Pancakes, Paradise & Parting Ways

South from Oatlands to Sorell for the last of the errands: parcels at the post office, and an optometrist for Sal's contacts, which is the kind of appointment that has to be fitted around wherever you happen to be that month.

Then out to Gordon, because with a few days left before she flew there was nowhere either of us would rather have spent them.

It is busier now than it was in June. Spring has brought people back and the camp that we had almost to ourselves in the winter has vehicles in it. But our spot was free, the one on the water looking east across the channel at Bruny, and we took it for the fifth or sixth time.

Dion turned up in an old bus with a dog.

He has been doing this for ten years, which makes our nine months look like a trial run, and he had the easy manner of somebody who has long since stopped explaining himself to people. The dog is called Girl Dog. We asked. That is the name.

The weather had turned enough for the pancakes to come back. Sal's chocolate chip protein pancakes, which are a warm-weather thing for reasons of effort and ventilation, with Anth's protein ice cream out of the Ninja Creami on top. We had not had them since autumn. It is a ridiculous thing to be pleased about and we were extremely pleased about it, and it was the clearest sign yet that the winter was actually over.

Sal worked through most of the days. There is a rhythm to it now that was not there a fortnight ago: readings, assignments, lectures at fixed times, the laptop out at the table with the channel through the window behind it. She has not been a student in a very long time and it took a few weeks to remember how, and she has remembered.

On the last morning Dion helped Anth get the diesel heater ready to go to its new owner.

That thing got us through a Tasmanian winter. It came out of a post office in Hobart in May, portable, temporary, bought in a hurry because we had decided to stay on the island through the cold. Now it was going, because the plan is a fixed unit properly installed, whenever we get to it, and because there is no point carrying two of anything in seven metres. Still, you get attached. It sat in the bus for four months and did exactly what we asked of it.

Then north to Hobart and the airport.

Two days of workshops. That is what the trip was for: every trimester the course requires her on campus, in a room, on dates the university sets, and no amount of good internet or reliable power solves it. From a paddock at Gordon Foreshore that means a flight to Queensland, a place to stay, and the better part of a week away from the bus for two days of attendance.

We had known this was coming since July. It is a different thing when it arrives as an itinerary.

So Sal flew out, and Anth would drive back down to Gordon the next day and sit in the same spot on the water and wait for her, which is the arrangement now: one of us leaves, the other one keeps the bus somewhere good.Read more