Tas-Whacked

By Kathryn D'Elia

Emily McAllister didn’t know how to escape the humiliation of her fiancé cheating on her so she did the only thing she could think of – she moved to Tasmania to take up a teaching position in a Catholic high school. Emily muddles through a year of mistakes, including leaving a student behind on a bush camp and walking in on two students performing a sex act in the school bathroom. Emily is hopeless in love despite her best efforts, either attracting the affections of entirely inappropriate suitors or failing to attract the attention of the object of her own affection. Written as a series of emails from Emily to her friends back in Victoria, Tas-Whacked is the story of a woman treading her own path and making no apologies for it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: May 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781925447644

Kathryn D'Elia

Kathryn has been working as a secondary school teacher for 12 years in both Victoria and Tasmania. She has a degree in Psychology and Criminology from the University of Melbourne, as well as a Bachelor of Teaching (Honours) degree. She is currently studying a Masters degree in Literacy. She was inspired to write this story partly due to an assignment she was given for her degree and partly due to a deep-seated love of Tasmania instilled in her during her time there.

Book preview

From: Emily

Date: Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Subject: From Em, now have internets and electricity!

Well hello All,

I’m writing because I now have access to the interweb. That, and the fact that I now have electricity and have had electricity for almost eight whole hours and so feel the need to utilise it. If you were to spend two nights in a house with no electricity, you too would feel the need to utilise it.

So I’m in. The boat trip was long but interesting, not least because of the fact that I discovered I am, apparently, allergic to sea travel. It started off well enough – well, actually, it started with me somehow gaining entry to the wrong cabin. I went downstairs to find my cabin and had a great deal of difficulty operating the credit-card slot door. You know, the type you find in fancy hotels where you slide in your personal card and then the door opens? This was not working for me so after a solid ten minutes of trying I took a step backwards and fly-kicked the door. This did cause the door to open (I know, I’m still surprised – I thought this only worked on TV?), but unfortunately it also caused me extreme pain in my right ankle that has still not subsided. Possibly a broken bone in there. Damn. I hobbled into the cabin and proceeded to throw my junk around, making myself at home. Then, before heading back upstairs, I pulled out some sports tape from my handbag and taped shut the little thingie in the handle mechanism that causes a door to shut, figuring I didn’t want to go through all that rubbish with the kung-fu kicking again.

The ship itself I thought was pretty cool. There’s a restaurant, a tourist information stop, a pokies room and, I was pleased to discover, three different bars. I had a few quiet beers in the hope they would help me sleep, and at about the same time we seemed to hit some rough water.

It came on me like a rogue wave - a sudden, body-convulsing need to vomit. Now, you know I’m no sprinter, but I made it from the bar on the seventh deck to the cabin three decks below in a time that Cathy Freeman would envy. Into the cabin, into the tiny ensuite in the cabin, and then, from my mouth it went, into the tiny toilet. I was sure I had hit the rock-bottom of my life, vomiting into a toilet well below sea level on The Spirit of Tasmania. Alone, afraid, fairly sure I was going to die. After emptying the contents of my stomach (and then some), I looked up and saw what I initially assumed was the Angel of Death. What struck me was his piercing green eyes. I hadn’t realised Death was so beautiful. Perfect shiny teeth, cheeky lopsided grin, almost-black hair. And eyes that literally sparkled. Then Death spoke. In a calm and surprisingly sweet tone. Ah... hello. I’m Tim. I don’t wish to sound rude, but, ah, why are you throwing up in my bathroom?

Shite. Death had a deathly Canadian accent and, it turned out, a half-dressed woman in his cabin. Mortified, I struggled to my feet, pushed past Tim of the Incredible Green Eyes, grabbed as much of my stuff from the floor of the cabin as I could and retreated quick-smart upstairs. I heard him call gently after me, Are you OK? Do you need any help?, but his voice was fading fast as I made my getaway. So I spent the rest of the trip in a toilet upstairs on the boat, hiding out to avoid further shame. It wasn’t completely comfortable – have you ever slept on the floor of a toilet cubicle, sort of hugging the ceramic bowl while resting your head on the closed lid as a pillow? No, you haven’t? Take my advice, avoid it if you can.

I called Mum at one point, thinking she might be able to cheer me up somewhat. All she had to say was, Oh honey bear, this is the sort of thing we’d expect Cody to get himself into – drinking to excess. But at your age? Is that really appropriate?

I’m 27. Yes, it’s appropriate to be drinking to excess.

And hang on, I think it was actually sea sickness anyway. But I could tell this was an argument I had no hope of winning, so I let it go.

 I arrived in the Apple Isle on Sunday night, drove to Hadspen (just out of Launceston) and stayed at a motel. Then on to here Monday morning, where I unpacked all my stuff (three bags of clothes; a picnic set complete with plastic cutlery; six DVDs and an empty bean bag) and settled in to a flat with no electricity, no hot water, no internet - not much of anything really! Except a stupid glass front door that I will no doubt smash within a week, and a smoke detector dangling ominously from the hall ceiling that fell and smashed into my face when I checked to see if it had batteries. Evidently no batteries and I don’t think that’s all that’s wrong with it…

So Monday night was fun, in bed and reading a book by torchlight by 9.30. Bed, incidentally, at that moment being lying on my doona on the floor, covered by my sleeping bag and at one point putting a pillow underneath me because the doona just wasn’t comfortable enough. Decided at this point I will definitely not be staying here for twelve months. Twelve days is more like it!

Since getting here I’ve mostly just been doing housekeeping, which is my fancy way of saying attempting to put together furniture. The new furniture – two futons, a table and four chairs and a TV table – arrived yesterday. In boxes. Not pre assembled. Eeek!

So, I looked down at the boxes I now owned, and wondered what the hell makes people decide to renovate? Why? Apparently there is some sort of sense of achievement or something that is related to creating something? I simply don’t know.

So yesterday I built the two futons. The first one took me two hours, including a quick trip down to the furniture shop to see how the transmission on their display futon was attached. Now I don’t know about you, but I believe that:

no piece of furniture should even have a transmission and

no person as mechanically inept as me should be allowed near anything that does have a transmission.

But I digress. The first one came together OK, the second one was fully bonza, taking just 50 minutes and not even requiring instructions! I do feel, however, that bolts should be made to screw in both clockwise and anticlockwise, because when I’m using my left hand I can’t figure out which way I’m going. Also, why don’t they make all washers the same size? Then I wouldn’t have had to undo the stupid bloody bolt and redo it with the correct size stupid washer. Aahh, but the sense of achievement (which, by the way, I’m still looking for...).

That was the end of the building for yesterday, because with no electricity I again had to retire to bed with the torch by just after 9.

This morning, and all last night, there was torrential rain. The weather’s quite warm, but thunderous rain belted down and with such intensity that I could literally not hear anything else. As I lay in bed, reading a novel by torchlight at 9pm, I have to admit I was overcome with a sense of dread. If I’m honest, I’m not entirely sure what I have gotten myself into over here. I don’t know a soul, I can’t really survive on my own because I have no essential life skills such as furniture building or home maintenance, and I hate bad weather. If I am entirely honest, I am not sure that this move was the smartest decision I could have made in my life.

The negative thoughts stayed with me through the night but this morning I woke up with renewed optimism and a determination to make this work. Which, sadly, meant more building. Starting with the TV table which is actually a lamp table, because surely it will be easiest.

How wrong can a person be? The table is up (sort of), the TV is on top of it which was the aim, and the real bonus is that I still have a piece of wood left over, which I will place on top of an empty cardboard box and put in my room as a bedside table.

The dining table was easy. Essentially it just involved attaching four legs to a flat hunk of wood, so I probably should have started with it. My profound sense of happiness at finishing the table, however, did not last long. Because then I got to the chairs.

The chairs were a disaster, and I discovered that if they give you four free Allen keys with the kit, it probably means they are not the highest quality Allen keys available.

The first two chairs took about four years, mostly because the backs have five ‘spindles’, which are round spikes of wood that start at the back of the seat and splay out towards the curved outside of the back of the chair. In order to put the spindles in, you need to push them simultaneously down into the groove for them at the bottom and up into the groove for them at the top, which naturally is just shorter than the length of the spindle which is what holds them in place. I almost punched myself in the face while trying to get the last one on the second chair in, at which point I devised an excellent plan: last night my phone battery went dead right in the middle of a message to Morgan, so I drove around to the school and introduced myself to the receptionist and asked if I could charge my phone there, as I still had no electricity. Then I came home, built the next two chairs in ten minutes flat (if you come to visit, don’t sit on those two) and by the time I went to pick up the phone the electricity bloke had come and gone and I was up and online. Mood picked up tenfold immediately.

Overall I’m counting today as a win; there was one small tiny negative when I accidentally mounted the kerb on the way home but so far the tyre appears to have survived that incident, all of the furniture appears to be built and the unit is now serviced by electricity and water, the two basic amenities one needs to survive. Feeling positive.

Love loads and loads,

Em.

From: Emily

Date: Friday, 6 February 2015

Subject: My new workplace.

Well, I’ve finished my first week of work, and overall I’d have to say it’s been pretty successful.

The first two days there were no kids, they were just staff days. I was feeling a little overwhelmed, there were a lot of new people to meet and a lot of information to take in. And, as always, a lot of faux pas on my behalf. But I’m still alive and haven’t been sacked yet, so that’s a bonus.

There are two young teachers in my office, Andie and Ella, who were really friendly and have already made me feel very welcome. They are going to take me out for a few drinks this weekend to show me some of the local nightlife, at a community event here called Festivale, and Andie has already told me of a few local sports clubs I might like to try out to meet some more people. She’s a PE teacher and I get the impression she may also be a pretty hard core gym junkie; she has outrageously impressive calf muscles and when she walks I have to jog to keep up. Ella is leaving halfway through this year, moving to the UK for two years to teach over there, which is a real pity because she is a dynamite Science teacher.

The other people at work are also generally quite friendly. There’s also a guy called Alistair who has helped me a bit with Science, and a guy who thinks he’s pretty special named Evan whose old desk I have moved into because he’s moved offices; and a rather cute fellow who we shall refer to as Mitch the Fairly Hot Office Guy who seems to be quite flirty. Evan thinks he is brilliant because he knows more about IT than me – which is sort of like saying a trained dog is brilliant because they, too, would know more about IT than me. He spent almost fifteen minutes this morning telling me how good his watch is because it has a USB port in it that he can plug straight into the computer. He didn’t actually tell me why he’d want to do this nor did he realise I tuned out after the first minute, but that was OK, he seems to like the sound of his own voice. He did get a little irritated later on in the day when Andie asked him about the bump under his shirt; turns out he wears a heart rate monitor all day that somehow transmits information to his cyber special watch. Gadget freak. 

Thankfully there isn’t really anybody that I passionately hate just yet, so I’m certainly counting that as a win.

Unfortunately, there was a mild situation that occurred yesterday that I could have handled better, but I guess there were bound to be some road bumps at the start. I have a Year 10 Science class with some fairly rowdy boys who I think will prove to be a handful. I decided the best way to deal with them was to dazzle them right from the beginning, so that they’d think I was cool and really smart. I figured the most impressive thing I could show them would be a classic sodium-in-water explosion, because that usually intrigues and impresses dopey teenage boys (or, in Cody’s case, dopey 23-year-old boys). So I went in with my big demonstration to show them and discovered two things – firstly, Year 10s aren’t likely to be placated by being shown a demonstration, they wanted to let me let them do it themselves. Secondly, when you drop sodium into water expecting a spectacular explosion, you should probably consider where the debris will end up – and, specifically, whether or not the flying debris might cause physical harm to a student. I don’t know if you’ve ever dropped sodium in water, but if you haven’t, it causes a fairly remarkable reaction where the metal sodium will actually explode and catch on fire. It is a sure-fire way (no pun intended) to impress in a Science lab. Unfortunately, the chunk of sodium I used was probably a little too big, and I didn’t really think the whole demonstration through fully before beginning. I finally had the kids willing to watch what I was doing, and they had crowded around the beaker at the front of the room. The sodium dropped in, the sodium caught fire, the kids ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ appropriately, the sodium exploded as I expected… and then, in a way in which I did not expect, a small hunk of the sodium exploded out of the beaker and landed on the Smartboard – a very expensive whiteboard/projector at the front of the room – and burnt it. I wish that was the end of the badness in this story. Unfortunately, it is not. There is a kid in my class named Tobias who, it turns out, did not want the burning sodium to damage anything else, so he bent down to