Streamers on the Handlebars

Ben Lomond National Park was full when we arrived, or so it appeared. The afternoon was getting late and every site on the loop road had something parked on it, and by the time we had driven the full circuit without finding a gap the mood in the bus had turned from hopeful to flat. Then we came around a bend and saw the group.

Five men, most of them bearded, a couple shirtless, arranged around a camp in a way that did not immediately suggest a welcoming committee. Something in a flagon was being passed between them. Sal's first instinct was to keep driving. Anth slowed the bus anyway, because the only open ground left was beside them, and before either of us had decided what to do a voice carried across the clearing: "G'day mates, set up right here, plenty of room."

The relief was instant. They were postie-bike riders, a group of blokes on a week-long lap of Tasmania on the small, low-powered motorcycles that Australia Post uses for mail delivery. One of the bikes had streamers on the handlebars, which told you everything you needed to know about the seriousness of the expedition. They were fathers, tradesmen, weekday workers spending their leave doing something pointless and joyful on machines that topped out at sixty kilometres an hour. We parked beside them and within minutes were sitting around their fire with drinks in hand and the mosquitoes circling.

The evening ran late. Stories came easily, the kind that men on a trip together tell when they have an audience that is not their wives: exaggerated, self-deprecating, delivered with the timing of people who have been making each other laugh for years. The fire crackled and the mosquitoes bit and nobody moved inside until the cold made sitting still uncomfortable. It was the best campfire night since the Yolla Tavern, and it had arrived from the last place we expected.

They left the next morning, engines buzzing like lawnmowers, bound for eight days of gravel roads and pub stops. The campground felt quieter for their going, but the site was ours now, and what it offered was considerable: flushing toilets, running water, and a location inside the national park with Ben Lomond's ridgeline visible from the bus window. We stayed a week.

The days settled into a routine that was becoming familiar: mornings at the laptops, afternoons outside if the weather allowed, pancakes when the mood struck. We edited video, wrote content for the online business, and kept a hopeful eye on the scrub for wombats that never appeared. Ben Lomond is known for them. They knew we were there and chose not to confirm it.

Midweek an English couple pulled in, Mark and Stacey, nomads like us, originally from somewhere in the south of England and now years into a travelling life in Tasmania. They had the quiet authority of people who had been doing this long enough to know where the good spots were, and over a few hours of conversation they shared places we had not heard of and would not have found without them. The tips went into the notebook alongside the ones from Helen, from Ros and Mike, from Mick. The list was growing, fed by every person who stopped long enough to talk.

On the last day we hiked. Not Jacob's Ladder, the switchback road to the summit that the bus had no interest in climbing, but a trail nearby that climbed through forest to a ridgeline view without requiring anything mechanical. The walk was steep in places, the air noticeably thinner than the lowlands, and the view from the top ran south across the highlands in a way that made the week below feel small and well spent.Read more