It's a disgrace

I know, I know.

I've no excuse for failing to add to my previous entries but I just haven't felt inspired and have felt time to be a rather more precious commodity of late.

I seem to recall making a list of future areas of exploration and for want of something better I'll start with the first one which was Death On The Island.

I was being driven to work just after 5.30 on the morning after the AFL Grand Final. We had only been driving for two minutes when we came to a Police roadblock which may be a familiar sight to those of you living in communities with more than one Police car but around here it is quite something. We we're turned around and told to take a detour as the road was closed. Sarah, who was giving me a lift, asked what had happened and was told that there had been a hit and run.

I assumed that it was one of the casual workers who stand on that section of road every morning in the hope of thumbing a lift from one of the line of cheese workers fortunate enough to have a car but once we arrived at the factory no one in my department was unaccounted for.

News trickled in as the day progressed. We heard first that the victim as dead and subsequently that he was a thirty six year old man. We also heard that he had been hit at around three in the morning but hadn't died until five. This was gruesome news but seemed unlikely as it would be hard to verify as the driver had not been found.

For someone in such a small community to hit a pedestrian and not stop is quite unbelievable, the chances of getting away with it must be pretty much nil as there is no way to get a car off the island other than on a weekly cargo ship and judging by the paint markings which the Police used to illustrate the path of the deceased's body the car would be clearly damaged. (Having said that, most of the cars here are fitted with roo-bars so perhaps there wouldn't be too many indications of the event).

We break for lunch at around ten and it was then that the news started to go around that it was a cheese factory worker who had been killed. I didn't know him but he was called Boags, named after a Tasmania beer. Although scant details have been published of the case it appears he was making his way back from the pub sometime after 3.00 am and was hit by someone leaving town, possibly coming from the same pub.

Drink-driving is pretty much accepted over here. I don't like it as I've been successfully indoctrinated by the many drink-driving ad campaigns in the UK but no one here seems to give it a second thought. Several people are caught and banned but I've heard rumours that they are repeat offenders or behaved in such a way as to give the Police no choice in the matter. One friend of mine told me that he was driving from the pub to the club (which is a distance of something like fifty meters) when he was stopped and when asked to get out of the vehicle he was unable to stand up. It would have been a bit difficult to turn a blind eye to such excess but as there is no public transport and only one cab people who live out of the main town have little choice if they want to drink and get home.

Boags' girlfriend worked in the factory also so there were quite a few upset people once the news started to spread, I decided to finish my lunch early and get back on the factory floor and out of the way.

We were called in for a "huddle" which is (in my opinion) a reprehensible euphemism for a meeting and were told by the manager that we should look out for one another and that anyone feeling unable to work should speak to their boss and then go home.

On the next day they organised for someone from the hospital together with the local vicar to come and give a talk on grief counseling. The counselors were rather taken aback with the number of people who attended the meeting and opened with a comment about how popular Boags must have been, little did they realise that we weren't told it was a meeting about Boags, we were just told to go to another 'huddle'. I was impressed however with the effort put in as it wasn't what I expected from the management of the factory.

It was a couple of days later that the driver was revealed. He was a local man (as opposed to Boags who hadn't lived here for the mandatory five generations in order to qualify as local) and unsurprisingly used to work at the cheese factory also. We've not heard anything since so I presume more will be revealed when it goes to court.

Boags' funeral was in Tasmania and a couple of the workers attended. They also had a ceremony for him down at the dock which was apparently pretty well attended. I haven't heard his name mentioned since although it's still written in pen on his locker.