Tasmania Transition
When I reached my sixth month in New Zealand, time was truly lost on me. It faded to some past notion that I had no relationship with and only faint reminders if someone mentioned "Monday's." The living structure of a week had been (and still is) completely annihilated. This precious experience was made all the more poignant when arriving in Tasmania. In my NZ time warp, I had no concept of how long I had been gone or living around Kiwis and what sort of impact it had made. It was striking, however, the moment I began my first conversation with my Australian hosts. As soon as I said "Hi" I hit some sort of verbal wall. When I spoke, my subconscious adaptation of an accent (some say I have a little Kiwi fringe) was not understood or returned. I was now surrounded by phrases like "As you do" and "Thank you very much" after sentences in place of "Sweet as" or "Yah, nah." I became keenly aware of how each sentence or commentary I made started with "In New Zealand…" Every. Time. Basically, I was in culture shock immediately. Some say TAS is like NZ (they are most likely connecting the wine lands and mountains, the quiet small town feel of an island territory), but arriving straight from a solid year of NZ environment and Kiwi immersion made the differences enormous. They are not the same. The vegetation of abundant eucalyptus and pepper berries encountered on my bush walks (no longer called "tramping") made the air feel somehow dryer. Long strips of eucalyptus bark scattered on the ground or half peeled on the trunks revealed warmer orange colors and seemed to match the common encounters with a red/orange dirt staining my boots. Even when driven into more lush and dense bush environments, my eye still noticed the contrast of ferns and lack of common NZ bush plants (read my Rangiora leaf poems). It was a wall of green I couldn't recognize or name. At higher altitudes, the harsh winds and winter environment (sometimes it can snow in summer in the Highlands) keep plants small and contained revealing stunning pinnacle rock formations at Mount Wellington or Ben Lomond National Park. The rocks hold a tinge of brick red coloration when wet and light tanned oranges when dry while naturally placed about the mountain as if someone had bulldozed them up into one pile during construction. But each rock formation is completely natural and nothing like anything I encountered in NZ. Even the glowworms were a slight faint green vs. the bright turquoise scattered ceilings of NZ caves; the dark underworld belly of TAS holding enormous cathedral lit openings far more spacious and grand then the small crevasses I had jimmied myself through at Waipu. And that's only the mountains and flora. Let's not forget the fact that wallaby carcasses are strewn about the country roads every 5 meters, possums are protected - not shot (read "On the Hunt" blurb), and there is the Tasmanian devil, the spotted-tail quoll, the wombat (who's square poo seems like miniature horse poo), echidna, platypuses -- the fauna list goes on. Living in a wildlife of just birds for a year, seeing wild marsupials hop across the road every 10 min. is a shocker. Any sort of poo on a track is awe inspiring. If I hadn't spent much time outdoors in NZ, perhaps these contrasts would be slight and I would walk away observing TAS/NZ similarities (the thylacine modern day sightings slightly mirror NZ's moa hopes). But there is no escaping the devastating contrasts of Tasmanian convict history at Port Arthur or the few remnants of an exterminated people found in museums. It is striking to pass these monuments and mementos of the last people solely of TAS Aboriginal decent while touching my Māori hand carved koru necklace made by the present and living. No. Tasmania, the "down under of the down under," is definitely not like New Zealand "across the ditch." You feel it the moment your feet touch the ground.
