Home About me Resume The Sound and the Fury Tasmanian Saga Photos Email me! Sign Guestbook View Guestbook Email me!
TASMANIA SAGA
< 1 2 3 4 >DEVONPORT AND WEST
Devonport was a little big town in Tasmania. In my opinion all the cities were just little big towns. But I will get to that later. When I arrived on the ferry it was dark and I couldn�t really see much of it so, I resigned judgment until the morning when I could see it better. There wasn�t much to see. It was just there. There wasn�t really any evil vibes or some sort of oppressing feeling to it. It was quite pretty in some ways. It was a city. It was not some sort of overglorified suburb in the middle of nowhere. This was a city with history and a downtown. It just was a very small downtown.
After I had wolfed down the aforementioned spaghetti, I took a shower and headed out to the common room to socialize and maybe get a good idea on what I be doing while I was here. The first thing I noticed was a big sign all the way down on the other side of the room. It was placed over a trash bag reading free bread. Before I had even finished reading the sign, my legs had moved me to a close proximity and my hands had picked out this pizza loaf thing out of the bag. This was the day leftovers from a bakery inside the city. The bread had been baked in the morning and it was still remarkably good stuff. Like the biblical jar of flour, the bag would never seem to be empty as long as I was there. I of course used the bread whenever I possibly could.
With bread in hand, I continued on to find I meandered around the common room searching for someone to make an impression on. While doing this, I made an interesting discovery. As far as languages went, English was the minority at Tasman House. The reason for this was the fact that a little over sixty percent of the people staying there were Japanese. There were a few people from Holland and Sweden and some scattered Aussies and Kiwis (New Zealanders) the rest were all from Japan. I found a spot on a couch and turned to the person next to me and uttered the infamous back packer catch phrase where are you from? J Japan answered the skinny Asian girl city across from me. I don�t speak English she uttered in the smallest possible voice. This was a lie. It is wonderful to have an accent when travelling. The ability to proclaim ignorance and be believed is a very handy thing to have in a foreign country. However, this is not a handy thing to have when encountering someone obsessed with your native language.
Could you please repeat that? I asked in Japanese being quite amused by the situation. This produced a surprised laugh and we quickly went into a conversation (in English). Ayako was in Tasmania picking apples, almost all of the Japanese were. It was probably the easiest job to find in the state. Also, the money wasn�t to bad. After about an hour, I told Ayako, I would see her tomorrow and I went to bed. My alarm went off at 6:AM and I promptly went back to sleep and decided to start work tomorrow. I looked around Devonport instead It isn�t really worth talking about.
It was a Tuesday when I made it to work. This place made The Pear Orchard look like a flea on a fat dogs ass. It was big. It was really big. biggest Orchard in The Southern Hemisphere some Kiwi with dreadlocks told me as I got off the bus. Despite the fact that I was standing on top of a hill, I could not see the end off it. I was impressed. Apples turned out to be a lot easier than Pears and the weather for the my first day was a dream. I was paired up with an Australian guy for my first day. We were picking apples known as Golden delicious, they bruise very easily but, they are gigantic apples. Goldies, are always strip picks, so you pull every last apple off the tree. Between the two off us, we filled four half-ton bins of apples by quitting time. I also ate about ten apples during the day. The fruits of my labour had never tasted sweeter. I did apples without much of a snag. I had a few off days while I was there. We switched varieties a few times. Sometimes it was easy and sometimes it was hard. But the apples always tasted good for the three weeks I stayed.
Something odd happened while in the middle of watching TV while I was at the hostel. I had sat down in front of the tube after dinner. The Simpson's ended so I was preparing to move on and seek other diversions. Suddenly, Japanese was being spouted out of the television. I didn't understand a Goddamn word of it. I zoned out for about half a second trying to translate. I blinked and opened my eyes to find that nearly every single Japanese person sat around the television. It was some sort of call signal or something. Two things kept me in front of the TV. One, I was curious, two, I couldn't move because there was about ten Japanese people sitting on the floor blocking the path out. In this way, I was introduced to a program called Takeshi's castle. It was subtitiled and had some Australia announcers providing very annoying commentary throughout. It was some fucked up obstacle course show. They had about eighty contestants of different shapes, sizes ages and genders. Some were in costumes, others were just very strange looking. These contestants ran through various obstacles while other people shot ink at them with squirt guns. My favourite obstacle involved three paper doors and walls behind two of them. BAM! WHACK! Full speed into a wall...he he he. Just when I was getting into the show, my phone rang. "Hey Ben, How's it going"
"Hey Dave, just let me step out for a minute" I nearly tripped no less than five times trying to get out of the TV room.
"Watch ya doing now?"
"I'm picking apples in Devonport. I�ve been doing it since I got off the ferry"
"Well, I'm down in Huonville doing the same. I am living in a tent again for Fifteen dollars a night. It's just freezing down here. This is a solid Hostel though. People pitch in on food and everything. Last Night, this guy made this beautiful smoked salmon, asked if anyone wanted in on it for a couple bucks. Just beautiful man, I think I'm going to stay down here till I finish a hundred bins"
To this I replied "I'm staying up here in a double for fourteen dollars a night" To which Dave followed with "Is it pretty warm there? Is it a good orchard? Can I get work easy?"
"Warmer than a tent, Orchards great, show up, and get on the bus" After some more conversation Dave ended with this. "Alright then, I'll see you Saturday"
The big talk at the hostel, was the waiting for the new varieties of apples to ripen. These were epic myths, we all waited in awe for the legendary fuji apple variety to ripen. On that day we would all be millionaires and all would be right tin the world. I remember how people s eyes would light up when the talked about an upcoming variety. This is how you were so sure that there was no way it could be true. It was kind of sad really. Dave arrived about a week before the Fujis ripened. I was getting restless. This was the third week I had spent in Tasmania. The only thing I had seen so far was apples. I had met some very cool people and I had made some money. The weather was changing and I wanted to go. It was good to see Dave again., there was another person to talk to and it was nice to have someone there that I already knew. I thought I muight be able to stay for a bit longer but the idea of leaving continued to rumble around in my head. I made it all the way until Tuesday before the compulsion was to strong.
We started to pick Fuji apples on that Tuesday,. The mythmaking Fujis were a bit of a let down. They were a color pick and they weren�t THAT big. I went to work, I picked a single bin of apples. About halfway through the bin, I decided it was time to go. I hitchhiked Back to the hostel and packed my bags and loaded up my bicycle and I went West.
< 1 2 3 4 >