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There is a Korean saying: ‘San neomeo san’ — ‘mountain beyond mountain’. It’s a metaphor for how one difficulty is followed by another, but it’s not just a metaphor. Korea is not a large country, yet it’s full of mountains, so if you drive even a little outside the city, you literally keep seeing mountains beyond mountains. It’s one of those places where it’s hard to see the horizon.
Not long after I moved to Sydney, I went to see the Blue Mountains, and I remember being struck by the horizon stretching endlessly across open fields the entire way there. Ah, this is a continent. This is flat land. A place where a saying like ‘mountains beyond mountains’ would never even come to Australians’ mind. It felt the same after I moved to Melbourne. A place where it’s easier to see the horizon. That’s what Australia was like to me.
But then, unexpectedly, during the first thirty minutes after getting off in Devonport and heading towards Launceston, the words my husband and I kept repeating were, “This feels just like Korea,” “It’s mountains beyond mountains,” “There’s nothing but mountains,” “Why is it all mountains when we’re on an island?”
Unlike Sydney or Melbourne, where you pass through gentle hills and open fields for a long time before reaching anything grand, here (and I might be exaggerating a little) the mountain peaks in front of us felt like they were reaching the sky, and we were driving right through them. It felt like driving somewhere in Gangwon Province in Korea. Maybe because it reminded me of where I used to live, I felt a strange sense of familiarity, and my first impression of Tasmania was a good one.
We stopped at a raspberry farm café in Christmas Hills for a simple brunch and a raspberry latte. I don’t usually like the tartness of raspberries, but their raspberry jam was genuinely good. Just 2 hours after getting off the ferry, we ended up buying souvenirs to take home (raspberry jam!) and then headed towards Launceston.
At the farmers market there, we had Korean hotteok (a sweet filled pancake). After walking through The Gorge, admiring the vast nature and being surprised by the bright, hot weather well over 25 degrees, we set off towards St Helens.
There were a few route options: heading back up to follow the coastal road, or going further inland. We chose the road through Scottsdale. The reason was simple. My manager Lucy is from Tasmania, and she told me she grew up there. And just in case, it needs to be said, I’m not a stalker.
I think the place and culture a person grows up in become part of who they are. People who live in a “mountains beyond mountains” country like Korea have historically been somewhat insular. It wouldn’t have been easy to connect with the outside. On top of that, summers are very hot and winters are very cold, so maybe people just wanted to get things done quickly and go home. I think that kind of environment has shaped part of my own identity. Here, in a country of wide open plains where it’s neither too hot nor too cold, people feel more laid back than Koreans. The weather is pleasant, so there’s no need to rush, and the paths are flat, so there’s no reason to be out of breath.
So I was curious. What kind of place did she grow up in? On a larger scale, Tasmania, and more specifically, what is Scottsdale like? If I passed through even briefly, would I understand her just a little more, even just one percent?
She’s my manager, but also someone I’d like to stay in touch with even if I leave the company, a friend of sorts. I believe we can make friends at work. Maybe not in the traditional sense of sharing every personal detail, but something like a ‘professional friendship’; closer than just colleagues, limited in some ways but still allowing parts of yourself to be seen. I’ve always had one or two friends in previous workplaces, and I’m still in touch with them. Lucy feels like that kind of person to me, and that’s why I was curious about Scottsdale.
We only passed through briefly, but it felt like a quiet town. Not the kind of place where everything is loud and bustling, the kind that would make people want to leave, but a place where like-minded people gather and enjoy a calm, understated kind of togetherness. A place that looks like a still lake on the surface, but if you look closely, there are small currents moving here and there, like a valley with subtle eddies.
Sitting at a brewery, having beer and pizza, I briefly imagined little Lucy’s everyday life; meeting friends, shopping, going to school in a place like this. It might just be my own projection, but I felt like I understood her a little better. I didn’t stay long enough to draw any grand conclusions. That’s really all there is.
Maybe travel is, in a way, a continuous process of imagining someone else’s everyday life. Whether they’re figures from history or ordinary people who once lived, or still live there, wondering what they did, how they lived, what they liked, what they achieved and lost, and how others saw them. Trying to grasp the weight, the outcomes, and the impact of their everyday lives. Maybe that’s what travel is.
For those brief thirty minutes in Scottsdale, I found myself thinking about Lucy, my manager and my professional friend. Growing up in Tasmania, a place that, in many ways, feels so similar to Korea with its many mountains, I wonder what parts of us are alike, and what parts are different.
