The Backroads to Barmah

The Murray was the first state border we had crossed since leaving Queensland, and it arrived without ceremony: a bridge, a sign, and flat country on both sides that looked no different for the change of jurisdiction. We had been aiming for Barmah National Park on the Victorian side, but recent flooding had closed the main access roads. The water had receded weeks earlier but left its mark on the tracks, and what the map showed as a straightforward route was, in reality, closed.

Anth found a way in on backroads. It was slow going. Fallen trees lay across the track in places, large enough to require stopping, assessing, and in one case reversing to find a line around. The road surface shifted between dust and mud without warning, and where the mud was soft the bus needed careful, deliberate steering to keep the wheels from digging in. Branches scraped along the sides. The Coaster was not built for this kind of driving, but it managed, and after an hour of threading through country that clearly had not seen much traffic since the floods, the campsite opened up beside the river.

It was a good spot. The Murray here was wide and slow, its surface carrying the reflections of the gums that lined both banks. We were the only ones there, which felt like a reward for the backroads. Pelicans drifted on the current in small groups, unhurried, their wingspans absurd at close range. Herons stood in the shallows, perfectly still, waiting. White spoonbills picked along the muddy edges with a delicacy that looked almost theatrical. The birdlife alone would have been worth the detour, but it was the dawn chorus that made the place unforgettable. Currawongs, magpies, corellas and cockatoos, hundreds of them, erupting from the trees at first light in a noise so dense and layered it woke us both before the alarm had a chance.

We stayed two nights. The mosquitoes saw to it that most of our time was spent inside the bus with the screens up, which turned out to be no hardship. A rhythm had started to form in those enclosed hours, one that would carry forward through the months ahead without either of us naming it at the time. Mornings were coffee and laptops: Sal working on her online business, Anth sorting photographs and writing notes. Afternoons were practical: windows cleaned, the floor swept, dust chased out of corners the road had filled. The bus was small enough that maintaining it was a short job, and that brevity left long stretches of nothing in particular, which was the point.

Evenings were the best of it. As the light went from the sky and the mosquitoes finally eased, we lit two candles on the bench and put jazz on low through the speaker. The river was audible through the screens, and the candlelight turned the inside of the bus into something that felt, for the first time, not like a vehicle we were living in but like a home we had chosen. It was a small shift, easy to miss if you were not paying attention. We were paying attention.Read more