From Tasmania, With Love

On the 7th of August 1998, my life was changed irrevocably.

Well, alright: in truth, it was my parents' lives that were changed irrevocably. Because on that cold August Friday, almost twenty-two years ago now, I popped into the world. So while it isn't an exaggeration to say that it was a fairly significant milestone for me, I feel as though dear old Mum and Dad probably registered the shift in a somewhat more immediate sense.

I kicked off the business of life in the mid-sized city of Wollongong: an industrial hub two hours south of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. And yet, as I sit and sort through twenty-one-and-a-bit-years of recollections, I realise that my earliest memories aren't set against the backdrop of 'mainland' Australia. Rather, the VHS-quality clips that make up these memories were filmed in the Apple Isle, in the 'Natural State': Tasmania.

My father was born-and-bred in Van Diemen’s Land. And while he migrated to New South Wales almost two decades before I was even a consideration, he’s never been able to fully rid himself of his second head (I’ve been informed that Tasmanians have two, so do with that what you will). Throughout my childhood, every other Christmas was spent in Hobart with my father’s allegedly two-headed family: it was there that I first boarded a boat, there that I first saw snow, there that I first swallowed soggy Weetbix. A lot of firsts were bolstered by the cold, Tasmanian air. It’s the kind of cold that sits deep within your lungs and makes you breathe deeply, more completely - perhaps it’s no surprise that Tasmania is the first place in which I remember being alive.

There is another prevailing childhood memory that stands out in my mind, here and now. It is the memory of looking at my parents - at my father in all of his double-craniumed glory, and at my mother who chose to stick around despite the obstacles that double craniums must bring - and deciding that, some day, I wanted to have what they have. It may sound clichéd (it is), but for as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to get married. I’ve wanted a partner in proverbial crime, a best friend at whom I can toss my soggy Weetbix across the breakfast table. And on the 22nd of January this year, my life was - again - changed irrevocably when my personal cereal-lobbing target asked me to marry him.

Now, outside of the every-other-year trips to Hobart and the occasional flight to Western Australia where my mother began her single-headed life, I’ve not been much of a traveller. I did visit Indonesia once, as a flower girl in my aunt’s 2009 destination wedding, but the whole thing ended with a bout of Bali Belly and braids that I refused to untangle for three months after returning home, so I’ll leave that particular experience where it lies. Yet while I may not yet have seen much of the world beyond my own driveway, Coby has seen even less. In a strange coincidence however, there is one place he has visited: not too long after graduating from high school, he took a trip to Tasmania. And despite not having spent a solid chunk of his formative years with socks wrapped around his hands in order to stave off frostbite whilst trekking to the Hobart shopping centre, he fell in love with the place. So when the topic of potential honeymoon destinations was brought to the table, placed amid chunks of slowly-congealing Weetbix, the decision was unsurprisingly unanimous.

I may have always wanted to get married, but I’ve never pined for what many would consider the ‘classic’ honeymoon set-up. I’m not one for resorts, for spa baths, for mosquito-guided walks along a tropical beach. In my mind (and in Coby’s, thankfully) the perfect honeymoon is an adventure: hiking, wandering, jumping from place to place in our banged-up Subaru which may or may not make it to the next petrol station. Camping out in cold mountain air, taking each day as it comes. This, to me, is what a ‘perfect honeymoon’ looks like.

As I write these words, I sit alone: bundled up in a hospital bed, unable to do little more than wait until my bladder inevitably reaches the point of explosion, press a button, and attempt to balance myself on the arm of a nurse as they lead me to the bathroom. The word, it seems, has never felt quite so small. Is it any wonder, then, that the notion of huddling around a campfire, shoulder to shoulder with the man I love, surrounded by the place in which I first remember laughing makes me want to cry?

The freedom to travel - the ability to go further, to explore, the ability to realise that you’ve grown restless where you’ve been standing and make the decision to take a step towards someplace new - is a beautiful thing. And with the beeping of a heart monitor in place of bird song, I can say with absolute certainty that I’ve taken this freedom for granted. Of course, I can’t see the future; I can’t begin to imagine how the world will turn when this season of isolation, illness and not-knowing finally draws near to its end. What I can imagine, however, is the peace that will come with stepping off the boat in Davenport and knowing that freedom was never lost, but simply misplaced - for a moment or two.

And so, Coby and I will make it to Tasmania. Things may look a little different than we had once planned: we may be too late to see the full force of the snowfall in June, and it may take me just that little bit longer to make it up the mountain side. But if nothing else, I’ve learned that the places in which we grow up stay with us - whether in the big ways, or the small. I’m looking forward to once again wrapping my hands in socks, to sleeping in the shadow of Cradle Mountain. And if a second head begins to sprout? Well... I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.