Native Sub Species of Tasmania

I'm in Tassie at the moment.  This simple fact goes along way to explain the recent slackness I've been exhibiting regarding this blog.  Currently I'm typing as quietly as I can on a noisy keyboard as my daughters sleep 2 feet away.  Then there's the slowness factor.  I swear I type a letter, and five whole seconds later it shows up on the screen.  Antiques.  Gotta love them.  Tassie does antiques really well.  In fact, I just turned on this computer screen, and an icepick and branding irons flashed up.  I began to seriously question my mother's possible new hobby, when I realised it was a display for an auction house specialising in antiquities.  I guess if some one's going to put an icepick through your skull, it would be nice if they did it using a valuable one with a pretty handle. 

Apart from antiques, there are other things Tassie does really well.  Cheese, beer, wine, pretty outdoor shit - like trees and that......and let's not forget bogans.  There are some quality bogans in Tassie.  We even have our own sub species down here - Chiggas.  Because Hobart is really a small city, a good many bogan confrontations happen on a daily basis.  Some of them are funny, as in the really drunk man in his 50s, my sister and I encountered at a restaurant yesterday.  We couldn't help but notice him eavesdropping on our conversation, and as soon as he got our attention, it was all on.  Then we got half of his life story, embarrassingly loud compliments about our "tits", and an offer to join him at his motel that night. He used the expression "ten past ten' - another bogan beauty meaning "legs spread"....  My sister was impressed I don't think she's heard that one before. We also got him napkins when he got carried away and smashed his hand on the table absolutely lacerating the top of it.  He didn't notice until the blood started pissing out everywhere.  Luckily that signalled his departure, although he had a parting gift for us.  This was a pelvic thrust outside the window, with his hands on his hips making kissy faces....niiiiiceeeee. Look, any knocker on the door is a compliment as far as I'm concerned.  Even if they are so drunk, that they cut their whole hand open without realising it, and continue to skull wine from the bottle at 1pm on a Wednesday afternoon.

Sometimes the confrontations are less amusing.  A particular example I shall go into now, occurred last summer on the first day of the Sunday markets held at Moorilla/MONA.  Now as hip as that place is, it is located smack bang in the heartland of the Chigga.  Contact with the locals cannot be avoided.  In this particular instance the contact was up close and confrontational.  It all started when a scrawny thing....shall we call her Chantal?.... slid up beside my friend, and got sprung by a woman on the grass opposite, with her fingers in my mate's bag.  Now old Chantal covered herself well by pretending she was looking for her lighter.  But my cluey friend wasn't fooled.  She abandoned her position, and came and told me all about it.  Naturally I spread the word - initially to a friend's mother.  However, unfortunately, I got sprung mid finger point.  Well, Chantal was immediately out of her seat, and coming straight for me faster than you can say "meat lovers pizza".  My friend's mother quickly split the scene, but I was rooted to the spot wishing I had a bundy and coke to ward her off with.  Before I knew it she was right in my face, and started yelling in it so close and loud, that her spittle was really connecting.  She smelt of cigarettes and that unmistakable tang of Rexona Sport. 

Much, much better teeth

She began her little tirade like this....... (sorry all mothers of my friends, bad swearing on the approach)......... "You fuckun cunt, you fuckun pointing at me you fuckun cunt.  I'll smash your fuckun face in".....I had no doubt she intended to do just that.  What's brazen public robbery when some bitch has the nerve to point at you?  Me, being the cowardy custard type, responded like this..."Weeeeelllllll, pointing?  Noooo, I wouldn't say I was exactly pointing.  It was more like a sort of indication towards that general area really...."  I don't think she understood what I said anyway, as there was a whole lot more swearing in a similar vein as before.  At this stage, my beloved stepped it.  I was relieved to realise he'd been watching.  Although, he'd probably been hoping for a bitch fight before eventually realising that I'd definitely lose. Then he copped it as well.  The spittle, more "cunts", threats of smashing in faces, etc.  However she ended with "I'm gunna call me fuckun boyfriend to come and get youse and he's a.....a......a cop!!!"  I don't think she realised that we didn't share her fear of police, and Chalky was like "Go on then, get him over here".  At that point she left and started frantically punching buttons on her phone.  By this stage I was hiding on the grass behind a fat woman eating chips, and trying to fashion a disguise from a cardigan, sunglasses and a scarf.....As I said - no medals for bravery here.  Anyway she was finally hunted down by security and escorted out - yet not before she made the sign of a gun, and finger-blew our heads off.  Her boyfriend was found hiding in the vines.  And surprise, surprise, he wasn't really a cop.

Officer Gary wondering what happened to Chantal

So, basically don't piss off a Tasmanian bogan.  And definitely don't point at them.  Once a friend asked me a while ago if I had any tips for her upcoming holiday to Tasmania.  I told her that if she was walking through Elizabeth St Mall in Hobart, and any 14 year old pregnant bogans ask her what she's looking at, she should put her eyes to the ground and power walk away as fast as possible.  She later replied that she just wanted to know some good places to eat.  Perhaps I should have saved this advice for a Swiss friend of my mine a few years ago.  "Emily, I don't understand" said poor Bernie, nursing a swollen jaw and black eye with a bag of ice.  "I have been to some of the most dangerous places in the world.  Yet I just take a little stroll through your small city on a Saturday night and look at me".  Sorry dude, what can I say?  Thanks for coming to visit me.....sorry I stood you up at Knopwoods......

I'm leaving again tomorrow.  It was short and sweet.  Absolutely not enough time to piss of any locals.  I'll be back next summer. Six weeks is surely enough time to fit in a bogan bashing or two......Especially considering I decided to have my wedding at the scene of the crime - MONA. I'm in the process of doing my invitations......Now, if I only knew Chantal's address.....

Wanna come to me wedding Chant?