I have now been here for half of my stay …I feel like I have been gone about two weeks but instead it has been five. Each week goes faster and faster. I have started using some of the slang naturally and I find myself sounding funny when I use “yank” terms as they call them here; however, this last weekend I happened to pick up a ton more so for starters on this blog lets go to an Australian vocabulary lesson:
crayfish- lobster
prawns-shrimp
grill guard – bull bar
bonnet- car hood
boot- trunk
give way- yield
take over – pass (meaning a car)
fringe – bangs
knackered- tired ----- so in my last blog I said naked was tired…apparently I found out I need to ask people to spell things because I get the word WAYYY wrong because of their accent and lack of pronouncing their “r”……this whole time I thought the Tassies were saying they were “naked” all the time they were saying they were “knackered” OOPS J
good bird – nice girl
shiela – girl
far out – unbelievable
jetty- dock
float- horse trailer
tires is spelled tyres
color is spelled colour
rogie and righto – ok (these are probably my two favorite words J )
how you going? – how are you?
crayfish- lobster
prawns-shrimp
grill guard – bull bar
bonnet- car hood
boot- trunk
give way- yield
take over – pass (meaning a car)
fringe – bangs
knackered- tired ----- so in my last blog I said naked was tired…apparently I found out I need to ask people to spell things because I get the word WAYYY wrong because of their accent and lack of pronouncing their “r”……this whole time I thought the Tassies were saying they were “naked” all the time they were saying they were “knackered” OOPS J
good bird – nice girl
shiela – girl
far out – unbelievable
jetty- dock
float- horse trailer
tires is spelled tyres
color is spelled colour
rogie and righto – ok (these are probably my two favorite words J )
how you going? – how are you?
Now for the fun stuff. The blog keeps getting longer and longer but I just can’t leave anything out! J My week started off in Stoodley with Zach and his family. On Sunday evening we went and shot clay pigeons for awhile. I can’t shut my right eye and leave my left eye open to aim properly so we made a make shit eye patch but coloring in one side of a pair of random safety glasses! I was too hard headed to wear ear plugs so by the time I finally hit a few clay pigeons I was def in one ear. All I could think about as we were driving out the pasture was how in the movies if you talk louder to someone who is foreign maybe they will better understand your language …I was going to be THAT girl at the BBQ we had planned. I would be yelling with an accent and then pretending like I understood them or have to turn my head to the good ear like a geezer to hear a thing. Well, everything turned out alright either way…I had a great time with Zac’s family and some friends. Good food, drinks, and fun with a potato gun. It was good idea I had some extra hair spray in my bag!
Monday Zach and I toured around the northwestern part of Tassie. His mom owns her own café in town so we started off with breakfast, met his grandma and her friend, and the next afternoon had lunch there as well. She is especially known for her rabbit pies (which were delicious) so I made a joke that their family lives on a rabbit ranch. J Next stop was a honeyfarme. There were probably 25 different flavors of honey from pistachio to strawberry to caramel and the regular flavors. You could walk around tasting or have an ice cream made with honey while learning about the process. Afterwards we drove around seeing the sites and took some small hikes to different lookout points including the alum cliffs, devils gullet, a hydro dam, and a few creeks (where I failed at skipping rocks and nearly fell in) and fishing spots etc. that only a local would know about. One of our last stops was at Mole Creek caves. There were a few lights for the path but at one point the tour guide turned off the lights and it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand waving right in front of your nose. Several types of rock filled the caves- your typical stalagmites and stalactites were there but a huge amount of “flow rock” filled it as well. That rock was my favorite. There were also sections in the roof where you could see where water flowed through the rock at one point before making sections of the rock weak causing the inside of the cave to buckle. The natural formations were pretty interesting – one looked like a palm tree and another area at the peak of the cave was called the cathedral and had several different unique features. We were asked why we thought a few of the rocks were dark colored and Zac preceded to answer that it was from glow worm poop. It gave us all a good laugh but we found it was from the soot of fires. On our way out because our eyes had adjusted to the darkness we flipped the lights off to see the numerous glow worms. Just as I thought the caves were going to be my favorite part of the day….the tour guide stopped to show us the cave spiders….and he kept finding more …and more ..and oh another one! Real cool except that my head was brushing the top of the cave just close enough for a spider to jump on and go for a ride. NOT COOL. J By the time we arrived back to Sheffield it was time for tea so we joined up with the rest of the family at the Sheffield Pub. We tried to win big in a game, explored a secret door, heard about the legendary platypus, and a bird nearly came through the windshield on the way home. Let’s just say getting Zac and his brother together is rather entertaining.
Monday Zach and I toured around the northwestern part of Tassie. His mom owns her own café in town so we started off with breakfast, met his grandma and her friend, and the next afternoon had lunch there as well. She is especially known for her rabbit pies (which were delicious) so I made a joke that their family lives on a rabbit ranch. J Next stop was a honeyfarme. There were probably 25 different flavors of honey from pistachio to strawberry to caramel and the regular flavors. You could walk around tasting or have an ice cream made with honey while learning about the process. Afterwards we drove around seeing the sites and took some small hikes to different lookout points including the alum cliffs, devils gullet, a hydro dam, and a few creeks (where I failed at skipping rocks and nearly fell in) and fishing spots etc. that only a local would know about. One of our last stops was at Mole Creek caves. There were a few lights for the path but at one point the tour guide turned off the lights and it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand waving right in front of your nose. Several types of rock filled the caves- your typical stalagmites and stalactites were there but a huge amount of “flow rock” filled it as well. That rock was my favorite. There were also sections in the roof where you could see where water flowed through the rock at one point before making sections of the rock weak causing the inside of the cave to buckle. The natural formations were pretty interesting – one looked like a palm tree and another area at the peak of the cave was called the cathedral and had several different unique features. We were asked why we thought a few of the rocks were dark colored and Zac preceded to answer that it was from glow worm poop. It gave us all a good laugh but we found it was from the soot of fires. On our way out because our eyes had adjusted to the darkness we flipped the lights off to see the numerous glow worms. Just as I thought the caves were going to be my favorite part of the day….the tour guide stopped to show us the cave spiders….and he kept finding more …and more ..and oh another one! Real cool except that my head was brushing the top of the cave just close enough for a spider to jump on and go for a ride. NOT COOL. J By the time we arrived back to Sheffield it was time for tea so we joined up with the rest of the family at the Sheffield Pub. We tried to win big in a game, explored a secret door, heard about the legendary platypus, and a bird nearly came through the windshield on the way home. Let’s just say getting Zac and his brother together is rather entertaining.
Tuesday AM I woke up rather startled at something furry at my feet. Gizmo, Zac’s pup, was curled up at my feet and I have to admit I punted her across the room on accident. After that I was wide awake and ready to battle another day. Because we spent a fair amount of time driving from place to place Zac introduced me to the Wolfe brother’s music on Monday- It is red dirt style music from a local band- which I loved the first, second, and third time but by the fiftieth time we listened to the CD of 5 songs I was ready for something new. Therefore, I spent some time in the morning putting some of my music on his ipod. Then we went to his mom’s café for her famous rabbit pies and headed to the local “seven sheds” brewery. It was home brewed beer so it was fun to sit down and talk to the owner about his operation and see how he does things versus what I saw at the commercial brewery down south. We did a bit more sight-seeing and then Zac had a few things to get done at home before returning to work the next day. I managed to find a new favorite snack-raspberry crème biscuits (cookies) and gave him a few genius ideas of how to load a wood chipper. He shut me down every time and then asked “are you sick of me? ..How bout now?” (a few seconds later)…which happened every five minutes. J It became a rather popular saying .
Wednesday and Thursday were pretty quiet days. Bec and I went for coffee and some shopping in Davenport to get ready for our big camping excursion. We got an amazing deal on a BBQ pack and we picked up a few other things. Wednesday evening we went to the neighbors down the road for some Kelly Pool (I think it was called.) J It was great fun but I of course lost both times. Thursday we got packed up and ready to go for the trip that was probably a once in a lifetime experience for me.
At 6 am we woke up …apparently a few of the others at 4:30 am, packed our utes, and met up to head to the Pieman on the west coast of Tasmania. Darcy and Tiarna were in the “fire engine”, Ned and Tash in “stumpy”, Keelan was late (haha), and Adam, Bec, and I were in the Hilux, loaded to the brim, with pretty normal tires. We were in the ute that we all hoped would make it to the site. Off we headed down the road only to stop five min later. Darcy had something wrong with his ute. All good. Moving on. 5 min later. Keelan said we needed some red bull and some food – nevermind he had just passed us going down the road with a whole package of Tim Tams and a double Red Bull. Stop again. Sketchy bathroom stop. Few snacks. Moving on. 5 min later. Started to rain so we stopped again to put a tarp over our ute. Ok here we go…we have food…had a bathroom stop…tarp set up..full tanks of petrol. The boys immediately started bragging about how well the tarp was tied down over the radios…..spoke too soon. Stop again. We had to fix the tarp. Keelan got bored so he decided to have a little play in the ditch and was completely perpendicular to the road when a cop decided to stroll by. Good thing he was focused on something else more important….Off we go again……..Apparently breakfast got the best of Ned or maybe what he did the night before….he needs a toilet. Here I was sitting in the back, traveling with new people, scared to have a sip of water because I didn’t have the courage to tell someone to stop if no one else had to pee and I gather I could have chugged a bottle every ten minutes and never had to be the one to speak up and say we needed to stop. I think we may have stopped a few more times further down the road but everything went rather smoothly. I saw a few rare things…three utes across a two lane road…someone playing on their phone, talking on the radio, listening to music, eating, and driving all at the same time. Good thing I didn’t get in the car with that guy. :)
The campsite was about 50k off of the main road. You had to do a bit of planning to get there because if the tide was too high we would end up waiting for low tide to go through. Bits of the drive were over rocks, through mud holes, and the best part was the time on the beach. The radios make for much easier travel so you can communicate and keep everyone together but mainly for pure entertainment. I sat in the back listening to them take a stab at the American accent and tease me for hours. There was a very old tractor bogged off the track and they asked if I wanted to stop and take a picture. The other conversations the boys came up with were interesting to say the least. Anyway, I found it interesting that on the track if a ute passed coming the other way the driver showed on their fingers how many utes/motor bikes/people followed because they had to wait…the track was rarely wide enough for two vehicles to go through at the same time. I got in with another one of the guys for the off road part and we were the first to get stuck. “This is a time when you need a Tim Tam” became one of the many quotes of the weekend. I have to admit when I first arrived here I was a bit skeptical of the “trucks”. The stud trucks here are the Toyota Hilux (Tacoma) and the Nissan Triton (Frontier) …quite small. They have a few F trucks (F250) if they will pull horses but I have probably seen five full-sized or mid-sized trucks since I left home. Now I know exactly why the guys are so proud of their “trucks.” Full sized pickups would not have fit down the tracks here and would have been a pain to pull out after they were bogged because of being so heavy. When we got stuck we pulled out the wench and were back on the road in a few minutes.
Everyone took their turn getting bogged on the way in besides our “tour guide” Ned which is good because he had the wench. Everyone arrived safe and sound at the camp but, Keelan, who didn’t have any of his stuff covered, had doused his swag with mud and sand AND his petrol can had leaked all over. Funny thing is he was the one that slept closest to the fire! After meeting Ned’s mom, dad, and their friends we set up camp and got the grill going for dinner. We relaxed around the fire for a bit and then a couple of us decided to go meet the neighbors. I returned back to camp shortly after and everyone was going to bed – at 815! I was wide awake so I went back to the neighbors and crashed their camp for the evening. It was nice to meet a few new people and I got to pay them a little visit the next day to get my chair and such that I had left so I didn’t have to carry it back in the dark.
Bright and early a few hours later (b/c everyone else went to bed so early) I was startled by the sound of Stumpy’s motor roaring, a loud boom, and my tent collapsing on my head. Good thing I slept in a “one” man tent that that looked like a garden gnomes house because I was able to hold my tent up with my foot (which served for jokes all weekend) until Bec saved me and put my small little tent back together so I could crawl out. I stayed awake about twenty minutes and I realized it was about 6:30 Am and went back to sleep. Saturday it rained off and on so we went on a drive for fun and ended up noticing a few people that got bogged the night before so we had some fun pulling them out and cleared a huge pipe out of the way of the track. The girls and I snuck into the shack where it was warm and played a few rounds of cards. After dinner we went “floundering”. With spear, bucket, and light in hand, Bec, Adam, Ned, and I waded out in the water….all of a sudden a breaking wave decided to make the water quite a bit deeper and filled Adam and Bec’s boots. I ran for it and made it out of the water dry. Apparently Ned’s waders that were waist high had a hole in them because he came out soaked as well. Bec and I joined the rest of the crew hanging out on the beach and left Adam and Ned to “flounder.” He snagged one and I ate some the next morning! I am not a fan of fish and it was delicious. J
Back at camp we all dried off and warmed up by the fire. We spent some time trying to think of words that we say differently in America. The discussion got rather creative from talking about parts of cars, to parts of plants, to what drinking two cans at once is, to the road signs. A “yield” sign in Tassie says “give way” and so one of the girls as serious as a heart attack asked me what a “stop” sign says in America. I wanted to tell her that it said “please pause” but Keelan piped up and said it was probably black with pink polka dots. We teased Bec pretty bad for her question until Keelan piped up a little later and asked what state Kansas was in in America. J We were also serenaded by Keelan and his garlic and herb rissoles. He must have had a stomach ache because he was half asleep, would clear us out –wake up with a ton of energy—and quiet down again for the calm before the next storm. After Keelan had finally fell asleep for good, mouth open, Ned decided to pay him back for bombing us all night so we squirted some meat sauce into his mouth just as he inhaled for a deep breath. J Little did we know, the fun for the night was just beginning. We all went to bed and in the middle of the night I woke up hearing something scratch around really close to my tent. Tash had just told me about the cannibals that lived in the Pieman and how they made a movie about it and here I was in this cute little tent all by myself on the west coast of Tasmania thinking there was a killer outside and surely they would see the cute little tent, think it was full of little people and go for them. My shoulder was numb on one side and I was about to pee my pants but I was too scared to make any noise and roll over because if it was a killer and they knew I saw them or was awake they would probably kill me. On the other hand if it was an animal maybe it would scare them off if I made noise. I chose to stay still and “counted sheep” to keep my brain busy until I fell asleep again.
Sunday morning several of us woke up to a loud burst of laughter and then yelling. Of course I had to go see what it was all about – Keelan had been attacked by a Tasmanian Devil in the middle of the night. That was what I had heard. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more frightened that that was what was lurking around the camp. They are small but they are fierce. Funny thing is, they only eat dead things……the scenario we came up with was that the Tassie Devil bit Keelan because he smelled dead from the garlic and herb rissoles. J He also managed to take a few gum boots (which we found later in the bush), eat some eggs, and tear up some boxes.
After a bit of morning excitement I hit the beach for a walk. It was absolutely beautiful. The rest of the group joined up and we spent some time fishing off the bay and playing in the sand in the ute’s doing “circle work.” At one point a boogie board was connected to a ute with a snatch strap and we tried sand sledding. It was mildly successful but purely entertaining watching Ned chase Keelan around with a mini bike and seeing Adam and Darcy throw clean off into the breaking tide. After getting some more firewood from the tons of driftwood on the beach we grabbed lunch and went out on the jetty (dock). A few of the group were going to set crayfish pots and it was so warm that the rest of us just lounged around and waited for them to come back. I am glad we picked a different jetty to hang out on than the day before b/c I am pretty sure we nearly busted a board and ended up in the water.
Sunday evening we waited til it got dark, loading up in Stumpy and the Mud Maggot and set off on our way for an off road drive to go crayfishing. I can’t quite give you an understanding without a picture of stumpy but three of us were across the front bench seat and then in the back were two people who were sitting sideways on a bench seat. Stumpy is short and tall and the weight was not balanced so it was not unusual to have her lean a bit too much into corners and be mighty close to going on two wheels. Then we had two people in the front of the Mud Maggot and two people standing on the flat bed holding on to the cab of the ute on the back. Safe right? – J Anyway off we went. The trip to the site was not bad but Stumpy did finally get stuck...but as Ned claims no one had to pull him out so it doesn’t count. He used the wench on his own ute and put the snatch strap around a rock. Apparently someone was killed last year when snatch strap broke so we cleared the area til it was out, played some musical chairs, and loaded up once again. When we arrived the water was too rough and it wouldn’t be safe for us all to climb down and take a go crayfish trapping so we packed back up again to return to the camp site and do some floundering again. Technical difficulties on the way home made the trip a bit more interesting. A bit after we left, Stumpy’s radio started to cut out, his lights had gone dim, and his cd player quit working on the way home. Ned thought it might be his alternator going or water got into something when we were stuck. So there were in the pitch black, out in the western coast of Tassie, trying to figure out the problem with a wallaby just stopped and stared right in front of us and all you could see were these HUGE bright RED eyes. SWEET! A wallaby with rabies I thought. ..If this isn’t a perfect scene for a scary movie I don’t know what is. This where I finally got a bit scared and for those who really know me- you would have known I was scared. So that I could stop my mind from thinking I cracked jokes non-stop and tried to make other people less scared that were with me acting relaxed but really I was about to throw up and was thinking worst case scenario. All I could picture was our ute’s lights going out around one of the many blind corners on the narrow track and us slamming into an embankment and the others who were following us not seeing us coming up over a blind hill and slamming into the back end throwing all three of us through our windshield and the two of them on the back of the flat bed into the bush full of rabid wallabies, human biting tassie devils, and blood sucking leeches. I nearly made myself sick and when we finally got back I admitted I had been a bit scared, needed to sit and settle my stomach and had never been so excited to be walking instead of riding in a car. I settled down a bit after dinner and Keelan spent some time entertaining the rest of us with “how to’s”…..how to get a marshmallow without your hands, how to cook one marshmallow, how to cook two marshmallows, how to eat cooked marshmallows while saving an uncooked one in your mouth and putting it back on the stick without your hands, how to marinade marshmallows, and how to get to firewood if tea trees are in the way. Then he and Ned decided to have a stick war that turned into someone getting a branch as a stick and things could have turned dangerous quickly. J As everyone started to go to bed on our last night I refused …I stood by the fire with my flashlight in my hand and my ipod playing so that there was constant noise and I didn’t freak myself out with the noises of nature or the scary thoughts in my head until I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open…….a few times we heard stuff and I made someone go check but nothing was ever seen. At one point we were sure we heard a tassie devil growl but after we heard it a third time we realized it was just Adam snoring. Keelan was the last person to go to bed so I decided if he wasn’t scared to go to bed after getting bitten I could “harden up” as they say here and go too.
Monday morning we packed up camp and headed by about 9 so that we beat the high tide. It was beautiful on the way out which beat the rainy views of everything on the way in. Only one person was bogged on the way out. Of course it was only natural to stop ten times in the first hour of the trip on the main road, one time because we thought stumpy was going to start on fire. We played a few games of “I-spy” over the radios and they tried to trick me by using Tassie terms but I always figured it out…they could never figure out my “yank” terms though. J Monday afternoon we arrived safe and sound with all utes fully in-tact. I have had an amazing time with everyone in Tassie but I was nervous that if I was to get homesick it would be Easter weekend because traditionally I am making name eggs, waking up Easter morning to a basket of candy, headed to church, big Easter dinner with the family and hiding Easter eggs with the nephew …..I reckon the Easter Bunny was bogged on the way in to the camp b/c I never got an Easter basket ;)but I wouldn’t change anything and would have to say that was a once in a lifetime experience and definitely a very special Easter weekend.
At 6 am we woke up …apparently a few of the others at 4:30 am, packed our utes, and met up to head to the Pieman on the west coast of Tasmania. Darcy and Tiarna were in the “fire engine”, Ned and Tash in “stumpy”, Keelan was late (haha), and Adam, Bec, and I were in the Hilux, loaded to the brim, with pretty normal tires. We were in the ute that we all hoped would make it to the site. Off we headed down the road only to stop five min later. Darcy had something wrong with his ute. All good. Moving on. 5 min later. Keelan said we needed some red bull and some food – nevermind he had just passed us going down the road with a whole package of Tim Tams and a double Red Bull. Stop again. Sketchy bathroom stop. Few snacks. Moving on. 5 min later. Started to rain so we stopped again to put a tarp over our ute. Ok here we go…we have food…had a bathroom stop…tarp set up..full tanks of petrol. The boys immediately started bragging about how well the tarp was tied down over the radios…..spoke too soon. Stop again. We had to fix the tarp. Keelan got bored so he decided to have a little play in the ditch and was completely perpendicular to the road when a cop decided to stroll by. Good thing he was focused on something else more important….Off we go again……..Apparently breakfast got the best of Ned or maybe what he did the night before….he needs a toilet. Here I was sitting in the back, traveling with new people, scared to have a sip of water because I didn’t have the courage to tell someone to stop if no one else had to pee and I gather I could have chugged a bottle every ten minutes and never had to be the one to speak up and say we needed to stop. I think we may have stopped a few more times further down the road but everything went rather smoothly. I saw a few rare things…three utes across a two lane road…someone playing on their phone, talking on the radio, listening to music, eating, and driving all at the same time. Good thing I didn’t get in the car with that guy. :)
The campsite was about 50k off of the main road. You had to do a bit of planning to get there because if the tide was too high we would end up waiting for low tide to go through. Bits of the drive were over rocks, through mud holes, and the best part was the time on the beach. The radios make for much easier travel so you can communicate and keep everyone together but mainly for pure entertainment. I sat in the back listening to them take a stab at the American accent and tease me for hours. There was a very old tractor bogged off the track and they asked if I wanted to stop and take a picture. The other conversations the boys came up with were interesting to say the least. Anyway, I found it interesting that on the track if a ute passed coming the other way the driver showed on their fingers how many utes/motor bikes/people followed because they had to wait…the track was rarely wide enough for two vehicles to go through at the same time. I got in with another one of the guys for the off road part and we were the first to get stuck. “This is a time when you need a Tim Tam” became one of the many quotes of the weekend. I have to admit when I first arrived here I was a bit skeptical of the “trucks”. The stud trucks here are the Toyota Hilux (Tacoma) and the Nissan Triton (Frontier) …quite small. They have a few F trucks (F250) if they will pull horses but I have probably seen five full-sized or mid-sized trucks since I left home. Now I know exactly why the guys are so proud of their “trucks.” Full sized pickups would not have fit down the tracks here and would have been a pain to pull out after they were bogged because of being so heavy. When we got stuck we pulled out the wench and were back on the road in a few minutes.
Everyone took their turn getting bogged on the way in besides our “tour guide” Ned which is good because he had the wench. Everyone arrived safe and sound at the camp but, Keelan, who didn’t have any of his stuff covered, had doused his swag with mud and sand AND his petrol can had leaked all over. Funny thing is he was the one that slept closest to the fire! After meeting Ned’s mom, dad, and their friends we set up camp and got the grill going for dinner. We relaxed around the fire for a bit and then a couple of us decided to go meet the neighbors. I returned back to camp shortly after and everyone was going to bed – at 815! I was wide awake so I went back to the neighbors and crashed their camp for the evening. It was nice to meet a few new people and I got to pay them a little visit the next day to get my chair and such that I had left so I didn’t have to carry it back in the dark.
Bright and early a few hours later (b/c everyone else went to bed so early) I was startled by the sound of Stumpy’s motor roaring, a loud boom, and my tent collapsing on my head. Good thing I slept in a “one” man tent that that looked like a garden gnomes house because I was able to hold my tent up with my foot (which served for jokes all weekend) until Bec saved me and put my small little tent back together so I could crawl out. I stayed awake about twenty minutes and I realized it was about 6:30 Am and went back to sleep. Saturday it rained off and on so we went on a drive for fun and ended up noticing a few people that got bogged the night before so we had some fun pulling them out and cleared a huge pipe out of the way of the track. The girls and I snuck into the shack where it was warm and played a few rounds of cards. After dinner we went “floundering”. With spear, bucket, and light in hand, Bec, Adam, Ned, and I waded out in the water….all of a sudden a breaking wave decided to make the water quite a bit deeper and filled Adam and Bec’s boots. I ran for it and made it out of the water dry. Apparently Ned’s waders that were waist high had a hole in them because he came out soaked as well. Bec and I joined the rest of the crew hanging out on the beach and left Adam and Ned to “flounder.” He snagged one and I ate some the next morning! I am not a fan of fish and it was delicious. J
Back at camp we all dried off and warmed up by the fire. We spent some time trying to think of words that we say differently in America. The discussion got rather creative from talking about parts of cars, to parts of plants, to what drinking two cans at once is, to the road signs. A “yield” sign in Tassie says “give way” and so one of the girls as serious as a heart attack asked me what a “stop” sign says in America. I wanted to tell her that it said “please pause” but Keelan piped up and said it was probably black with pink polka dots. We teased Bec pretty bad for her question until Keelan piped up a little later and asked what state Kansas was in in America. J We were also serenaded by Keelan and his garlic and herb rissoles. He must have had a stomach ache because he was half asleep, would clear us out –wake up with a ton of energy—and quiet down again for the calm before the next storm. After Keelan had finally fell asleep for good, mouth open, Ned decided to pay him back for bombing us all night so we squirted some meat sauce into his mouth just as he inhaled for a deep breath. J Little did we know, the fun for the night was just beginning. We all went to bed and in the middle of the night I woke up hearing something scratch around really close to my tent. Tash had just told me about the cannibals that lived in the Pieman and how they made a movie about it and here I was in this cute little tent all by myself on the west coast of Tasmania thinking there was a killer outside and surely they would see the cute little tent, think it was full of little people and go for them. My shoulder was numb on one side and I was about to pee my pants but I was too scared to make any noise and roll over because if it was a killer and they knew I saw them or was awake they would probably kill me. On the other hand if it was an animal maybe it would scare them off if I made noise. I chose to stay still and “counted sheep” to keep my brain busy until I fell asleep again.
Sunday morning several of us woke up to a loud burst of laughter and then yelling. Of course I had to go see what it was all about – Keelan had been attacked by a Tasmanian Devil in the middle of the night. That was what I had heard. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more frightened that that was what was lurking around the camp. They are small but they are fierce. Funny thing is, they only eat dead things……the scenario we came up with was that the Tassie Devil bit Keelan because he smelled dead from the garlic and herb rissoles. J He also managed to take a few gum boots (which we found later in the bush), eat some eggs, and tear up some boxes.
After a bit of morning excitement I hit the beach for a walk. It was absolutely beautiful. The rest of the group joined up and we spent some time fishing off the bay and playing in the sand in the ute’s doing “circle work.” At one point a boogie board was connected to a ute with a snatch strap and we tried sand sledding. It was mildly successful but purely entertaining watching Ned chase Keelan around with a mini bike and seeing Adam and Darcy throw clean off into the breaking tide. After getting some more firewood from the tons of driftwood on the beach we grabbed lunch and went out on the jetty (dock). A few of the group were going to set crayfish pots and it was so warm that the rest of us just lounged around and waited for them to come back. I am glad we picked a different jetty to hang out on than the day before b/c I am pretty sure we nearly busted a board and ended up in the water.
Sunday evening we waited til it got dark, loading up in Stumpy and the Mud Maggot and set off on our way for an off road drive to go crayfishing. I can’t quite give you an understanding without a picture of stumpy but three of us were across the front bench seat and then in the back were two people who were sitting sideways on a bench seat. Stumpy is short and tall and the weight was not balanced so it was not unusual to have her lean a bit too much into corners and be mighty close to going on two wheels. Then we had two people in the front of the Mud Maggot and two people standing on the flat bed holding on to the cab of the ute on the back. Safe right? – J Anyway off we went. The trip to the site was not bad but Stumpy did finally get stuck...but as Ned claims no one had to pull him out so it doesn’t count. He used the wench on his own ute and put the snatch strap around a rock. Apparently someone was killed last year when snatch strap broke so we cleared the area til it was out, played some musical chairs, and loaded up once again. When we arrived the water was too rough and it wouldn’t be safe for us all to climb down and take a go crayfish trapping so we packed back up again to return to the camp site and do some floundering again. Technical difficulties on the way home made the trip a bit more interesting. A bit after we left, Stumpy’s radio started to cut out, his lights had gone dim, and his cd player quit working on the way home. Ned thought it might be his alternator going or water got into something when we were stuck. So there were in the pitch black, out in the western coast of Tassie, trying to figure out the problem with a wallaby just stopped and stared right in front of us and all you could see were these HUGE bright RED eyes. SWEET! A wallaby with rabies I thought. ..If this isn’t a perfect scene for a scary movie I don’t know what is. This where I finally got a bit scared and for those who really know me- you would have known I was scared. So that I could stop my mind from thinking I cracked jokes non-stop and tried to make other people less scared that were with me acting relaxed but really I was about to throw up and was thinking worst case scenario. All I could picture was our ute’s lights going out around one of the many blind corners on the narrow track and us slamming into an embankment and the others who were following us not seeing us coming up over a blind hill and slamming into the back end throwing all three of us through our windshield and the two of them on the back of the flat bed into the bush full of rabid wallabies, human biting tassie devils, and blood sucking leeches. I nearly made myself sick and when we finally got back I admitted I had been a bit scared, needed to sit and settle my stomach and had never been so excited to be walking instead of riding in a car. I settled down a bit after dinner and Keelan spent some time entertaining the rest of us with “how to’s”…..how to get a marshmallow without your hands, how to cook one marshmallow, how to cook two marshmallows, how to eat cooked marshmallows while saving an uncooked one in your mouth and putting it back on the stick without your hands, how to marinade marshmallows, and how to get to firewood if tea trees are in the way. Then he and Ned decided to have a stick war that turned into someone getting a branch as a stick and things could have turned dangerous quickly. J As everyone started to go to bed on our last night I refused …I stood by the fire with my flashlight in my hand and my ipod playing so that there was constant noise and I didn’t freak myself out with the noises of nature or the scary thoughts in my head until I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open…….a few times we heard stuff and I made someone go check but nothing was ever seen. At one point we were sure we heard a tassie devil growl but after we heard it a third time we realized it was just Adam snoring. Keelan was the last person to go to bed so I decided if he wasn’t scared to go to bed after getting bitten I could “harden up” as they say here and go too.
Monday morning we packed up camp and headed by about 9 so that we beat the high tide. It was beautiful on the way out which beat the rainy views of everything on the way in. Only one person was bogged on the way out. Of course it was only natural to stop ten times in the first hour of the trip on the main road, one time because we thought stumpy was going to start on fire. We played a few games of “I-spy” over the radios and they tried to trick me by using Tassie terms but I always figured it out…they could never figure out my “yank” terms though. J Monday afternoon we arrived safe and sound with all utes fully in-tact. I have had an amazing time with everyone in Tassie but I was nervous that if I was to get homesick it would be Easter weekend because traditionally I am making name eggs, waking up Easter morning to a basket of candy, headed to church, big Easter dinner with the family and hiding Easter eggs with the nephew …..I reckon the Easter Bunny was bogged on the way in to the camp b/c I never got an Easter basket ;)but I wouldn’t change anything and would have to say that was a once in a lifetime experience and definitely a very special Easter weekend.
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