Charles Wooley: On how social media reminded me just how much I love rambling on

I once wrote an informal guide to Battery Point with an old journo mate and while I might not have made a cent out of those books I certainly had a lot of fun putting them together, writes Charles Wooley.

Rambling _ adjective

1. Aimlessly wandering

2. Taking an irregular course; a rambling brook.

3. Straying from one subject to another; a rambling novel

4. A walk without a definite route, taken merely for pleasure.

If you read this newspaper online, you might have noticed a comments opportunity at the end of many features and stories.

I don’t get the need, not being a computer kind of bloke.

As far as I am concerned my computer is just a quieter typewriter which can miraculously send this column to my editor. Anything more is wasted on me.

Though sometimes, much unlike the trusty old Olivetti typewriter of my distant youth, the computer can make all my deathless prose vanish with the press of a key.

Which key I am not sure, which is why it keeps happening.

The kids say all I need to do is press ‘z’ and ‘control’ and everything will be back as it was.

Imagine if life was like that.

This week Gladys Berejiklian, Dan Andrews and even Roger Jaensch would have been pounding those keys.

But I digress.

Are you still there?

Yes, I am rambling just as a reader commented in that little box thingamajig at the end of last week’s column. I do not recommend you click on it but if ever you do you can even leave a comment of your own.

No mastery of the English language is required, should you dare venture there.

“DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STAIRS” is a warning that begins so many horror movies.

Way back I could never believe with the 1989 horror movie Pet Sematary (sic) why the kids did not take seriously Brad Greenquist’s doom-laden and deep gravelly warning that, “The barrier was not meant to be crossed.”

Of course, if humans were not foolish and feckless there would be no plots for horror movies. Nor for that matter much fodder for television news bulletins nor for newspapers. Nor any stupidities to make narky comments about at the bottom of the online article.

But any feedback can be good. The reader who said I had been ‘rambling’ (they ain’t seen nothing yet) reminded me just how much I am a shameless rambler.

I love a walk or a journey with no other intent than to wander aimlessly: the only purpose to be surprised by what is discovered and to be safely back in the restaurant or the pub by 7 o’clock.

Charles Wooley, left, and Michael Tatlow meander their way along the streets of their old sandstone town at the launch of their informal guide to Battery Point, A Walk in Old Hobart, in 2008.

For years Channel 9 indulged me and paid the cost of making documentaries that way. A wallet full of Kerry Packer’s dollars, a film crew, a 4WD and a long dusty road to sunny anywhere. It worked for a long time until I joined 60 Minutes where they wanted to know what the story was about before we left the office.

There was no point telling those control freaks, “How the hell do I know what the story is about?

“I haven’t been there yet.”

Years ago, Tasmanian journalist Mike Tatlow and I published the guidebook ‘A Walk in Old Hobart’.

We wrote it as an amiable meander through our salty old sandstone town’s history.

It was an informative ramble, taking idiosyncratic diversions into backstreets, down alleyways and historical byways, with legends, tall tales and unlikely characters thrown in.

‘Tats’ insisted it was all true.

Our readers sometimes reported getting completely lost but at the same time discovering things that were not in the script.

And that my friends surely is what the art of rambling is all about.

The point is to get lost and found in the moment.

You can pay a fortune to a therapist or you might just ramble for free.

Digressing a little more, I have just remembered one reader who fell into some road works in Kelly Street while he was walking and reading at the same time.

We only learned about it when the hapless fellow was able to follow our directions to finally limp into the Shipwrights Arms for some restoration.

We bought him a beer but these days we would have been sued.

Recently Mike Tatlow rambled off to a retirement home on the Queensland Gold Coast where his children live.

Apparently, in his removal, hundreds of copies of that dangerous walk guide ended up at the Hobart tip.

I don’t know if they made the Tip Shop bestseller list or whether only the seagulls browsed them.

'A Walk In Old Hobart' by Charles Wooley and Michael Tatlow, didn’t make its authors a fortune but was plenty of fun to write.

I still come across those books in the oddest places, mostly in the courses of my rambling.

Recently I had been showing a friend the giant trees in the Styx Valley and on the way back we dropped into the wonderful old Bush Inn at New Norfolk.

In its long 200-year history I can report this wonderful old pub has never had such an honest publican as the one I met there a few weeks ago.

“Charlie, we’ve got some money for you. Years ago, your mate left some books and we’ve sold them all and we’ve been holding your dough,” Peter the publican told me.

I promised that I would be back to spend the night upstairs in the reputedly haunted room he had just told me about. “Hold on to the money Peter and the drinks are on me when I come back.

“But don’t tell Mike Tatlow.”

To be fair, until now I never made a cent out of those books. But I did get a fortune’s worth of rambling.

And now I get to tell the story of the haunted room at the Bush Inn.

But that’s a ramble for another day.