SASS' DIARY : DAYS FIVE - TEN

Days Six – Ten
Tuesday 7th – Sat 11th July
Students and Sustainability, Tasmania

Hitched with Polly from Devonport to Hobart with a guy from the RAAF and his son. Having worked in mining and logging he was remarkably open minded about what we were doing and about environmental issues in general… he dropped us right outside S & S lunch – all the colourful bods and yummy food! I went straight off to a most informative nuclear cycle workshop…
Polly, Loosie and I spent most of Wednesday at the Tasmanian Environment Centre – faxing, phoning and copying – then we did a small journey and walk up to Ferntree (where I got left, but immediately got a lift with a friendly local woman). …

Once Tash and Scott arrived we had a lengthy up to speed-ing meeting – which was good but as time went on people became testy with each other. We were still trying to work out systems such as accounting, what we were doing re; Councils and enviro groups, etc.

We twice announced Peace Bus stuff at plenaries : who we are, what’s been happening, fundraising, launches.. and had a resolution passed supporting us. All to positive response. We had morning and lunchtime stalls, gathered contacts, raised money and sold all the t-shirts we had in ten minutes!!

Friday we doofed under the full moon. Saturday a girl crew of bussers rode with Dave’s van on a slightly confused path to Devonport and met up with a few other individual journeyers. Andrew and Scotty dashed in at the last minute, much to our consternation after our last ferry misadventure.

On the ferry we were having our “what are we going to do tomorrow and at the launches” meeting when the S&S crew came and asked us to sing Kakadu songs with them, which we did and which was lovely. Then the suggestion was to move as a group to the bar/dance floor and sing it for the other ferry occupants. This was not successful. Bar staff wouldn’t turn off the music video so that we could be heard. We sat in a circle on the dance floor, occasionally breaking into song and dance accompanying the videos and asking/arguing with various staff until it became clear that it wasn’t happening and we left.


from personal diary:
“A Hobart path with Loosie:

Full moon shining
Down
undulating slopes of snow capped
mountain tops
rise
above the half grown trees
scattered
tramping down the curving path
in the cold
cars pass us
we laugh
hating to run.”