Where the sea meets the city

For Seán Kelly, Cork’s docklands are where the city meets the world and where he recalls Hobart, his home port.

THERE’S always something magical and exotic about a port. When I was a small boy living in Hobart, Tasmania (like Cork, a port city), I would spend hours on summer days hanging around the docks. All the streets seemed to run naturally down to the water.

The water was always a partially glimpsed flat gleam between buildings or the silver-grey end stop to a street, so it was natural to gravitate to the water on hot lazy days.