The comfort of winter rituals
Six Tassie locals share how they move, create and connect during the colder months.
From summer harvest to winter kitchen
In the Huon Valley, artist Tess Magor begins assembling her winter kitchen months earlier, in the thick of her orchard’s harvest.
Tess and her husband tend to more than 50 fruit trees – apples, plums, nectarines, berries, persimmons, blueberries – each ripening in its own time. When the crop is at its peak, the work shifts indoors. Fruit is stewed, poached, bottled or frozen, and set aside carefully for the colder months ahead.
“We just eat what comes on at that time,” Tess says. “And then we preserve what we can’t keep up with. We were both raised in families that grew a lot of their own produce and it’s amazing what you can fit in, even with just a small space.”
By winter, those efforts are rewarded in delicious fashion. Jars are opened, containers pulled from the freezer, and the kitchen fills again, this time with the slow comfort and rich aromas of cooking. There are cakes and desserts, often simple and familiar: poached fruit with custard, or a crumble on a cold night.
“We’ve still got preserves from last year,” she says. “We’ll be using them up this winter.”
It’s a ritual that carries the seasons forward – the brightness of summer stored away, then brought back, spoonful by spoonful, when it’s needed most.
Living room with a view
From her home perched on the slopes of Mount Nelson, public servant Penny Stringer wakes to one of Hobart’s most expansive views: the Derwent stretching out below, with the eastern shore catching the early light. In warmer months, she’ll step onto the balcony to take it all in. But in winter, the ritual shifts indoors.
“There’s nothing better on a cold, dark day than throwing on an Oodie and a pair of moccasins and settling in,” she says.
On chilly Sunday afternoons, Penny curls into her armchair with a cup of tea and a craft project – most often cross stitch, a hobby she learned as a child during winter lunchtime sessions at school. Decades on, she still returns to it, drawn by the quiet rhythm and the small satisfaction of each stitch.
As the day closes in, the focus moves to the table. Board games come out – Labyrinth and Azul are the current favourites – and the family gathers, coaxing her two sons away from their devices. There’s laughter, gentle competition and the easy silliness of shared time.
“It makes me feel warm and fuzzy to know that even as teenagers, the boys are not too grown up for some family fun with their mum and dad,” she says. “It’s like we’ve slowed things down, just for a while.”
Among the pages
At Black Swan Bookshop in New Norfolk, owner Alexander Okenyo notices the shift as soon as winter begins to set in.
“People come in out of the cold,” he says, “and they stay that little bit longer than they might do in summer.”
Inside, the space feels cocooned: a small corner building filled with warm, golden light, the smell of coffee and books, and rain streaking softly against the windows. Outside, the day might be dark and drizzly, but inside everything is cosy and bright.
For Alexander, winter and books are closely entwined. As the evenings draw in, there’s a natural slowing: fewer distractions, more time to sit, read and reflect. “You stop the hustle and bustle of the warmer months,” he says. “To have a good book in your hand – and to be influenced by the weather like that – helps you appreciate the moment you’re in.”
Winter, he suggests, invites a different pace. “It asks you to be a bit more inward facing.”
At home, on the mountain where he lives with his family, that same rhythm takes hold – the garden now dormant, the fire-warmed art studio calling, the quiet joy of returning to a good novel.
“It’s a more reflective time,” he says.
“If you're comfortable in winter, then you’re among the truly blessed, and you should never take that for granted.”
Embracing the western wild
On Tasmania’s West Coast, winter rain is a given. In Queenstown, graphic designer and Soggy Brolly gallery owner Lea Walpole finds the shorter daylight hours a challenge – but the weather itself rarely dampens her spirits.
“I don’t mind a storm,” she says. “It just makes us appreciate the sunshine all the more when we do get it.”
Instead, Lea pulls on a jacket and heads out to Horsetail Falls, where the rain brings out beautiful colours in the rocks or into the forest along the Confluence Track, where fungi push up through the earth and the air carries that unmistakable scent of damp soil.
“If we let the rain stop us, we’d never do anything at all,” she says.
Back home, the slow cooker is already on, or a roast is in the oven: something warm and comforting filling the house with a delicious smell. Sunday dinners are for gathering around the table with family before the week begins again, often finished with an apple crumble.
“There’s something so nice about being inside,” she says, “when there’s rain on the tin roof and it’s a little wild outside.”
Finding balance
For Ben Davidson, a Tasmanian winter is a far cry from the sub-zero, snow-locked months he once weathered in the north-eastern United States. Here, the cold is less an obstacle and more an invitation.
On the state’s north-east coast, Ben spends his weekends outdoors: mountain biking through wet bush tracks or walking the rugged stretches around St Helens and Binalong Bay. But the ritual isn’t complete until he comes back inside.
“We’ve always had great wood stoves,” he says. “We’ve loved having them as a central part of the house.”
Fire marks the rhythm of Ben’s winter days. There’s one burning at home, and another at The Shop in the Bush, the antiques store he owns just outside St Helens, where an open hearth glows steadily through the colder months. It’s something people are drawn to: a place to pause, warm up and linger a little longer.
All the favourite places Ben returns to share this common thread. At Priory Ridge, it’s a glass of wine beside the wood fire in the old shearers’ shed. At The Hub in Binalong Bay, it’s wood-fired pizza after a windswept walk along the coast.
“It brings you back to earth,” he says. “It’s the old way, I guess. Gets you back to the roots.”
Food as connection
Creole Chef Toni Burnett-Rands, known to many as Honey Child, has called Tasmania home for 17 years – the longest she has ever been settled in one place.
With a successful catering business and a custom-made food truck, Toni’s kitchen is busy year-round, but winter is when she loves to combine Tasmania’s rich seasonal produce with the techniques and warming flavours of her heritage.
“Personally, I am all about stuff in a bowl in the winter,” she says. “Soups, stews, baked desserts – even something simple like roasted vegetables with black beans, garlic and a little splash of coconut milk. It’s easy, comforting and, when the world is too much, I can do that on autopilot.”
Chicken pot pie is another favourite, and she always makes two; if freezer space is tight, she’ll drop the second one to a friend or neighbour.
For Toni, food is far more than just fuel – it’s a way to connect with herself, with family and with community. Tasmania’s colder months are perfect for that.
“It’s the time for the abundance and vibrancy of long table feasts,” she says. “Time to move past hi-bye-ing the people next door and instead wrap some scones in a tea towel and knock on the door. Maybe even time to take a thermos into the wild for a date with yourself. It’s perilous in this world right now, so if you can take the sacred dark of this place and put some love in it, that’s what I would do.”
