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TASMANIA SAGA
< 1 2 3 4 5 6 >BALFES HILL
The bus didn�t go to Cygnet. I was dropped off with my bicycle in front of a sign that said �18k to Cygnet�. My knee still hurt immensely whenever I was on a bicycle. As far as I could tell, I didn�t have a choice. Wincing in pain most of the way, I did the 13 kilometers. I was stressed when I got there. I had spent the last two days sleeping in tent in the rain. I hadn�t taken a shower and my clothes had not been washed since I was in Burnie. I was in no state to interact with other people.. I knew this when I checked in. I got right down to business.? �Do you have a room?�
�Yes�
�Is there work here?�
�Not for another four days�
�Do you have a laundry?�
�Bring your clothes back up here before eight and we�ll wash and dry them for six dollars�
�Ok then�
I ran to my room, unpacked my things and grabbed my laundry. I didn�t have a single item that was clean other than my swimsuit. I was packing very light for the bike trip so I had very little clothing. I took a shower before bringing in my laundry. My head had been out in the cold too long and I new I wouldn�t be able to relax until my clothes and body were clean. The water was still cold but that was the least of my worries. I changed into a combination of things I didn�t need to wear on a daily basis. I had my swimsuit on followed by the leggings I used when riding a bicycle (tights) , the tight T-shirt for biking, the tight silver jacket for biking, and shoes without socks. I looked like some mentally deficient gay super hero. Strangely enough, this didn�t bother me. The idea of having all of my clothes clean seemed to neutralize any embarrassment I felt. I was told that I could collect my clothes in the morning.
I have a hard time summarizing my time in Cygnet. The work was shit and unavailable most of the time. The rooms were always cold but there were so many people that I have a hard time not reverting to a minute-by-minute journal. So I�ll just jump right into a day at work and the sound of a gunshot.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
�Cockatoos! They�re the bloodiest things!� Jack was standing on the bed of his truck shooting in the direction of some large white birds hovering around the apple trees. By his feet was a medium sized dog that was chained to the truck. I had been hearing the shots all day long. I had merely assumed that they were a tractor back firing or some large piece of metal hitting the ground over and over. �I think they�ve almost got the message� Jack yelled as he jumped back in the cab and headed off in the direction of the cockatoos. Moments later I could tell were he was by the sound of Yukari�s (the over excitable Japanese girl) screams echoing every shot fired. I gave a look of no surprise to Yoshi(Yukari�s boyfriend) and he responded with the nodding of his head in the �yeah, yeah , I know� expression.
The apples were picking were known as Pink Ladies. There were seven of us working together for Jack. There was myself, Yoshi and Yukari, a Japanese couple traveling together, Tom, a Canadian who loved his pot, Jutta, a tall German girl with a thing for Keanu Reeves, Yoshie a Japanese girl with amazing picking abilities, and Naoko. Naoko was perhaps the incarnate of the Japanese girl seen so often in anime. Attractive, cute, talked in a really high voice, kind and so on. Of course, she wouldn�t give me the time of day.
The days at work were all really the same. We came and picked apples while Jack told us not to bruise the fruit and shot at cockatoos. Tom, Jutta and I were all n the opinion that if one of us was taking a break we might as all be. So, we�d hunt down another one of us every time we were feeling lazy or Jutta was taking a cigarette break. The days went well in this regard. We�d arrive around 8 o�clock and leave around four forty-five. Because the apples we were picking were fragile, we were being paid extra per bin. So it was good money. The manager of the hostel, Jane, would drive us to and from work everyday along with everyone else to there respective orchards. The hostel was pretty big but there weren�t many people left because the season was about over. Everything was pretty goood. Except when I�d wake up with a large smelly African land mammal in my room.
�Rhino wake up. You stink, what are you doing here? Don�t you live in the other building?�
�Just frblmmfl minute frgrblle matey�
Rhino was a big guy. His real name was Ryan and one never really questioned how he got the name. He was a Queenslander about six and a half feet tall with dirty frizzy dreadlocks. He talked slowly like most Queenslanders and always had a hold of some sort of mind altering substance, be it beer or whatever. I have no idea what he did for work there since he was there when I went to work and there when I left. He couldn�t leave because of the fact that he hadn�t paid rent in all the months he had stayed there and owed a few thousand dollars because of it. The night I awoke to find him awake in my room he had stayed up all night drinking and had watched the sunrise from the veranda of the building I was staying. Some how he had wandered into the closest room from there, Which happened to be mine. A few hours later he emerged with the statement �So how�d I end up in here?�
The only one who topped Rhino in drunkenness and incoherent babbling was Manish, a Nepalese guy who new a lot of English words but just couldn�t seem to string them together to make any sense. He talked fast too. You had to uses all your powers of concentration to even get a glimpse of what he was trying to say. It got worse after his nightly two or three liters of beer. He started talking in nothing but metaphor. The key was to nod your head.
�Ben,You listening to me?�
�Uh huhu�
�Every one here is beautiful man , were brothers you know that, if there was this dog and the moon and he looked up at the sky and saw the stars and this girl was the went to city, Fuck me man , Why the fuck am I still here. It is a beautiful thing man, and then they went on and on and the stars came down and then wow it was beautiful man you must be like the stars and the moon, man�
Jutta, had a signal for Manish whenever he was babbling to much. She�d whistle and he�d usually stop and speak in single sentences for a short amount of time. He was a really good guy when he wasn�t high or drunk. He was a good guy all of the time really. He was very generous always sharing whatever wine he bought. The two most cohereant phrases to come from his lips were �You want some wine man?� and �Jimmy and I were just smoking some cones man�. He and Rhino had fallen into the rut of hostel living. They�d been there longer than anyone else and it was very unlikely that they�d leave anytime soon.
I am not really sure how I fit in that place. The days went by quickly and slowly at the same time. The rain came and we had our days off. There was the weekly pilgrimage down to the Laundromat in Cygnet with Tom and Jutta. There was an online center in town that was reasonably priced and a little caf� with a decent atmosphere. Cygnet was really a Hippy town for people seeking a cleaner life in Tasmania. Most of the populace that I met hadn�t been born anywhere near Cygnet or Tasmania for that matter. The town had two stores that sold nothing but natural foods, a craft store specializing in multicolored clothing with and Indian accent and, according to my roommate, some of the best pot in the world. It was clean town. It was just really small and a forty-minute walk from the hostel. If you wanted a place with bigger grocery stores and you stuck out your thumb and hitched the 13k to the happening town of Huonville
�Tadaima�
"...."
�Tadaima!�
Emiko was trying to help me out with my Japanese and I had already forgotten how to respond to the phrase that the Japanese say when returning home. She was glaring at me now waiting for me to respond. I reacted a little differently than I was supposed to. �Aw shit! What was the word again uh.. damn It! eh� to� Okari!� She stopped glaring and went on to go and talk to Yoshie and Naoko about her day and sit in the chair in front of the heater. Emiko was the exact opposite of Naoko, she swore and cussed constantly in both English and Japanese. She had a surprisingly deep voice for someone who only weighed about 90 lbs. She was almost always willing to help me out with my Japanese for the sole reason that her English was so bad. Her English was an accumulation of simple phrases, slang and cuss words. There were many instances were one of us would say something in one language and the other respond in another. �Samui ne?� I�d say
�Its not fucking cold, Okey dokey?� she�d respond smiling. Having a conversation was always difficult because of the language barrier. This didn�t stop me from starting to babble on in English like a racehorse when I was meant to be talking slow and enunciating. I might have well been background music when this happened and she told me as much on a few occasions.
The funny thing about the language barrier is that often enough I�ve had the same amount of trouble with the English, Irish and Scottish as anyone else. The accent, Scottish has been the worst, makes words indecipherable among the jabber. If I wanted intelligent conversation that didn�t involve translation of my native language or the absence of polysyllable words, I went to talk to Jutta. I�d talk to Tom but It was too frustrating explaining what words mean to another native speaker. Jutta had a better handle on the English language than most of my High school classmates and had read many of the same books I had. So we�d had a good amount to talk about and she made a good drinking partner. We�d sit and complain about the town and the boredom of it all. There were good nights and bad.
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