Eight Hours and Eighteen Dollars

The bus station farewell carried familiar weight, though this separation would stretch longer than most. A few weeks at minimum, our paths diverging in ways that had become second nature to navigate. Even with Anth's plans shifting like sand, Sal's girlfriend getaway remained fixed: a coastal escape with Jan and Liz that had been circled on the calendar for months.

Change was often hard. We knew this intimately, remembering the versions of ourselves who had once resisted it with white-knuckled determination, clinging to the familiar rhythms of a life bound to one place. Now change had become our constant companion, and somewhere along the winding roads of this nomadic existence, we had learned not merely to accept it but to flourish within its stories. Each separation was simply another chapter, each reunion a homecoming that felt earned rather than expected.

Anth's journey back to Melbourne unfolded across eight hours of Australian landscape: four on the bus watching the outskirts of Canberra give way to rural New South Wales, another four on the train as the scenery shifted toward Victoria's familiar contours. The eighteen-dollar fare versus four hundred to fly had made the decision effortless, and the hours became their own kind of gift. He read with the particular absorption that long journeys allow, then turned to journaling our travels, words flowing easier when the world scrolled past windows in endless parallax.

The city hotel was cheap and functional, its thin walls and basic amenities exactly what a screening appointment required and nothing more. The medical checks passed without drama, the clinical routine now so familiar it barely registered. Later, when Sal asked how it went, the joke wrote itself: "How did the job interview go?" We laughed at how clinical trials had become our unconventional employment, bodies offered to science in exchange for the freedom to keep moving.

Meanwhile, the South Coast wrapped Sal in its particular magic. Tuross Head, with its sleepy coastal charm, provided the perfect backdrop for a belated fiftieth celebration. Three months had passed since her actual birthday, but Sal had long held the belief that birthdays were a season rather than a single day, deserving of multiple celebrations stretched across time. Jan and Liz understood this philosophy implicitly.

The days at the holiday house settled into gentle rhythm. Morning walks along beaches where the sand held overnight coolness beneath their feet. Coffee at local cafés where conversation meandered without destination. Card games that stretched into hours, punctuated by laughter that echoed off rental walls. This was friendship distilled to its essence: presence without agenda, connection without complication.

After four nights of coastal restoration, plans shifted again. Sal would spend the weekend at Liz's place, where eventually our paths would converge once more.

Anth, meanwhile, had reversed his marathon journey, another day consumed by train and bus as he traced his route back to Canberra. Jess collected him from the station, that familiar face in the arrivals crowd providing anchor in the constant motion. One more night followed, this time in the bus parked on a suburban street, the particular quiet of sleeping in your own space even when that space sits on public road.

Tomorrow promised Namadgi National Park, its wilderness calling with the voice that always stirred something restless in Anth's chest. A few days of exploration before returning once more to the orbit of friends and obligations. The separations continued, the reunions approached, and somewhere in between, we kept learning that distance measured in kilometres meant nothing compared to the connection that stretched effortlessly across it.Read more