City's Rush to Nature's Hush

Geelong arrived a day ahead of schedule, which was not a decision so much as a parcel. The children had sent a package of things we had forgotten or not known we needed, and it was waiting at the post office with the ferry to Tasmania booked for the twenty-sixth. That left one night to collect it, resupply, and find somewhere to sleep before the crossing.

After three weeks of bush camps and backroads, Geelong was a shock. Not the town itself, which was pleasant enough, but the sheer volume of everything: traffic, roundabouts, pedestrians, car parks with painted lines and ticket machines. We had grown used to the sound of birds as background noise and the absence of anyone within earshot, and suddenly the bus was crawling through suburban streets with indicators on and a shopping list on the dash. Both of us felt the change physically, a tightness in the shoulders, a slight irritation at having to wait for things that the bush never asked you to wait for.

We collected the parcel, stocked up on groceries, and left as soon as we could. Bunjil's Lookout was a free camp above a valley not far from town, the kind of spot that looked unremarkable from the road but opened up once you pulled in. The view ran down across vineyards and grain fields to a distant quarry, with houses scattered through the green in a way that made the valley look inhabited but not crowded. A few caravans were already there when we arrived. By dusk, more had pulled in and arranged themselves along the ridge, and the camp filled quietly with the particular community of people who know how to occupy a shared space without occupying each other.

The storm came after midnight. Wind first, hard enough to rock the bus on its suspension, and then rain, heavy and sustained, hammering the roof until conversation was pointless. We lay in bed and listened to it build, and the thought neither of us said aloud was the same one: if this is what the weather does on land, what will Bass Strait be like in the morning? The Spirit of Tasmania was booked. The crossing was roughly nine hours. The strait had a reputation, and the storm outside was doing nothing to soften it.

By dawn the rain had eased but the wind had not, and we packed up with the bus still swaying and the valley below half lost in low cloud. Whatever lay ahead across the water, the mainland was behind us now. Three weeks of it, dust and heat and rivers and rain, each camp a little further from the life we had left in Aroona and a little closer to something we had not yet learned to name.Read more