Chapter Thirty Three

 June 2003

Tasmania feels like some forgotten wintry part of England.

   They have free bread in the hostel. I eat nothing but bread for two days. Now I never want to eat bread again. The thought of it sickens me.

   An elderly English lady is staying in the hostel. She says she's lived in north Queensland for forty years and now she's house hunting in Tasmania because she misses seasons. I can't imagine missing the cold.

   I go on a tour of the island. There are sandwiches for lunch every day but I take the filling out and eat it without the bread. It's a small group, another English girl, a newly wed Singaporean couple who seem lost and confused, and a Swiss man who is frighteningly serious about cake. 

   I find myself no longer able to eat cake.

   We go to Freycinet National Park where the air is fresh and looks across the still blue waters of Wineglass Bay. The tour guide points at a distant shape and says it's a humpback whale. It could be anything.

   In the evening we watch Australian Big Brother on TV. There is a Tasmanian woman on it. The tour guide says, 'She's such a bogan.' It's an insult, like townie or something.

   In a wildlife place we see Tasmanian devils. I feel sorry for them, derided as devils because of their red ears, when they look small and fragile. There are bush babies, their eyes look unnaturally huge. My baby does it- No. I have no baby. There was blood. Maybe only a little, but blood is blood and pregnant women don't bleed.

   I got away with it. Steve will never need to know.

   I feel a sense of loss, of sadness, but I will have to bear it alone.

   We can't go up Cradle Mountain because of the snow.

   We arrived at Port Arthur in the evening to join a ghost tour. It was a harsh prison, full of suffering and death. If ghosts exist then I pity them, having to stay here even after death.

   The tour guide says she once saw a line of hooded figures here. As we leave one dark room there is a clatter behind us. The tour guide shows us a section of  high wall where no ivy grows. She says one convict pushed another off there, killing him, and was then sentenced to death. Perhaps it was a murder pact. One killed the other knowing death would be his punishment, because death was the only way out of this place. 

   I hope they are not still trapped here as ghosts.

   As the tour guide shines her torch into a hut. I notice an electric light switch on the wall, a bulb on the ceiling. 

   I am annoyed. Why not just turn the lights on so we can see properly? I think. Because of the atmosphere. I don't care about the atmosphere.

   The boat ride back to Melbourne is rough and the air tastes thick and salty. I throw up over the side thinking of bread and cake.