"The Crazy Women" of Launceston

I left the comfort of Jenny and Bronte's home in the Huon Valley and headed to my next host.

Yvonne Gulyas. Fiftysomething. Lives in Launceston, northern Tasmania.

A single women with many life experiences and more than willing to tell her about her son who had got mixed up with the wrong kind of people, her intertwined relationships with men, her achivements and passions all within the first ten minutes of meeting her.

This was a truely extraordinary women. Needless to say, she had AHD.

Upon meeting her, I didn't know whether to be amazed at the amount of words and different conversation topics she could get out in one breathe or to run for the hills. I don't even believe that I got more than two words in during the first couple of days I stayed with her.

She was a poet, a writer, had previously been a journalist and now owned had her catering business. A crazy women, but her heart was in the right place.

I was volunteering for new experiences, and by joe staying with Yvonne was definitley an experience.

She'd lived in China for four years, had four children, grew up in sydney and relocated to Tasmania. She'd had her life theatened by a previous boyfriend hurling a knife, won poetry prizes, had love affairs with her best friends man, worked on chinese tv, trained as a chef, went to school in Malaysia, lived in Bali and took pride in telling me she had 'cancelled christmas' and was heading back there for a the festive peroid.

This women was something else.

She was loud. She was crass. She was one of a kind.

Her house was messy, but it was an organised chaos. She had a cat she mothered and a stray she fed. She housed two chinese students, both lovely people.

An odd family life but never a dull moment.

The 10 days I stayed with her were never boring. In the evenings I spent most of my time in my room, enjoying the peace and quiet and the ability to hear my own thoughts or chatted with Rachel, one of the students, answering her many grammar questions and helping with her pronouncation of English.

A couple of evenings she had guests for dinner which was nice. She was a very sociable person and she shone when she had company. Another evening we also attended one of her poetry nights, where she met up with a group of local poets and they shared their writings over a few drinks at a local pub which I found very interesting. It was also nice to see her in her element, almost like seeing a wild animal in the wildness. Her personality shone there too.

So as I said it was certainly an experience meeting Yvonne, and certainly not one I would forget in a hurry.