Peacocks are shite, because they just are

 

I’m cool. Zip-lining is very cool and I have done zip-lining. I did it well.  This argument should not be lost on anyone because it is deductively logical. (Shout out to anyone over the past decade who has done the “Art and Science of Analysis” with me). For context though, so did my wife who is terrified of heights, so logically she must be cooler than me, but this post is not about that. Maybe it is.  The Hollybank Wilderness Adventure Hub, 25 minutes outside Launceston is where you can be anything you want to be, and it can let you redefine what cool is about. (The term “cool” transcends time for a very good reason). This place is another example of an experience that is well marketed and has a great on-line presence but fails to explain the full intensity of what is offers. I can compare it to a full body massage I had booked for me by a great mate of mine in Bankgok, during my 50^th birthday celebration tour, (see Longybig50only3arrests blog). What goes away stays away so that is the end of the story. But you are wrong in what you thinking about what I am not telling you.  There are muscles you don’t know you have until they are massaged a certain way and so, as a result of this encounter, for the last five years I have done yoga. I became an improved human. The Hollybank Wilderness Adventure Hub is identical to the Thai experience.

The people who work at both are not only attractive, but smart, and ridiculously capable. You can’t take any photos of your own at either – they do it themselves in the best positions they can find and then charge you for them. In each of these experiences you realise you can do things you never thought possible, and despite your fears, you are never in any danger – but it is so cool because your head resists telling you that. And finally, when you finish, you start to think about all the other incredible things you just might be able to do.  The only real difference is that in Bangkok you walk outside and get a tuk-tuk but in Hollybank you can get an Uber home to your RV, as long as you stand in the carpark to get a signal. Until you have done both, you can’t really understand the amazing similarities.

At least some of you just had the thought, “Hang on, did he say he got an Uber 20km out of Launceston?” And you would be right in thinking just how small the world is becoming because Uber made it happen.  Earlier in the day I get an Uber to the chemist at Olde Tudor Shopping Centre (correct spelling but yet not a multi-paned window, slender column, towering spire, or stone chimney in site) driven by Rodney from Prospect and then one home with Rali, and Italian migrant, and in each case wait times are minutes. Same deal out to the Zip Line and back. On the way back we get Sankrit to drop me at the Coles 2.7km from the Big 4 Launceston, which by the way lives up to its name, to get a few things to make dinner for my son’s birthday. I bought big and I was even a bit cocky about how my return would be met with the extras I had purchased.  Now here is the rub.  All my previous Uber rides had been off peak.  I didn’t know this but there is a limit to how many Uber drivers are in any single town and when they are all busy, there are no f@@king cars available. Suffice to say the walk was uphill all the way and I don’t remember if my return was heralded, or not, but Uber is shite.

What is not shite however, is the Cataract Basin, just minutes from the CBD of Launceston. Usually when every local you come across says, “Oh you have to check out the blind dog at the daub hut, or you will love the big tree near the gravel road, or even make sure you see the broken chairs near the old dump about 6 clicks past the turn-off to the hay bale sculptures”, you get a sense it might be ok if you don’t get time. Not in this case. The cheeky bastards, all 11 of them, were right. You do have to go see the Cataract Basin, because it is the real deal.  It’s a bit like when I went to a wedding in Kyogle because my then new girlfriend asked me to and told me it was a dry bar, but promised it would be a great time – fair enough. I get there and it is a dry bar but it is a hippie wedding and the mushies and the paper are outstanding! Recklessly extending on the metaphor, the highlight of the experience in the Cataract Basin, or Gorge depending who you talk to, is, wait, hearing the “karrk-karrk” of some bird shatter the silent travel on a chairlift moving through a gorge over pristine running water surrounded by manicured lawns, a modern swimming pool, hundreds of kids shooting water guns, and looking down on peacocks on the roof of century old building surrounded in hydrangeas and lilies from another country. I swear I had one can before we got there.

(Quick fact for completeness. The chairlift at Cataract and the final zipline at Hollybank are both 400 metres long but one takes 25 seconds and the other about 2.5 minutes. You do the math.)

The Basin is testament to two fascinating aspects of human existence. The first is how out of nothing, people can build such an incredible spectacle through sheer hard work and determination and nearly a century later, it fulfils its purpose a hundred times more than was intended. The second is that people put up with peacocks – they are shite.