A weekend at Cradle Mountain was a long overdue escape from the hustle and bustle of Hobart. I really wanted to go in winter to see snow and clouds and mysterious rain, and I’m really glad I did. Nothing especially exciting happened but it was absolutely spectacular and beautiful. I walked around Dove Lake in the rain, through Ballroom Forest and the occasional bit of rainforest, and then across some bush. Most exciting were all the wombats, and the pademelon joey – so unbelievably cute. I also saw some traces of Tasmanian devils: they push their prey into the ground while eating it, so bits of the animal get crushed into the mud.

On Sunday morning I got up at 6am to see the moon and stars and a dusting of snow, and set off to catch the sunrise at a rainforest waterfall. I got about 10 seconds of sun before a snowstorm set in. Overnight the park had turned into a picturesque winter wonderland, with lichen-covered trees frosted thickly with snow.

Up towards the summit of Cradle Mountain it got snowier and snowier until everything was black and white. I was falling up to my thighs in snow, occasionally crawling on all fours – the serious people had snow shoes and crampons – before finally turning back and retreating to the emergency hut. The cloud blocked out everything below, cutting us off from the world like a dream. I was blinded by the snow and had started seeing stars, and the huge footprint holes glowed with a pale, alien turquoise light. Occasionally the cloud would lift enough to reveal the jagged peaks of Cradle Mountain, when everyone stopped and gazed in awe. And then it disappeared and we returned to the pure and magical land of black and white.

I reached Tasmania a while ago. I’m living in one of the southernmost cities in the world, and it feels southern, full of Antarctic wind and snow: we’re in the roaring 40s here – the wind that created a naval superhighway and blew ships around the world. The wind is vicious, and it tends to snow rather than rain, but the sky is nearly always blue, and there always seems to be a rainbow somewhere if you look hard enough.

I’ve been reluctant to write about Hobart for fear of making premature and prejudiced judgements that I’ll have to live with for the next six months. But it’s high time I wrote something.

We’re living in Battery Point, the quaint village-like part of Hobart just by Salamanca waterfront. The house is white and sharp-lined, part of a brown and grey modern development. It’s got a whole wall of French windows which is wonderful when it’s sunny, but there’s only one fan heater which is supposed to heat the whole house; for the first few days we froze, until we cracked and bought some electric heaters. I bought a second-hand road bike (“a piece of junk” said the man in the bike shop) and have become addicted to my morning cycle ride along the River Derwent.

Everything looks a bit cold, but perhaps that’s because it’s winter and I’ve long forgotten what summer is like. The buildings are elegant though rather cool and severe. It’s hard to believe this is a capital city; there are no skyscrapers, no fancy hotels, no large official buildings, no wailing sirens. In fact, it has the air of a rather pleasant little hilly town. There are good museums and exhibitions and plays, but it’s all so small! One day while standing at some traffic lights (they do exist) a car sped through an amber light, and it occurred to me this was the most exciting thing I’d seen.

In the water stand two enormous ice-breakers: Aurora Australis and L’Astrolabe. Next to them in Salamanca Place, the trees glow with lights every evening. It feels like the depot at the end of the world, hidden and forgotten about. Maps sometimes forget to put Tasmania on the map of Australia, or even leave it off deliberately.

And what of the work, the reason I’m here? Consider the size of Hobart and the amount of politics in inverse proportion. And I can’t explain how strange it is to find myself studying Romanian art and history here. But where better to dedicate myself to the pursuit of truth and wisdom than a place of no distractions, of pure wind and blue skies, of prisons and wilderness?