Yep, your indefatigable blogger - never was an adjective more worthily earned - is back on duty. I got back last night from Hobart, where I spent a full and fascinating four days investigating the Ten Days on the Island festival (report to follow) and leading some workshops for Critical Acclaim, a program in which seven aspiring critics are thrown into the deep end and told to swim. (You can see some of their efforts at the swank new Spark Online site, as well as a plethora of other outlets like Australian Stage Online, Mercury Online and others.).

So it's been some week. From three days in the remote Flinders Ranges writing a poem with a camera stuck up my nose (which was much more fun than you or I might expect) to lounging about the chocolate box Hobart theatres and Salamanca's cafe society felt like an epic journey. But like Odysseus, I'm a bit of a homebody, and I'm glad to be back. And to make me feel even more upbeat, the Australian this weekend listed Theatre Notes as one of Australia's best blogs. I'm still not past being chuffed. I'm chuffed!

Addendum: check out Matt Trueman's piece on the situation facing young critics and the thoughtful discussion following it on the Guardian theatre blog. Very interesting, given what I've just been doing in Hobart. I'd say the difference here is that we have little tradition of theatre criticism - Katherine Brisbane and Harry Kippax (both Sydney critics) are about the whole shebang. Very often, those of us passionate about critical discourse in the theatre feel as if we're building from the ground up. As with many things about Australian culture, this lack of tradition - often decried in the past, and often rightly, as cultural aridity - means we look forward instead of backward, with no tradition letting fall its long shadow over us. Meaning that it can be a liberating plus as much as a problem.