Rules and more rules, as long as they are my rules.

 

The chances of us coming back to drive ourselves around the central highlands of Tasmania in a rolling Hilton is about the same as any Kiwi in Australia not currently playing first class Rugby claiming, after a few beers, that they, or their brother, were an All Black triallist. The chances of us doing anything more than driving though Rosebury on any subsequent journeys, is roughly about the same as any of the said Kiwis, or their brothers, having actually trialed for the All Blacks.  It is such a stark contrast to the effort, clear priorities and care that have been put into the hundred kilometers we travelled before, that I am still struggling to reconcile the difference.  It has a really cool gold and zinc ore bucket rope conveyor with rusted buckets on it as you enter town that, based on the drive in, comfort you, thinking that this mining shenanigans obviously was not happening anymore. One kilometre later, and acres of desolation open up showing you just how wrong you were. As usual there is an upside to everything and the incredibly winding road in has dramatically improved my reach and sip reaction time.

As is my tendency to look for the upside of most things, a few have emerged over the past week. I will start with the obvious. In a house where we (read Mary 8 and me 2) can do anywhere upwards of 10 loads of washing a week, we did our third wash today on Day 6 and when I say load, I mean we were gouged for the 8 bucks we had to pay to separate colors and whites. Don’t ask me why there are whites on this trip, there just are. My daughter is getting her head around breaking the  5 second rule – not the one about food but the one about how long you wear something for before it needs to be washed. My son is just doing what he would normally do but getting some sort of reward for day 6 of the same PJs. The big win is the rules I can make up that I roll out under the “motorhome code” that no-one can really questions, because we have never done this before and if you read the first post, Val never gave us any rules other than “your insurance won’t cover you if you put petrol in it mate – it’s a diesel”.

So the new rules are easy.

1.       You have to wash up everything, and dry it and put it away in the right drawer in case we have to do an emergency run to the hospital and we don t have time to pack things.

2.       Put it where it lives – in an RV this has no whiff of OCD – because we don’t have much room.

3.       You can use the toilet or shower in the RV anytime, but it just means that when one of us farts, we can’t tell who did it so we have to smile and suck it up.

4.       Strawberries don’t need to be in the fridge down here because of the climate, but beer does.

5.       “Urgency with Concentration” is not just a great t-shirt you got made for Dad for his birthday, but now you got to live it.

I’d like to introduce a few other rules down here, but I think there would be some problems with not just enforcement but explaining them to some people.  For example, if you ever come to Tasmania and you don’t find a way to get to the King Solomon caves and the Marakoopa caves, you are missing out on something that is at the heart of my first rule.  Stop trying to take pictures of things that just can’t portray the depth and intensity of the experience and have the experience.  When the guide tells you to turn off you screen so we can see these glow worms, just do it. Sure, take a few here and there but the research tells us that once you have posted it your feed you have a 1% chance of looking at it again more than 1 month after you took it.  Who are you taking the photo for? The other problem is that it fails to capture the reality of what you are in.  One of the easiest and simplest walks in Cradle Mountain, The Enchanted Walk, is just what the name says. And I don’t even really like the word “enchanted”. But it is. The “Ballroom Forest” defies photography.  So you can’t really imagine what the Dove Lake Circuit is like from any photo.  That said, I wish I had a photo of the look on Mary’s face when she encountered a healthy Tiger Snake welcoming us into the Enchanted Forest.

The second rule I think we can do with is one about signs, social media posts and websites having to have form of, I don’t know, correctness, accuracy, maybe effort.  If you ever go to Strahan and you see the sign for Platypus Creek, know it is named after what Erik, who works at the park near it saw there in 2016, and in his own words, “I haven’t really looked that hard since but I can’t say I’ve seen one again”. They will be there mate, but you might have to be there a while.” If you go to Mole Creek in search of a coffee, after a dazzling 3 hours at the caves and the sign on the way into town (Not the one where some one moved a few things and changed it from MOLE CREEK to WOLFE CREEK) tells you Bassy Café is open 7 days, as does the one in town, and the one right out front of the café, that not only proclaims coffee but also free wifi, don’t believe it. And if you make it to Launceston and want to book into the biggest hotel in town for dinner, make sure you check the items on the extensive website menu are available – I don’t mean Moroccan Dukkha encased lobster tails, in a broth of wild limestone infused kielerberry and  Khast Forest giert, but rather Spaghetti Bolognaise (Our son’s favourite birthday meal) because there was no joy to be had on that night. 

Anyway, the final rule will be as polarizing as it is obvious. Don’t wear hats in a cave.  I know that these days hats are statements of fashion, a pattern baldness security blanket, indicators of status and even a last gasp attempt at winning on, but when it comes to caves here are my reasons for having lockers at the reception to put them in:

1.       There is no sun in a cave.

2.       There is nearly no light in a cave so no-one can see you anyway, your label, your bald spot or your basketball team.

3.       When you hit your head on the low part of the cave because you didn’t see it because of your hat we all have to stop and wait until you can go on OR we shit ourselves at your scream, because we think it was one of our family who fell to their death (and the guide told you that would happen you idiot)

4.       I can’t see past your shite hat when the guide is pointing things out – the gap is 50cms wide.

5.       If you are on a tour in the middle of remote Tasmania in a cave and you think your hat is going to tip things in your favour with a potential win, none of these rules are going to make sense to you anyway.

Zip-lining tomorrow and all I can say it if I see one person wearing a hat under their helmet there maybe a little OHS incident you can look for in local Launceston news.