Serpents and Secrets

Honeycomb Caves sat in the farmland below the Western Tiers, close to Mole Creek, and we dropped down to them from the Mersey Forest camp on the last morning all four vehicles would travel together. The road was the same one we had driven two years earlier on the way to the Walls of Jerusalem, and passing through it again felt less like retracing a route than confirming a promise. The Tiers stood along the southern horizon, familiar now, their escarpment holding the plateau above like a wall built by something patient.

We camped beside the caves with Grammy and Fran alongside, the Hiace parked in its usual spot at the bus's flank. Anth spotted a geocache in the national park nearby and set off down the track to find it. He did not get far. A tiger snake lay across the path less than a metre ahead, thick-bodied and disinclined to move. Anth stamped his boots. The snake shifted enough to express displeasure but not enough to clear the way, and the two of them stood in a brief standoff that the snake won by the simple strategy of not caring. Anth came back to camp without the cache and with a story that improved with each telling. He would try again in the morning.

The caves were a short walk from the campsite, the entrance visible from the clearing, and we wandered down to them in the afternoon to find Arli, Luke and Tali already there. The same three from the Mersey Forest campfire, arrived by a separate road, standing at the mouth of the cave as though they had been waiting. Tasmania continued to fold the same people back into the same places, and by now the pattern had stopped surprising us and started feeling like a feature of the island itself. We explored the caves together, voices carrying oddly off the limestone walls, the interior cool and dark and large enough to swallow the sound of seven people talking. We parted at the entrance with the kind of goodbye that assumes a next time, though no next time was planned.

That evening a couple from a neighbouring motorhome joined the campfire, and the circle expanded one last time. Nibbles were shared, routes compared, the usual currency exchanged between travellers who will not see each other again and are comfortable with that fact. The fire crackled and the Tiers went dark behind the camp, and the conversation ran until the cold moved it inside.

It was the last night with Grammy and Fran. The three weeks had covered the Nut and the Edge of the World, the Gordon River and Maria Island, Leven Canyon and the Yolla Tavern, wombats and waffles and a hired white Hiace that had followed the golden bus through every weather Tasmania could produce. In the morning Grammy and Fran would drive to Launceston and fly home, and Anth would fly to the mainland for a trial screening on the same day, the departures overlapping in a way that gave the farewell a double weight. Sal would be alone with the bus for the first time since Forcett, but longer this time, and the solo stretch ahead of her sat in the background of the evening without being discussed.

The next morning Anth went back to the geocache before breakfast. The snake was gone. He found the cache, signed the log, and walked back through the quiet bush with the small satisfaction of a piece of unfinished business closed. The convoy drove to Launceston together for the last time, the Hiace behind the bus, the gap between them the same respectful distance Grammy had maintained since the first day at Old Mac's Farm.Read more