taslandia

So I was down in Tassie recently and here are the photos to prove it.
I had a great time, managing to catch up with friends and family in Launceston and Hobart, taking heaps of photos on my new digital camera and op-shopping with Mum, inbetween buying her a pack of Horizon menthol light 2mg cigarettes, which she proceeded to surreptitiously suck the death out of in various nooks and crannies around Launceston, lest anyone from her church should catch her, smoke in hand.
That was funny.
There's a photo in this posting of her with her new boyfriend - don't tell Dad.
We had lunch at Fitzies' (S)C(hy)i(t)ty Caf, which is a venue that sells English-style food, roasted and mass produced like pig slops, frequented by flannelette-wearing rural folks and the blue rinse set (those in this cohort who still have hair left), whereupon I whinged at her for not talking to Dad about my being queer. There's still a massive not-so-invisible barrier between me and my parents and I'm eager to see it surmounted, despite running off to the big smoke directly after making it apparent. It's funny how my parents demanded honesty and inclusion from their children - but only up to a point! Well, I'm doing what I can, but with Dad's health not what it used to be, it'd be nice if they'd help each other come to some space where they can acknowledge it. Apparently, I'm asking too much from them and I should just be grateful that they haven't disowned me but that would be buying into a minoritarian position that I refuse to accept. I demand a relative equality from my parents! I should settle for no less, damnit! I'm not going to accept their oppressive conservative 'Christian' values. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that I will never even gain a passive acceptance from them on this count and so there will always be a tension between us. But I want them to know that that tension is their making. Or a product of their socialisation and in no way my fault.
This is another reason why friendships are so important. Gosh, I've got some great friends too! Dave and Phoebe happened to be in Launceston when I arrived and took me down to Hobart, putting me up for a night and feeding me. Thanks! I've known these guys for so long and have travelled along a sometimes difficult way with them, just a little. What a privilege.
Compare this to the slightly stilted conversations with people at our mutual friend's bucks party where the obligatory, "So, what have you been doing?" conversation yielded less than I'd hoped for. What I'd give to find out what people think of me. There's a culture of decline in much of Tasmania. Very passive.
Saria! Wow, what an amazing friendship we share. I miss her company so much. She, Dave, Phoebe, Chris, Jacob; nothing if not active. Saria and I have travelled a far along similiar trajectories. Ours is a frienship that will never quit. Why won't you guys move to Melbourne?
I took a photo of a Gunns holding lot or something in Launceston. It's disgusting. All that old growth forest coverted into stacks of drying, dead wood. It's worse in Burnie, where they woodchip the wood and ship it out to other countries, whereupon it's converted into something 'useful' (but probably unnecessary) and then sold back to us at a much great price. The woodchip piles are so huge that the massive bulldozers used to regulate them for whatever reasons look like toy tonka trucks. It's fucked. And of course, the Labor Party are in Gunns pockets helping them make profits at the environment (and tax payers' [whatever]) expense. Meanwhile the Upper Florentine is being raped and protesters arrested for trying to protect it. Sigh.
Anyway, it was a really good trip. Not least of all because it affirmed the life I lead in Melbourne. As much as I love Tasmania, I really love living in Melbourne.
I'll move back to Tassie to spend my later years I reckon in contemplative retirement. Either that or I'll be just another environmental refugee when the planet decides it wants to evict humanity for being such bad residents. I'll grow organic vegies on some small patch of turf on the East Coast, living in a solar powered tee-pee, living in harmony with the quolls and paddymelons, communicating via drum circles in a perpetual post-human twilight.