… Burnie is another alarming city, a port on the northern coast of Tasmania. On my first night there, I ventured into a bar because it had the brightest light along the street. The jukebox was playing “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree”, which was my parents’ favourite. Sipping on my shandy, I was approached by a muscle-bound local, who introduced himself to me as Steve, a sheep farmer. He asked if I would dance with him. I really had to think lightning fast about what might happen if I had refused him, but I felt I really couldn’t oblige and, like a jelly in a high wind, spluttered, “perhaps later”. The moment he was out of sight, I bolted out of the bar and ran back to my nearby hotel where I bolted my door. In the morning, such was my appetite to rid myself of my unpleasant city experience I drove to the western tip of the Tasmanian island, where Aborigines were slaughtered and the Tasmanian tiger became extinct. I had come to inspect an estate that was owned by an extraordinary company that had a Royal Charter, called Van Diemen’s Land Company. But even in this rural area there was no respite from my city experience because the place was eerie. Walking through the land, I felt as if I was at a massive outdoor seance. I couldn’t wait to turn back to Burnie, which reminded me that cities do not hold exclusive rights over horribleness. It was Scylla and Charybdis. In daylight Burnie, I searched in vain for an attractive building, shopfront, or site. There were ugly cranes in the sky and ugly cruise ships that had docked by the quay, and there was a concatenation of warehouses with corrugated iron roofs and bungalows and low-rises that were poorly painted in an uncoordinated colour scheme. The beach was empty, awash with black seaweed and rubbish. I couldn’t wait to egress …
