In the years I’ve been living here, there have been two unsuccessful attempts to get a shop-type-establishment up and running at Eaglehawk Neck. The first was a couple of rough and ready empty-nester sea-changers from the northern suburbs of Hobart. She was an ex-canteen lady, who wore her hair in a cropped blonde perm and her torso in a magenta polar fleece, and he was a balding ex-plumber with a glass eye who wanted, and I quote, ‘a shit-free change in career’. Rumour had it that he lost his corporeal eye when, as a curious teenager, he opened a golf ball with a handsaw in his father’s shed. They ran the shop as if it were a school canteen, complete with pink kiss biscuits crusted with hundreds and thousands, pizza pockets and chicken burgers. They lasted one summer.

The second couple, who also lasted one summer and who were also sea-changers, were Melbourne-born hipsters in their early thirties. Their vision was, and again, I quote, of a ‘shabby chic Byron Bay-esque coastal cafe slash corner store with a lounge room vibe’. While the coffee and food were exceptional, it was a bit on the fancy side for most of the locals who were perplexed by individual items on the menu, such as kimchi, rillette and radicchio—‘You mean it’s not a fancy radish?’—and by many of the meals as a whole.

One morning, sitting by the window sipping my post-swim cold-pressed coffee, I overheard Linda Fish mutter to Shirley Fitzpatrick, ‘It’s one thing to poach a crab in butter, but it’s another to pickle an egg. And serve them together on a crumpet with watercress? Waste of a perfectly good crab if you ask me.’

To which Shirley replied, ‘Waste of a perfectly good crumpet, too. Nothing wrong with butter and honey in my book.’

General consensus was that such a cafe would have been better suited catering to townies in North Hobart, or even the clientele on Bruny Island—the severed landmass on the other side of Storm Bay, which traces the south-east coast of mainland Tasmania.

‘They’re a bit more la-di-dah over there on Bruny, what with their gourmet cheese and white wallabies and all that shit.’