Ferry to Catch

by Joseph Ashmore (Italy)

Making a local connection Australia

I left a Hobart looking its best, autumnal sun beaming through reddening leaves, but not so much as to banish the chill from the air; small clouds of breath preceding the faces on the street. In the harbour was reflected a clear blue sky, and Mt Wellington sat tirelessly watching. After four weeks hitching down Tasmania’s east coast, it was finally time to head back to the mainland. Later that day, in fact, I had the ferry booked, so I’d set myself something of a challenge: to hitch hike the length of the island, south to north, and reach the ferry in Devonport by afternoon. Luckily Tasmania is not so big. I took a bus out of the city to the suburbs, walked a little while on the outskirts, and where the houses became sparse and the road led up into pine forest, I stuck out my thumb, and waited. Tassie had been good to me – the perfect contrast to life in the big city. The people were warm and curious and welcoming. I was never waiting long beside the road. That day I met a man called Robert, an ex-traffic policeman who'd worked in every state. Best of all, he was going all the way to Devonport. “One of my first days we turned up to a car crash where two young fellas and their girls had crashed and the car had gone up in flames - completely incinerated. After the fire-blokes had finished we had to get the bodies out, and that's real tough cos a burnt body’s rock solid,” he mimed the position of the driver, arms rigid on the wheel. “So you have t’break em up to get em out.” It is one of life’s greatest joys for me, to see how willingly people open up to a stranger in the passenger seat. “Well, course after Vietnam, I could handle it. I saw lots of things there, did lots of things a person wouldn't normally do,” said Robert. He was opening up, but people are not like oysters, requiring a stab and a twist to relinquish juicy innards; memories must be shared, not extracted. “War is hell... whilst having fun!” He chuckled. “They were good times; I remember my first jump - boy, what a thing that was!” He was full of boyish energy. “You have one dummy rip, where the ripcord pulls automatically. Second time it's just you. Y’jump out and y’dropping at 180 feet a second and y’thinking 'Shit, whadda do next?!' and you remember the ripcord and y’grab it-” He raised his right hand off the wheel and clenched the imaginary cord at his collar, “-one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, and y’pull it and y’realise y’been screaming the whole blahdy time and every bugger around yah's been screamin', and the skies are fulla screaming blokes!" He laughed and hammered the wheel four or five times with the palm of his hand. "Yeah, they were good times alright." In Australia and New Zealand they commemorate their armed forces with Anzac Day. It had recently passed, and I asked Robert about it. “For fifteen years after I retired I never went t’the Anzac services. When I first got back from Vietnam I had balloons fulla red paint thrown at me - students protestin' the government. Course, we didn't decide t’goda war; nobody wanted t’goda Vietnam, but I had my men and when it was ah turn it was ah turn.” “Twelve months, and after I had therapy for ten years. Those kinda experiences stay with yah forever. If I’m stressed I dream at naht and-” he snapped his fingers “-I'm right back there. I still see someone ev’ry two weeks, an' that's... Blimey, fordy-seven years since I left Vietnam.” “They use to call it 'battle fatigue', and before that it was called LMF: lacking moral fibre." He shook his head lightly. "Only someone who never served on the ground could say that." Before we parted ways Robert insisted on buying me a pie for the road. Brushing off the crumbs, I shouldered my pack, shook his hand and thanked him. I had a ferry to catch, a continent to explore, full of people and stories.