Road Grime to Lakeside Prime

We drove west from Dunalley and passed through Forcett without stopping, though both of us glanced toward Michael's farm as it went by. It had been a few weeks since Sal had driven the bus there alone for the first time, and the place already carried a small history.

Sorell was a supply run. Chocolate, mostly, and the essentials that justified the chocolate. The road from there followed the same route we had taken weeks earlier on the way to Penstock, the landscape familiar enough now to feel like retracing rather than discovering. Past the Penstock turnoff we kept heading west into country we had not driven before, the highlands giving way to farmland and the sky settling into the low grey that Tasmania wears when the temperature is dropping.

Hamilton offered water and a one-dollar hot shower at the public amenities, which Anth took without hesitation. Days of the recirculating shower outside the bus had their charm, but a dollar for hot water with pressure behind it and a door that locked was a bargain he was not going to overthink. He came out cleaner than he had been in a week and said so, unnecessarily.

Meadowbank Lake appeared in the late afternoon, the campsite set above the water with a view that opened up as the road dropped toward it. We parked with Grammy's Hiace alongside and had the place to ourselves for the first hour before other travellers began filling the sites behind us. The maps came out over dinner, the route to Strahan traced in pen across the western half of the island. Grammy's second cruise was waiting there, the Gordon River this time, and the anticipation of it sat quietly alongside the cold that was now arriving each evening with real intent. We layered up, closed the bus doors early, and felt, for the first time since arriving in Tasmania, that winter was not a distant idea but something walking toward us.Read more