An exploration of late life in rural Tasmania and the relation between people and place - Master Thesis Myrthe Felten

1 | M y r t h e F e l t e n A u g u s t 1 5 t h
2 0 1 6
Master Thesis Cultural Anthropology
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Myrthe Felten – s4399641
Nijmegen, August 15th
2016
Supervisor: dr. Hans Marks
“I tend to stick it out here as long as I can”
An exploration of late life in rural Tasmania
and the relation between people and place

2 0 1 6
Word count: 25 962
Picture front: Ruth (66) in the South West national park, one of her favourite places in Tasmania. © Felten

2 0 1 6
Abstract
This thesis addresses the experience of rural aging in Tasmania. As in many other countries
throughout the world, Australia’s older population is also set to grow extensively. Of the
Australian states, the island-state Tasmania has the oldest and fastest growing aging
population. Most elderly remain in their own home as they age, outside the capital area of
Hobart. To further enhance the knowledge about rural aging in the anthropological field I
explored the lived experience of rural agers in Tasmania with regard to place attachment. In
this thesis I argue that the feeling of place attachment with an area that seems to be dislocated,
and therefore may seem like a place where people would not age well, turns out to be a
necessity to do just that. Exemplified with three case-studies I describe that the feeling of
physical, social and autobiographical insideness strengthens people in their aging process.
Their experiences with the rural lifestyle and the bonds they have with their lifeworld,
enforces people’s will and ability to age in their own locale, even if that comes with
dependency upon others as well. Keeping in mind the metaphysical thought of being rooted in
place it is not certain if the rural lifeworld will remain a good place to grow old as people age
further. Until that time, however, their lifeworld positively influences people’s well-being.
There is no better place to stay and age then in their own locale. These findings may have
some consonance with rural agers in other western countries, and this research is meant to
give further comprehension about the lives and well-being of a growing group of people and
the role that (attachment to) place plays.

2 0 1 6
Content
Abstract 3
Introduction: late life in rural Tasmania 5
Place attachment and the lived experience of aging in a rural residence: 8
a literature review
Research setting: introducing the ‘dislocated’ area 17
“To live here you gotta be extra-ordinary”
Working in the field: immersed and disconnected at the “edge of civilisation” 21
Physical insideness: devotion and resilience through familiarity 27
“They have always lived here and know how to cope with having nothing”
Social insideness: joy and dependency through (social) connectedness 37
“I would have to disconnect myself, wouldn’t I, to become disconnected”
Autobiographical insideness: fear and strength in being out of place 45
“Your place is here, where you identify with”
Concluding chapter: the strengths and the pitfall of rural place attachment 55
“I tend to stick it out here as long as I can”
Literature 61
Appendix 66
Corpus of the data 66
Map of Tasmania 73
Picturing the scene 74
Road sign in Queenstown, a familiar sight in rural towns. © Felten

2 0 1 6
Introduction: late life in rural Tasmania
I am very blessed, because I can get out. I can get out of my house every day.
Summer, winter, autumn or spring. Get into my car, or walk anywhere I want to. If I
get out into the garden, I can do such a lot of things. But I cannot get down on the
ground, because it is so hard to get up, so all my work is done with a long hover. And I
have a gardener, that is why I say I’m very blessed, I’m very fortunate. … He does a
lovely job, I couldn’t possibly do it. … If I didn’t have good health and I needed
attention, I couldn’t cook for myself and I couldn’t do all the things that I normally
have to do I’d be lost. But I can do all those sort of things, so I am, I just stay here.
And I don’t wánt to move at any time. But if I have to move, of course you have to
move. No one knows. But I am quite happy to be here forever. And I don’t know how
long forever goes on, but forever and ever as far as I’m concerned never ends.
– Barbara (93)
This thesis makes use of a narrative approach to illustrate the experience of aging on
Tasmania’s countryside and the relation with place attachment. It is based on fieldwork that I
conducted from January 22nd
to May 6th
2016. Tucked away under its mainland, Tasmania has
the largest and fastest growing population of elderly in Australia (Jackson 2007, 18; COTA
2013, 39). A country that, more so than other western countries, is well-known with the aging
phenomenon (Davis and Bartlett 2008, 59; Jackson 2007, 18; Teitelbaum and Winter 1985,
68). Like Barbara, so too are many others in Tasmania. They remain in their own home as
they age, in a rural lifeworld, outside the capital area of Hobart (COTA 2013, 18; ibid., 43;
Davis and Bartlett 2008, 56).
Although several theoretical and empirical researches in the field of gerontology have
been carried out on aging people who reside outside urban areas in different local contexts
(see Krout 1988; Rowles 1988), there is an absence of studies that explore rural aging on the
level from which Barbara experiences it herself. The ‘rural’, as well as the diversities of
‘elderly’, tends to be overlooked (ibid., 104; ibid., 115-116; Fraser et al 2002, 160-168).
Barbara, along with other elderly who live in a rural locale, are consequently marginalised
and subordinated, especially in relation to other age groups or elderly in metropolitan areas
(Bryant and Pini 2011, 137-154; Davis and Bartlett 2008, 57; Powell 2001, 118-119). Their
lives “must be made evident and valorised” further as to explore different narratives of a large
and growing group of people (Chalmers and Joseph 1998, 155-157).

2 0 1 6
I chose to study this in relation to the concept place attachment, because this concept
shows how rurality and aging are intertwined with each other on the personal micro-level.
Anthropological literature on the phenomenon of place attachment offers the knowledge that
changing bodily bounds, such as loss of mobility and independence, and socio-cultural
changes, such as rural restructuring and the deaths of age peers, can lead to isolation and
dislocation for older people (see Woods 2005; Hoon 2014; Fogg 2000; Rubinstein and
Parmelee 1992). Yet, until now the relation between place attachment and the rural aging
experience has rarely been studied. Nor has qualitative anthropological research about this
theme been conducted in Tasmania. Therefore, to see how attachment to place resonates with
a rural lifestyle and getting older, I interviewed and observed 31 people between the age of 62
and 93 in different rural localities in Tasmania. I arranged to stay with three hosts in order to
gain access to people and localities that would have been difficult to reach otherwise. I lived
with Lester (65) and Collette (63), with Chris (64) and Frances (63), and with Ruth (66). I
also spent time in the country towns Coles Bay and Zeehan. During this time I learned that the
emotional tie of being attached to a rural locality is an influential aspect in the lives of my
participants and their feeling of well-being. I address this in the coming chapters with the
following research question: In what way does the feeling of being attached to place affect the
experience of aging in rural Tasmania?
This thesis starts from a literature review concerning old age and rurality. These
concepts are analysed and criticised from an anthropological perspective on place attachment
as to grasp a better image of the intersection between aging and rurality. Intersection in this
case refers to the place where both identity markers cross-cut each other; the mediation
between them (Lutz 2010, 1650). In the following chapter I introduce my field. I explicate in
what locality my participants are set, as to place their personal experience into the macro-
ecological context. Thereafter I give account of the used methodology and the process of my
research. My ethnographic chapters are subdivided in accordance with Rowles (1984, 129-
130) partitioning of place attachment.
In the first ethnographic chapter I describe how participants addressed the feeling of
physical insideness and how this form of attachment is at play in their lives. In the second
chapter I describe the way in which people expressed social insideness and how this feeling of
integration interweaves with the aging process. In the last ethnographic chapter I relate place
attachment to autobiographical insideness and how the extent with which people said they are
bonded to place can influence the mind-set of rural dwellers. In these chapters I use case-
studies of, consecutive, Redge (70) and Christina (69), Ruth, Chris and Frances, and a few

2 0 1 6
other small cases. In the conclusion I describe what strength, but also what pitfall comes forth
through place attachment and I provide the answer to the research question. The shown
findings in this master thesis may have some consonance with rural agers in other western
countries, and this anthropological research is meant to give further comprehension about the
lives and well-being of a growing group of people and the role that (attachment to) place
plays.

2 0 1 6
Place attachment and the lived experience of aging in a rural residence: a literature
review
Set in the rural locale my research holds one main theoretical theme, it being place
attachment. Within this theme there are several subdivisions that need to be taken into account
in order to grasp an understanding of rural aging. Before I come to the analysis of my field
data I therefore outline the concepts I address in these chapters. First I discuss the discourse of
both ‘the rural’ and ‘the elderly’. Subsequently I explicate the meaning of rurality, as this is
an important domain through which to understand experiences of locality. With the use of the
theory on place attachment I then outline how (loss of) connection to the rural area can
influence the lived experience of aging people who live in such locales.
‘The rural’ and its aging people (or not?)
“As a cultural construct, ‘the rural’ and the equally common terms ‘the bush’, or ‘agricultural
land’, have tended to be commonly used in Australia in a rather homogenous and
undifferentiated way to refer to the wide counties of the Australian landscape that lie outside
capital areas”, Hogg and Carrington (2006, 6) state. Such concepts accentuate differences
between urban and rural environments and overlook intra-area variation within them (Rowles
1988, 116; Krout 1988, 104). Yet, in Australia, as in all parts of the world, “there are many
ways of inhabiting rural space and many different and diverse groups who do so” (Hogg and
Carrington 2006, 7; see Fraser et al 2005, 289). ‘The rural’ is not in itself explanatory. It can
even be seen as problematic and inadequate, because it cannot account for the wide diversity
of people lifeworld’s (ibid.; Krout 1988, 105; Rowles 1988, 115)
The stereotyping of place not only compresses a diverse cultural reality, it also leads to
an image of stereotypical people, namely the ‘rural others’ who reside in these areas (Hogg
and Carrington 2006, 4; ibid., 7). Take for example the images of hard-working farming
families or the idea of conservative and cohesive communities (Fraser et al 2002, 289). ‘Rural
others’ are deemed invisible and insignificant (Hogg and Carrington 2006, 7). Not only is
rural difference itself “denied, excluded or silenced”, so too are people who live in a rural
environment (ibid). Especially in Australia, where a large group of aboriginals reside in rural
areas, this is striking. In Tasmania they are literally silenced as it is often thought and stated
that there are no more Tasmanian aborigines since the mass genocide in 1824-1847 (Breen
2011, 71-73; Flanagan 2002). Whilst aborigines still live there, they remain unrecognised.

2 0 1 6
Although the aging of the population is a well-known contemporary phenomenon
taking place throughout the world, particularly Australia is familiar with this process.
Australia, and especially Tasmania, is currently experiencing an aging process that will extent
over seventy years because of a “disproportionate” magnitude and lengthy baby boom
(Jackson 2007, 13-18; Hugo 2014, 2; Teitelbaum and Winter 1985, 68). The majority of this
fast growing group remain in their own home as they age, outside the capital area of Hobart
(COTA 2013, 18; ibid., 43; Davis and Bartlett 2008, 56). With regard to the aging
phenomenon it seems that rural elderly in Tasmania, as elsewhere in the world, face a ‘double
marginalisation’, since “they suffer the disadvantages of being both old and rural” (Krout
1988, 107; Rowles 1984, 130). The concept of old age is namely often approached through
the western hegemonic discourse. This discourse gives predominance to economic, social and
physical decline of agers and this group has been problematised throughout the twentieth
century and continues to do so today (Bryant and Pini 2011, 133; Powell 2001, 118). Old age,
for example, points to the last phase of life, wherein both bodily and mental functions slowly
decrease (Encyclo 2016). The aging body is a write-off, subjected to decay and, thus, leads to
an adverse quality of life (Powell 2001, 118).
This discourse has been starting to shift over the past years. That aging might actually
be something positive comes forth in ethnographic studies from, amongst other, Dychtwald
(1999) and Singer (2015). In Older and Bolder Singer (ibid.) writes against the anxieties and
stereotypes of the decades that come after the age of sixty with stories of “productive old
age”. Based on the lives of women over sixty in New-York and Melbourne, Singer (ibid., 7)
describes that her participants are joyful and active people who are, and remain, engaged with
life and with people. Singer, herself being in the early years of sixty, concludes she has much
to look forward to in the “third stage” of her life (ibid., 6-7). Gerontologist and psychologist
Dychtwald has a more economic approach to aging. In Age Power: how the 21st
century will
be ruled by the New Old (1999) he argues that the United States of America is becoming a
gerontocracy, but that aging people could be migrating into the most powerful years of their
lives (ibid., 235-236). From a strong demographic position they have the potential to realise
their full intellectual influence in politics, as they exemplify a new kind of wise and mature
leadership. Other studies also suggest that getting older “might not be so bad” and that the
latter days of life can be lived audaciously (Henig 2013; see CBS 2013; Friedan 2006).
Several studies refer to this as ‘aging well’: pointing to the quality of life that elderly have; the
health, happiness and well-being of a person.

2 0 1 6
Rather than seeing old age as a written of subject of decay, Singer (2015) and
Dychtwald (1999) recognise that it is more accurate to see old age as a process, or in other
words, as aging. With the concept of aging it is acknowledged that “changes in bodily ability
and the ways of using the body often occur slowly and almost imperceptibly” (Bryant and
Pini 2011, 134). Bodily decline or disability is not a permanent or definite part of aging.
Rather, people move across different stages of bodily change, with which increasingly more
defects come to light, like rigidness or arthritis. As the body gradually changes or forsakes, a
person may also change or adjust his or her lifestyle “to incorporate both loss and new bodily
performance” (ibid.).
Although the collective term ‘the elderly’ points to transitions and experiences that
affect all elderly, the rural hegemonic discourse and the rural setting produce extra, distinctive
constructions for so-called rural agers (Chalmers and Joseph, 2006, 392; Bryant and Pini
2011, 133). This is because most knowledge about rural agers stems from macro-ecological
contexts, such as urban and rural comparisons (Krout 1988, 104; Rowles 1988, 116-118;
Davis and Bartlett 2008, 56; Fraser et al 2005, 160). This comparative perspective only
reinforces the false homogenisation of diverse rural localities and how and by whom these can
be inhabited. It consequently results in conclusions that rural elderly are worse off than urban
elderly, because they live in less adequate housing, have lower incomes, fewer available
services and poorer health, as has been done in the United States or New Zealand (see Krout
1988; Woods 2005). On its own, the nature of the macro-ecological context, whether urban or
rural, is an inadequate predictor of an individual’s aging experience (Rowles 1988, 118;
Chalmers and Joseph 1998, 155).
Concerning (mental) health and aging in Australia both Davis and Bartlett (2008, 59)
and Fraser et al (2002, 292), therefore, criticise the lack of understanding the complexity of
rurality and healthy ageing in order to study the local experiences of aging. Although health is
not the main focus in this thesis, the findings of Davis and Bartlett (2008) and Fraser et al
(2002) show that within a very small area there can be major variation in the lifestyle and
well-being of individual old people. While, it is indeed the case that the environmental
context has an effect on the local and specific experiences of people (see Chalmers and Joseph
2006) local experiences cannot be enfolded within these single, homogenous and hegemonic
definitions (Davis and Bartlett 2008, 59; Fraser et al 2002; Rowles 1984, 130; ibid. 1988,
115-116; Krout 1988, 104; Powell 2001, 119; Bryant and Pini 2011, 117-136). Not only the
western discourse on aging, but also the discourse on rural areas, thus, cannot account for the
diverse experiences within these concepts. A focus on these definitions result in a failure of

2 0 1 6
understanding rural aging, as local impacts on people simply have not been documented
extensively enough in order to do so (Chalmers and Joseph 1998, 155; Krout 1988, 112).
Since there is a growing number of aging people who reside in the countryside, amongst other
in Tasmania, a better understanding of their lived experiences and life circumstances seems
logical (COTA 2013, 18; ibid., 43; Davis and Bartlett 2008, 56).
Rurality: an important identity marker for ‘aging in place’
In order to better understand life’s experiences of elderly in rural places an emphasis must be
placed on the micro-level; the local environment where experience and reality takes place, as
has been argued by Lutz (2010) regarding migratory processes in European countries.
Although the hegemonic discourses on the macro-level do affect the aged (Bryant and Pini
2011, 133), the aging process is part of life’s experiences and should be studied in the local
context.
In order to grasp the micro-experience it is essential to realise that the aging
experience is a personal phenomenon that takes place in the unique lifeworld of a person
(Rowles 1988, 120-121). So far I have based this chapter on literature stemming from social
sciences other than anthropology, yet especially this science is qualified to create more depth
and understanding to notions such as aging and rurality. Perceptions of aging in daily practice
are namely influenced by intersectional aspects, such as gender, lifecycle, age and class (Lutz
2010, 1650; Bryant and Pini 2011, 141-142). Diversity also comes with different ethnicities,
different social positions, emotions, dreams and ideals, agency or social constraints that
humans encounter (see Thai 2005; Gale 2007 or; Coe 2008). This means that different social
actors have different gendered meanings and experiences (Bryant and Pini 2011, 125-131).
For example, although the life-expectancy has already improved by ten to fifteen years since
1962, the life span of aborigines is still around ten years lower than other Australians. Though
this cumulative fact is only visible on the macro-level, this life span differential shows that
ethnic diversity alone leads to different narratives and experiences about aging (ABS 2016a;
AIHW 2015, 6). All these intersecting factors are identity markers that shape and reshape
lived experience.
Regarding the experience of growing old in a rural area it is especially important to
acknowledge ‘rurality’ itself, or in other words, the rural lifeworld, as an important influence.
The complexity of intersected identity is not static and cannot be universalised because stories
and emotions are “partial, temporal and also geographically bound” (Bryant and Pini 2011,

2 0 1 6
149). Life is experienced from a certain location during a certain time and this locality, in this
case rurality, is intersected with other markers (ibid., 141; Fogg 2000, 11). I therefore see
rurality as an important intersection, because it provides insight on how localities in which
people live shape, or at the least, influence lived experience.
To explore this, I have made a distinction between a socio-cultural and an ecological
environment. Broadly speaking, the rural lifeworld is a space into which a person is set and
that comprises his or her personal context, “the lifestyle he or she pursues and the values he or
she cherishes” (Rowles 1988, 121). Within this definition, the ecological environment of a
person points to the landscape in which he or she is set; the macro-environmental context that
frames a personal context on a micro-scale (ibid., 118). The socio-cultural environment is
seen as the micro-surroundings of an individual, such as his or her home, social networks he
or she has, services he or she uses and possible family members living nearby. The
relationship between these two types of geographical and environmental bounds and how they
influence the aging experience is explored with regard to place attachment in the following
section.
Place attachment: emotional ties with a rural area of residence
Important when recognising rurality as an identity marker is the fact that rurality is bodily
experience, “the body being the medium through which place is lived” (Bryant and Pini 2011,
141). The locality people live in often has an emotional significance, and people can link
themselves to a geographic location, whether it is in a negative or positive way (Ponzetti
2003; Tonnaer 2014). This emotional connection between a person and his or her
environment is called place attachment. It is a “set of feelings about a geographic location that
emotionally binds a person to that place as a function of its role as a setting for experience”
(Rubinstein and Parmelee 1992, 139). Places such as home, community and land are both
lived as remembered and arise from personal beliefs, characteristics and feelings, as well as
through people and their experiences with that place (ibid., 140; Ponzetti 2003, 1-2; Kellaher,
Sheila and Holland 2004, 68). ‘Place’ is thus evoked through emotion, cognition and
behaviour ascribed to that place (Ponzetti 2003, 1).
The phenomenon of place attachment is a common one (ibid.). A famous example is
that of Bourdieu (1977) who examined everyday life in France and Algeria, and how human
beings behave in particular spatial settings. He revealed that ordinary experiences and
practices that take place in environmental contexts evolve into habitus (ibid., 72-95; Kellaher,

2 0 1 6
Sheila and Holland 2004, 65). Habitus unknowingly internalises norms and values, ways of
thinking, perceiving and performing, and establish custom and culture. The environmental
setting is incorporated into a human being, Bourdieu (1977, 95) teaches, which means that
place is also part of the life course. A place can change over time, different persons can relate
differently to a place over time, as has been argued by Tonnaer (2014, 251) as well regarding
the bond that people have with nature. A place can also disappear in time, but that does not
mean that the sense of that place, or the attachment to it, disappears as well. Place is, thus,
enacted upon through the connection people have with it. It is therefore important that
attention is paid to place in order to grasp an understanding of how people see their immediate
environment and how this shapes their practices.
The phenomenon of place attachment might especially be significant for agers who
always lived in a rural environment. This becomes clear when place attachment is made
researchable with the use of Rowles (1984, 129-130) conceptualisation. He partitioned place
attachment into three related aspects: autobiographical, physical and social insideness. The
first aspect, autobiographical insideness, refers to an attachment that arises “out of a lifetime
in particular environments” (ibid.). Physical insideness, the second dimension, means that
people feel “familiarity with the physical setting” (ibid.). Social insideness, the third aspect,
points to a form of social integration with age peers and with the local community.
In light of the first aspect it becomes clear why place attachment can strongly reside
within older people. Autobiographical insideness exists within the larger context of the life
course. This form of place attachment has originated and grown during a person’s life
(Rubinstein and Parmelee 1992, 139). That rural agers in Tasmania express this feeling of
attachment is visible in the simple fact that they keep living in their current environment for
as long as possible (COTA 2013, 109). This phenomenon of ‘aging in place’ can be related to
the experiences people have with the life course in their locale, the memory people have with
it, but it also enables people to maintain a sense of continuity; to maintain the attachment that
spans a lifetime (Rubinstein and Parmelee 1992, 139-140; Hoon 2014, 4).
These reasons to age in place also refer to the second aspect of place attachment.
Physical insideness points to the familiarities people have with their locale and wanting to
maintain the continuity they have with their lifestyle. “Rural elderly may secure a source of
identity, refuge, and comfort” through their attachment to rurality, as has been argued by
Ponzetti (2003, 2) in Illinois. It can be a way to protect oneself against change, but the feeling
of familiarity with the locale also further ties people to place.

2 0 1 6
This feeling of belonging can be rooted within the locale itself as well as within the
socio-cultural environment (ibid., 9). Social ties, for example, are important to elderly because
it is a way to stay engaged in the local society, as came to the fore in Hoon’s research in South
East Queensland (2014, 2). Being socially integrated and having a feeling of social insideness
with people around them is also a reason for older people to remain in their own home as they
age. The third aspect of Rowles (1984, 129-130) conceptualisation of place attachment is thus
another dimension in people’s connection to the locale in which they live. Attachments to
land or people keep the past alive and help to maintain and strengthen a sense of self over
time, because this “may act as a buffer and a means of retaining identity” (Rubinstein and
Parmelee 1992, 140).
Though place attachment might especially be significant for rural agers, this
connecting feeling can also have problematic consequences for them in view of socio-cultural
changes. Australian rural areas are experiencing an outmigration of younger people,
especially in Tasmania (Davis and Bartlett 2008, 56; Tasmania’s population 2008). Younger
people seek better (paid) job opportunities, do not desire to inherit farms, or cannot find a job
since, for example, agriculture is, and will continue to, fade (Alston 2004; Downey, Threlkeld
and Warburton 2015, 58). The patterns of outmigration have a characterising impact on the
demographic spreading of elderly in Australia (Davis and Bartlett 2008, 57; Hoon 2014, 9-
10). They live at greater distances from their children, whilst they are increasingly
concentrated in a low density area (ibid.; Hugo 2007, 2). Rather than feeling integrated,
elderly may therefore in fact encounter a loss of physical and social insideness, as is the case
in New Zealand (Woods 2005). Population restructuring, eroding social networks, the
disappearance of village businesses, such as shops, post offices and banks, and the
fragmentation of families leads to changes in older people’s lifeworld (ibid., 253-254).
Having to travel longer distances and the inescapable deaths of friend’s means that networks
in which elderly partake can slowly become non-existent and areas in which they live slowly
unfamiliar. Attachment to place could in a way thus lead to becoming dislocated, due to the
loss of social and physical insideness.
With regard to physical mobility the tension between rural place attachment and
dislocation is even more evident. I have subdivided physical mobility in changing physicality
of those aging, such as the loss of bodily strength, and the ability to keep a mobile,
independent lifestyle. Both occurrences can have limiting effects on a person’s life. As
Rubinstein and Parmelee (1992, 140) explain “aging, particularly extreme old age does bring
physical and sensory limitations.” Loss of bodily strength also affects the independent

2 0 1 6
lifestyle people can have, especially in view of transport. Rural Australia has low levels of
public transport and the car is the means of travel that offers independence and autonomy
(Rosier and McDonald 2011, 1; Fogg 2000, 22). Loss of a driver’s license can therefore
seriously affect a person’s lifestyle. In New South Wales, for example, the car enables elderly
to go out, do groceries, or meet friends and it contributes to their quality of life (ibid., 31).
Poor physical ability and mobility threatens people’s independence and competence
(Rubinstein and Parmelee 1992, 140; Fogg 2000, 7), while, at the same time, the rural
environment hinders the provision of care from social networks and physicians (ibid., 43).
Loss of mobility in a physically demanding environment can decrease social and physical
insideness further, as this can socially disconnect a person in his or her locale, but also
disengage a person with the life he or she is familiar with (Woods 2005, 253; Hoon 2014, 3).
All in all it seems that while the landscape in which aging people live roughly stays
the same, bodily changes and the socio-cultural changes of the rural environment lead to a
paradox between rural place attachment and dislocation. Especially in view of
autobiographical insideness rural place attachment particularly relates to elderly. With regard
to physical and social insideness, attachment to rural places can, however, also be especially
problematic for this cohort. Restricted and decreasing daily mobility and changing socio-
cultural environments, due to a loss of rural services and social capital, and the loss of age
peers, can have serious consequences for the well-being of elderly (Krout 1988, 105-106).
Implication: rural aging and place attachment
As argued, there are widespread orientations that mask the diverse lives of both the aged
population and the rural population. Many elders decide to stay in rural environments, yet
“the lived experience of rural elderly are often overlooked in rural places and must be made
evident and valorised, as to comment on the reflection of their lived experiences in
contemporary approaches to rural studies”, Chalmers and Joseph (1998, 155) explain. The
theoretical contribution that place attachment offers about the experience of rural aging shows
that the emotional tie to place is influential in living on the countryside. Changing bodily
bounds and socio-cultural changes can, however, also lead to the isolation and dislocation of
older people.
Although there are studies that indicate that ‘getting older really isn’t that bad’, there
is not a lot of knowledge available on the personal experience of rural aging and the link with
place attachment. This phenomenon is, however, an interesting concept to study the rural

2 0 1 6
aging experience with. Place attachment underscores the relation between people and place
and therefore, in this thesis, how the ‘rural’ and ‘getting older’ interweave with each other and
how place affects people. With the use of anthropological research I therefore explored the
effect of place attachment on the Tasmanian countryside and the possible tensions with
becoming dislocated, due to social and physical disconnection. Even though this region has
the oldest population of Australia, and will continue to have (Jackson 2007, 18), I have not
been able to find ethnographies about the aging experience on the island-state. The answer of
how the well-being of a person is affected by place attachment and the possibility that he or
she might lose familiarity with his or her surroundings, is something I address in the
ethnographic chapters with the use of the following research question: In what way does the
feeling of being attached to place affect the experience of aging in rural Tasmania? This
question is answered with the following sub-questions: In what way does the rural locale
affect the lives of aging people?; In what way do people feel attached to their locale; How do
rural agers cope with physical and social change?; In what way does the longitude of living in
a rural environment impact the feeling of attachment?
In the following chapter of my thesis I explicate the macro-ecological context in which
my research has taken place. Herein I explicate the rural lifeworld I encountered during the
span of fieldwork, so to place the lived experience of aging into the context of that time. The
socio-cultural context in which my fieldwork took place is explained in the ethnographic
chapters with the use of Rowles (1984, 129-130) conceptualisation of place attachment. Each
ethnographic chapter carries one of the three forms of insideness and how this particular
attachment influences people I talked to. The answer to the research question and how these
three forms of insideness interweave with each other is provided in the concluding chapter.

2 0 1 6
Research setting: introducing the ‘dislocated’ area
“To live here you gotta be extra-ordinary” – Don (81)
Tucked away under Australia is the island-state Tasmania. Perhaps small in comparison with
its mainland, the island is still about the size of Ireland. An hour by plane, thirteen hours by
boat across the tempestuous and fierce rushes of the 240 kilometre wide canal of Bass Strait,
Tasmania is hardly anything more than just another phrase for the remoteness it encapsulates.
As it is from time and location that life is experienced (Bryant and Pini 2011, 141; Fogg 2000,
11), I explicate what this remoteness actually entails and in which macro-environment
participants lived during the span of fieldwork, so to place their narratives into context.
Setting the scene
Rural, regional, country, isolated, remote, outback, wild, rugged. All are terms with which
people I talked to describe Tasmania’s macro-ecological context. Remote and rugged are
perhaps the terms that gives the island’s vast remoteness most justice. Sighted by Dutchman
Abel Tasman in 1642, Tasmania did not get claimed. The land on the far side of the world
was too far out of reach for trade and too expensive to ship products to. The English, a couple
of hundred years later in the nineteenth century, sent their convicts over from their
overcrowded London prisons. A good way to be rid of those who committed a petty felony. A
good way also to populate and farm the island “beyond the seas” (Shakespeare 2006, 7).
Most of the western part of ‘Tassie’, as locals called it, is protected and uninhabited
wilderness. A total of forty percent of the entire Tasmanian countryside is national park. The
largest park, titled the South west national park, is perhaps a dull name considering it protects
thick and impassable rainforests, glacier lakes, gushing rivers and a hinterland of mountains.
However, as it covers the entire south west landscape of the island such a name is no more
than just. Facing the Indian Ocean this side of the island is right in the pathway of The
Roaring Forties. The stark and unhampered winds that blow over from Cape Horn in
Argentina do not meet land anywhere else and “smack at full tilt into the west coast”, as
English-man Shakespeare (2006, 10) describes in In Tasmania, a book about his experience of
immigrating to Tasmania. The gusts against the natural made dunes blow the sand further
inwards, dig in forests as the decades come along and cover the mountains in mists. There are
places that are only accessible by boat. Other areas are inaccessible and remain unseen and
untouched by people. For this reason it is often assumed that the extinct Tasmanian tiger
might still be wandering through the rainforests (see Shears 2013).

2 0 1 6
The majority of the population of just over half a million have their habitat in Hobart,
Launceston, or in the small northern harbour cities Burnie and Devonport (Knoema 2014;
ABS 2016b). Situated on the southern shores the capital Hobart is by far the biggest city with
almost half of the entire population (ibid. 2015). The Derwent River circles through the
sociable and busy Victorian built harbour town, into Storm bay. Ships, small boats, fish and
chips shacks, and farmers markets decorate the esplanades while a fresh breeze blows through
the city streets. Launceston, with a hundred thousand people the second city of Tasmania, is a
four hour drive northwards. Between the two main cities is the central plateau, also called the
northern and southern midlands. The one-lined highway traverses through dry, hilly farm- and
bushland, and through three Georgian-styled towns with mills and churches. A warm-hearted
colonial realm set amidst the open land, isolation and quietness where the remaining hundred
and fifty thousand people, about one third of the population, live spread out in.
Whereas the west coast is mountainous and densely forested with temperate
rainforests, the east coast of Tasmania is much calmer-looking and warmer, because the
mountains in the west break of most of the ‘roaring’ wind and rain. A geographical division of
land that crosses over where the western granite mountains make place for the almost blinding
white dolerite peaks. The sun shines down on the greenish hills, dry plains and on the pearl
blue sea that rolls onto the white beaches and splashes against the rocks. Sheep graze on dry,
sandy fields. Acres of vineyards with trees full of grapes and a few paddocks covered in hay
stacks charm the valleys. There are empty bricked houses, wooden cottages that have
collapsed with the winds of time. A lot of properties have simply been abandoned and most
fields are neglected and overgrown with bushes. During summer quite a number of tourists go
to the island ‘under Down Under’ for about a week to explore the largely uninhabited areas
(Sprothen 2016). Every now and again farmers warn drivers on the road that their herd is
crossing. By night wombats, wallabies, Tasmanian devils, possums and at least one of the
three types of venomous snakes vacate the road. During daytime the roads are mostly
desolate. Stretching out over the emptiness and the wild and untamed landscape – uncovering
a scene of what I sometimes imagine all corners of the world once looked like.1
Aging beautifully dislocated
The climate, the isolation and the nature in which people live for a large part determine the
lifestyle of the older people in rural Tasmania. Like all parts of the world, also Tasmania has
1
See appendix for a map (p. 73) of Tasmania and pictures (p. 74-83) I made during fieldwork

2 0 1 6
been affected by climate change. This results in a severe drought in which crops and
vegetable gardens are hard to maintain, and in which water tanks run low during summer.
Especially farmers have not had it easy, as they have not been able to maximise the use of
their farm. Winters are cold, however, during which time roads get icy, filled with rocks from
the mountains, or they disappear under a stream of water. At the same time, “If you don’t like
Tasmanian weather, come back in five minutes” is a joke I often heard. The weather is ever-
changeable and basically anything can happen any time of year, any hour per day. “You
always gotta make sure you can last a few weeks on your own”, Collette therefore warned me
after the Tasman highway flooded because of ongoing rainstorms.
Townships and villages such as Coles Bay, Zeehan and Campania usually have a
population between two or three hundred people. Such towns have a small supermarket, with
limited, expensive products and names such as Veggies and hardware or General store. One
or two gas pumps generally stand next to the entrance door. Depending on the size, the
slightly bigger towns also have an ATM machine and a post office, mostly inside the
supermarket. Settlements such as Eaglehawk Neck, a small stretch of land that connects the
peninsula with the rest of Tasmania, have none of these facilities and people have to travel to
the nearest town. Almost everyone drives to Hobart or Burnie to do groceries, buy clothes, get
books or buy herbs. Travelling to Hobart can take five hours from Coles Bay, seven from
Zeehan and two from Eaglehawk Neck, while the roads lack regular maintenance. Most
participants do not drive that distance all too often. Some things can be ordered online, but
also that means that people have to drive to the post office to pick up their parcel. In terms of
distances and facilities rural people live rather dislocated.
Especially aging people can live dislocated, as they need to visit the doctor more often
than other age-groups. As Don (81) explained, while looking out over the three dolerite peaks
across the bay from his living room on the Coles Bay waterline:
To live here you gotta be extra ordinary … you have to be healthy to keep living here,
and you gotta be up for it you know, to be further away from shops and things like
that. That is not for everybody.
Towns do have voluntary ambulances, which means that local people assess the severity of an
emergency call and drive the ambulance to Hobart or Launceston, while a professional
medical team from the city either drives towards the volunteers with a fully equipped
ambulance or uses the Flying Doctor service. Yet, people in Campania and Eaglehawk Neck

2 0 1 6
need to travel to neighbouring towns to visit the doctor or to go the pharmacy. In Zeehan the
doctor’s post is open three days a week, in Coles Bay the doctor comes in every fortnight. For
X-rays, radiation treatments or operations, everyone needs to go to Hobart or Launceston.
Moreover, older people are also affected by economic and demographic changes.
Throughout the state there are job opportunities in road work, construction work, timber ware
and tourism, but in the east most people have an (oyster) farm or vineyard. In the west most
people work for mining companies or on fisheries. Jobs in secondary or tertiary sections do
not in exist in large amounts outside Hobart. Therefore, as written in the previous chapter,
many younger, working-age cohorts, and most children of the participants I spoke to, move
out of the regions for work in Hobart or on the mainland (see Alston 2004, 41-42; Tasmanian
population 2015). Economic chances, being closer to facilities and earning more money for
less effort are usually reasons for children to leave, their retired parents told me. Swimming
lessons, good schooling, getting books from the library and going out for the evening are all
activities for which people need to travel to Hobart. People consequently drive to the city so
often, they eventually just move there, several participants explained. As a result the
countryside is increasingly deprived of younger people and an already aging population gets
more and more isolated from other generations. Whereas currently one in five people are aged
65 years or older, by 2030 one in four people will have reached this age (COTA 2013, 52;
Jackson 2007, 13). As most older Tasmanians live in rural areas, most of this growth will
happen in the countryside, where one in three people will be aged 65 or more by 2030 (Davis
and Bartlett 2008, 56; Hugo 2014, 30; COTA 2013, 18).
During three and a half months of fieldwork I have seen a glimpse of the wild, rugged,
remote and rural areas of Tasmania, and I have explored a glimpse of people who live in an
environment that is both relaxing and challenging. “The landscape is not”, as Shakespeare
(2006, 10) explains, “the ruined coastline of most countries and it would probably have
looked much the same … in 1804” as it does now. Birds and wallabies are abundant, cell
phone reach and internet is uncertain. Still, during the span of fieldwork alone I found that my
participants are subjected to ‘five minute weather’, The Roaring Forties, drought, emptiness,
distance, lack of facilities, and a deprivation of younger cohorts in a remote part of Australia,
on a remote part of the world. In that sense, the people I talked to could be considered
dislocated. Yet, if so, they do live beautifully dislocated. Their lifeworld brings forth a
timeless vastness, and as Shakespeare (2006, 7) describes: “… It is like outer space on earth
and invoked by those at the ‘centre’ to stand for all that is far-flung, strand and unveriviable.”

2 0 1 6
Working in the field: immersed and disconnected at the “edge of civilisation”
I walk over the sandy road or paved street to the front door. I knock and wait for a response as
I hear people trudge through the hallways. “Oh!”, the participants often respond with an
amazed tone in their voice. They look curious at this young woman whom they have never
seen before. “Hello”, I then say, “I am Myrthe, your neighbour or friend Don thought it would
be nice to talk to you.” I explain who I am, where I am from and what I’m doing in Tasmania.
“Is it all right if I have an interview with you?”, I conclude. “Well you’ve come to the right
place then!”, participants often say enthusiastic, or they exclaim: “Well there’s a thought, do
you want to come in or make an appointment for later?” People I approached during
fieldwork are mostly happy that they can show me what life in the countryside is really like
and they explained to me why everyone should live where they live (but then not again not
really, because that would mean it would become too overcrowded). I either found these
people through people in their network that I had talked to prior, or through my hosts.
During my stay in Tasmania I lived with Lester (65) and Collette (63), who live along
the Tasman Highway on the east coast; with Chris (64) and Frances (63), who live in the
Campania valley in the southern midlands; and I lived with Ruth (66), who lives in
Eaglehawk Neck on the Tasman peninsula. I found my hosts on helpx.net (2016). This is a
website in which local residents of Australia offer tourists and backpacker’s accommodation
in exchange for small chores in and around the house. As the countryside of Tasmania is wide
spread I expected that people could be hard to reach without knowing where to go or who to
contact. I therefore arranged to stay in a rural locality in this manner. Living with hosts could
allow me to first-hand experience what the rural lifestyle entails and through their social
networks I could also reach other people more easily.
I selected my hosts beforehand through purposive sampling, which means that they
comply with the selection criteria (Gobo 2008, 113). These are retired people over sixty who
live in a rural locality and whom can share their views and experiences on which I sought
more information. The term retired has a nuanced meaning in this thesis, however. Including
some of my hosts, I talked to several people who are either under the pensionable age of 65
(Australian Government 2015) or who own local businesses or farms and intend to do for as
long as they can2
. The age of people I interviewed ranges from 62 to the age of 93. Except for
Frances all people told me they are retired though. Retired in a sense that they are not on
anyone’s payroll, receive pension every fortnight or have reached the pensionable age. I
2
See Appendix (p. 66-72) for a complete overview of the data, including date, location and specifics of the data

2 0 1 6
maintain this operationalisation in this thesis as the aging experience is described from the
emic perspective, hence from local meanings and explanations (Kottak 2012, 55). An
experience that for some includes work on the farm or in the shop. Frances started a part-time
job again after being retired for five years due to unexpected financial instability. As the
comparison between the urban and the rural lifestyle has been mentioned several times by my
participants, this, as I argued, homogenising comparative perspective is addressed as well. I
address this only to the extent of explaining how people described their lifeworld and I, by no
means mean to homogenise different rural or urban environments with each other.
I spent two weeks with Lester and Collette and both a month with Ruth and with Chris
and Frances. Through email and phone calls we discussed my research and agreed upon a
reciprocal arrangement. In exchange for chores I received accommodation in their home and
in my free time I was able to observe and interview them and people in their social network.
That this combination of chores and fieldwork could be difficult and a lot to manage at once is
something I learned early on in the fieldwork with Lester and Collette. The couple runs a little
tearoom and shop called The Pondering Frog. They chose this name because a: Collette is
crazy for frogs and b: people need to think about their order. “Hi, you pondering? Ponder
around, have an ice-cream”, Lester always greets customers with. The tearoom is mainly an
ice-cream shop, which are homemade by Collette. They also serve savoury pies, Devonshire
teas, scones, salads, fish & chips and cherries. Bright green magnet and china ware frogs are
up for sale as well. The shop is open from eight to seven, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks
a year. Since the couple bought the property three years ago, they have hardly left home, for
the simple fact that they do not have time to do so, nor have the need to do so, they explained.
In between the vegetables they grow and the supplies that come with the food truck every
week, the couple manages to be self-sustaining. They both enjoy their lifestyle and do not
mind the effort it requires from them. The couple do not have a lot of social contacts and they
cannot afford help in the shop. Making use of Helpx.com gives them a bit of both.3
For me the division of work and fieldwork was out of balance though. Other than we
talked about initially, I had to work seven days a week from seven to seven, I could not leave
the property for fieldwork and was not allowed to talk to people on their property as Lester
felt that it was interfering with his business. In studying the possibility of becoming dislocated
in rural areas, I myself thus encountered a feeling of dislocation. As we had agreed upon a
two week trial I left after this and went to Coles Bay, which is, because of its natural
surroundings, a popular tourist location, forty minutes from The Pondering Frog. This gave
3
See Appendix (p. 79) for supporting pictures

2 0 1 6
me more insight on the locality in which Lester and Collette live and how other people
experience living and aging in that area. Though I had originally planned to mainly focus on
people who live more isolated and not in a country-town, the need for a more comprehensive
understanding broadened my field in that sense.
The reciprocal relationship with my next hosts, Chris and Frances, was different. I
helped them out on the farming property called Campania Springs, fifteen minutes on an
unsealed road from the nearest town, Campania. I observed and interviewed my hosts and had
small talk with them. Other than with Lester and Collette we did not rush each other into
anything, wanting too much from each other, and, as agreed upon beforehand I was able to
conduct fieldwork and interview people who live elsewhere in the Campania valley or the
southern midlands. Here, I found that most people who do not live in a rural township do
maintain ties with the nearest towns anyway, because of social relations they have there or the
groceries they can do. Before I visited my last hostess, Ruth, I therefore went to the quiet
mining town Zeehan, so that I could gain more understanding of the role that towns play in
people’s lives. This was also a good way to see in what way aging experiences in this town
are similar or different from experiences in Coles Bay, as Zeehan is economically and
demographically declining due to the closure of mines. I then travelled to Eaglehawk Neck. It
is a stretched out settlement of shacks and a couple of houses. Locals buy the morning paper
at the Lufra hotel. Here, as well, I observed and interviewed my hostess, had small talk and
was able to conduct fieldwork in Ruth’s locality and through her social network.
Most of the participants are thus found by means of the snowball effect, because I
selected the qualified participants through my hosts and other participants (Gobo 2008, 140).
This selection did take place with regard to the selection criteria. From January 22nd
2016
until May 6th
2016 I interviewed 31 aging people, 21 of which are formal, and had several
conversations with younger people, and community and health workers. Most formal indepth
interviews tended to be two hours long and were usually held in interviewees’ homes.
Eighteen of these interviews are tape-recorded. For privacy reasons, the remaining three
formal interviews have not been tape-recorded. The interviews that have been conducted in an
informal context are not recorded either.
The interviews I held are half-structured. I asked some structured questions during the
interview in order to obtain basic knowledge, but most subjects were addressed in a more
conversational dialogue (Baarda, de Goede en Teunissen (2001, 149-152). As I always had
my interview guide with me in the field, I was also able to ask these questions during the
unplanned, informal interviews. I addressed the life course, the aging experience, the

2 0 1 6
connection to locality, the possibility of being or becoming dislocated and the importance of
mobility, social relations, independence, health and healthcare. There was also room for the
participants to bring information to the fore which I had not taken into account. I learned, for
example, that the participants who moved to a rural area at a later stage in their life brought
different feelings about their lifeworld to the fore than other participants.
To gain a good understanding of the setting to which my participants are or are not
attached to, I made use of grand tour observation (Spradley 1980, 73-84). In observing the
macro-ecological rural areas I could see what the rural setting actually entails in Tasmania
and how this environment can influence the lifestyle of people living there. I observed the
nature, the geology, the climate, but also the quality of the roads and the presence of (health)
facilities in the towns, such as pharmacies, and conducted small talk and interviews to gain
more knowledge of this. These observations took place in Hobart, Zeehan and Coles Bay, a
trip on the west coast, bus trips to get from Hobart to my hosts, and in their localities.
Next to this exploratory observation I used participant observation (Gobo 2008, 13), in
which I specifically looked at the micro-environment of people, how people perceive their
lifeworld and their behaviour and activities. These observations took place in the households
of my participants and the environment in which they live. The observations at my hosts also
included their home furnishings. This allowed me to advance my understanding of where the
interests of my hosts lie. The fact that the wall paintings in Chris’ and Frances’ house are all
related to water and boats showed me, for example, that Chris is closely connected to the sea
and boats, and that living inland disconnects him from that.
I also joined in social outings with Frances’ age peers from the area. We walked along
the beachside of Cunningham with a group of elderly and visited the touristic site The Wall
on the west coast with elderly from the town Oatlands. Both outings were held by Rural
Health Tasmania, an organisation that arranges social outings, health meetings, exercise
classes and exercise outings for rural, mainly older, people. Walks such as the one at
Cunningham are organised every second month and are meant to get rural dwellers in touch
with each other, but it also allows social workers to talk to their clients and to assess their
specific situation in an informal manner. During the trips I was able to talk about this with the
women that work for Rural Health and with people going to these outings. The outings have
been important for my research, because they gave me more understanding of the role that
community work and social networks play in the lives of the participants. I also had expert-
interviews with a local doctor and a local nurse from the Rural health centre in Zeehan, and I
interviewed community workers in Zeehan. I read news articles in papers, read community

2 0 1 6
magazines and watched the news. Lastly, I arranged a Focus Group Discussion with the Red
Cross committee in Campania, of which Frances is president, to add on the importance of
community work, being active for a community and how getting older is perceived.
Everything together I studied and explored the lives and experiences of elderly in two
country towns and three rural localities. These different aspects of my fieldwork have led to
an iterative understanding of the lived experience of aging and how the concept of place
attachment is interwoven with people’s lives. While the social outings and the Focus Group
Discussion, for example, gave me more understanding of the social connections people have
and what it means to have this, interviewing the health nurse and the local doctor in Zeehan
gave me more insight on the physical and mental health of older people, their attitudes and
their approach to getting older. Through the other aspects of my fieldwork I could place the
data from the indepth interviews in perspective. Moreover, as I had expected, I did gain a lot
of knowledge and understanding of the rural aging experience in living with and learning
from my hosts. As I had hoped this also allowed me to first-hand experience ‘a rural lifestyle’,
and through the social networks of my last two hosts I could reach other people quite easily.
In order to identify and transcend the themes and concepts that arose from people’s
narratives, hence with a thematic analysis, I systematically sorted and structured the data with
the use of open, axial and selective codes during fieldwork (Ezzy 2002, 86; Gobo 2008, 256;
Strauss and Corbin 1990, 55-241). I then structured my analysis by categorising and sub-
categorising all these themes. Thereafter, I subdivided the themes within the three dimensions
of place attachment, physical, social and autobiographical insideness, and analysed how the
gathered data did or did not find cohesion with the theory of place attachment. In
underscoring the three aspects of this concept from an inductive approach, and how these
forms of insideness influence the aging process, I can give a good comprehension of rural
aging, as well as enrich the knowledge about the role that place plays in the lives of people.
Although the combination of fieldwork and housework remained a bit hard to manage
from time to time I found a working rhythm in which both of my jobs did not suffer from the
other, while living with joyous and welcoming people who made me feel at home. I must
mention, however, that the time I spent in the field is not enough to fully grasp the essence of
the aging experience and how people relate to their rural lifeworld. Being able to live with
three different hosts, and being able to talk to people in different towns and places has
allowed me to gain an overarching understanding of aging in a rural locale though and how it
shapes lived experience. The results provided in this thesis are therefore based on the
differences and similarities that people expressed. As the fieldwork has been carried out

2 0 1 6
inductive, I also carry my conclusions in this thesis on my analyses from the field. In other
words, the analysis and conclusions I lay down in this thesis are based on the data I collected
through dialogue with my participants and the particular experiences and points of view they
shared with me within the time and space of the research process (Hastrup 1992, 127; ibid.
1993, 174-177; Hervik 1994, 96-97). To preserve the reality of this dialectical process I have
rendered the ethnographic cases and the cumulated knowledge in the present tense, as well as
in the way I illustrated the field. The ethnographic details within the analytical sections and
paragraphs are rendered in the past tense though and the cases, examples and the analysis and
conclusions I present in this thesis are based only on the actual lived experience I encountered
during the span of fieldwork (Hastrup 1992, 125-128).
Furthermore, I must mention the eyes through which the rural aging experience has
been observed, the body with which the rural lifestyle has been experienced, and the hands
with which this has been documented. As a young woman of 25 I cannot pretend to know
what getting older feels like. All participants who are over sixty are experiencing a form of
arthritis. Whereas a couple of people indicated that it was a painful and limiting disability,
most people spoke rather objectified about it. As I cannot measure or feel this kind of pain
personally, I tried to describe this accordingly to what I have learned from my participants.
Being from the Netherlands, or “from the heart of the world”, as Chris described it, I
could scarcely imagine the idea of being and living in a remote area, or grasp an
understanding of how wide spread and remote the countryside I immersed myself in was. I
grew up in an era of technology and the growing reach of the World Wide Web and I am used
to a kind of (digital) interconnectedness that the participants are not familiar with. It was
surprising for me how technologically disadvantaged rural Tasmania is, or how
geographically dislocated people can live in comparison with my own experience in the
Netherlands. It was difficult to arrange (public) transport and lack of mobile reception and
internet connection made it difficult to gain extra information for my research. I could not
look for additional literature on online libraries, nor get into contact with health institutions in
Hobart. Chris described this as living “on the edge of civilisation”, seeing the McDonalds just
outside of Hobart as the first station of re-entering civilisation, himself living as “blooming
nowhere”. Although it did not lead to a feeling of disconnection (in fact, I quite liked it), this
personal experience with remoteness has been an important insight for my research, as the
form of dislocation is an essential part of my participants’ lives. Moreover, being immersed in
the rural lifestyle like this gave me more space to study the personal experiences of what life
can be like in rural areas and how aging can be experienced; the reason for me being there.

2 0 1 6
Physical insideness: devotion and resilience through familiarity
“They have always lived here and know how to cope with having nothing” – Jolmer (40)
In the research setting I described the macro-ecological environment in which people I talked
to live and how this comprises their personal context. Concluding that elderly can be
considered geographically detrimental from, amongst other, healthcare I now describe the
rural lifeworld from the participant’s point of view. In the first part of this chapter I describe
the extent to which people feel a form of “familiarity with their physical setting”, hence the
feeling of physical insideness with their lifeworld (Rowles 1984, 129-130). This form of place
attachment provides an insight on, first, how people perceive their immediate surroundings
and how physical insideness reveals itself in their daily lives. Second, it also gives a good
indication whether or not people are attached to their locality and how this is expressed. I
follow with a case study of Redge (70) and Christina (69) in the second part of this chapter.
To understand the gain that physical insideness offers people, I describe the self-sufficiency
of the participants, but I also describe how they manage in the ‘dislocated’ localities.
Used to dislocation
“It is a bit disheartening when you think of what it was and what it could be”, Joan (52) tells
me during the interview with her and Melissa (37) at the Zeehan community centre. They sit
across a large table from me in the reception room. A guy sits behind one of the three
computers in the left corner while we talk about their town. In the back of the room the
secretary is making phone calls behind her desk. Melissa and Joan work as fieldworkers for
“the central hub in town”, a place where people can ask questions, go to lunches, get
computer training or get their pet vaccinated every once a year. It is a place where they
provide a bit of everything they explain to me, so that people in town do not have to go all the
way to Burnie or elsewhere for every little thing. “It is hard because, and you get defensive,
because when you get people like you, for example, asking all those questions. And you go
like: ‘ah we’re doing all right’”, Melissa says, “but yeah, what Joan said: it is sad. And it feels
scary sometimes, but everyone just keeps ticking a long though, don’t they? People on the
west coast are like that. They are being resilient and are like: we keep pushing through.”
Comments like this are at the heart of conversation about the rural lifeworld of people
I spoke to. With the community workers, the doctor and with older people themselves. On the
one hand living in the outskirts of Tasmania is about being resilient to, indeed, the somewhat

2 0 1 6
disadvantages. On the other hand there is also a form of defensiveness in explaining the
possibilities that people have. When the car breaks down in Zeehan it needs to be brought to
Burnie, for example, a two to three hour drive on the windiest road of Australia. Although not
as windy or mountainous, the travel time is not much less in the others town. Yet, when
elderly need to send an e-mail or need help with an application form for a health or elderly
card, they can walk over to the community centre, the community hall or friends along the
road and ask for help, participants defended. Those who do not have a driver’s license
(anymore) can book the community car for five to twenty dollars. People book this car, one of
the volunteers picks them up and he or she takes them to the supermarket or the pharmacy.
The volunteers also drive to Hobart or Launceston for an appointment at the dentist or the
hairdresser. Whatever is necessary, they pick the elderly up and drop them off at home again,
all participants told me.
“And how about a pharmacy, is it true that a pharmacy isn’t here either?”, I asked
Peter, a bald middle aged man who was filling up the shelves with milk and other drinks in
the general store of Coles Bay. I had been wandering around town, looking for the doctor’s
post, but could not find anything. Peter nodded. If people need ibuprofen or a prescription
they either drive to Bicheno, fifty minutes towards the north, or Peter calls the prescription in
with the pharmacy in Bicheno. They send it down on the school bus that brings the Coles Bay
kids back home at the end of a school day and people can pick it up at the store. While I noted
this as a deprivation of facilities, the people I talked to approach this the other way around.
People stated that they can come by the doctor three days a week in Zeehan, while the doctor
from Swansea, an hour and a half south of Coles Bay, sets up office in the Coles Bay
community hall every other Wednesday. Although Ruth, Chris and Frances, and the other
people in their area have to drive between thirty and fifty minutes to visit the doctor, all
townships and localities have ambulance volunteers and care nurses on call who come by
when there is need for it, participants explained.
“So it is not quite as isolated as you might think”, Don explained to me regarding this.
He and his wife Anne (76) recently sold their oyster farm to their son and are now enjoying a
Friday afternoon with their long-time friend Ray (75), who lives across the bay. The
geographic location cannot provide Don, Anne and Ray with the same facilities that elderly in
Hobart or Launceston have, but it is not like there is nothing here. In fact, most people
compared their own living environment with Hobart, which they feel might not even be that
good of a place to be if you are in need of care. As Don, Anne and Ray said:

2 0 1 6
Anne: The helicopter [Flying Doctors] just takes half an hour, in Sydney you could be
stuck in traffic for two hours
Ray: And unfortunately, the people who get ill in the city. Nobody gets in and checks
on them
Don: That’s right
Ray: And these people die
Don: It is a lack of attention
Ray: Nobody is interested
Anne: Whereas here in this town, anyhow, and I think it is in most country towns, we
are all looking out for each other all the time
Don: Yes, that is what I call social capital. There is a bigger social capital here than
people sometimes think, in a regional sense or in towns. Whereas in the city that is
kind of looked after by a payed for thing. If you get ill you pay to get a nurse in. If you
get ill, can’t cook, you pay for it
Ray: That is right
Don: So the city is overcome with their wealth and somehow there is more of those
services than there would be in a place like this. Here we can rely on volunteering and
looking after each other, you know
With comparisons like this the participants explained to me how they see their
immediate living environment. Some use it as a defensive approach, to show me that people
who live in the city are worse off. Others want to put their own experience into perspective.
None of the participants actually consider it a problem to live, so-called, dislocated. No, there
might be no pavement to walk on, but there is plenty of room on the rarely occupied road.
People realise that it might lóók dislocated for people with an urban background, but they do
not féél dislocated. They shrugged their shoulders and said things like: “I suppose it could be
a nuisance, but I have had to drive to all these things my entire life”, as Ruth explained.
People are used to having to drive to do the groceries, to buy the newspaper, or to see the
doctor, the dentist or the hairdresser, why be bothered with it now? With these attitudes
towards their lifeworld people also express a feeling of physical insideness. They are familiar
with the setting in which they live, what (voluntary) services come and which do not come
with it, and how their locale shapes their life.
Elsewhere Keating (2008) came to the same findings. In Rural Ageing: A good place
to grow old? she lays down the complexities of rural areas in Southeast England and Western

2 0 1 6
Canada and the difficulties that elderly might encounter, such as having lack of support
networks, and limited access to transportation, healthcare facilities and grocery shopping in
widely dispersed areas. As in Tasmania, so too in England and Canada do older people not
see living regionally as a problem, as available (voluntary) services and support networks
meet the needs of the residents (ibid., 107-108).
A few participants pointed out that in view of time they actually made a great
improvement travel and health wise. In exploring the primary healthcare service of Tasmanian
bush nurses in the period of 1910 until 1957, Bardenhagen (2003) points this out too. With a
focus on the autonomy, independence and loneliness of the bush nurses, Bardenhagen (ibid.,
344) describes that the Tasmanian nursing history is embedded within the rural isolation in
which their patients were living, and where most of people I talked to grew up in. Nurses were
placed in areas without doctors and without the means for them, or their patients, to gain
access to medical advice or treatments, in a time when also communication technology was
rudimentary. Bardenhagen (ibid., 348) describes:
The conditions were indisputably harsh, and these became reflected in isolation
bonuses. But money could not assuage their loneliness, frustration and feeling of
powerlessness. High rainfall, mountain climates, and heavy snow made access to
patients difficult. This was compounded by the winding bush tracks, often impassable
roads, flooded rivers, and treacherous sea passages. Walking, riding horses, or using
vehicular traffic with frequent mechanical breakdowns tested their mettle. Not only
did the Bush Nurse have to endure these conditions to access her patients, but
transferring those that could not be nursed at home to the Bush Nursing Centre, or to
an out-of-area facility, was at times even more fraught with difficulty.
Yet, this was also a period of substantial change in healthcare and of revolutions in transport
and communication (ibid., 27). So much so that the Bush Nurses organisation ceased to exist
in 1957 when both ‘the bush’ and healthcare became more accessible (ibid., 58) . Also, as my
participants explained, during their lifetime highways have been placed, roads have been
sealed, cars have become a normal aspect in their lives, and help from elsewhere comes faster.
Most of the participants also see no reason for moving to a more dense area and refuse
to relocate. “Do you think of moving?”, I always asked during my interviews, for example.
“Why would I do that?”, some people responded agitated. Other people explained that they
have thought about it, but see no need for it. There are a few people who described that they

2 0 1 6
will not move at this stage, but maybe later, when necessary. For some this stage will come
when they lose their driver’s license. For others when they need aid or lose their physical
strength. Stages that might never even come if they are lucky, they indicated, because none of
the participants really wants to move to Hobart or Launceston. The air does not smell as
clean, it is too busy and neighbours live too close. It is not an environment people think they
can get used to, because they are not familiar with living in a city.
“We know that if something happens we are a long way out”, my host Lester stated as
he quickly sipped of his coffee in between rush hours. “But if we are gonna die, we are gonna
die”, he continued. “We can’t stress around these things”, his partner added. “If the balls fall,
they fall.” Objectively speaking it might be smarter to move to Hobart some of the
participants wonder, but most participants simply really do not want to. People know that
there is a real chance that they might die here, because the ambulance or helicopter takes too
long. Yet, people rather die at home, if possible at all in their own bed, than to be in a hospital
or a care home over a long period of time, having to recover from a heart attack or having to
move to a place they are unfamiliar with. Death is certain, it is coming for everyone, but
people rather have some form of a peaceful, quick or painless death at home than to have to
be ‘saved’ and suffer. It is about the quality of life – not the longevity of life, several people
explained. And this quality is found in their own home. In the location where they are
attached, not somewhere else.
Not only are people, thus, familiar with their physical setting and the disadvantages
that have substantially improved during their lifetime, they are also attached to their home and
their surroundings. People all live in a place that they feel and see as ‘home’ and as long as
they do not have to move, they will not. Likewise, also Keating (2008, 22-31) addresses the
question of why older people want to stay in a secluded, disadvantaged locality. She, too,
found that elderly are attached to the place they have lived in and cannot contemplate to live
anywhere else, because their sense of self is constructed with the land (ibid., 30-31). Moving
away from the place my participants know and love is therefore seen as an unwise decision.
Moreover, once age will cause pain or sickness they do not expect, hope in fact, to live long
anyway when that happens, no matter where they might live. So they might as well stay
where they feel attached, they explained. Home is not only the place where people want to
live, it is also the place where they eventually want to draw their last breath. In the following
paragraph I show how this feeling about their lifeworld influences the aging process.

2 0 1 6
Keeping a home: devotion and resilience
“People keep asking me if I think of moving, but they don’t get it do they?”, Maureen (70)
told me after the Red Cross meeting she just had with her friends in the Campania community
hall. As mentioned, I always asked if people were planning on moving to Hobart or elsewhere
and if not, why they wanted to stay at home. The participants often get this question, they told
me: if they are planning on moving soon. As if moving would be the logical thing to do. Like
Maureen, several participants indicated that some people do not seem to understand that they
like living where they live and see no need for moving. Even more, the participants indicated
that the familiarity they feel with the locality is a big essence of their daily life. They have
lived in their rural locale almost all of their life and, also, do not feel that aging affects the
attachment they feel for their home. Nor that getting older means that they should move away.
They get pleasures out of their rural lifestyle and do not need or want to go to the cinema, do
not always want to buy new clothes or be in the city, and they do not understand why they
should be better off in the city when all that they know is here. The participants will be
detached from everything they know and are familiar with. In other words, they will lose their
physical insideness.
That does not mean that living in a rural area is always easy. Whether the participants
live somewhere alone or in a small town, run a business, or own a sheep or a self-sustaining
farm, the rural lifestyle can be difficult. That is not to say that it is a bad or hard lifestyle to
live, it is a lifestyle you have to like. You have to work hard to make it in a rural area and to
age well there, all participants said pertinacious. To achieve this you must have passion for
your land, your home, your community, the locale you live in, and be resilient to the
circumstances. The participants used words such as resilience, passion, devotion and vision to
express this. Although resilience to the living-environment is necessary if people want to
remain there, it seems that it is the passion, the devotion and the liking of the rural lifestyle,
hence the attachment itself, that makes people want to live and age there in the first place.
With regard to resilience it is especially important to be self-sustaining. Being self-
sustaining means being able to take care of yourself and also, knowing how to do so. Yet,
most participants lived in a rural area their entire life and know exactly how to take care of
themselves. They have been weighed and measured through the times, gone through
hardships and continued on. They chop their own fire wood for the fireplaces in the single
glazed houses, keep a vegetable garden, some also keep a pen of chickens, they have one or

2 0 1 6
two water tanks with filtered rainwater, practice their fire or flooding escape procedure every
once in a while, and have neighbours that give eggs in exchange for ‘veggies’. Their physical
insideness, the familiarity people have with their physical setting, thus, actually also helps
them in maintaining and managing their (self-sustaining) lifestyle, because they simply know
exactly how to do so due to years of experience.
Although all participants mentioned it in one form or another, Redge and Christina are
one of the few that specifically tell me they believe that you cannot make in the outer areas if
you cannot be self-sustaining anymore. We sit in their jeep at the side of the road after the
daytrip to The Wall, waiting for my host Chris to pick me up halfway. They still have a thirty
minute drive through the valleys ahead of them, whereafter Redge is going to chop some
firewood and Christina is going to tend their goats and sheep. The couple feels very strong for
nature and have a big heart for wildlife and environmental issues. They own about ten acres of
land, which is mainly just bushland, and have two dogs, two sheep and three goats as pets to
keep the grass down. They signed their property off as a wildlife area, which means that it is a
voluntary wildlife area and that no one, not even the next owners can (mis)use the piece of
land of which Redge truly believes “is the most beautiful spot that anyone can live in”. They
love the fresh air, the peace and quiet, the low density of cars on the road, and the distance
from everything else what is going on in the world. They feel untouched in a sense and they
love it. There is nothing better than waking up early in the morning, to see the mists through
the valley and to mutter around with the chickens.
Redge and Christina show a great passion and devotion for their property and say that
they are really attached to it. They grow their own crops and fruits and only go to the shops
every month or so. Like other participants they also tell me that they do not see a reason for
having or wanting to move. “I plan to die here I guess”, Redge states. He has noticed that the
maintenance of the property is starting to lack a little. “But that is mostly because I lose
myself in painting”, he laughs. He has recently taken up this new hobby and can,
unknowingly, brush away for hours. Physically he has gotten slower too, he admits, but he
does not see this as a big problem yet. They still can maintain the property. It just takes a bit
longer nowadays.
The couple does believe that you have to make an effort to live where they live. Aging
on the countryside and dislocation do not have to go hand in hand, they state by the side of the
gravel road. Their son has been worried about them. He thinks they are going to die in a big
bush fire. The couple repeatedly tried to set him at ease, because they know how to manage

2 0 1 6
and make an effort to keep managing, they explain. They try to stay both mentally and
physically active, by doing crossword puzzles and by going to gym and Tai Chi classes that
the Rural Health organisation provides in Oatlands, a forty-five minute drive. In fact,
Christine was on the waiting list for a hip replacement, but she took herself off it, because “I
find that moving around just helps.” Redge agrees: “The longer you stay inactive, the worse it
gets.” By staying active the couple keeps fit and being fit enables them to live, as they
explain, “a simple, frugal and self-sustaining life”. “You’d be impressed with what we are still
able to do”, Christine says. “You should see her chopping wood”, Redge says while looking
proud at his wife. “She cuts the last bit in half with her hands.” “Yes I still do actually”,
Christine smiles modest.
Although Don explained that people have to be extra-ordinary to live here, this does
not capture the essence. Mostly, the participants explained that you have to be up for it, work
through the pain that is, for example, caused by arthritis, and simply do it. As the case of
Redge and Christina shows, you have to make an effort for yourself and the locality you live
in if you want to live in the outer parts of Tasmania, and show some resilience to it. Like other
participants they have a great passion for their lifeworld, know how to take care of themselves
and work hard to keep fit. Also the participants who own a farm said they still work on the
land daily, from dawn until dusk. Yes, it may be physically challenging at times, but people I
talked to approach this mentally. They are managing, are self-sufficient, doing all right and
like what they do.
The importance of knowing how to take care of yourself especially becomes clear in
Zeehan. Zeehan is not equipped to take care of people who only come there because of the
cheap house prices and to receive social security money, Jolmer4
(40), the local doctor
explains to me, as do several elderly in Zeehan. They have no idea how to manage, they all
state. Originally from Rotterdam, Netherlands, Jolmer has been working as a substitute doctor
for about ten years at posts in small regional towns throughout Australia that do not have a
doctor, while enjoying the outback in his free time. He has been on the west coast for about
six months. Jolmer has encountered the same things I found during my conversations with
rural Tasmanians. Live on the west coast is not a place for people who are in need of help,
“needy”, as Jolmer describes it as we eat a toastie in a café during his lunch break. You have
to be able to take a beating. “And people who’ve always lived here cán do this”, Jolmer says
with a respectful tone in his voice: “They don’t just blow over.”
4
I translated the interview with Jolmer from Dutch

2 0 1 6
At the same time older people do not always ask for help, which can come at the cost
of their health, help they are entitled to and pensioner’s discounts they did not know they had,
Jolmer continues. “But at the same time this makes them strong, wilful and resolute”, the
doctor explains. “At a certain stage you see them accepting that they are in need of help and
when they accept this we can offer them this help.” Doctor’s posts can arrange homecare, but
they can also provide people with the right medication or arrange appointments with
specialists in the city when necessary and arrange transport for this. Indeed, it is not as if there
are no possibilities at all. It is in combination with these possibilities, the options they have,
that a lot of older people have the will and the tenaciousness to stay in their rural locale. “I
find them to be unique and strong people”, Jolmer states. “They have always lived here and
know how to cope with having nothing.”
Implication: physical insideness and rural aging
The living environment through the lens of physical insideness sheds another, perhaps more
accurate, light on the locale in which participants live. Although I mentioned in the theoretical
chapter that aging in a rural locality is often seen as being unsuitable for elderly, and although
I wrote in the research setting that participants could be considered living dislocated, when
researched from their perspective, the locale in which rural elderly live is not as unsuited or
dislocated as presumed. Yes, people live remote, but they do not live isolated, they explained.
Especially in view of the changes along the life course this is not the case, as transport,
communication and healthcare services have substantially improved during people’s lifetime.
The physical insideness people have is therefore not only place bound, but also bound to time.
Attachment to place, but also time and the life course are indispensable aspects through which
people have familiarised themselves with their lifeworld, grown attached to it, and grown
used to both the possibilities and the disadvantages that their locale gives them.
The aging process does not affect this feeling of familiarity, or how people feel about
their locality for that matter. If anything age has only familiarised them further with their
locality and their lifestyle – their passion, devotion or attachment to their home. Although all
participants are used to the disadvantages, it is because of these passions that people refuse to
relocate. Their attachment makes them wilfully to work hard to make it and to be resilient to
the circumstances: a necessity if a person wants to stay at home, age well and also die in his
or her locale, I learned from people during the span of fieldwork. The gain that physical
insideness offers people is that their familiarity with the physical setting actually also helps

2 0 1 6
them in maintaining and managing their (self-sustaining) lifestyle, because people simply
know exactly how to do so due to their years of experience. As Melissa stated in the reception
room of the community centre as well: “Everything starts falling into place when you get used
to all the things you don’t have.”

2 0 1 6
Social insideness: joy and dependency through (social) connectedness
“I would have to disconnect myself, wouldn’t I, to become disconnected”- Patricia (76)
In the previous chapter I described that people are attached to home and used to the supposed
“nuisances” as Ruth described them to be. In this chapter I delve deeper into this line of
argumentation by describing why people are attached to place. I do this by illustrating the
social insideness people have with their lifeworld. As Rowles (1984, 129-130) explains this
means that people feel a form of social integration with age peers and with the local
community. This form of place attachment allows us to see, first, in what manner people feel
integrated in their locale and, second, what role social connections play. Ruth’s lifestyle
serves a case-study to show that being attached to place entails more than having social
connections. In the second part of this chapter I then describe how social insideness
interweaves with the aging process. To explain the gain that social insideness offers people I
illustrate the acceptant and independent mentality of people, as well as their dependency upon
others.
Joy
Ruth has short grey hair and wrinkles covering her skin. Most days she wears a beige pants, a
dark blue sweater and worn off brown leather boots. Ruth has lived in the same house for over
forty years. A recently renovated wooden house on the shore of a small bay on Eaglehawk
Neck. The bay is Ruth’s front yard, the ocean on the other side of the neck, her view. The
remains of the jetty, on which the children used to play when they were little, stretches far
into the water where dolphins sometimes linger for a couple of days. Hidden between tall and
dense trees she takes care of her property of two hectares. A big vegetable garden with
beetroot, zucchini’s, tomatoes, potatoes, beans and pumpkins is situated at the back of the
land, covered by peach- and chestnut trees and a vineyard. The rest of the garden is flowering
with roses, dahlias and every other sort of flower that Ruth loves. “I can work in the garden
all day”, Ruth tells me on the day of my arrival. If she does not have to go to Hobart or
elsewhere, she does the housework early in the morning and spends the rest of the day in the
garden. “There is nothing better than planting new flowers”, she smiles enthusiastic.5
Ruth is born in Triabunna and grew up in a farmer settlement on the north coast of
Tasmania. She met her husband Frank (90) while working in Hobart. After a couple of years
5
See Appendix (p. 80-81) for supporting pictures

2 0 1 6
the couple decided to move out of Hobart again. Frank, originally from Czech-Slovakia was
born on a farm, and both he and Ruth wanted their children to grow up in a spacious and safe
environment. They chose to move to Eaglehawk Neck, because it had more rainfall than most
parts of Tasmania and they liked the area from the holidays they had spent there. Frank has
dementia and last year she decided to have him placed in a care home in Hobart, a two hour
drive from home. Their youngest son, Milos (42), who has asperses and autism, lives at home
with Ruth. The dog, Sally, and a paddy melon, Hopper, roam around in the house too.
The days with Ruth slowly come along, full with rhythms and calmness. Ruth and
Milos walk to the beach every morning to walk Sally. They have a quick pass with their long
and strong legs, wave to the neighbour Neil, who is just on his way back home, or they check
Marcia’s mailbox down the road, because she is away for a week. It is an hour’s walk and
Ruth often bends down on the beach to pick up seaweed. She uses this to fertilise the flower
garden. Ruth has ostia-arthritis in her knees and shoulders, and has been walking with sticks
for a couple of years now. Before, the arthritis caused her a lot of pain and some days she
could not even get out of bed. By leaning on the sticks the muscles around her knee
strengthen and eases her pain. After tea with homemade cake Ruth and I often go into the
garden. We weed the flower patches, plant lilies or walk up to the vegetable garden. We plant
bean steaks, garlic, spinach, leek and parsley. We spud out weeds, plough up beds of sand and
pull zucchini and tomato plants up from the ground. Silence often surrounds us as Ruth loves
to listen to the birds and the breeze that rustles through the tall trees. The garden is a place for
Ruth to be in sync with her thoughts.
Lunch is made up of homemade minestrone soup, carrot soup, muffins, scones,
bolognaise sauce or baked courgettes on toast. Ruth reads in her book for about an hour
before we go back into the garden. Sometimes we take the car and drive to a little café in the
area to eat oysters or fish & chips. “I never get sick of this”, Ruth says several times while
walking or driving in the area. It is not unusual for her to hit the brakes and to point me to a
bird somewhere far up in a tree. My hostess has worked as a tour guide and a birdwatcher and
she enjoys to see and to tell me about the Tasmanian geology and birdlife. On hot autumn
days we grab the cool box, fill it with sausages, salad and root beer, and drive to the National
park on the Peninsula. We bake the sausages on the grill, have our pick nick in the forest or on
the beach and walk one of the tracks in the park. “How I love this geology!”, Ruth often calls
out happy and enthusiastic. At the end of the tour she is also happy to be home as well. She
often goes back into the garden by herself and stays there until dark. Milos lights the fire and

2 0 1 6
just before dinner we have gin and tonic. Ruth reads her book in the final hours of the day and
Milos reads truck magazines, while the hearth is crackling and tea and pie lurk on the table.
The telling’s of other participants are similar to Ruth’s case. People are attached
because they enjoy their habit and the things they are able to do in their rural dwelling. Their
daily rhythms and routines have been a continuous aspect of their lives and the feeling of
connectedness with their locale comes forth through this. Ruth feels strong for her garden, the
surrounding nature and the ever present bird life. Farmers feel strong for their land, others for
their garden, their natural surroundings or the crocoite in the mines. This feeling of
connectedness strongly resonates with Rowles (1984, 129-130) description of social
insideness, as the participants clearly expressed a feeling of integration. This feeling,
however, does not point to the social relations that people have, because people do not need
social connections in order to feel integrated. People like Ruth feel attached to their locale for
the happiness and quietness it holds. “I can go days before I feel the need to see anyone”,
Ruth told me one day as she bended over a flowerbed pulling out weeds. People find a delight
in being alone; being able to sit by the fire for hours, to wander through nature, or to wave to
Neil in the distance and not having to say anything.
For a number of people the social connections they have do add to the feeling of being
integrated. Lester, for example, specifically said that he could not deal with the isolated
lifestyle here without being able to talk to his customers. Especially, the sense of community
and cohesion that rural places have offer a big advantage for these people, particularly in
comparison with an urban area, they told me. Not only does Hobart have its own
disadvantages, Hobart also has a lot less “community feel” as Don called it. In a study about
the use of community Baumann (2009, 30), however, contests the term community. It is a
conceptually simple term that “offers enormous flexibility of application”, but it is therefore
also a misleading term for understanding how people engage with each other and what social
meanings they create and live.
I recognise this in my own data as well, because different participants addressed
different meanings to the term ‘community’. Explaining that ‘they are often active in the
community’ means that people are involved with voluntary work, for example. They work as
ambulance drivers, help out in the local church, and are active in craft committees or
organisations, such as Red Cross. Having friends in the first place or simply bringing meals to
sick neighbours are other examples. In a broad sense the meaning that people address to
community is having social relations and helping others with what they can do. People see
helping as a responsibility, giving something to the community, but it is also a social outing

An exploration of late life in rural Tasmania and the relation between people and place - Master Thesis Myrthe Felten

An exploration of late life in rural Tasmania and the relation between people and place - Master Thesis Myrthe Felten

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (12)

Similar to An exploration of late life in rural Tasmania and the relation between people and place - Master Thesis Myrthe Felten

Similar to An exploration of late life in rural Tasmania and the relation between people and place - Master Thesis Myrthe Felten (20)

An exploration of late life in rural Tasmania and the relation between people and place - Master Thesis Myrthe Felten