The Wall We Didn't Expect

The road west from Meadowbank climbed steadily into the highlands, the farmland dropping away as the altitude rose and the air thinned. A small marker by the roadside turned out to be the geographical centre of Tasmania, an unremarkable spot on an unremarkable stretch of road that somehow felt worth stopping for. We stood beside it for a minute, looked around at country that appeared no different from the country a kilometre in any direction, and drove on with the pleasant sense of having been to the middle of something without needing to make anything of it.

Grammy's voice came through the UHF as we neared Derwent Bridge. She had spotted a sign for The Wall and wanted to stop. Anth had not heard of it. Grammy had, or had read about it somewhere, and her enthusiasm on the radio left no room for driving past. We turned in and parked beside what looked, from the outside, like an agricultural shed set back from the road in thick bush.

Inside was something else entirely. The Wall is a series of monumental panels carved from Huon pine, each one depicting scenes from Tasmania's highland history: the timber workers, the dam builders, the animals, the land itself. The carvings were detailed enough to stop conversation. Figures emerged from the wood with expressions and postures that carried weight, and the smell of Huon pine filled the shed with a sweetness that made the space feel warmer than it was. Grammy moved along the panels slowly, reading every plaque. Fran stood in front of one section for so long that Sal eventually came back to check on her. None of us had expected this, which was part of why it worked.

We followed it with scones, jam and cream beside a fireplace in the cafe next door, the kind of indulgence that belongs to cold-weather Tasmania and nowhere else. The warmth of the fire and the weight of the scones made leaving feel like a negotiation, but the afternoon was running short and the campsite was waiting.

The camp sat beside the Derwent River near Derwent Bridge, and the landscape around it had an odd, unsettled quality. A dried lakebed stretched out from the shore, its surface broken by the pale trunks of dead trees standing upright in the mud, their branches gone, their shapes preserved like something between a forest and a memorial. We parked near the water's edge with Grammy alongside and walked the lakebed at dusk, looking for wombats in the fading light. None appeared. The Maria Island magic had not followed us back to the mainland, and the droppings along the track continued to promise what the animals themselves would not deliver.

The fire that evening was not optional. The temperature was dropping in a way we had not felt before on the trip, a steady, deliberate cold that came down from the highlands and did not ease after dark. We sat around the flames until sitting still became colder than moving, and retreated to the bus with frost forecast at one degree. It arrived. The coldest night since we had left Queensland, the windows fogged by morning, and the promise of winter that had been walking toward us at Meadowbank Lake took another step closer.Read more