So I was reading this morning in the Herald Sun (before I boycott it for going off about Alan Didak) about the Gippsland netball team (as you would know, netball has a special place in my heart) and how they didn't get a licence to be in the new Victorian State League. This was really sad to me, not just because the young gun of the team who was pictured, Mary Livesey, was super cute, and shoved up to the front of the photo little red dress Chinese girl style, while two of the older players were shoved up the back. It turns out the team will fold, which is something I always hate - any time a local sports team disappears I get really sad, unless it's Airdrie - because the community really suffers. I lost my Australian Rules team in Tasmania, Sandy Bay, who ridiculously became the Southern Cats, and didn't have a social club, due to economic rationalisation or some such gubbins, and one of my favourite ever teams, South Burnie, because they all smoked pot on the team bus (dude). Obviously, the Gippsland team folding ruins a lot of social events, causes bitterness and takes away something for people to do, but it's more than that, because you lose not just local heroes and identities (if Mary Livesey wants to move to Hobart, call me) but several levels of junior competition where the kids can get involved. At a time when Kevin Rudd is probably maybe possibly formulating Fatwatch to get the kids less tubby, and Grant Hackett is patronising us with his get fit campaign, why take away a sports team? Sport in places like Gippsland and Tasmania has always represented a vital element in community life, It's enough to almost make me write an angry letter to the Mercury...almost...
Our home town sports hero as best I can remember growing up in Penguin was a bloke called Bill Fielding. Puffing Billy they called him, and we all loved the bloke, and his mad skills on a football field. I think the major inspirational feat was that he was roughly 112 year olds, and played about 923 games. Any time some old bloke would yell out something like "I'm 50 and I could do better!" they would know they couldn't do better than our Bill, so it was a crap thing to shout out. I presume he retired to a farm and is one of those blokes who's able to walk into a pub and just say "easy fellas" and calm down any situation. Of course, the great thing about Bill aside from probably his right wing views (well, I presume he retired to a farm, being of that age) was his sphere of influence wouldn't have extended beyond Penguin. In Riana or Natone, someone else was the hometown hero, with apple cheeked girls lined up to be impressed by the football star. As the years have rolled on, the influence of local football heroes has diminished at the same rate of influence as the local team (hence why I'm outraged by Gippsland et al), and it's AFL stars who visit their home town once a year who seem to be more feted, which is just sad. In Penguin, it's Russell Robertson who they are most proud of - the Melbourne footballer who I knew as a kid, and who broke my calculator when I was a kid by kicking it off a balcony. He was actually in the pub the last time I set foot in Penguin, round about New Year in 2001, and he was playing pool and chatting away. Someone ran up to him, flicked his ears, and said "Hey! Well done! You came second!" because his team had lost the Grand Final and he was smiling because it was someone he knew, but really, you knew that if we wanted, he could have him killed. I find that with AFL footballers, their spheres of influences are now all encompassing - their associates more evil, their outlook much broader. The days of a local footballer who's idea of an entourage was their best mate Kev who bought them beer after a game and organised their testimonial and meat tray raffle are slowing dying, and it's really sad...
A staple of any local sports team is unquestionably the fund raising. Where an AFL team can simply conjure up a new multinational sponsor, the finances of local sporting teams depend on people buying tickets to meat tray raffles (you can be a smart arse about in your ad Luke Ablett, but I don't like that) and women selling lamingtons. My girlfriend, the netball player who I dated on my gap year (I prefer saying I was rested), was the best maker of lamingtons in the world, which was great for when we smoked funny things (thanks Kid Rock). She refused to share the recipe with me, and I think now works in a bakery, with piles of lamingtons being sold and no one buying the custard tarts (they were awful babe). I've mentioned before that on the North West Coast, the local identity around the football club in charge of the fundraising was the Queens Quest representative, a local footballers wife or, in a pinch, the girl with the best reputation for not being a skank, who would compete Miss World style to raise funds and interest in the local football team, and organise the working bees that were needed to keep everything painted. As a further sign of my world slowly dying, apparently men are now entering as Penguin's Stuart Whiley won the Queens Quest award in 2005 - that's somehow even less man than the guy on the Electrodry advert with the ginger tache. Anyway, this one time at the Penguin club rooms the prize was like 500 bucks or something, in cold hard cash, not just 500 bucks worth of lamingtons. Everyone was very impressed with the efforts of our Queens Quest representative and how chaste she was, and the MC announced the winner was someone called Johno (all football clubs have a Johno, or a Boof, but never both) who proceeded to get up, tell everyone they were a wanker, should get stuffed, and stick various things up their arse. Except when he got to the stage, the MC said "Nah mate, only kidding, you didn't win" and he had to go back to his seat with everyone returning the compliment. I just don't see this kind of hilarity coming out in a corporate, franchised Scott Wade future, or at an AFL club - unless Spider Everitt runs the raffle of course...
Of course, when a local sports team dies, the youth teams die off as well, which denies people their one lifetime moment of sporting glory. Mines are fleeting, long lost on muddy Tasmanian fields. My best moment was a soccer hat trick against Natone in the semi final of the school six a sides, on a freezing awful day at Montello - Montello, incidentally, a long time enemy of my school, with some ginger kid on their team who used to cry if they lost. I kicked him in the stomach one day. That might have been my highlight. Anyway, I tried out once for the local team when I was a kid, Burnie United - I know, I know, I lived in Penguin, but the population wasn't going to extend to a basketball team AND a football team, and besides, Penguin wasn't going to have a soccer team, way too gay - and I lined up shyly with a lot more talented kids. I had watched Rocky, I had watched that weirdly homoerotic film where Pele teaches the American kid how to do the overhead kick, that I always thought was called Flashback but which was called Hotshot, the video I rented out when I stayed with my friend when I had to hide in the cupboard to avoid being axed. I believed in miracles, I believed that this muddy field was my field of d...oh who am I kidding, I was rubbish, I didn't really do anything but faff about and get muddy a bit. I was definitely not identified, I had no Soccer Superstar style coming out (wait, that should be coming of age these days shouldn't it?). As I came off, I saw my Dad sitting in the car looking downcast, and my Mum said something like "Nae way would I a fucking picked ye son", I realised that thanks to local sport, I'd learnt a valuable lesson. Life wasn't fair, but life went on, and a new day would come - but my dreams died on that muddy field, and I realised I'd never play for Celtic, or even Riana. I think every day on local fields, courts, and courses, dreams are born and die, in seconds. I find that quite inspiring, and powerful. Local pride in Gippsland will go down now they don't have their netball team, no young 9 year old will win the game with a last second shot, no fat kid will blow a game with a turnover. It's the circle of life Simba, and it's slowly being lost...
Incidentally, Mary Livesey is 17...oh well, she should still move to Hobart, she'd get into Syrup pretty easily...
Showing posts with label Local Pride. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Local Pride. Show all posts
Friday, August 15, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
Hobart vs Launceston
So i was driving back from Launceston after listening to some terrible old school hits (and i mean proper old school, like Gene Vincent) and making mental notes about all of the wonderful out of the way towns that dot Tasmania that you just never get to. If you do the basic Launceston to Hobart drive, there's that giant boring stretch in the middle, but there's a lot of really interesting dirt roads, down which you can find the real Tasmania. Everyone seems to stop in Ross or Campbelltown, but what about Pyengana, where you get to walk on a duckboard (who needs the Internet kids). Evandale might have the Penny farthing championships, but what about Avoca? Fingal? Nile? Canoe paddling in Falmouth? Sounds great doesn't it? No one ever seems to go to the North East of Tasmania, it's just completely unspoiled and rustic, and I'd love to visit these places, especially since this is a blog about local pride within Tasmanian communities, particularly small ones. I often tell people these places out of the way are the real Tasmania, where the opinions are unreconstructed, the men manly, the women quite often manlier, and the beer always Boags. It's just a shame that as far as I seem to get these days (and it's my own laziness) is Launceston, and even that's a massive effort these days. I'd love to be able to expand my Launceston stories beyond a night at a quiz night, and a trip to The Saloon. Mind you, I must get to my night at The Saloon one day, but I'd love a lot more to be able to do a post about my trip to Binnalong Bay. I'm sure I'd learn a lot about girls the size of Cheryl Haworth in flannel shirts selling bait...always selling bait.
I was in Launceston to see the football, between Hawthorn and the Brisbane Lions. A man with fuzzy hair had a lot of interesting opinions on the relative merits of the umpires. He also was much funnier in his head than he was out loud, but I don't think I'm much better watching Collingwood in fairness, and when I went to the Telstra Dome, I threw my Paul Medhurst badge a shamefully long way across the lower tier in a hissy fit. I've mentioned before about the pride I always showed when Penguin did well, and how the community rallied around them, but AFL teams have moved a long way beyond that, and Collingwood as I've said before don't mean anything special to the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood for instance. Hawthorn want to become Tasmanias team, which I won't buy until I see Sam Mitchell at Isobar, and we pay them a lot of money to come down to Launceston and play. This is no guarantee of entertainment or interest though - the girls, I have to say, came to see Buddy, the men came to drink beer, and I have no idea why I attended. During the game I ended up talking to strangers about the saddest TV deaths in history (no question, Molly in A Country Practice - anyone who says Cathy Godbold is insane) and whatever happened to Rob Brough. There wasn't much feeling at the game, and we left before the predictable meat market that was the after match meet the players function. I went to one for Melbourne by lying to Jim Stynes that I was a member, and it was wall to wall mini skirts trying to pick up a footballer. I was tempted to grab a Melbourne tracksuit top and hang out and flirt, but I'm not fit enough to pass for that, although my cousin had a stone cold excellent reputation for picking up in England by putting on a Scotland tracksuit and claiming to be a member of Scotlands under 21 team. Sadly, my attempts to pick up by pretending to be a Penguin player always failed - no one wanted to clean my boots with a Paddle Pop stick, and mores the pity...
Part of the problem with Hawthorn being Tassies team (frizzy haired Melburnian visitors aside) is that four games a year isn't enough to build up a rivalry with anyone that Tasmanians can get behind. The real rivalry in Tasmania is between Launceston and Hobart, although no one is quite sure how to harness it. I think they want to be the capital city, and I spent an hour once with a Launcestonian telling me how great the Saloon was compared to Syrup (like picking between Anne Maree Cooksley and Rob Brough as Australias most obscure celebrity really). Scott Wade dreams of a football league where Launceston and Hobart grind to a halt to cheer their city on. We hate Launceston though mostly because they get all the AFL games, not because they could beat us in a contrived local league. Our great lovely radio station here (when they aren't pimping out their DJs) often try and stir up a local rivalry between Hobart and Launceston by organising tug of war competitions or referencing Launcestons monkey park where the monkeys have herpes. I don't know what they do in Launceston, but I'd imagine they get up to similar hilarious japes and probably mock our local hooded hoons and street parades for Reggie from Big Brother, where women dressed as chiko rolls cop a spray from unemployed males for wasting their time. There seems to be a rivalry there though that is begging to have money made out of it by a slick huckster, although I actually do like Launceston I must admit. I really enjoy the mall there, the girls are pretty, and the coffee in a cart is fantastic. And Target up there used to have the (second) prettiest store girl in the whole world, and the fact that she overused the word "cunt" every day did nothing to dim her light.
As much as living in Hobart has ended up skewing my view of Launceston a bit though, and as much as I would love for Hobart and Launceston to have something really big to harness the rivalry that isn't just Kim and Dave being tools, it's the small rivalries in Tasmania that fascinate me even more. I love going to the Regional League games down here in Tasmania and seeing a game between, say, Huonville and Dodges Ferry and seeing a crowd of about 150 getting into a massive bitchfest and bringing up old games from the 1970s. It reminds me of my childhood in Penguin, and the stories the old timers used to tell. One old timer who went to all the Penguin games was obsessed with East Devonport football club, and was delighted when they disappeared off a cliff one year, almost taking an advert out in the paper. One day over a Violet Crumble I asked him why, and he said that when he was younger, he had come home early from work, and found a pair of East Devonport logoed football socks in the wash. His wife said they must have got mixed up at the laundrette, but he didn't believe her and thought she was having an affair with a East Devonport player, and was convinced even more by the fact that there wasn't a laundrette within miles, but he didn't bring it up again for a few years, until their tenth anniversary, at which point he gave his wife a gift - an East Devonport jumper rolled in pig manure with divorce papers in the middle of it and her ring in pieces on top of it, lovingly laid out in the middle of the bed. I don't know whether or not his wife ever did cheat on him, but rivalries like that burn for years.
Scott Wade, you can't create rivalry like that...you can't even come close...
I was in Launceston to see the football, between Hawthorn and the Brisbane Lions. A man with fuzzy hair had a lot of interesting opinions on the relative merits of the umpires. He also was much funnier in his head than he was out loud, but I don't think I'm much better watching Collingwood in fairness, and when I went to the Telstra Dome, I threw my Paul Medhurst badge a shamefully long way across the lower tier in a hissy fit. I've mentioned before about the pride I always showed when Penguin did well, and how the community rallied around them, but AFL teams have moved a long way beyond that, and Collingwood as I've said before don't mean anything special to the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood for instance. Hawthorn want to become Tasmanias team, which I won't buy until I see Sam Mitchell at Isobar, and we pay them a lot of money to come down to Launceston and play. This is no guarantee of entertainment or interest though - the girls, I have to say, came to see Buddy, the men came to drink beer, and I have no idea why I attended. During the game I ended up talking to strangers about the saddest TV deaths in history (no question, Molly in A Country Practice - anyone who says Cathy Godbold is insane) and whatever happened to Rob Brough. There wasn't much feeling at the game, and we left before the predictable meat market that was the after match meet the players function. I went to one for Melbourne by lying to Jim Stynes that I was a member, and it was wall to wall mini skirts trying to pick up a footballer. I was tempted to grab a Melbourne tracksuit top and hang out and flirt, but I'm not fit enough to pass for that, although my cousin had a stone cold excellent reputation for picking up in England by putting on a Scotland tracksuit and claiming to be a member of Scotlands under 21 team. Sadly, my attempts to pick up by pretending to be a Penguin player always failed - no one wanted to clean my boots with a Paddle Pop stick, and mores the pity...
Part of the problem with Hawthorn being Tassies team (frizzy haired Melburnian visitors aside) is that four games a year isn't enough to build up a rivalry with anyone that Tasmanians can get behind. The real rivalry in Tasmania is between Launceston and Hobart, although no one is quite sure how to harness it. I think they want to be the capital city, and I spent an hour once with a Launcestonian telling me how great the Saloon was compared to Syrup (like picking between Anne Maree Cooksley and Rob Brough as Australias most obscure celebrity really). Scott Wade dreams of a football league where Launceston and Hobart grind to a halt to cheer their city on. We hate Launceston though mostly because they get all the AFL games, not because they could beat us in a contrived local league. Our great lovely radio station here (when they aren't pimping out their DJs) often try and stir up a local rivalry between Hobart and Launceston by organising tug of war competitions or referencing Launcestons monkey park where the monkeys have herpes. I don't know what they do in Launceston, but I'd imagine they get up to similar hilarious japes and probably mock our local hooded hoons and street parades for Reggie from Big Brother, where women dressed as chiko rolls cop a spray from unemployed males for wasting their time. There seems to be a rivalry there though that is begging to have money made out of it by a slick huckster, although I actually do like Launceston I must admit. I really enjoy the mall there, the girls are pretty, and the coffee in a cart is fantastic. And Target up there used to have the (second) prettiest store girl in the whole world, and the fact that she overused the word "cunt" every day did nothing to dim her light.
As much as living in Hobart has ended up skewing my view of Launceston a bit though, and as much as I would love for Hobart and Launceston to have something really big to harness the rivalry that isn't just Kim and Dave being tools, it's the small rivalries in Tasmania that fascinate me even more. I love going to the Regional League games down here in Tasmania and seeing a game between, say, Huonville and Dodges Ferry and seeing a crowd of about 150 getting into a massive bitchfest and bringing up old games from the 1970s. It reminds me of my childhood in Penguin, and the stories the old timers used to tell. One old timer who went to all the Penguin games was obsessed with East Devonport football club, and was delighted when they disappeared off a cliff one year, almost taking an advert out in the paper. One day over a Violet Crumble I asked him why, and he said that when he was younger, he had come home early from work, and found a pair of East Devonport logoed football socks in the wash. His wife said they must have got mixed up at the laundrette, but he didn't believe her and thought she was having an affair with a East Devonport player, and was convinced even more by the fact that there wasn't a laundrette within miles, but he didn't bring it up again for a few years, until their tenth anniversary, at which point he gave his wife a gift - an East Devonport jumper rolled in pig manure with divorce papers in the middle of it and her ring in pieces on top of it, lovingly laid out in the middle of the bed. I don't know whether or not his wife ever did cheat on him, but rivalries like that burn for years.
Scott Wade, you can't create rivalry like that...you can't even come close...
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Tommy Hafey, he sleeps with the bogans
There's this book out at the moment that I saw in Angus and Robertson - not the one in town with the really grumpy woman who shuffles magazines next to anyone who browses, and not in a certain store where a certain girl with blue eye shadow works either - which is called Billys Book for Blokes by Billy Brownless. Just so you know if you are a furrener, Billy Brownless is a "colourful" ex football personality who makes a good living out of having gentle fun poked at his weight on television and travelling all over Australia visiting local football clubs spinning chocolate wheels and drinking bars dry. I think a lot of blokes would quite like to be Billy Brownless, since he played football, has a wife roughly 200 times hotter than him, and never has to pay for a beer. So it makes sense for him to write a book - much more sense than scumbag Andy Mahers "book of jokes" anyway - all about blokes. I haven't read it, but I'd imagine it's got chapters about drinking, fighting, mateship, cards, pool, cars, changing a tyre...all the usual things that real blokes are supposed to like. I'm sitting staring at a Hannah Montana poster and I spend most of my days wondering how anyone could possibly fancy Gabrielle Climi. Even knowing who she is probably DQs me from the real bloke category, although I do have a lot of opinions on what Mick Malthouse should do next. I've tried to look at a couple of times in a certain store, but I could probably guess the contents from here. If only the woman in that shop didn't keep walking past with her security intercom...
Anyway, thinking about Billy Brownless and the role he's played in local football (and by extension, local pride) got me thinking about two things important to any local community. And certainly I could write a very good post about being a bloke. In fact last nights news probably was something of an inspiration. Apparently Kevin Rudd stopped all the funding for community groups (such a sexy two word phrase, up there with smart casual and day off) until he had a review (get out, that doesn't sound like Kevin) of whether the funding model was viable, or summat. Anyway, the heads of the community groups got together to discuss this, and how to get their funding back, and they were all on the Tasmanian news, chatting about this over Tim Tams and weak tea. This is definitely going to be my future career path, helping out the local community in some way around a pot of tea. Mostly, I'm just going to sit in a room and pay out on everyone. Maybe it was just the community groups and CWA in Penguin, but I've always found that community groups are massive bitchfests. Between bitching about how little funding you get, bitching about respective governments, bitching about the quality of the cake that committee member X brought last week, and of course bitching about how here you are giving up your free time to plan a big event and damn punk kids/local council/senior citizens etc won't support it, you can pretty much spend your days just having massive sprays at everyone. Sounds like terrific fun, throw in my love of local pride, and it's amazing I never do it.
The first thing important to any small local community is the visit of a celebrity. In Penguin, it was always Kevin Sheedy or Tom Hafey. I think those two are pretty much who goes and visits the place now to be honest. Can't imagine Rihanna and her 3 different expressions popping in for tea and scones. The visit of a Kevin Sheedy, particularly in the 1980s, was a cause for celebration and an 8 page special in the Advocate. The format for their visit was pretty much set in stone - funny speech, bit of Q&A, help out with a bit of fundraising via raffling off a couple of footy jumpers, then a few drinks at the bar. The best bit about this visit (and it was always a footballer who visited Penguin for our celebrity quotient, we never quite got Jason Mraz - even Burnie got Slim Dusty every 6 weeks) was that in preparation, the local dickheads would pump themselves up that they were going to confront Sheeds on why he wasn't playing a particular player or how they could do a better job. And then, they would melt like starstruck 8 year olds when they actually had a chance to ask their question. Eddie McGuire a few years ago yelled at the crowd at the casino to just buy the fucking jumper that was raffled, so tedious were these stuttering questions. I felt the spirit of these important local visits a few years ago when I did work experience for a company that was in a very rah rah phase with it's employers. The company booked Tom Hafey, who if you don't know is a very motivational old football coach famous for yelling at people and keeping himself in such amazing physical shape he could still outrun you all at age 80. Everything was all set, except our ditzy secretary had mistakenly booked Mr Hafey into a caravan park, and not a good one - one in Warrane (Tassies equivalent of Beirut). Naturally, this was easily fixed, but I thought the company went a tad far in firing her for her error. I mean, Tommy would loved the place - he could have yelled at lazy bogan slackers to get up and do some push ups. Who knows, maybe one of those ugly Warrane ducklings could have become a beautiful Anne Maree Cooksley (one in every post) type swan through Tommys rantings?
However, as much as there is lots of local pride in showing a Billy Brownless your town, there is one group of people who don't enjoy the visit of a celebrity - the existing local identities. These people spend roughly 364 days a year in exalted local status. I'm obsessed with old fashioned local identities, people spoke in awe struck tones because they bake the best scones in the village or something. I loved that in Penguin when Kevin Sheedy was in town, how personally they would take being marginalised. If Mr Sheedy asked for a particular type of tea or biscuit, he copped it right in the neck for being a snob. If Mr Hafey made a remotely off colour joke, he was bitched about for a week. They would patiently wait at the back of the hall until the celebrity left town and then seized control and attention back as rapidly as they could. One family in Burnie of a certain standing used to shove their daughter into the face of any visiting singer or footballer, and bitch about them based entirely on their response. If they didn't hit on her, they were gay, if they did, they were sleazy. I used to love when we'd throw a BBQ in Penguin seeing the more known families bringing a particularly posh beer or a salad because they didn't want to be common and just have a pork sausage. Their kids were always with us in the rumpus room, and we'd get them drunk or get them to do something embarrassing, just to keep ourselves amused. Even the kids would bitch about the footballers speech, and how lame it was, and they weren't even allowed in. This one kid I went to school with, he hated Kevin Sheedy, hated Tom Hafey, thought David Parkin swore too much, and yet, went to Melbourne and got about 20 pictures with David Dixon. And they gave him social standing? I'd have taken it off him just for that...
Mind you, at our school, we were definitely bitching, the only celebrity speaker we ever got was Jane Fleming, a woman who never got over the first hurdle at the Olympics, telling us to work hard and never give in. I'd only have paid attention if we got the sexy early years Melinda Gainsford...whatever happened to Mel G?
Anyway, thinking about Billy Brownless and the role he's played in local football (and by extension, local pride) got me thinking about two things important to any local community. And certainly I could write a very good post about being a bloke. In fact last nights news probably was something of an inspiration. Apparently Kevin Rudd stopped all the funding for community groups (such a sexy two word phrase, up there with smart casual and day off) until he had a review (get out, that doesn't sound like Kevin) of whether the funding model was viable, or summat. Anyway, the heads of the community groups got together to discuss this, and how to get their funding back, and they were all on the Tasmanian news, chatting about this over Tim Tams and weak tea. This is definitely going to be my future career path, helping out the local community in some way around a pot of tea. Mostly, I'm just going to sit in a room and pay out on everyone. Maybe it was just the community groups and CWA in Penguin, but I've always found that community groups are massive bitchfests. Between bitching about how little funding you get, bitching about respective governments, bitching about the quality of the cake that committee member X brought last week, and of course bitching about how here you are giving up your free time to plan a big event and damn punk kids/local council/senior citizens etc won't support it, you can pretty much spend your days just having massive sprays at everyone. Sounds like terrific fun, throw in my love of local pride, and it's amazing I never do it.
The first thing important to any small local community is the visit of a celebrity. In Penguin, it was always Kevin Sheedy or Tom Hafey. I think those two are pretty much who goes and visits the place now to be honest. Can't imagine Rihanna and her 3 different expressions popping in for tea and scones. The visit of a Kevin Sheedy, particularly in the 1980s, was a cause for celebration and an 8 page special in the Advocate. The format for their visit was pretty much set in stone - funny speech, bit of Q&A, help out with a bit of fundraising via raffling off a couple of footy jumpers, then a few drinks at the bar. The best bit about this visit (and it was always a footballer who visited Penguin for our celebrity quotient, we never quite got Jason Mraz - even Burnie got Slim Dusty every 6 weeks) was that in preparation, the local dickheads would pump themselves up that they were going to confront Sheeds on why he wasn't playing a particular player or how they could do a better job. And then, they would melt like starstruck 8 year olds when they actually had a chance to ask their question. Eddie McGuire a few years ago yelled at the crowd at the casino to just buy the fucking jumper that was raffled, so tedious were these stuttering questions. I felt the spirit of these important local visits a few years ago when I did work experience for a company that was in a very rah rah phase with it's employers. The company booked Tom Hafey, who if you don't know is a very motivational old football coach famous for yelling at people and keeping himself in such amazing physical shape he could still outrun you all at age 80. Everything was all set, except our ditzy secretary had mistakenly booked Mr Hafey into a caravan park, and not a good one - one in Warrane (Tassies equivalent of Beirut). Naturally, this was easily fixed, but I thought the company went a tad far in firing her for her error. I mean, Tommy would loved the place - he could have yelled at lazy bogan slackers to get up and do some push ups. Who knows, maybe one of those ugly Warrane ducklings could have become a beautiful Anne Maree Cooksley (one in every post) type swan through Tommys rantings?
However, as much as there is lots of local pride in showing a Billy Brownless your town, there is one group of people who don't enjoy the visit of a celebrity - the existing local identities. These people spend roughly 364 days a year in exalted local status. I'm obsessed with old fashioned local identities, people spoke in awe struck tones because they bake the best scones in the village or something. I loved that in Penguin when Kevin Sheedy was in town, how personally they would take being marginalised. If Mr Sheedy asked for a particular type of tea or biscuit, he copped it right in the neck for being a snob. If Mr Hafey made a remotely off colour joke, he was bitched about for a week. They would patiently wait at the back of the hall until the celebrity left town and then seized control and attention back as rapidly as they could. One family in Burnie of a certain standing used to shove their daughter into the face of any visiting singer or footballer, and bitch about them based entirely on their response. If they didn't hit on her, they were gay, if they did, they were sleazy. I used to love when we'd throw a BBQ in Penguin seeing the more known families bringing a particularly posh beer or a salad because they didn't want to be common and just have a pork sausage. Their kids were always with us in the rumpus room, and we'd get them drunk or get them to do something embarrassing, just to keep ourselves amused. Even the kids would bitch about the footballers speech, and how lame it was, and they weren't even allowed in. This one kid I went to school with, he hated Kevin Sheedy, hated Tom Hafey, thought David Parkin swore too much, and yet, went to Melbourne and got about 20 pictures with David Dixon. And they gave him social standing? I'd have taken it off him just for that...
Mind you, at our school, we were definitely bitching, the only celebrity speaker we ever got was Jane Fleming, a woman who never got over the first hurdle at the Olympics, telling us to work hard and never give in. I'd only have paid attention if we got the sexy early years Melinda Gainsford...whatever happened to Mel G?
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Theres a Store where the Creatures meet
So I found out yesterday that popular fashion designer Alannah Hill (no, me neither) was not only born in Geeveston, here in Tasmania, but her parents owned the world famous Penguin milk bar. Now, this was on Wikipedia, so there's a better than average chance it was complete rubbish and tomorrow it will say she got her big break at the Geeveston show when she won best pig in show, but it is really interesting to think that someone made it out from under the oppression of running the family business (believe me, you don't want that) to fulfil their dreams, even if it was via running away and joining the circus. And to think, it must have been HER parents that were the Golden Gaytime Gigglers...
It's interesting to me that this is a blog essentially about local pride, and i haven't taken the time to talk about the local shop. Now, this isn't referring to, say, the big Coles Supermarket or a thinly disguised franchise "with the same old owners", I'm talking about Cut Price Sams, or the local milk bar, or even the local newsagency. I don't think it seems as important down here as it does on the NW Coast, because in Penguin it was really frowned upon to travel into Burnie and shop at Roelf Vos, when there was a local store run by local people. My local store here in Kingston isn't thought of in the same way - in fact, to be honest, it's really weird. Since I've lived there, it's had about 15 different owners. I don't want to get all Pauline Hanson on everyone, but all 15 owners have been Greek, and I think there's some sort of immigration thing going on with it, either that or it's a great way to have a holiday, come and run the shop for 6 months. The main and only reason I like it is that it is the only place in Tasmania you can get the energy drink Viper, which I suspect is banned or something given I can't find it anywhere else in the whole state. And when I first moved down there they had one of the greatest front of store paint jobs I've ever seen - a twisty auburn cartoon snake that should have painted in a museum, but it's certainly not part of the local community, although it does seem to be a gathering point for some of the creatures of the night. Hooded tops, blank expressions, armed with sticks. You know the kind...
Anyway, Penguin Milk Bar was a fantastic little shop. It was always the place you went when you got a treat, having been good at Swannies hairdressers when he was chopping your locks off (or in my case, after he cut my ear), or were feeling sick or were tired after running along the beach. The main thing I remember about it was the delicious frothy chocolate milkshakes that I always ended up ordering. I think it's because I always got a frothy chocolate milkshake when I was good and well behaved, and it was important for teaching me how to manipulate the system to my advantage. So I learned to accentuate my achievements, cut out the negative parts and not discuss my failures - in other words, lie - and it was all for the sake of a chocolate milkshake. I also loved the way adults interacted at the post office, kids interacted at the milk bar, or at least, at the post office with their parents looking at the milk bar and trying to get mum to shut up so they could get an ice cream. I also think it was the only place in Penguin that had a coin operated video game. I might be wrong on this, but I think nowhere else (except maybe the laundrette) that had Frogger, so it was very trendy. They had some really funky furniture as well, the kind of straight backed design that you just don't get these days. No stools in Penguin Milk Bar, oh no. Everyone had a proper seat. And that's before I get to how many chips you got for 10c...
In a town as small as Penguin (and yes, I do have a point, this isn't just "remember when chips were 10c a bag" nostalgia) the local store really mattered, and it was always the first place that was decorated when the football team made the Grand Final. However, at some point, they put in the Dial Arcade, a sort of shopping mall that was meant to represent the future. I don't know how well it worked, because we moved out of Penguin roughly around the time it opened, so I didn't see the rise and fall of the initial investment buzz. It was the last gasp of 80s risk and reward, and I have no idea what's still there or if it's still open, I just remember it opening. And what I remember the most is that one of the stores had this exotic, exciting ice cream store, with bright lighting and funky music. Someone told me that it was the second place in the entire world that had a machine where you could take, say, a flake, and have it crushed up and put into the ice cream. Imagine the future, mango ice cream with a crushed up bit of flake in it. Take that, Iphone generation. I really believed it, and was so excited that our little town had this magical machine with it's delicious flavour maker, and it was really hyped up. The problem was - it was awful. For some reason, it really was disgusting no matter what combination of flavour you tried to create. It was a wonderful metaphor for what everyone really thought about Penguin - a local town, for local people, with local pride and local ideas. No big city flavour makers were required. Don't bring your flashy Milan based designs to our yard thanks very much. Chocolate, Vanilla and Strawberry, that's all we need. No wonder everyone went back to the local milk bar, where things were as they always were.
I wonder what they'd make these days of Cans of Viper and hooded youths hanging outside the milk bar in Penguin...actually, I know what they'd think, it's the same as they told the recent developers...
It's interesting to me that this is a blog essentially about local pride, and i haven't taken the time to talk about the local shop. Now, this isn't referring to, say, the big Coles Supermarket or a thinly disguised franchise "with the same old owners", I'm talking about Cut Price Sams, or the local milk bar, or even the local newsagency. I don't think it seems as important down here as it does on the NW Coast, because in Penguin it was really frowned upon to travel into Burnie and shop at Roelf Vos, when there was a local store run by local people. My local store here in Kingston isn't thought of in the same way - in fact, to be honest, it's really weird. Since I've lived there, it's had about 15 different owners. I don't want to get all Pauline Hanson on everyone, but all 15 owners have been Greek, and I think there's some sort of immigration thing going on with it, either that or it's a great way to have a holiday, come and run the shop for 6 months. The main and only reason I like it is that it is the only place in Tasmania you can get the energy drink Viper, which I suspect is banned or something given I can't find it anywhere else in the whole state. And when I first moved down there they had one of the greatest front of store paint jobs I've ever seen - a twisty auburn cartoon snake that should have painted in a museum, but it's certainly not part of the local community, although it does seem to be a gathering point for some of the creatures of the night. Hooded tops, blank expressions, armed with sticks. You know the kind...
Anyway, Penguin Milk Bar was a fantastic little shop. It was always the place you went when you got a treat, having been good at Swannies hairdressers when he was chopping your locks off (or in my case, after he cut my ear), or were feeling sick or were tired after running along the beach. The main thing I remember about it was the delicious frothy chocolate milkshakes that I always ended up ordering. I think it's because I always got a frothy chocolate milkshake when I was good and well behaved, and it was important for teaching me how to manipulate the system to my advantage. So I learned to accentuate my achievements, cut out the negative parts and not discuss my failures - in other words, lie - and it was all for the sake of a chocolate milkshake. I also loved the way adults interacted at the post office, kids interacted at the milk bar, or at least, at the post office with their parents looking at the milk bar and trying to get mum to shut up so they could get an ice cream. I also think it was the only place in Penguin that had a coin operated video game. I might be wrong on this, but I think nowhere else (except maybe the laundrette) that had Frogger, so it was very trendy. They had some really funky furniture as well, the kind of straight backed design that you just don't get these days. No stools in Penguin Milk Bar, oh no. Everyone had a proper seat. And that's before I get to how many chips you got for 10c...
In a town as small as Penguin (and yes, I do have a point, this isn't just "remember when chips were 10c a bag" nostalgia) the local store really mattered, and it was always the first place that was decorated when the football team made the Grand Final. However, at some point, they put in the Dial Arcade, a sort of shopping mall that was meant to represent the future. I don't know how well it worked, because we moved out of Penguin roughly around the time it opened, so I didn't see the rise and fall of the initial investment buzz. It was the last gasp of 80s risk and reward, and I have no idea what's still there or if it's still open, I just remember it opening. And what I remember the most is that one of the stores had this exotic, exciting ice cream store, with bright lighting and funky music. Someone told me that it was the second place in the entire world that had a machine where you could take, say, a flake, and have it crushed up and put into the ice cream. Imagine the future, mango ice cream with a crushed up bit of flake in it. Take that, Iphone generation. I really believed it, and was so excited that our little town had this magical machine with it's delicious flavour maker, and it was really hyped up. The problem was - it was awful. For some reason, it really was disgusting no matter what combination of flavour you tried to create. It was a wonderful metaphor for what everyone really thought about Penguin - a local town, for local people, with local pride and local ideas. No big city flavour makers were required. Don't bring your flashy Milan based designs to our yard thanks very much. Chocolate, Vanilla and Strawberry, that's all we need. No wonder everyone went back to the local milk bar, where things were as they always were.
I wonder what they'd make these days of Cans of Viper and hooded youths hanging outside the milk bar in Penguin...actually, I know what they'd think, it's the same as they told the recent developers...
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Womens Basketball Brings Sexy Back
So I saw some stand up comedy last night, which basically revolved about taking the surname of Gabrielle Climi and turning it into a an STD. "Imagine," he pondered, "if you found out your girlfriend suffered from Climi" - you can supply your own "what is the deal with..." or laugh track if you want, we just went home.
This blog, initially, was going to be about what was found in soccer programmes and what it told me about local pride. I kind of went off that idea and wrote about other areas of local pride, but I'm still very conscious of the role sport plays in a community. Every so often when they aren't telling everyone how useless Kevin Rudd is you see some bewildered and blinking old duck or crusty old farmer standing in the middle of a football ground bemoaning the death or merger of a country football or netball team. These articles are easy to write, old duck, club won 6 Premierships in the 30s, VFL superstar grew up in the town, town migration, why aren't the AFL doing anything, didn't see the drought coming and so on. Kingstons team for instance, the Kingborough Tigers, mean nothing to me, which is a shame. They are my local team, so I should be on board, but AFL is everywhere now, I've got enough to worry about with Paul Medhurst. At some time in the next 50 years, I know there will be no more Penguin, but I don't think there's much anyone can do about.
In the early part of the 90s, there was a massive push in Australia to make womens basketball sexy (like they are doing with netball now, dispersing the talent so every team has a hot girl - don't think we haven't noticed). This comprised of two things - first, putting every single woman in the WNBL (our local basketball league) regardless of shape into figure hugging lycra bodysuits and secondly, focusing all the leagues marketing muscle behind Trish Fallon, a sort of poor womans Emma George. It says a lot about how successful this was that while I can't name you a single team or player from that era other than Trish Fallon, I know she was married to a black American DJ called Rodney O who later beat her up. She was everywhere for a while, especially after we hosted the womens world championships. I think there was a brief Michelle Griffiths era, but that was about a week long. My mate (I promise this isn't a "my mate" story meaning it was really me) was stalking this womens basketballer called Mary Anne Di Francesco to the point that when it was announced on TV she was manning a phone line taking charity donations, he kept ringing it in different voices just to talk to her. Wonder what happened to him. Anyway, the point is, eventually they gave up when they realised it was hard to make Lauren Jackson hot, and the phase passed quietly and without comment.
This was a big, big awkward shock to me, because when I was living in Penguin, womens basketball was anything but sexy. It was violent and gang warfare, a complete expression of local pride which essentially became the towns focus. Penguin vs Ulverstone wasn't somewhere where you would expect to find a Trish Fallon or Michelle Griffiths model type, it was two teams of girls who looked like Peggy Lee Leather or Reggie Bennett. They were stocky, big, strong, and every possession was a contest. Every single team had a "Plugger", a reference to the girl who looked most like Tony Lockett. Anyone attempting a three pointer could expect to be absolutely flattened as she took the shot, and one game I went to, I think Penguin vs Wynyard, had the best crowd fight I've seen at any sporting event, which started because someone in the Wynyard crowd ordered a hot dog, someone in the Penguin crowd said only gay people (I didn't say it was a PC crowd fight) ate hot dogs, and two families of hillbillies just punched on for ages, to the point even security didn't want to break it up, it was so compelling. Now, these girls deserve everyones respect. Some people would tell you oh they were so ugly, and let's all laugh at them - they weren't ugly, they were beautiful local legends. If you were short, sweet and petite, you entered the Queens Quest competition, married a footballer and raised funds for the football club, and if you were stocky, big, could throw a punch or were just fat, you did your bit by playing womens basketball. It was sort of the same in the mens basketball, but to be honest, it just wasn't the same. There was a place for everyone in Penguin, the last fully functioning local community I'll ever live in.
And I hope it's always that way, forever and ever. There's still no place for you though Fallon, it's not your type of game...
This blog, initially, was going to be about what was found in soccer programmes and what it told me about local pride. I kind of went off that idea and wrote about other areas of local pride, but I'm still very conscious of the role sport plays in a community. Every so often when they aren't telling everyone how useless Kevin Rudd is you see some bewildered and blinking old duck or crusty old farmer standing in the middle of a football ground bemoaning the death or merger of a country football or netball team. These articles are easy to write, old duck, club won 6 Premierships in the 30s, VFL superstar grew up in the town, town migration, why aren't the AFL doing anything, didn't see the drought coming and so on. Kingstons team for instance, the Kingborough Tigers, mean nothing to me, which is a shame. They are my local team, so I should be on board, but AFL is everywhere now, I've got enough to worry about with Paul Medhurst. At some time in the next 50 years, I know there will be no more Penguin, but I don't think there's much anyone can do about.
In the early part of the 90s, there was a massive push in Australia to make womens basketball sexy (like they are doing with netball now, dispersing the talent so every team has a hot girl - don't think we haven't noticed). This comprised of two things - first, putting every single woman in the WNBL (our local basketball league) regardless of shape into figure hugging lycra bodysuits and secondly, focusing all the leagues marketing muscle behind Trish Fallon, a sort of poor womans Emma George. It says a lot about how successful this was that while I can't name you a single team or player from that era other than Trish Fallon, I know she was married to a black American DJ called Rodney O who later beat her up. She was everywhere for a while, especially after we hosted the womens world championships. I think there was a brief Michelle Griffiths era, but that was about a week long. My mate (I promise this isn't a "my mate" story meaning it was really me) was stalking this womens basketballer called Mary Anne Di Francesco to the point that when it was announced on TV she was manning a phone line taking charity donations, he kept ringing it in different voices just to talk to her. Wonder what happened to him. Anyway, the point is, eventually they gave up when they realised it was hard to make Lauren Jackson hot, and the phase passed quietly and without comment.
This was a big, big awkward shock to me, because when I was living in Penguin, womens basketball was anything but sexy. It was violent and gang warfare, a complete expression of local pride which essentially became the towns focus. Penguin vs Ulverstone wasn't somewhere where you would expect to find a Trish Fallon or Michelle Griffiths model type, it was two teams of girls who looked like Peggy Lee Leather or Reggie Bennett. They were stocky, big, strong, and every possession was a contest. Every single team had a "Plugger", a reference to the girl who looked most like Tony Lockett. Anyone attempting a three pointer could expect to be absolutely flattened as she took the shot, and one game I went to, I think Penguin vs Wynyard, had the best crowd fight I've seen at any sporting event, which started because someone in the Wynyard crowd ordered a hot dog, someone in the Penguin crowd said only gay people (I didn't say it was a PC crowd fight) ate hot dogs, and two families of hillbillies just punched on for ages, to the point even security didn't want to break it up, it was so compelling. Now, these girls deserve everyones respect. Some people would tell you oh they were so ugly, and let's all laugh at them - they weren't ugly, they were beautiful local legends. If you were short, sweet and petite, you entered the Queens Quest competition, married a footballer and raised funds for the football club, and if you were stocky, big, could throw a punch or were just fat, you did your bit by playing womens basketball. It was sort of the same in the mens basketball, but to be honest, it just wasn't the same. There was a place for everyone in Penguin, the last fully functioning local community I'll ever live in.
And I hope it's always that way, forever and ever. There's still no place for you though Fallon, it's not your type of game...
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Hobart Airport
I told everyone I knew today Lindsay Lohan was a lesbian - no one was really interested. I probably need some new friends.
I'm different to a lot of people (and not just because I run a one man Leilani Kai fanclub) in that I really like hanging out in airports. I don't have any rhyme or reason for this, but I don't mind sitting sipping a nice coffee or reading a magazine specially imported from the UK two months before the regular edition comes out. I like watching couples split up and get back together. I like the sense of adventure that comes from watching people fly off, and above all, I really like Internet machines that charge a dollar for 10 minutes and then block every single website that mentions the word "darn" just in case a child looks at it. The ones in Scotland sometimes make a beeping noise when they block websites - you can't even look at a Vanessa Williams clip on Youtube without alerting the entire airport that you are some kind of sick pervert. Jordin Sparks, oddly, seems to be OK. My favourite airport in the entire world is Amsterdam, because it's a big straight line, and because it's positively filthy with a lot of dodgy looking men trying to sneak a look at porn. Ah, class.
Anyway, if you want to come to Hobart, or for that matter leave Hobart, you have to lob at Hobart Airport, on either a Jetstar or Virgin Blue plane. For some reason they got rid of my favourite thing in the airport, the big truck with all the luggage that parked in the middle of a warehouse and let everyone fight to get their bags. If you take a Jetstar into Hobart, you will land roughly on time on a very cheap plane after a ten minute delay that no one can figure out. If you land on a Virgin Blue plane, you'll probably be twenty minutes late, but convince yourself you had a much better flight because the plane is a bit nicer. We've come a fair way from the glory of Kendall Airlines, the only airline in the world where doing a complete 180 in mid air was considered a smooth ride. No one I know remembers Kendall Airlines down here, but I think we've all tried to shut out the horrors of Kendalls idea of what "turbulence" constituted. Once when I flew out of Burnie to go to Melbourne, I had to get on a Spitfire type military plane due to a pilots strike, with a big landscape painting bolted across as a "door" and a for once taken really seriously lecture on what to do in case we hit a mountain - so I really should stop whinging about Jetstar, now I think about it.
Hobart Airport isn't going to win any classic design awards and most people seem to hate the place. However what I do love about Hobart Airport is the fact that there really is no upper class to the joint - like I said, you either land Jetstar or Virgin Blue, and you'll be in economy, and you'll walk across the tarmac and wait for your bags and look at the world WILKOMMEN in the twinkling lights like the rest of us - so it doesn't matter if you are a celebrity, a faux celebrity or have just won the lottery. You are in that crappy lounge watching the Today show on TV with the rest of us. Cricket teams? On a Jetstar. Football teams? Guess what the choice is? That Australian band I was on the plane with when I thought we were going to crash in the Tasman and wondered if it was worth dying if it meant I took them with me? Get on the Jetstar and stop your rock like posturing. My favourite moment like this wasn't our state Premier Paul Lennon hiding in a coffee shop so disgruntled voters wouldn't hassle him, it was all around dickhead TV, celebrity Carlton cheer squad member and radio football commentator Tim "Timmy" Lane sitting a row in front of me trying to read a book while two drunk Carlton supporters sitting next to him tried to discuss Tasmanias bid for an AFL team and whether Eddie Betts was better than Sean Charles. Every part of his face was screaming for help and the comfort of business class. Oh, that'll teach you Timmy to hate Collingwood so much...
The final reason I think everyone should spend a day at Hobart Airport is this - no one has ever, ever landed in anything other than terrible weater. I'm not sure why this is, but I promise every single time you touch down in Hobart and get off the plane, it's absolutely freezing. Even if the sun is shining, even if they tell you on the plane it's 38 degrees in Hobart, I promise you you land in rain and cold weather every single time. Adam Hills got ten minutes out of that during a stand up show. There must be a scientific explanation for it. It's like a lot of odd things about Hobart - the strange obsession of our nightclubs with Dave Dobbyn, the way the crappier a radio show is, the longer it stays on the air, the fact that we never, ever make anything out of Errol Flynn or Taz to try and promote the state, but hope Ricky Ponting will do the job, and the way that the coffee in the shops at the airport, unlike anywhere in the centre of the city, actually, crazily, tastes like coffee. Something Starbucks should probably try one day.
Ooh, an anti Starbucks reference, how very "The Age"...
I'm different to a lot of people (and not just because I run a one man Leilani Kai fanclub) in that I really like hanging out in airports. I don't have any rhyme or reason for this, but I don't mind sitting sipping a nice coffee or reading a magazine specially imported from the UK two months before the regular edition comes out. I like watching couples split up and get back together. I like the sense of adventure that comes from watching people fly off, and above all, I really like Internet machines that charge a dollar for 10 minutes and then block every single website that mentions the word "darn" just in case a child looks at it. The ones in Scotland sometimes make a beeping noise when they block websites - you can't even look at a Vanessa Williams clip on Youtube without alerting the entire airport that you are some kind of sick pervert. Jordin Sparks, oddly, seems to be OK. My favourite airport in the entire world is Amsterdam, because it's a big straight line, and because it's positively filthy with a lot of dodgy looking men trying to sneak a look at porn. Ah, class.
Anyway, if you want to come to Hobart, or for that matter leave Hobart, you have to lob at Hobart Airport, on either a Jetstar or Virgin Blue plane. For some reason they got rid of my favourite thing in the airport, the big truck with all the luggage that parked in the middle of a warehouse and let everyone fight to get their bags. If you take a Jetstar into Hobart, you will land roughly on time on a very cheap plane after a ten minute delay that no one can figure out. If you land on a Virgin Blue plane, you'll probably be twenty minutes late, but convince yourself you had a much better flight because the plane is a bit nicer. We've come a fair way from the glory of Kendall Airlines, the only airline in the world where doing a complete 180 in mid air was considered a smooth ride. No one I know remembers Kendall Airlines down here, but I think we've all tried to shut out the horrors of Kendalls idea of what "turbulence" constituted. Once when I flew out of Burnie to go to Melbourne, I had to get on a Spitfire type military plane due to a pilots strike, with a big landscape painting bolted across as a "door" and a for once taken really seriously lecture on what to do in case we hit a mountain - so I really should stop whinging about Jetstar, now I think about it.
Hobart Airport isn't going to win any classic design awards and most people seem to hate the place. However what I do love about Hobart Airport is the fact that there really is no upper class to the joint - like I said, you either land Jetstar or Virgin Blue, and you'll be in economy, and you'll walk across the tarmac and wait for your bags and look at the world WILKOMMEN in the twinkling lights like the rest of us - so it doesn't matter if you are a celebrity, a faux celebrity or have just won the lottery. You are in that crappy lounge watching the Today show on TV with the rest of us. Cricket teams? On a Jetstar. Football teams? Guess what the choice is? That Australian band I was on the plane with when I thought we were going to crash in the Tasman and wondered if it was worth dying if it meant I took them with me? Get on the Jetstar and stop your rock like posturing. My favourite moment like this wasn't our state Premier Paul Lennon hiding in a coffee shop so disgruntled voters wouldn't hassle him, it was all around dickhead TV, celebrity Carlton cheer squad member and radio football commentator Tim "Timmy" Lane sitting a row in front of me trying to read a book while two drunk Carlton supporters sitting next to him tried to discuss Tasmanias bid for an AFL team and whether Eddie Betts was better than Sean Charles. Every part of his face was screaming for help and the comfort of business class. Oh, that'll teach you Timmy to hate Collingwood so much...
The final reason I think everyone should spend a day at Hobart Airport is this - no one has ever, ever landed in anything other than terrible weater. I'm not sure why this is, but I promise every single time you touch down in Hobart and get off the plane, it's absolutely freezing. Even if the sun is shining, even if they tell you on the plane it's 38 degrees in Hobart, I promise you you land in rain and cold weather every single time. Adam Hills got ten minutes out of that during a stand up show. There must be a scientific explanation for it. It's like a lot of odd things about Hobart - the strange obsession of our nightclubs with Dave Dobbyn, the way the crappier a radio show is, the longer it stays on the air, the fact that we never, ever make anything out of Errol Flynn or Taz to try and promote the state, but hope Ricky Ponting will do the job, and the way that the coffee in the shops at the airport, unlike anywhere in the centre of the city, actually, crazily, tastes like coffee. Something Starbucks should probably try one day.
Ooh, an anti Starbucks reference, how very "The Age"...
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Middle Of Nowhere
I'm really really proud to have lived in Penguin on the North West Coast of Tasmania when I was younger. I lived across the road from the football ground, the hub of the community back in the days before AFL ruined everything that was once good about local football. I loved the jumper the Penguin team wore, since it was dark blue and light blue vertical stripes, a design no one else in Australia had. I loved Hiscutt Park, although I liked it better before it had a name and got a bit poncy. I loved how incredibly fierce and violent the girls basketball competition was (which has lead to my lifelong love of womens wrestling I think). I loved the Penguin shaped rubbish bins. I loved the local milk bar, I loved that on one day we got a new Soapbox and a new Sock Shop, and I loved the long sandy beach that seemingly went on forever, only to come to a crashing halt on a big pile of stones and rocks. It really was a lovely place to spend a childhood, and I really have a lot of local pride (hey, theme!) for the area.
Of course, when I was a bit older, I hated the place as well. Nothing happened. Ever. It was like someone hit the pause button in 1984. It really was the kind of place where Sunday seemed to last a month, and the month seemed to last a year. It was pretty predictable as well. You could tell what day of the week it was after a while by the cakes in the window or by who was collecting their mail. When we moved back there, it was like the entire world had stopped moving for me. Stupid things would bother me - if I saw the same girl two days in a row, I would think life was really boring and want to see different people. We didn't have proper TV, and I couldn't get Irn Bru. Stupid little things that add up to a million little things that add up to massive despair. I would lie in my room immensely frustrated that nothing was happening. Secretly, I would sneak out of the house late at night away from my parents and just walk around. That's why I know what was on sale late at night in the park - I think I ended up selling some tapes myself there one night, although this may be a trick of my imagination (like thinking Chris Tarrant was ever a good player).
A lot of people in conversation ask me if I've ever been truly happy or truly sad, and to be honest, I was both in one night. Now, I don't have any real regrets in my life apart from the usual - I've never left a girl stranded at the altar, I've never shot a man just to watch him die, my regrets are probably to do with time wasted (and never meeting Vilimaina Davu). I could have worked harder, I could have done more with my life, but I don't regret it. It is what it is. But I wonder what my life would have been like if I had really run away the night that I planned to. I couldn't see any good at all in Penguin, and absolutely no way out of my lonely boring life, and so, one night, I went to run away, took some meagre possessions, two hundred dollars and set off out the house really quietly, determined to have a new life away from this town that I couldn't stand.
Now, everyone has done this I'm sure, but I really wasn't doing it for attention, I was genuine about somehow getting back to the UK. Problem was, I decided to sleep in the Penguin football club grandstand. This wouldn't have been a bad thing, especially considering someone (oh the trust of the early 90s) had left two doors unlocked, and I could get easy access to food (all the Orange Jaffa Big Ms and Cherry Ripes a boy could want) but as I was just about to go to sleep (my memory might be off here, I might have been sleeping in the middle of the ground, to be hardcore) I saw the most beautiful star I've ever seen in my entire life. It wasn't just twinkling, it was glowing so brightly, it was illuminating the whole town, lighting up the sky, making it impossible to sleep, but also lighting up the houses dotting the skyline, almost to the point I could see people individually, fighting, arguing, loving, living. Everyone with their own problems, everyone with their own lives, but all of them facing up to them as best they could. It really remains an important part of my life, the night I realised that I could never run away from myself, and while from time to time I've tried, I always really remember that clearly - and how beautiful Penguin looked on that cold October night.
And that's why I always try and have as much local pride as I can - the people in Tasmania are just good people, making the best of what they have. Even with a terrible radio station...
Of course, when I was a bit older, I hated the place as well. Nothing happened. Ever. It was like someone hit the pause button in 1984. It really was the kind of place where Sunday seemed to last a month, and the month seemed to last a year. It was pretty predictable as well. You could tell what day of the week it was after a while by the cakes in the window or by who was collecting their mail. When we moved back there, it was like the entire world had stopped moving for me. Stupid things would bother me - if I saw the same girl two days in a row, I would think life was really boring and want to see different people. We didn't have proper TV, and I couldn't get Irn Bru. Stupid little things that add up to a million little things that add up to massive despair. I would lie in my room immensely frustrated that nothing was happening. Secretly, I would sneak out of the house late at night away from my parents and just walk around. That's why I know what was on sale late at night in the park - I think I ended up selling some tapes myself there one night, although this may be a trick of my imagination (like thinking Chris Tarrant was ever a good player).
A lot of people in conversation ask me if I've ever been truly happy or truly sad, and to be honest, I was both in one night. Now, I don't have any real regrets in my life apart from the usual - I've never left a girl stranded at the altar, I've never shot a man just to watch him die, my regrets are probably to do with time wasted (and never meeting Vilimaina Davu). I could have worked harder, I could have done more with my life, but I don't regret it. It is what it is. But I wonder what my life would have been like if I had really run away the night that I planned to. I couldn't see any good at all in Penguin, and absolutely no way out of my lonely boring life, and so, one night, I went to run away, took some meagre possessions, two hundred dollars and set off out the house really quietly, determined to have a new life away from this town that I couldn't stand.
Now, everyone has done this I'm sure, but I really wasn't doing it for attention, I was genuine about somehow getting back to the UK. Problem was, I decided to sleep in the Penguin football club grandstand. This wouldn't have been a bad thing, especially considering someone (oh the trust of the early 90s) had left two doors unlocked, and I could get easy access to food (all the Orange Jaffa Big Ms and Cherry Ripes a boy could want) but as I was just about to go to sleep (my memory might be off here, I might have been sleeping in the middle of the ground, to be hardcore) I saw the most beautiful star I've ever seen in my entire life. It wasn't just twinkling, it was glowing so brightly, it was illuminating the whole town, lighting up the sky, making it impossible to sleep, but also lighting up the houses dotting the skyline, almost to the point I could see people individually, fighting, arguing, loving, living. Everyone with their own problems, everyone with their own lives, but all of them facing up to them as best they could. It really remains an important part of my life, the night I realised that I could never run away from myself, and while from time to time I've tried, I always really remember that clearly - and how beautiful Penguin looked on that cold October night.
And that's why I always try and have as much local pride as I can - the people in Tasmania are just good people, making the best of what they have. Even with a terrible radio station...
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