Bittersweet Farewells and New Beginnings

The flight was late afternoon, so there was no reason to leave Gordon early and we did not. Then the run back up the channel and over the Tasman Bridge into Hobart, which we had crossed enough times by then for it to feel like arriving somewhere rather than passing through.

Sorell first, to post a parcel back to Grammy. The awning shade and the Camps Australia book, both lent to us in January when she handed them over on the understanding that she would not be needing them again. She was seventy-four and had decided that part of her life was finished.

Three weeks on the road with us undid that. She went home, thought about it, and bought a van.

So the parcel was not a return of borrowed goods so much as an admission that the loan had been made on false premises. She wanted her shade back because she was going to be sitting under it somewhere.

Shopping, a meal, and then the airport, where Anth flew out to Melbourne for a day of work that would go into the Japan fund, and Jack at the other end. Jack had spent Christmas with us in Queensland before any of this started. They had an evening of going back over things, which is what you do with someone who knew you in a previous configuration.

Sal drove to Forcett and set up at the back of the property. She had been there before, on her own, the last time Anth flew out of Hobart, so it was familiar ground in the way that only second visits are. She spent the evening working on a YouTube edit. The channel was new then and mostly an experiment, and there is something specific about sitting alone in a bus in a paddock in June assembling footage of the two of you.

Anth was back the next day, Uber from the airport, and that was the separation done.

What we had not expected was Michael. He hosts the Hipcamp, and by the second day he had stopped treating us as guests. He offered to move the bus up closer to the house so we could plug in, and told us to stay as long as we liked, with no end date attached and nothing wanted in return. It was June, the panels were losing the argument with the weather, and a week of shore power was worth more than he probably realised. People do not usually make that offer to strangers. He made it easily.

Him and Amanda both. We ended up at the local pub with them, eating steak marinated in Jack Daniels that the place is apparently known for, and there we met Ian, a cowboy with the full complement of stories and no shortage of willingness to tell them. Another day they took us into Salamanca for the markets, and afterwards to a friend's bar with live music on, the sort of thing you never find as a visitor because it requires somebody local to walk you in.

The last night was a feast in the cold. Roast lamb and roast pork, the smell of it going across the yard, everybody standing about with coats on. Michael, Amanda, Ian, Liz, us. Pool first, which our hosts won convincingly, and then the table.

That is the part of this life nobody warns you about. Not the loneliness, which we had braced for and largely not found, but the opposite problem: you keep meeting people at exactly the pace you can afford to lose them. Six days earlier Michael had been a booking on an app. Now he was somebody carving pork in a paddock and telling us to stay.

We left the next morning with Hobart ahead of us again and nothing after that on the calendar at all.Read more