Yeah. I got some explaining to do.
I’ll start by admitting that my countrymen and I don’t know doodly-squat about Australia. And especially the southern-most state of Australia, Tasmania.
So, since I did the long flights to get myself to the other side of the planet, I will fall on the grenade and give y’all a primer on the whole Down-Under thing.
And first lesson. I’ve not heard anyone here refer to Australia as Down-Under. I think that’s just something for the tourists.
Second… Australia has states. Just like ‘Merica has Kansas and Mississippi and Texas.
Tasmania is one of those states, and it’s also an island.
Think of Hawaii, except the size of Florida, with around the same amount of people as five Woodstocks.
And instead of flat swamps and invasive vermin like Florida, Tasmania has mountains and rivers and cliffs and beaches and, and, and… With a fraction of the people. Most of Tasmania is pretty wild. No roads, no houses, nobody. It’s pretty refreshing. I’d assume that no matter how long you live here, you feel like a temporary guest. Tasmania has been here for millions of years before you and will remain after you turn to dust.
Let’s start with The Monk.
That’s me.
This is all part of my wild-hair idea to wander around the planet and Hunter S. Thompson myself into the Hell’s Angels, except I’m doing it in distilleries, which are far safer. I don’t imagine some distiller will stomp me at the end. I put myself into Tasmania, and I’ve been living here for about three weeks now. My first engagement/placement/landing zone has been McHenry Distilling on the southern-most point of Tasmania. The Peninsula, they call it. It’s an utterly foreign, yet very familiar place. The people I’ve met have all been wonderful. Kind, happy, living great lives. Just like you’d meet anywhere you go when you take the time to get to know them. They’re a bit like Texans, but they talk funny.
I’ve been living up in The Bothy for three weeks now. Bothy is an old Scottish term for a little cabin out in the hills that a herder or hiker might stay in for a bit, to avoid bad weather or to live for the season before going back to village life.
No TV. No Interwebs. But a kitchen and a fireplace and a miraculous hot shower with water from the artesian spring a hundred meters away, and it’s all solar powered. Otherwise, off any kind of grid.
It’s the perfect place for someone with an alarmingly short attention span to actually accomplish something.
So every night, I gather up some firewood from one of the piles at the bottom of the mountain, throw it in the back of the truck, bumble my way up the steep dirt road, unload the wood, chop up some kindling, and build a fire.
On cold nights, the first hour of being home is cold until the fire cranks up. I pull the chair up close to the stove and fiddle with the wood, using an old piece of rebar, until it’s throwing out enough heat. Then I write. Edit video. Write more. Everyone I know on the other side of the planet is in a vastly different time zone, so for a few hours, no distractions.
I might have a little glass of McHenry’s whisky, and I might cook something with a pot on the woodstove.
But other than that, that’s my life. Go to bed pretty early. Wake up somewhere in the middle of the night. Talk to folks back home. Go back to sleep. Take a miraculous hot shower and go down the hill.
It’s a bloody monastery.
I just need a long robe with a hood, which would be warm. I get the long monks’ robes.
It’s pretty nice, actually. To just carve out a chunk of life as a little monk. I highly recommend it. Clear the modern world out of your head for a while and think new thoughts. I’ll work on levitation next week.
Now… The Bogan.
New term for all us ‘Mericans.
A Bogan is Australian slang for what we might call a “redneck.”
Maybe mix in a little mullet haircut for finishing style.
Now, I don’t know if a bogan knows they’re a bogan and embraces their boganness or if it’s something one bestows on others. I’m still trying to work that out. I was in a pub the other night in Port Arthur with a friend, and there were a lot of guys quaffing cold beers who obviously didn’t wash their clothes up before hitting the bar.
“Those guys all bogans?”
“Oh, most certainly.”
Now back in Texas, being a Redneck is a big source of pride, and true rednecks would, if they did this kind of thing, tattoo “REDNECK” on their foreheads in case there was any doubt.
I suspect I’ve met plenty of bogans. Nice folks. Occasionally, the accent can be hard to decipher, just like it might in East Texas, “Where Jee-umm is a two-syllable word…”
Now Wombats.
Seriously, who doesn’t love a wombat. How is it possible not to love a wombat? I’ve seen plenty. And I even saw a devil last night on the dirt road home. I’ve seen four kangaroos, although they’re all around my cabin, so it could be the same kangaroo. They all look alike to me. And wallabies. You can’t open your eyes without seeing a wallaby here. And you can’t walk anywhere green without seeing Tasmanian Tootsie Rolls all over the ground.
Tasmanian Tootsie Rolls are wallaby turds.
I made that up.
And Ted.
Ted has been my roommate up in The Bothy.
He’s a huntsman spider with long, spindly legs that is always just hanging around. With his legs out, he’s around the size of the palm of my hand, and he’s mostly legs that he doesn’t really know how to use. When he walks, he’s perfectly spiderly, but when he’s just sitting on a wall or door, his legs look all tangled up.
He cares little for appearances.
And he’s always visible. He doesn’t bother to hide. We had a long talk, well, I talked, and he listened. I told him that he’s welcome so long as I don’t wake up and he’s on my forehead. That would be a deal breaker. Other than that, he’s a fine roommate. And apparently, this is a common viewpoint here in Tasmania. I’ve had plenty of conversations with locals who let them be. “They eat other bugs, so we don’t bother them.”
They’re a bit like an insect Roomba.
They sleep or meditate or sit with their long legs all tangled up, and contemplate the complexities of the universe most of the time, and occasionally find a new spot and eat a bug on the way.
Ted is welcome. He’s quiet and never borrows the car keys.
So we’ve covered all those bases. Monk. Bogan. Wombat. Bothy.
But what about Australian culture, you ask?
I’ll stumble around that for a while.
It seems there are a lot of big differences between Australian culture and governing and American culture and governing.
I can’t go too deep here without doing a bunch of scholarly research on the interwebs, which I can’t get up on this mountain, but I don’t give a Tasmanian Tootsie Roll about scholarly research.
But I can give you my unscholarly impressions.
I think Australians are happier than Americans.
I’ve had a lot of long conversations with Bill McHenry about the hiring and employee culture here. It seems everyone can make enough money to live a decent life. I may be wrong, but that seems to be the impression. People get a job, do their job, make enough money to afford a life, and there isn’t the madness of having to live in a van down by the river.
If they get sick, they can go to a doctor.
There is a safety net here, so the pressure isn’t as great.
Maybe it’s different in the big cities, but most everyone I’ve met here in Tasmania is from a big city.
People here get paid vacations. They get more to work on Sunday. If you own a company and you hire people, you will spend more on them than back home. Bill feels that pain, but he also realizes it’s a fair system for everyone. We’ve talked about the “hustle or die” mentality back home, and he says it’s just a foreign idea here. The society as a whole feels more like it’s a society as a whole, whereas back home, people don’t feel connected to each other. Americans are all an army of one. We’re in it for us because if we don’t hustle, it’s that van down by the river.
There isn’t much mercy in American culture, unless it’s the made-for-TV mercy of a rich someone giving trinkets to a poor nobody and posing while they do it.
But on the other hand, hiring someone who feels safe in their job and who can make enough to live means there isn’t the hustle you might see back in the US.
That bogan-filled pub? Two bartenders. Both efficient but lacking in charm or hustle. They don’t get tips, so there’s no reason to engage people.
What can I get you… Here you go… I’m gonna go look at my email.
I get it. And I see why Americans do so much outrageous stuff. We’re all one step away from that van down by the river. We HAVE to hustle. We’re so far from comfort we can’t stop swimming. And even if we get rich, we’re still hard-wired to hustle because nobody loves you, and that van down by the river is waiting.
I get it, and I understand both, but I think the Australian system is a little better. It’s certainly more civilized. The people seem a little happier. As an employer, it might be tougher to get rich because you have to be nice, but the society it produces is kinder.
Even the bogans seemed in a good mood because whatever job they had, they could afford a decent life.
And the wombats seem quite cheerful, and Ted, the Akimbo-Legged Huntsman, is quite content.
