Apples on the Apple Isle

From Liffey Falls we dropped north to Hagley, where parcels were waiting at the post office. The pickups were becoming a rhythm of their own: things ordered weeks ago from a previous life arriving at small-town counters, each one a reminder that the postal system was holding up its end of the arrangement even when we could not say with certainty where we would be collecting from next.

Five minutes past Hagley we found a paddock on the outskirts of Westbury and pulled in for the night. It was not a beautiful camp. It was a flat field with a fence and a road nearby, the kind of place that exists purely to be free and close to where you need to be in the morning. After Penstock and Liffey Falls, the plainness of it was almost refreshing. Not every night needed a lagoon.

Anth walked four kilometres into Westbury to chase geocaches through the town, and came back with a handful of finds and a Tasmanian apple eaten on the walk, the kind of small pleasure that earns its place on the Apple Isle without needing to try. Sal had the bus to herself for the afternoon, which by now was a familiar and welcome arrangement.

That evening we rewatched Dune Part One on the laptop, propped up in bed with the paddock dark and quiet outside. Part Two was screening in Launceston, close enough to reach the next day, and the prospect of seeing it in a cinema after weeks of nothing but bus screens and campfire light had been building quietly between them for days. The paddock was not the point. The paddock was the pause before the thing they were looking forward to.Read more