Detours and Unexpected Paths

Down off the plateau and back onto the Midland Highway, which we now know well enough to drive without thinking, and which was carrying considerably more traffic than it had in winter.

We stocked up before going anywhere. That is the arithmetic of heading west in this state: the towns out there are small and far apart and the prices reflect both facts, so you buy what you can where the supermarkets are and carry it.

Then a message came through, and west got postponed again.

It was another trial, which meant another screening, which meant Anth on another plane. The trials are how this life gets paid for and they are also the thing most likely to interrupt it, and by now we recognise the shape: a message arrives, a date gets fixed by somebody else, and whatever we had been planning goes back in the drawer. West has now been postponed by a mechanic, a house move, Japan, shingles, a vehicle inspection, and this. It is starting to feel like a place we talk about rather than a place we are going.

Launceston, then, since that is where the flights leave from.

We stopped at Ross on the way. Anth had been through in August on his own, walking the four corners and the bridge, partly because Grammy had wanted to see it and never got the chance. This time Sal walked it with him.

He showed her the crossroads, and the gaol on one corner and the church on the other. Then down to the bridge, and the hundred and eighty-six carvings on it, and Daniel Herbert, who cut faces into stone until they let him out. In August there had been nobody to tell any of it to. That is a different walk with somebody beside you, even the same one.

Summer had arrived properly by then. Fifteen hours between sunrise and sunset, which after a winter of losing the light at half four feels like being handed something. The days had stopped being a resource to ration.

Campbell Town for the night, at the free camp, which was busy in a way it had not been in September. Peak season. Vans everywhere, families, the whole island filled up while we were not paying attention.

We ran that evening, through the streets of the town instead of the bush tracks at Brady's Lake, which is a poorer surface and a better distraction. The brick trail was under our feet for part of it, all those names, and we ran over Red Kelly without stopping this time.

Then back at the bus, rabbits. Dozens of them, out across the grassed camping area in the evening, feeding and sitting up and taking almost no notice of anyone. They are a pest here and have been since the 1800s and they are extremely good at this, and it is hard to hold that against them while watching them work over a lawn at dusk.

We washed, ate, and put a film on. Launceston tomorrow, and a flight after that.Read more