Well, as they say, all tree killing and no play makes a
conservation volunteer a dull man so let’s talk about life outside the forest,
let’s talk about the leisure opportunities in the great outdoors in Launceston.
The first thing that strikes the independent traveller about
Tasmania is that there are not many roads and consequently even fewer buses.
You would be better off waiting to flag down your local tassie devil for a
piggy back ride than trying to find a bus to take you from A-B. In fact, A-B
has been deemed commonplace in Tasmania and they only operate ‘Scenic Routes’
which don’t just go from A-B, they mean a trek around C, D, E, F, G too.
Honestly, to get to the next town in some cases you have to take a trip back to
the mainland. Ridiculous. Hire a car folks, there are only three roads so you
can’t get lost. You think I’m exaggerating? This is the only place where the AA map notes junctions
as points of national interest.
Having said that, after a particularly damp winter, Tassie
is beautifully green at the moment and is one of those lovely places where it’s
all hills and rolling countryside with the occasional impressive peak thrown in
out of nowhere.
On a couple of work days we went down to the local beach. It
looked idyllic from the van but, in the true style of St. Helens beaches all
over the world, was fekking freezing when you got to the water and sand bit.
Caroline and I got out our beach towels straight away – and wrapped them around
us to try and get some warmth (you didn’t honestly think I was getting into the
water did you?) whilst the rest of the team indulged in a soccer match to try
to stop their muscles from spasming. I’d tried to explain rip tides to Thomas
the night before without much success; he didn’t understand what shabby clothes
had to do with the sea. In the end he was under the impression that you
couldn’t swim in Australia in torn shorts in case you got carried off (by some
over enthusiastic fashion police presumably). I gave up and just drew him a
picture of a shark attacking him instead, which kept him out of the water quite
nicely. Just in case you thought it never happened, there’s a diver on the news
who has been carried off by two great whites, they are looking for remains but
don’t expect to find any. Hey, come to Australia – great place to visit!
On that note, I went for a walk along the sands to warm up
and came across four dead sea gulls with their necks broken, like they had just
dropped out of the sky and died. Yeah, that one didn’t make the photo album.
So if you’re not climbing hills or freezing on the beach you
can take in places such as the cheese factory – no, not a Stock, Aitken
Waterman museum but a cafe where you can watch cheese being made and then go
and have your coffee next to a cow’s bum. Honestly, the decking was next to the
cow pen and they were doing what cows do when they see a tourist coming. I took
my tea inside.
Todd invited us over for home made cake and ice cream and
musical entertainment which was genuinely lovely. It was a thank you for all
our hard work so far. It was at this point that Jamie realised the true perils
of introducing the Koreans using their Korean names with our English
pronunciation as he casually introduced Buonghee as Bon kee or ‘Plastic Bag’ –
it took the group a full ten minutes to stop laughing enough to explain the
problem. I’d wondered why they had been tittering every time Jamie or I spoke
to him using the Korean name.
The worst thing about doing this kind of work is that I keep
wanting to destroy pine trees wherever I see them. This makes me a bit of a menace
at Christmas parties.
Elsie.
