Solitude's Embrace at Marion Lookout

Fortescue Bay had given us what it was going to give us, so we sat in the bus with WikiCamps open and worked north.

The plan was loose. Sal had a flight to Brisbane in three weeks, going up to see family while Anth was at CMAX, and until then the idea was to work our way up the east coast picking off whatever we had not seen. After seven months on this island that was a shorter list than it used to be. Marion Bay Lookout came up on the map about half an hour north, past Dunalley, free camping right at the lookout. We had driven past the turnoff two years earlier on the way to the Three Capes Track without giving it a thought.

Half an hour later we were parked with the day barely started.

There was nobody else there. Not a quiet camp with a few vans in it, nobody. This is what Tasmania does in July: the free camps that are full in January have one bus in them. And a lookout camp is the one place where where you park genuinely matters, because the whole reason the site exists is the view off the edge of it. We spent five minutes getting the angle right so the windows faced out, which you only do when there is no competition for the spot.

Then we worked. The sun in late July has very little heat in it but it was clear and unobstructed and the panels took what there was, which after Fortescue Bay's canopy was a relief. Two laptops, the online business, a long quiet afternoon of the kind of work that has to happen for any of the rest of it to be possible. We would look up, and there was the water, and then back to the screen.

That is a thing worth saying plainly, because these entries tend to be about walks and mountains. Most days are not that. Most days are two people working in a parked vehicle with a good view, and the reason the view is good is that we chose where to park, and the reason we could choose is the work.

The night was clear and the stars came out properly, no town anywhere near enough to interfere.

In the morning we drove on, and turned the drive into a geocaching day. There is a particular rhythm to that: pull over, walk twenty metres, feel around under a guard rail or behind a sign, find it or fail, sign the log, drive on. Some of them had not been signed in months. It is a slow way to cover ground and it makes you stop in places that have absolutely nothing to recommend them, which is the point.

Three weeks until we both left the island, in opposite directions, for a month. Close enough to be a fact and far enough not to think about. We drove north and found small plastic containers hidden by strangers and signed our name in them.Read more