At the 1982 Commonwealth Games, even the mechanical kangaroo known as Matilda was in on the gag, flashing a knowing wink to her fellow mainlanders as the ensemble of performers formed the shape of the nation’s coastline, sans the map of Tassie.
Yesterday, the people of Tasmania turned these long years of disregard into a virtue. In light of the corona chaos, it told Australia: We will decide who comes here and the circumstances under which they come. No one will be in like Flynn upon lobbing in Hobart.
Tassie has cut itself off from the mainland and will go it alone, for the next fortnight at least.
Why stop there? The prospect of the Apple Isle rising above mere statehood and achieving nationhood would be the most entertaining constitutional development since West Australian wheat farmer Leonard Casley crowned himself the Prince of the Hutt River Province.
There’d be a great fight about whether to locate the capital in Hobart or Launceston, an even bigger brawl about whether they served Boag’s or Cascade in the member’s dining room, and the delicious prospect of Jacqui Lambie becoming its first head of state.
Her first ceremonial duty would be unveiling a new national currency, the Boony, the highest denomination being a $53 note in honour of the tinnies the great man consumed while travelling on a flight route that used to exist between Sydney and London.
These are strange times for our great Australian Federation. In Queensland, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is considering using the ban on indoor gatherings of 100 to suspend this year’s state election, prompting the late Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen to look down from on high and wonder: “Why didn’t I think of that?”
In my home state of South Australia, Premier Steven Marshall has been ringing talkback desperate to kill off mad rumours that SA is about to do a Tassie and go it alone too, even though it could achieve economic superpower status overnight as home of the Kimberly-Clark toilet paper factory.
On Kangaroo Island, there is genuine speculation it could also go down the Tasmanian path, which makes perfect scientific sense. In Kingscote, Ozone Hotel general manager Mary Lou Corcoran told me this week that locals on the coronavirus-free Island had been talking about turning it into a sanctuary for humans: “I’m not sure if it’s what we call a kangarumour over here, but a lot of people have been talking about it.”
Kangaroo Island’s mayor, Michael Pengilly, has heard the rumour, calling it “total bullshit … I wish I could round up the halfwits who start this sort of rubbish on social media and ship them to Antarctica until we’re through this”.
You could, mayor, but you’d have to get them through Fortress Tasmania first.
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For decades, Tasmanians have been understandably miffed at being a forgotten footnote in our Federation, regularly insulted by being left off the national map.