Sometimes it seems almost every mainlander has a Tasmanian story to tell. And each story speaks of something wilder, sadder, more enraging or wondrous than most anything else in the story-teller's life.
There will be a moment of silent reflection in the telling of a Tasmanian tale that says without saying, "for better or worse that changed my life forever". The island is the extra to the continent's ordinary.
Older gay mainlanders have more than their fair share of Tasmanian stories to tell. In fact the sheer number of gay men over 60 who travelled to Tasmania in their early twenties with no fixed plans or return dates, and who wandered the island's winding roads with no destination, suggests they weren't just visiting beauty spots or escaping the summer heat.
I suspect that in their own small way they were replicating the journeys white gay men of means have been making since the eighteenth century, journeys of escape from convention to other, distant, exotic lands where they might find some freedom.
Certainly this was the goal of more recent gay immigrants to Tasmania, those green-minded gay men like by Bob Brown who came looking for the Thylacine but were really looking for themselves.
Some of the gay adventurers of the 50s and 60s were profoundly disappointed by an island in the clutches of a change-averse elite determined to drive out homosexuals and whatever innovation, creativity, shame or subversion they were thought to embody.
But most I've spoken to were entranced and inspired. Although it was homosexual oppression from which they were fleeing and homosexual freedom for which they were searching they did not need a homosexual cultural or sexual experience to find themselves. Indeed for many of these men understanding their struggle in its own terms was too confronting. They needed a symbol, a metaphor, safely removed from love and sexuality, through which to interpret their deeper needs.
Lex was one such man. I met him at Brisbane's Gay and Lesbian Fair Day on Saturday. He was attracted to the Tourism Tasmania stall I was helping staff by a large map of the island. He was staring at the West Coast when I hit him with my standard ice-breaker about whether he was planning a trip to Tassie.
"I went there years ago."
I asked if he'd spent time on the West Coast.
"I went everywhere, but I loved Queenstown."
"Not many mainlanders say that", I joked.
"It wasn't the place, it was the people, well more one person.
"One night I started talking to this guy in the Queenstown pub. He had a lot of energy in those bright blue eyes of his, and he never strayed far from talking about dams.
"He said he wanted to see them built everywhere, most of all on the East Coast. He told me about the drought they had then, and about the sheep dying and the farm labourer's kids going without shoes. He had me believing dams all up and down the East Coast was the answer to kids with dirty feet."
Lex laughed and his eyes were suddenly bright too.
"I wasn't exactly sweet on the guy. He wasn't Rock Hudson. But he had a way of looking at things that carried you along.
"Anyway, the craziest thing happened.
"I asked him what his name was and he said 'Eric'.
"Whadya do Eric?
"'I'm the Premier of Tasmania.'
"Bullsh*t, you bloody liar.
"He said, 'you ask anyone here and they'll tell you it's true. Ask my wife. Dear, what do I do for a living'.
"'You're in politics dear. You're the Premier.'
"If it had been anywhere else I would have thought it was some elaborate joke, but it was Tasmania so it was the extravagant truth."
It's easy to pass judgements on discredited visions. The vision of Tasmania as the industrial heartland of Australia, a new Ruhr Valley powered by endless cheap hydro-electricity, has received more than its fair share of mockery because it was a state-sponsored ideology hammered into the head of every Tasmanian child my age and older. It obliterated beautiful places and corrupted idealistic men.
It's harder to look beyond this to the profound sense of purpose such a vision brought to those who believed in it. To do this means questioning the sources of our own sense of purpose, and eventually the whole project of purpose.
When writers like Richard Flanagan present us with the idealism of hydro-industrialisation and the idealism of wilderness conservation, when he traces the all-too-human errors, blind spots and conceits of both, and then asks what difference, we start wondering where does meaning legitimately come from? When he narrates Tasmania's two hundred year history of cargo cults we are left to ask where are our answers if they're not all safely stowed on the next plane or boat?
If I'd had the presence of mind to ask Lex he might of said a vision is something each of us needs at some point in our lives but then most of us move on.
The man with the bright eyes so carried him along that he stayed for two years and loyally helped Eric Reece win the 1968 referendum that led to the establishment of Australia's first legal casino at Wrest Point.
Then he said goodbye to Reece, Tasmania and the meaning he found here, I assume having become the man his early life had promised he could be.
I usually ask gay men like Lex if they want to re-visit Tasmania. Some say "never" because they learnt all they could learn, or because they perversely regret the "innocence" Tasmania lost in the 1990s when it confronted and overcame its gay demons, and they don't want their memories spoilt.
But most say "yes, sometime" because they are reaching a stage of life when it's time to take stock. Lex was no exception.
"Will you go to Queenstown?", I asked him.
"Maybe, but where I really want to go is the East Coast. I want to see if there are still any kids who go without shoes."
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Monday, June 14, 2004