Red Wine Express

The CB and I lived in Tasmania, Zeehan to be precise, for three years. She taught primary school in Queenstown, Roseberry and Zeehan and I worked at the Renison tin mine and played rugby on the weekends. Tassie is a great place to visit but for us, our recent visit was a trip down memory lane also. So as we drove past Rugby Park in Hobart and I said “I played a sevens tournament there and we made the semi finals”, by the time I got to the word “tournament” I was greeted by hoots of derision emanating from my three female travel companions. The CB said she didn’t even remember. That episode was at the end of the holiday but was pretty indicative of the attitude to the rugby part of the nostalgia trip. But this is my blog so some of the memories of my glorious three year career with the West Coast Green Machine will adorn this post.

From the day we all agreed to do this trip my overwhelming desire was to have a beer at the Central Hotel in Zeehan. I have fallen off more stools in that pub than any other in the world. Okay, it was only twice (that I can remember) but the events that caused these alcohol induced plummets were indeed momentous. One was a going away piss-up for someone and I can’t remember what the other one was. I do however, remember walking into the bedroom wardrobe at home after one of these occasions. I blame the publican for locking us in after closing time.

Anyway, much to my chagrin when we got there, it was permanently closed. After a bit of research I discovered that I could have bought it for $390,000 a couple of years ago but on mentioning this to the CB, the look said it all. We would not be moving into the back room at the Central any time soon.

The Central was our rugby clubhouse before we built our own.  Actually we sited it rather than built it. Our club president was the underground manager at the nearby Mount Lyell copper mine and he happened to find a disused building which was thrown on the back of a truck and deposited on a concrete slab next to our playing arena 30km away in Zeehan. Alas, all that remains of the clubhouse is the slab. So that nostalgia trip was stymied as well.

I was two and zero as we headed out to the golf club which, great relief, was still there, still had old mine shafts in the middle of it and still looked like you could lose your ball in the middle of the fairway after the grass was mown. Notwithstanding it is still the only course where I have played in an official competition (once) and won. I then retired undefeated. The clubhouse was still there but like many of the buildings I once frequented (including our home) it was the worst for wear.

Our old house on the corner of Gellibrand and Fowell Streets had a shed where I built my barbecue from old zinc smelter bricks and the bit of fence I erected was gone. And it was blue whereas it had started out green and was pink when we left which sounds a bit like a sad version of Edward Scissorhands’ street. It was a company house so choices were limited to what you were told you would get. At $2/week rent I didn’t care what the outside looked like.

The CB got to stand outside the school room she taught in, right across the road from our house. The school seems to have done alright out of Julia Gillard’s Building the Education Revolution with a relatively new hall or gymnasium or whatever that no doubt cost five times what it would have cost if organised by non-politicians.

We drove past the shop where I was laughed at for wearing shorts on a Sunday morning in winter, having just ducked out to get the newspaper. Then there was the shop where the CB bought me the very first Australian Penthouse with the recently defected red bikini girl, Liliana Gasinskaya on the cover (and inside minus the bikini). Across the road is the Gaiety Theatre where we played basketball when it was raining too hard for rugby training. As the old-timers used to say “if you have to play in it, you should train in it”. We were wimps.

Just outside Zeehan is a particularly treacherous piece of s-bendy road which our car took, at speed, upside down one wet Saturday night. There were no wives present just three players and one of them (me) was sitting in the back of the car nursing a broken nose from that afternoon’s activities. More accurately, as we slid down the road I was sitting on the ceiling – seatbelts weren’t compulsory back then. On this recent occasion I wanted to stop and see if we could find the carton of beer which was flung into the bushes after the car was put back on it wheels. But I was out-voted. Miraculously the car, a little Mazda 808 still went. Back then what we now call hatch-backs were called fast-back cars. We had the only fast-front car in Zeehan. More miraculously, the car stayed on the road despite its unconventional trajectory and no one was hurt.

Away from Zeehan we regularly stayed at the Penny Royal Hotel in Launceston. This was our hotel of choice when we visited for rugby games. On one particular Saturday morning there, I picked up the newspaper to find out Keith Moon had died or more correctly inflicted death upon himself, inadvertently I assume. Later that morning we (there were three players and three wives there) watched the Australian Wallabies inflict a rare but incredible defeat on the All Blacks. Incredible because Wallabies loose forward Greg Cornelsen scored four tries, a feat (against the men in black) which is yet to be equalled I believe. That afternoon our team, the northern competition premiers, played the southern competition premiers and we got towelled. It was quite a memorable day.

As we drove around the state many fond memories and some not so fond (see above re Mazda 808) came flooding back. Considering the amount of rain the west coast of Tasmania gets, “flooding” is rather appropriate. Great place to visit but wouldn’t like to live there (again). No, that’s unfair. There are many nice homely spots in Tassie. Go check it out.