Dawn's Promise: Journey Begins

Last night in the bus for three weeks, at Simon and Sue's place at Boomer Bay, with the packs done and standing by the door.

We had packed them the day before and then opened them again, twice, which is what people do. Two lightweight bags for three weeks, which after nine months of living in seven metres felt like an insulting amount of space and was in fact generous.

Torrin went to Japan in November last year. Two months before we left, while the bus was still on the driveway at Aroona with the fit-out unfinished and the whole thing an argument we were having with ourselves about whether it would work. He has never seen it done. He has never seen the life. Eleven months of photographs and video calls from lay-bys and paddocks, and a son on the other side of the world who has been getting the edited version.

That is what all of it had been for. The trial at CMAX, the screening flights to Melbourne, the fortnights of blood tests and controlled meals, the whole grubby practical business of selling a bit of your time to a pharmaceutical company. It bought this.

We made coffee in the morning, which is the ordinary thing we do every day and which felt like something else that morning, because it was the last one for three weeks and because of where we were going afterwards.

Then the bus got shut up properly. Everything off, everything locked, the gas isolated, the fridge emptied, all the small rituals of leaving something valuable in someone else's yard. Simon and Sue had offered without being asked and would be keeping an eye on it, which is not a small thing to trust to people we met a week ago.

We walked out to the road with a pack each to wait for an Uber.

There is a particular strangeness in that, standing on a verge at Boomer Bay carrying everything you need for three weeks, with the house you live in parked behind you in a stranger's yard and a plane at the other end of the day. We had spent nine months getting extremely good at going places slowly. Now we were about to cross the world in a day and a half to stand in a room with our son.Read more