Echidnas, Essays & Island Generosity

A week out from Japan, and one more camp to find.

Lime Bay is up on the northern end of the Tasman Peninsula and we had never been, which after nine months on this island is becoming rarer. An hour and a half from the airport, which mattered, because everything that week was measured against a flight.

We got as far as Dunalley and there was an echidna in the middle of the road.

They do this. They are slow, they are single-minded, and they have no concept of a vehicle, and one of them was working its way across the bitumen at a pace that would have got it killed inside ten minutes. We stopped the bus and got out and encouraged it along toward the verge, which mostly involves standing in the right place and letting it decide, since picking one up is not an option. It went into the grass eventually without ever acknowledging that we existed.

Then over Eaglehawk Neck, the strip of land a hundred metres wide that once had a line of chained dogs across it to stop men escaping Port Arthur, and north onto roads we had not driven.

Lime Bay is a scatter of sites along a curve of coast and on a Monday there was almost nobody in it. We took a spot in full sun, which most people avoid and we now actively look for. The panels want it, the tinting handles the glare, and the insulation is good enough that the inside stays reasonable while the roof does the work. Nine months has taught us to read a campsite for solar aspect before anything else, including the view.

The spring changed the place mid-week. The Hobart Show holiday came round and the camp filled with families down for the long weekend, kids and dogs and the noise of a school holiday, after months of having these places to ourselves. It was not unwelcome. It was just a reminder that the island empties in winter and fills again, and that we had spent our first Tasmanian year in the quiet half of it.

Simon and Sue came out of that weekend. They live at Boomer Bay, not far, and somewhere in a conversation the problem of what to do with a seven-metre bus for three weeks came up, and they offered their yard.

That is now Michael, and Samuel, and John with the firewood, and Debi and Brett, and these two. We have stopped being surprised and started being slightly embarrassed by it.

Sal had three assignments due and spent most of the week on them, at the table, headphones in, while the camp got louder around her. They went in a few days before the flight. Three at once is a lot for a first trimester and she has had a fortnight of moving house in the middle of it, and she got them done from a paddock on a peninsula with the internet she could find.

To mark it we walked across the peninsula, which is short and easy, and came out on a beach with nobody on it at all. Not a person, not a footprint. Perfect spring weather, empty sand, and one of us newly unburdened. We had it entirely to ourselves for as long as we wanted it.

On the Sunday everyone packed up at once and so did we. The food had run out the night before, which we chose to describe as good provisioning rather than as cutting it fine.

Before Boomer Bay we stopped at the Coal Mines.

It is at the top end of the peninsula and it was the punishment station: the place Port Arthur sent men who had reoffended after already being sent to Port Arthur. What is left is stone walls, foundations, and the underground solitary cells, which you can go down into. They are small and they are entirely dark and men were kept in them alone for days at a time.

We spent a couple of hours walking it. Nobody else was there.

We flew to Japan in five days to see our son, who moved there because he wanted to. Standing in a hole in the ground where the empire put men it had already broken once, that contrast does not need pointing out, but it was there the whole time we walked around.

Then down to Boomer Bay in the evening, to Simon and Sue's, where the bus would sit while we were away.

Last night in Tasmania for three weeks.Read more