Nightfall Drive to Oatlands' Calm

Out of Launceston after dark, which we had said we would not do.

The rule was made in the first months and it was a good rule: no driving at night, because arriving somewhere in the dark tells you nothing about the ground you are parking on, and because Tasmanian roads after dusk belong to the wildlife. We have held to it fairly well. We are also, by late September, holding to it less than we did, and this was the second or third time in a few months that the day had run long and we had gone anyway.

The headlights did not help. They are the ones the bus came with and they are adequate for a suburban street and not much use on a highway with no lighting and animals at the edges. Anth drove slowly with his eyes on the verges the whole way and neither of us said much. Driving lights went back onto the wish list, where they had been sitting since a wet forestry road in August very nearly ended differently.

Oatlands is an hour and a bit south and we got there without incident.

Anth had been through in August on his own and not stopped, because the winter festival was on and the free camp was full of stalls and vehicles and people. He had turned round and gone to Tunnack instead. This time there were a handful of vans spread around the lake edge and room for anyone, and we pulled in beside Lake Dulverton with the town quiet behind us.

Same camp, six weeks apart, and unrecognisable. That keeps happening in this state. You go somewhere twice and it is two places.

The wind came up in the night and worked on the bus, which by now is so familiar that neither of us wakes for it. A vehicle that lives on its springs moves whenever the weather does, and after nine months the movement has stopped registering as anything other than the sound of being where we live.Read more