The Little Island that Could

Oprah Daily sent me to Tasmania to meet the farmers, chefs, scientists, horticulturists, and entrepreneurs who are revolutionizing this remarkable place. The magazine is on newsstands today. To celebrate, here is the full article.

The little island that could.

Tasmania floats at sea, a wonderland of lessons. The last stop before Antarctica, it's a hotbed of important plants and unusual people. When I was a kid growing up in rural Australia, Tasmania was considered so unimportant that it was completely left off the map at the Commonwealth games and later, literature for the Sydney Olympic Games. But Tasmania didn’t get its feelings hurt — you don’t come here for drama.

This is a land of calm, isolated, endangered beauty. Above, the air hums with more than 100 species of birds—Green Rosellas, Yellow Wattlebirds, Tasmanian Thornbills. Below, in the brisk waters, a hidden garden thrives—rock lobster, mussels, abalone, sea urchins, deep-sea fish, freshwater trout. And on land, in the shelter of ancient pencil pines, wombats, wallabies, pademelons, echidnas, and the elusive Tasmanian Devil.

The Tasmanian Devil is native to Tasmania, the largest carnivorous marsupial, about the size of a dog. At birth, the babies race to their mother’s pouch and don’t let go for months. Even after they outgrow it, they cling to her, scrambling back whenever she returns. If separated too soon, they cry out, desperate to reunite. Some refuse to leave home at all, sneaking back into the den. Others go reluctantly. For some, the bond is almost impossible to break.

In some ways, I’m a Tasmanian Devil. My twin brother and I clung fiercely to our mother. We grew up on a farm, isolated, and when I left Australia, the guilt followed me everywhere. Even at 17, I knew it would break her heart. But I wanted, desperately, to make her proud—which meant leaving. But the juice had to be worth the squeeze. I see now that it set me on a path of chronic workaholism in a race for “independence”. Since then, we’ve spent too much time apart. This trip to Tasmania was a way of finding my way back.

This was our second trip to Tasmania. More than fifteen years ago we came to go oyster harvesting. At the time, I had been in New York for over a decade, consumed by the creative agency I founded at 28—a business that devoured my 20s, 30s, and part of my 40s. It was a rare vacation. We all suffered from the hereditary disease of busyness and the need to please everyone but ourselves. I remember checking emails obsessively, unable to relax, afraid of stepping too far from work.

On that trip, we met Rodney Dunn and his wife, Severine Demanet, who had started a small business from their home in Lachlan—the Agrarian Kitchen. They grew their own food, cooked from scratch, and taught classes. There was something powerful in what Rodney was doing. I remember standing in his kitchen, realizing a part of my soul had withered in my busy, independent New York life. His cookbook has lived in my kitchen ever since, its pages dog-eared and butter-stained. It planted the seed for what would later become my home and business, Flamingo Estate.

On this new trip, food was also going to be the focus. It started with Analiese Gregory.

Analiese is a force of nature, widely considered the most exciting chef of her generation. She dives for abalone, wakame, and sea urchins, hunts for meat, forages for greens—living as close to nature as possible. Fresh off the plane, my mother and I meet her for breakfast at The Bowmont, a heritage-listed guesthouse on the banks of the Huon River.

I had read her book, How Wild Things Are, and knew her story. She started cooking as a teenager, moved to London and Paris to train under the world’s most demanding chefs. By 24, she was working at Quay, repeatedly ranked among the world’s top 50 restaurants. Then, she walked away from it all—to the bottom of Australia.

I felt an immediate connection. We both left home as teenagers, chasing something we couldn’t name, only to find the grass wasn’t greener. “You have to do the full circle,” she said, “or you wouldn’t understand.” I did understand. The search for real joy often comes with struggle.

In her book, she describes isolation—being the only woman in a French kitchen, unable to speak the language. The exhaustion of chasing dangling carrots that never feed the hungry ghosts of our egos. And yet, here, in one of the most remote places on Earth, she has found her tribe—making artichoke ice cream, seaweed jam, gin with wild honey.

That morning, we ate one of the best meals of my life—scallops, oysters, and lobster she had pulled from the sea just hours before, draped in brown butter Béarnaise. But more than that, we were fed wisdom. What a joyful act of rebellion to walk away and reinvent. I saw my mother light up hearing her story and wondered how we could do the same…

Analiese is deeply connected to the land and the people working it. And she gave us a name I won’t soon forget: Adam James.

Adam is a fermentation legend—dubbed the Prince of Pickles, the Aussie King of Kimchi. His obsession began in high school and deepened with a Churchill Fellowship, sending him across Japan, China, Korea, Italy, France, Georgia, and Denmark to study fermentation’s cultural role. He learned from sixth-generation artisans perfecting a single craft, and from monk and renowned chef Jeong Kwan in a Korean monastery.

We found him barefoot in his garden, perched high in the forest canopy, surrounded by a thousand shades of green. Below, a river cut through the land—his daily ritual was a plunge into its cold depths, a reset (he invited us to join for a swim). His “office” sat above the house, lined with handmade fermentation crocks. He pried open a mother ferment, 11 years in the making, handed us spoons. “Mass production is the death of any industry,” he said. I agreed. Scale is the enemy of intimacy, and this is an intimate craft.

Adam cooked my mother congee—biodynamic rice, shiitake, quinoa, wild-fermented turmeric, ginger, garlic, onion, carrot, celery, spices, tamari. Her first taste, and she loved it. Then came wild-shot Bruny Island wallaby, grilled over homemade charcoal, finished with morello cherry boshi and chickpea miso. She was so inspired, she left with a bottle of his Mothership— crafted from 16 varieties of fermented heirloom chilies, daikon, hakurei, tomato, tomatillo, eggplant, cucumber, radish, fennel, garlic scapes, raw apple vinegar, sea salt, and an herbaceous tangle of shiso, parsley, tarragon, lovage, laksa leaf, dill, and chervil. It was a hot, hot, hot sauce we were going to need for the oysters ahead.

Tasmania’s cool climate is a gift—its air, the cleanest in the world. Its water, the purest. This is why the oysters of Coles Bay are considered some of Australia’s finest. We waded out to the outer beds, eating oysters fresh from the water, on a table. Our guide, Hamish from Saffire Freycinet, told us that oysters open and close with the tide, so just like people they grow stronger with effort—physical, mental, creative— it builds endurance. He told us that the Wine Maker, Claudio Radenti, was also worth a visit. “The man is like his wine — very good, uncomplicated and takes his time.”

Early the next morning, we arrived at Claudio’s vineyard—the oldest of its kind in Tasmania. With his heavy Italian accent and easy warmth, he guided us through the fields, my mother in full investigative mode. “The clean air and sunshine touch everything here,” he said. “That’s why things taste better.” Everything on the property is done by hand. Like so many we met, Claudio was committed to doing things the right way. No shortcuts.

“Sometimes it’s good to struggle,” he said as we walked the rows. “Nature shows us that adversity makes you bear fruit.” We stopped and listened. “The soil here was tough. The vines struggled for years. But that’s how they develop strong roots. If the soil were too good, the vines would grow leaves, not fruit. People are like that too.”

Before leaving, Claudio opened his favorite sparkling wine, Radenti, named after his family. We raised our glasses beneath his statue of Saint Vincent, patron saint of winemakers—who represents solidarity with those who work the land. And solidarity with Mother Nature, we realized, was the thread connecting everyone we met.

The same was true for Chris Manson and Alice Laing, who left city life to harvest salt on Tasmania’s remote east coast. Chris, a former lawyer, couldn’t understand why chefs imported salt from Europe when Tasmania had the cleanest, most nutrient-rich waters in the world. They founded Tasman Sea Salt, developing a system that evaporates seawater using solar power by day and thermal energy from the ocean at night—producing salt just meters from the shore.

Further down the coast, we met the Polmear family, who turned an old oyster hatchery into an award-winning whisky distillery named Waubs Harbour Distillery. Their single malt is made with river water, ocean-cooled stills, and malted barley from around the island. They even experiment with a uniquely Tasmanian peat—formed from coastal reeds, saltbush, and the native melaleuca tree. My mother and I were both obsessed with these people all harnessing the water and doing something with it. But if there was one titan among the water gods, it would be our next stop: Sam Elsom.

Sam is on a mission to save the world—quite literally. His solution? Seaweed. Specifically, asparagopsis, a red seaweed native to Australian waters that, when added in tiny pellets to livestock feed, reduces methane emissions by 98%. Methane, with a warming effect 28 times greater than CO₂, accounts for 16% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Asparagopsis doesn’t just curb emissions; it also restores ocean health, absorbing excess nutrients and CO₂ from the atmosphere.

While governments around the world drag their feet, Tasmania is the only place backing this revolution. Sam’s company, Sea Forest, was also named a finalist for the $1.9M Earthshot Prize, launched by Prince William and Sir David Attenborough. Now, he’s scaling up—partnering with global luxury brands to ensure the sheep producing their wool are also fighting climate change.

We stood at his lab on the water’s edge, where scientists are breeding seaweed before releasing it into Tasmania’s vast, pristine waters. Beneath the surface, an underwater forest is growing—an ecosystem, a rebellion, a quiet, radical act of hope. It earned him Tasmanian of the Year, and now he’s rumored to be next in line for Australian of the Year, one of the nation’s highest honors. He’s got my vote. He’s not playing small.

Also not playing small is MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art. It’s one of the most provocative contemporary art museums in the world, founded by David Walsh—a mathematical genius, professional gambler, and cultural iconoclast. He made his fortune with an algorithm-based betting system, then turned his winnings into an audacious playground of art and disruption.

But if Walsh is the gambler, his wife, Kirsha Kaechele, is the one placing the biggest bets. According to the team at MONA, she doesn’t shy away from problems—she devours them. For example, EAT THE PROBLEM, her book, TV series, and event series, takes invasive species and puts them on the plate. Instead of lamenting ecological destruction, she turns it into dinner: crispy-skin cane toad, snake jerky (snerky), feral camel toes, myna bird parfait.

At MONA, nearly half a million visitors come each year, but they won’t find factory-farmed beef, pork, or chicken on the restaurant’s menu. Instead, it’s wallaby, feral deer, and rabbit—species that need to be eaten. There’s no Tasmanian salmon either; the industry’s environmental damage makes it unwelcome. Zero waste, no plastic packaging. Kirsha doesn’t just talk about sustainability—she rejoices in it.

She pushes even further through The Material Institute, one of her charities, and The Ladies Lounge—a velvet-drenched, women-only club inside MONA. Until 1965, Australian women weren’t allowed in public bars. So Kirsha made her own. No men allowed.

In 2023, a man named Jason Lau filed a complaint after being refused entry. He demanded an apology—or for men to receive discounted museum tickets to make up for their loss. Kirsha fired back: “I’m not sorry, and you can’t come in.” When he pushed, she pointed out Australia’s 12% gender pay gap and dismissed his claim outright. The case escalated all the way to the Tasmanian Supreme Court. Kirsha Kaechele took on the patriarchy—and won. The press called her the art world’s most glamorous vigilante.

Kirsha chooses the wild over the industrial, the resourceful over the wasteful. She’s rewritten what it means to be “green” —proving it’s not just ethical, but thrilling. We spent hours at MONA, not staring at art, but hearing about her vision from the team. And that was enough. We left more inspired than any canvas could have made us.

Last but not least, my mother and I returned to The Agrarian Kitchen, the place that first planted the seed for Flamingo Estate all those years ago. No longer housed in Rodney Dunn and Severine Demanet’s home, it now occupies an abandoned psychiatric hospital—a sprawling space where an immense vegetable garden thrives, enclosed by towering concrete walls that once held inmates in an exercise yard. Last year, it was named Best Restaurant in Australia—the first time the honor had ever gone to a Tasmanian restaurant.

In every way, The Agrarian Kitchen is a love letter to Tasmanian produce and people. There’s no compromise, no shortcuts. “If we can make something ourselves, we should,” said Head Chef Stephen Peak. So, they do. A dedicated kitchen on-site is devoted entirely to preserving—pickles, jams, and ferments, alongside house-made cheeses and charcuterie, all feeding back into the restaurant. We arrived at a table set with warm fennel sausage rolls and ketchup made from black walnuts.

But the real heart of the place isn’t the kitchen—it’s the garden. “This is the center of everything,” said Head Gardener Mitch Thiessen. The restaurant sends 12 tons of food waste back to the soil each year. Instead of turning compost, they ferment it—preserving nitrogen, locking in nutrients, and creating the rich, thriving earth that feeds the kitchen. The cycle is seamless, like everything in Tasmania.

Seeing Rodney again felt like coming full circle—so much had changed, yet everything we loved remained. And my mother, more than anyone, embodied that transformation. This was not the woman I had spoken to a week ago—the one weighed down by business, by caring for my father. In Tasmania, she came alive, moving through conversations like the island’s birds, flitting from story to story, drawing people in. She glowed, reflecting back the warmth given to us.

Truthfully, the trip would have been dull without her—without her curiosity, her humor, the parts of her that had been bottled up for too long. It made me realize the power of stepping into the world, rather than getting lost inside my own head.

I’m now almost the age my mother was when I left home. And in many ways, I have become her. I don’t keep a large circle of friends. I prefer my garden, my animals, my time alone with my partner, Harvey. My dogs are like my children. The older I get, the smaller my world has become. But Tasmania whispered a different truth—maybe the answer isn’t fewer people, but more.

No man is an island. And perhaps, after decades of trying to prove I didn’t need anyone, a little island at the bottom of the world convinced me that the opposite was true. These people were really LIVING, and they were doing it together. Just watching them was an education. From Rodney, I learned hospitality. From Annalise, courage. From Claudio, patience. From Kirsha, audacity. And from my mother, I learned about change.

Tasmania is a land of second acts—a lawyer who becomes a salt farmer, a family that becomes distillers, a designer saving the world with seaweed. I have hope for second, even third acts—for my mother, for myself. And I now see how that’s possible—by surrounding ourselves with people who challenge us, who open our eyes and imaginations. And I wish so deeply I could bottle the feeling as we return home from this powerful, unique place.

When Australia next hosts the Olympic Games, it’s the mainland they should leave off the map.