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TASMANIA SAGA

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SMITHTON to HOBART to DOVER to CYGNET

The best things I did in Hobart are as follows:
1. Take a tour of the Cadbury chocolate factory
2. Take a tour to the convict site of Port Arthur with a pleasant Korean girl
3. Find a copy of the second Harry Potter book in the book exchange at the Hostel
4. Eat a pizza
5. Carry a loaded Bicycle up three flights of stairs
The last on the list was the first of the things that I did. The bus from Smithton had taken most of the day. It had gone back through Burnie, Devonport and made a brief stop in Launcestion. Sheep is the word for the scenery on the trip. There were rolling hills for miles. As beautiful as it was, I found myself a little saddened by the sight. It was all grass and sheep. There were ancient gum trees sparsely spaced between the fields and sheep. A good number of the trees were dead or dying and there were many fires where farmers were burning of dead wood. It was readily apparent that these large expanses of land had been cleared to make grassing areas for the abundant sheep. It would have been nice to see at least one forest on the trip. When I arrived at the hostel in Hobart with my bicycle. I found out that it was all the way on the fourth floor. My bicycle had all my luggage attached to it and was quite heavy. �I�ll be damned if I�m going to make two trips!! � I thought as I hefted it on to my shoulder and started to climb the stars with vigor and determination.
I can imagine what the people at the front desk saw when I made it up to the top level. Some sort of luggage monster in the shape of a bicycle was rising from stairs. The receptionist had a smile on her face as I emerged from behind the bicycle. I made some sort of inane remark about the sadistic pigs that put the hostel on the fourth floor and got into the act of checking in. I was told very quickly that there was a place on the bottom floor where most people kept their bikes. For Hobart, this was grand excitement. The hostel was completely dead. All blank faces were watching but not really watching TV. No one was really talking to each other unless they had arrived together. It was dull.
The Cadbury chocolate factory was my first tourist stop in Hobart. I consider this a great achievement. I pulled out my list of things to do before I die and crossed out tour a chocolate factory. I can�t talk about it. The oompa Loompas swore they�d bust my kneecaps if I breathed a single word. All I can say is that I ate a lot of chocolate in the factory and that I brought a lot back with me. Mmmm chocolate� I found out about the place after fixing someone else�s mobile phone so it could receive text messages again. I sent a message from the tour �God Bless Chocolate�
After that, I was bored fro three days straight. There just wasn�t anything to do in the city. It was tiny! It was bigger than a Devenport, but you could wander around the city centre in minutes and still see everything. I always surprise myself while traveling. I figure it takes about a minute and a half at most to go introduce myself to a pretty girl when they check in. I got to practice Japanese a lot this way. When I found out a person was from Japan, I would switch to Japanese and keep talking until my vocabulary was exhausted. I found it to be a good conversation starter, especially if the speaker wasn�t comfortable with English. This is how I met The aforementioned pleasant Korean girl.
While eating dinner, my radar picked up that there was a new girl in the hostel. While my feet moved my brain made the quick observations that had become habit. Medium build� long undyed hair� glasses�. mannerisms are Asian so not from a western country.. Chance from Japan: high� (I start reviewing phrases in my head) . These observations made without strenuous thought or deviating eyes. I reach talking distance �Hi, I�m Ben. Where are you from?� or something like that. She looked up quickly with a warm bubbly smile � Hi Ben, I�m Annette. I�m from Korea where are you from?�
Most people from Korea, that I�ve met, pick an English name to go by while they are traveling. This is because their real names are damn near impossible to pronounce. Annette�s was Jung Won, Yoon. That isn�t pronounced anything like you would think. I couldn�t say it and I�m usually pretty good with stuff like that. I was a bit surprised when I found out that she wasn�t from Japan and was headed in the direction of an awkward silence. I was saved by the fact that Annette was one of the warmest, most outgoing people I�ve met in Australia. I was thrown off completely. I joined her the next morning in a tour of the convict ruins of Port Arthur. Port Arthur was the prison of prisons in Australia. Tasmania or Van Diems Land as it was called. Held some of the worst convicts of the colonies. It was a place for repeat offenders. Only the worst of the worst made there way down to Tasmania. Port Arthur was on the Tasman peninsula. It could be described as a natural prison. It was a big land mast connected to the shore by a narrow isthmus about fifty meters across. When the prison was operating, a thing called the dog line operated a long the narrowest point called Eagle hawk neck. Under fed dogs and guards dotted the line. Any prisoner woul have to travel three days by land on foot top get to this point. Thanks to some ingenious signaling devices. The guards would know he was coming about fifteen minutes after he escaped.
The best story about would be escapees was a bout a professional actor who tried to escape by donning the hide of a kangaroo. For three days he hopped a long living the life of a kangaroo. What he didn�t know was that the guards at Eaglehawk neck supplemented their diet with Kangaroo meat. So when one of the guards pointed his gun at a kangaroo and said �Alright fellas, we�ll have this boomer for lunch�, he was very surprised to see it stand up and yell �DON�T SHOOT!� The prison itself was a converted flour mill that had closed down after the soil in the hills proved to be insufficient to grow wheat. The guided tour of the place was absolutely fascinating. The scariest part of the tour was the info a about the solitary confinement prison. The prisoners where given numbers, their names where never used and not a sound was to be every spoken. The guards communicated in hand signals and the prisoners never saw light. They were fed once for every 24 hours. The meals were brought at a different time every day so that they would have no sense of time. It was sick.
The trip itself was quick. Port Arthur is quite a good distance away from Hobart so we spent most of the time driving. There were a few other people in the group. Most were just going through the motions of being a tourist. I spent most of the time talking with Annette. The company is what really made the outing enjoyable. I have to admit that if I went alone I would have been bored and wondering why I went at all. But everyone that goes to Tassie goes to Port Arthur and I�m glad I did.
I was bored with Hobart. There wasn�t anything really exciting about the place. I did meet a few more people to practice my Japanese on and I bought a proper textbook on the subject. I was running low on funds again. The lack of Hostels in Smithton, the bus ticket to Hobart, the tours, all had taken their toll on the hard earned apple money. I needed to work fast. Something caught my eye on the bulletin board � APPLE PICKERS NEEDED IN DOVER FOR TWO TO THREE WEEKS WORK!� I made a phone call, gathered my things and got on a bus to Dover.
Dover was a complete bust. It was raining all the time the first day I worked and I was staying in a tent at a caravan park. I left the day after I arrived. I can stand being miserable during the day but I can�t stand not having a warm place to sit and read or talk to other people. . I was headed to the place that my friend Dave had mentioned. The guidebook said it was in a place called Cygnet about 80 kilometers from Dover. Once again, I got on a bus and left in search of work.
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