Audrey Liza – Chapter 3
The Road South
It took less time than he’d feared, getting off the ferry. It was a streamlined process with a minimum of fuss. The staff herded the motorhomes efficiently, like high-vis collies rounding up bulky, docile sheep.
They got enough practice, after all. Two arrivals and two departures a day, over the summer months.
Ten minutes after clanking down the ramp, he was out on the Bass Highway.
The traffic wasn’t bad, considering it was building up to peak hour. Plenty of trucks amongst the commuter traffic, of course. Semis and the occasional B-double, they’d be Launceston or Hobart-bound. Smaller goods vehicles, probably local traffic between the knot of townships and farms on the central north coast. A milk tanker. There was the cavalcade of motorhomes from the ferry: big, boxy and white. There were Rangers, Land Cruisers and RAMs towing big-arse caravans.
Doug and Coral, he read. Bert and Alice. Did people really still do that, then, put their names on the backs of their vans? Quaint. It reminded him of the Grey Nomads up the East Coast, all the way from Port Macquarie to Port Douglas. Five o’clock drinks in thongs, vest and shorts. Snags on the barbie. Then, when the mozzies chased them indoors, crank up the aircon and settle down to watch TV. By nine p.m. the caravan parks were so quiet, it might as well have been midnight.
Probably the same crowd. Some of them had Queensland plates, and there were a few from WA.
The little van didn’t have a whole lot of guts for the hills, but she was nimble enough and she liked cruising along at a hundred and ten. Soon he’d left most of the holidaymakers from the boat behind.
Low cloud sat on top of the Great Western Tiers, as if pressing the mountains down.
Coming home.
Yet he’d only been here once in the last forty years, that hectic week with Mags and Stevie. There’d been no time to notice things then: the lie of the land, the crisp, cool air. All the indefinable ways that the island of his birth was different to that bigger island to the north.
Why had he not come back more often?
It was good country from Devonport to Deloraine. An undulating patchwork quilt of farmland. Small paddocks. Dams were full, fringed by reeds.
Yet he knew it’d been a dry summer in Tassie too. Meanwhile, devastating floods up in western Queensland.
Bloody hell, who’d be a farmer? He was well out of it. Mags and her new bloke could see how they got on, without the money from the mines coming in every winter.
Now, now. Be nice.
Frisians and Herefords, Merinos. He noticed a cell grazing operation across the river. Electric fences divided the paddock into small rectangles, with the cattle packed into one of them. In another was an A-frame chook tractor, its roof spread like wings, its residents white, brown and black against the vivid green grass. Interesting.
Broad, ploughed, red-earth paddocks bore a fuzz of new green growth. Rich soil up here in the north. Berry farms to left and right.
Lavender farms were a thing around here too, weren’t they? Hadn’t he read somewhere about a crocus farm, for saffron? Truffles? Was this Tassie, or Provence?
What was this, now? The outskirts of Launceston already. Jeez the place had grown. Wait – he didn’t want to be in bloody Launceston. Surely it was the wrong direction entirely.
He’d come the long way round. Should have used the app.
You don’t know this island any more, mate.
The highway crossed the Southern Esk at Perth. The dark bulk of Ben Lomond, with Mensa Moor, Ragged Jack and the rooster comb of Stacks Bluff veered away to the left. The Fingal Valley opened.
He still knew the names, after all these years. They made the hairs stand up on his forearms. They resonated like the legends of ancient kings, wild and strange.
Soft bastard.
The clouds had vanished now. Suddenly: he hadn’t even noticed their passing.
Had he been daydreaming? He hadn’t slept well on the boat. Not used to having another body in the same room.
It had been lovely though. Lying there, listening to a woman’s breathing. He’d missed that, these past two solitary years.
Concentrate.
He drove south along the belt of grassland. HEARTLANDS DRIVE, the tourist sign announced. It was a bleak and arid heart to look at, this March morning. After the illusory lushness of the north, he could see the bite of the drought down here.
What happens when you chop down all the bloody trees.
Mind you, to be fair, the valley was in the rain shadow of the mountains to the west. They soaked up all the rain-laden fronts driven ashore by the Roaring Forties. It was always going to be dry down here.
‘Roaring Forties’ made him think of last night’s conversation in the brightly lit cafeteria, picking at their trays of fried food.
‘The sea has a way of killing those who disrespect her,’ she’d said.
And:
‘It’s all very well to say the sea’s in your blood. Forgive me, Jamie, but that’s romantic nonsense. Your father was a seaman. You’re not. There’s a great raft of skills you just don’t have.’
She’d laid her hand on his arm for emphasis.
How was it a woman was allowed to do that? And a man never felt offended or threatened by a woman’s touch. He’d felt honoured.
‘I’ll worry about you.’
He’d scoffed, but she was right. Of course.
A great raft of skills.
Odd way of putting it. Memorable, though.
One thing at a time, mate. Look over the boat. Find out what you’ve let yourself in for. Sus out the situation at the boatyard. Make a plan for the reno. Get help with the bits you aren’t competent to do yourself. Carry out the plan, as well as time and funds allow.
The rest’ll take care of itself.
Anyroad, boats steered themselves these days. What with autohelms and radar and chartplotters and sonar. You just keyed in where you wanted to go, and off you went.
The highway climbed into the bald, sculpted hills.
He’d been driving for two hours solid since disembarking the ferry. He could feel his right leg cramping up and there was a dull ache behind his eyes.
Take a break, mate. No point in getting this far to pile into the back of something. Stevie would like his van back in one piece, come the summer. Probably his old man, too.
Reluctantly, he left the highway and coasted the little van into the quiet sandstone village of Oatlands.
The lone café was just opening up; its chalkboard promised crêpes and Devonshire cream teas.
The woman behind the counter suggested a nice ham-and-cheese crêpe, or a breakfast toastie perhaps? ‘No,’ said his stomach, firmly. He opted for just a long black. She asked him where he was bound and where from, listened to his news and made pronouncements about the weather.
Terribly dry this year.
Filling up at the servo, he saw out of the corner of his eye a squat, high-sided white van flash by.
Leigh?
Just an hour from his goal now. Down past Brighton to the broad Derwent with its swans and hulking pulp mill. The new high bridge looked nearly complete. Would they demolish the old low one when it opened?
Across the Derwent, he turned left, downriver and into the three-dimensional tangle of roads that was Hobart now, trusting the app to find the way.
Half an hour of frustrating stop-start traffic, then, quite suddenly he was out the other side. The campervan protested mildly at the steep, long ascent through bushland. A panorama of Hobart and the bay opened to his left, but the road demanded his full attention.
The highway swung around the shoulder of Mount Wellington, which the sign reminded him to call kunanyi. Steadily climbing still, skirting Kingston and turning inland.
Then they’d mounted Vince’s Saddle – and down they swooped into the Huon Valley, past apple and netted cherry orchards. Into Huonville and straight out the other side, crossing the broad black Huon.
Left at the junction; into Franklin with its boat sheds and jetties, a steep-roofed weatherboard cider house on the right, Frank’s, and up the hill a little church.
Leaving the tiny town behind, following the river. A few more bends and he came to an unnamed straggle of buildings on both sides of the road. On the river side an outboard dealer. Tinnies, motorcruisers and yachts alongside a wharf. Then a compound with a metal shed, tall, wide and long.
‘Arrived’ said Siri.
E. W. Doherty Traditional Shipwrights.
Through the chainlink fence he could see a slipway with a winch shed, wooden boats sitting on cradles.
Was one his?
Coming up:
This Friday in The Last Orchard: Leigh sets off to find her orchard – and also thinks about last night. She drives the same route as Jamie, but notices very different things.
Next Tuesday in Audrey Liza: Jamie meets a straight-talking shipwright and gets some honest advice.
Author’s note:
The protagonists of Audrey Liza (Jamie) and The Last Orchard (Leigh) feature occasionally in each other’s story. The stories can be read separately, and will make perfectly good sense that way. However, reading them together will add depth and contrast to the reading experience.
To give you all a feeling for how this will work, I’m sending the first three chapters of The Last Orchard free to all subscribers.
"A great raft of skills." I knew what it meant but it was an odd way of putting it. Then you said it was an odd way of putting it. Read my mind.