The Authentic Eclectic

Roadkill and loathing in Southern Tasmania. Part I.

The Journey Begins.

If you think of Australia as a nation obsessed with sport, you’re not wrong.

Yet it’s not as universal as you might expect. As someone who has spent much time in the arts, I can assure you there are many Australians who couldn’t care less.

There is one interest that does edge closer to the universal — real estate.

My wife, ever the situationist, was delighted at the arrival of online real estate shopping. We were running a restaurant at the time and were often scratching around for event ideas to fill the upstairs space.

“What if we projected the real estate website onto the big screen and got people to shout out criteria? You know, most recent in Richmond, longest on the market in NSW, cheapest in Tasmania”

We never quite got around to it but I know it would have been a huge hit.

Around this time, our son was old enough for playgroup.

The most popular dad at playgroup? Craig. You guess it, a real estate agent.

His litany of hot tips, sage advice and market intelligence had the parents hanging off his every word. The one that stuck in my head?

“Cheap property? I mean really cheap property. Never go and have a look. It’s cheap for a reason. Don’t let that reason sway your resolve. Just snap up a bargain and sort it out later.”

Running a restaurant in the heart of Melbourne is exhausting. My wife had been at it longer than I had and had had enough. We needed an exit plan.

“Somewhere cheap and remote with fresh running water”

A $1 island in Canada? Sure, it’s snowed in 9 months of the year. A trulli in southern Italy? New Zealand? Tasmania?

A cute little shack in Tasmania with a creek had been on the market for a long time. The price just kept going down and down and down. Today, it’s hard to appreciate how unfashionable Tasmania was at the time. Soon the price had crossed “The Craig Threshold”.

We gave the agent a call. “So, what’s wrong with it?”

“THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT! NOTHING!!!!” His exasperation was palpable.

By coincidence, my father-in-law was in Tasmania at the time and he offered to drive by to have a look.

“Doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with it.”

Through one or two dubious means, we scraped the cash together and bought it. At the time, I had never been to Tasmania in my life.

Too be clear, it really was a shack on a tiny parcel of land. No running water, except the creek. No plumbed toilet. The power was on, though.

We arrived in Hobart, visited our solicitor and handed over the cheque. “Cash!” They were pleased that the banks wouldn’t be involved.

The keys would be available at 11am tomorrow.

With keys in hand, we jumped in the hire car and began the 90 minute drive up into the mountains. Once we turned off the highway out of Hobart it was a steady mix of farmland, bush and small towns. New Norfolk, Bushy Park, Westerway. It was pretty.

Once we passed through Westerway to road began to wind along the Tyenna River and the forest thickened. This was our first glimpse of the magical beauty of mountain living in Tasmania and I was excited.

Not long after, we arrived.

We’d bought a few essentials in Hobart. That was unnecessary. The previous owners had given the keys to the real estate agent and left. I expect the only thing they’d taken was their fishing rods.

Beds. Tables and chairs. Crockery and cutlery. It was rough, but it was ours. So far, Craig’s advice was holding up.

The fireplace could be more accurately described as a fire hazard and that was clearly going to be first on the repair list.

We’d heard the Tyenna River was famous for its fishing so we thought we’d take a walk and have a look.

It wasn’t clear how to get to the river, not without crossing someone else’s property, so we went for a wander along the abandoned train line.

Ten minutes into our walk we saw a tall man, carrying a big stick and struggling to restrain two very large dogs, coming towards up. My wife grew up on a farm with lots of dogs and wasn’t perturbed. I, who at that stage in my life, had only ever been a cat person, was a little more sceptical.

A few moments later, we were standing facing the man.

“Hello”

“Who are you? What are you doing here? You’re not greenies are you?”

“Greenies? What’s a greenie.”

“You know. Greenies. Those environmentalists. I heard there’s been some greenies about and I’m here to sort ’em out”

His tone was aggressive.

“Oh, no, not greenies, and who are you?”

He was the caretaker of something or other. Part of his job involved making sure no greenies were camping out in the something or other. He wasn’t convinced that we weren’t greenie, but the three of us did seem like a harmless enough family group. We explained our purchase of the shack and assured him we would definitely not need to camp out in the something or other.

“You better not be greenies. If find out you are greenies, I’ll be back.”

We parted ways as the sun was beginning to dim. The warm glow of shacklife had been monentarily cooled. We walked a little further and got a glimpse of the river. That was enough for today. We turned around and headed back.

As we neared the shack we passed the gate of a nearby property. There was a man standing there, studiously avoiding us like he had come up to the gate purely for the purposes of studiously avoiding us. We’d either have to walk on by or make the first move ourselves. Fortunately, as battle hardened restaurateurs, this wasn’t a problem for us.

“Hello”

“Oh hello, I didn’t see you there. Where’d you appear from?”

I expected he’d been closely watching us from the moment we pulled up in the hire car.

“That shack over there. We bought it.”

“Bought it? It sold?” He seemed surprised.

This time, more tentatively than Mr Caretaker. “You’re not greenies, are you?”

“Greenies? No. What about you? Are you a greenie.”

“No, no, no. I’m definitely not a greenie. Did someone say I was a greenie?”

It seems he was aware we’d also come across Mr Caretaker. We related the incident and he laughed.

“Don’t worry about him, he’s an idiot.”

OK. So around here, we don’t worry about idiots, but greenies appear to be a problem. He seemed like a genial fellow, perhaps even a closet greenie. It was a relief after our run-in with Mr Caretaker.

“You’re not planning on living there, are you?”

“Living where?”

“In the shack?”

“No. We live in Melbourne. We’ll just be coming down for holidays.”

“Oh, alright. Good.”

On the first night we could have sworn someone, perhaps Mr Caretaker, had come over to throw rocks on the roof. Once it had gone dark, every five minutes or so, thump, thump, thump.

It was old metal roof and the boom resonated throughout the shack. This went on for a while, then, what’s that? Sounds like foot steps. “Someone’s on the roof.”

Not someone, something. Possums and lots of them. They were living in the giant tree that hovered above the shack and every night they’d drop onto the roof, making their way to ground for the evening meal.

I had spent my entire life living in the city. I could see country living was going to take some adjustments.

We stayed a few more days. It seems like such a blur now. We hadn’t had a meaningful holiday in five years, maybe longer and a few days was barely enough time to begin unwinding.

We knocked around the shack a bit, did some exploring and I found a wallaby skull by the roadside. At the time, it felt like a great archealogical discovery.

Little did I realise that over the years I’d collect hundreds of these. I’d soon realise there presence in such great numbers was no mystery. They were roadkill, an endemic problem across Tasmania.

Before we knew it, we were back on the plane, jetting back to Melbourne. To our relief, the restaurant was still standing, though in the space of a week it had ground to a relative stand still.

Before long the restaurant would be on the market and plans were being made, plans that now had a new criteria — Tasmania.

More on Tasmania.