Tasmania's Tarmac

Trip Start Feb 16, 2008
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Trip End Jul 22, 2008


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Thursday, February 28, 2008

Tassie...I wanted to go to Tasmania for the simple and selfish reason of saying that I've been to Tasmania.  It's like saying you've gone skinny dipping in Loch Ness.  How many people can say they've gone skinny dipping in Loch Ness?  Well, I have.  Now I can say I've been to Tasmania (sadly, no skinny dipping). Most people, when they think of Tasmania, they think of the cartoon Tasmanian Devil and really, I don't know what else. Tassie actually has a pretty interesting history and it's an incredibly beautiful island to boot!  Very well worth the trip!  Tassie (originally Van Dieman's Land) is one of Australia's states.  A place where the European settlers brought their convicts and slowly, because of disease, murder, colonization, and war, the indigenous people of Tassie are no more.  Australia's history has so many similarities to the US's and the parallels to Europeans treatment of the Native Americans is very similar to their treatment of the Aboriginal people of Australia.  I'm learning a lot-- making me think, you know...

Ok, so after a wonderful and insightful few days in Melbourne, I'm off to Tasmania for what I feel like from the beginning, will not be long enough.  I arrive in this little airport in Launceston - little.  No jetway.  Only stairs to the tarmac and through the door.  There's something very romantic to me about taking the stairs off an airplane.  There's never anyone waiting for me to run to, but it's still kinda cool.  I was in no hurry.  Tasmania, like Australia has serious food restrictions.  You cannot bring food into the island so they bring out the big dogs to check your luggage and personal belongings...the big dogs = beagles!  We had to wait forever for the luggage and once I got mine, I called Chreeta to say hello. I then went to find the shuttle.  This airport is so tiny that the shuttle driver wasn't going to return until the next flights arrived -- over an hour's wait.  Since I was really in no hurry, I went outside to read my book.  One universal thing about airports in every place in the US and abroad I've always noticed and hated -- no matter how hot or cold it is, immediately when you walk outside, the smell of cigarette smoke.  There were a whopping 3 people besides me outside, and still the same.

Shuttle driver shows up, gets some ice cream and takes me, his lone passenger, to the hostel.  He's cracks a joke and I laugh.  He keeps eating his ice cream.  Hostel is fine, clean.  I'm feeling a little forlorn. I'd reserved a double - all that was available, which is fine.  I take a quick nap, read, hit the grocery store, check email on their crappy computers.  I have a roommate - a very nice older woman from Chile who'd been in Australia for 26 years who's in nursing school.  She tells me about her life in Sydney, her two children, her two marriages - one to and Italian man, the second to an Englishman.  How her second marriage has trust that her first did not.  We had a really long and wonderful conversation which, because I didn't want to interrupt (boy, she was a talker), made the quick load of laundry I decided to do, missed the 9pm dryer shut off...my clothes were going to have to hang dry in our already cold room.  Wet jeans - never fun. I couldn't really figure out why I was feeling so sad.  I was in Tasmania for God's sake, having this wonderful converstion.  I'm so lucky, yet I still felt out of sorts or something.  Little did I know, 3 of the most challenging and exciting days I've experienced were about to begin...
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