The comfort of strangeness

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This was published 15 years ago

The comfort of strangeness

Among the abundant wildlife are wombats and wallabies.

Among the abundant wildlife are wombats and wallabies.Credit: David Webb/Tourism Tasmania

You've probably heard the story where Jesus heals a man's tortured mind by casting his demons into a herd of pigs, which jump off a cliff and die.

As a child I thought: "Why pigs?" My family was raising pigs at the time. It was clear those cute piglets had enough horror ahead of them, so I never cast my worries their way.

However, years later, I try it on a wombat. This is on the advice of a friend who makes a poor living as a counsellor: she uses the Jesus strategy. When I tell her I'm going on a brooding end-of-marriage holiday, and in fact I'm returning to Flinders Island where I'd honeymooned 11 years ago, she says I'm setting myself up for a crazy haunting and it's important I have a few "tools" to keep my chin up.

"Take everything that's hurting you and mentally shoot it into something else," she says.

And so it is that one recent morning, while driving slowly across Flinders Island for a cup of real but pale coffee and complimentary Freckles (those dollar-sized circles of chocolate measled with hundreds and thousands), I realise I'm talking aloud to my ex-wife, reliving a happy conversation we'd had while doing this drive years before with the windows down, through the moody countryside, with the bouldered range of mountains to the left and straight ahead, from the crest of a rise in the road, the blustery ocean and outlying lonely islands all misty with the breath of Bass Strait.

At that moment I see a wombat rooting around at the side of the road. I pull over and attempt to cast out this vexed feeling of nostalgia and futility. The wombat raises its boxy head and looks at the car. From a certain angle they have such pretty faces, as is often the case with very fat people. I open my door, feeling it important to say something now that I've bombarded the little fellow with my nuttiness.

I don't know if you've ever seen a wombat take off. "Like a runaway footstool," is how my ex-wife described it, which is what comes to mind when this particular wombat blurs across the road in front of the car and vanishes into some rocks. At this moment I miss that little wombat more than I miss the missus. I'm now standing at the side of the car, waiting for the wombat to pop its head out but it doesn't. Instead there's a whooshing sound, then a soft creaking and a dusty, oily smell that seems to fall and brush my face, vaguely erotic. I immediately forget all my troubles at the sight of a white-breasted sea eagle landing on a fence post, just across the road. This is the therapy I've come for.

I've seen swamp harriers, little falcons, pere- grine falcons, grey goshawks and wedge-tailed eagles on Flinders Island but never a white-breasted sea eagle. It's a magnificent bird, weighing up to 4.5 kilograms and with a wingspan of nearly two metres - not far behind the albatross. And where the wings of the albatross are long and thin, seeming to fold out like a old-fashioned timber builder's rule, built for gliding, the wings of the sea eagle are wide, almost canopy-like and heavily slotted, splayed at the tips such that each blue-grey feather acts like a winglet: built for power and speed but here it's perching quietly, looking at me.

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I've known people to get mystical about eagles. They borrow a little knowledge from Native American mythology and claim to have had experiences where their soul has been carried by an eagle and they're able to see all over the land. I always nod my head politely. I sympathise with their desire to bond with such a beautiful creature. I can relate as far as understanding the impossible expectations and demands we place on romantic love.

I stand in the middle of the road. The eagle spreads its wings and puts its head forward, a common display that signifies both a threat and defensiveness. I take a step back to the edge of the road and sit down. The wings come down and we continue to look at each another. I feel happy to be here.

In the past year I've been part of the graduate ornithology program at Charles Sturt University, learning how to be a bird scientist. I'm not a classic long-time birdwatcher who keeps a list of species observed in the bush - but I've had a passion for seabirds for more than 30 years, ever since I first sailed to Antarctica.

I started writing about birds a couple of years ago because it seemed like a good way to write about climate change. Since then, I've become fascinated by how birds work: their muscles, their voices, their digestive systems, how they run their societies and marriages. Increasingly, as I learn more about them, I find myself cheered and comforted at the oddest moments by the appearance of birds.

And this is why I bring my grief and ghost-busting determination for renewal to Flinders Island.

It has all sorts of beautiful birds. Plus, it has the things that make for both a perfect honeymoon and solo resurrection: spookily empty beaches with lichen-covered platforms and boulders the colours of rust; a mixture of peaceful and wild weather (being dead-set in the middle of the Roaring Forties, its weather is good for canoodling or wandering moodily in an anorak); few other people - but those present are friendly when you need them to be (population 800, everyone raises their finger in salute from the steering wheel when you pass them on the road); a vague sense of derring-do (even the locals talk about getting on and off the island in smallish commuter planes as an adventure); and seafood so fresh it doesn't taste of fish. I'm taken in one night for a paella by some locals who are happy telling old stories by way of entertainment and ask no awkward questions.

Every morning I make the drive from the tiny village of Lady Barron to the almost-as-small Whitemark for a coffee and Freckle at the little cafe called Sweet Surprises. It's about 26 kilometres, or 20 minutes if you drive in the way you might drive at home, but I dawdle.

It is a drive that I don't feel I would ever get tired of. Sometimes I take a side road and end up at a beach or in a patch of bush. Then I go back to the main road and make for the cafe. Every morning I see wallabies and wombats, and always birds. I have a mate who travels for a living, usually guiding groups. He gets annoyed when people talk of one place reminding them - or being just like - another.

But that's how travel works on the mind. The thrill of the new and unfamiliar is somehow balanced by resonances of what we already know. Anyway, I'm driving along when I see a peacock and his brides wandering along like a gypsy wedding party. It reminds me of a wedding party I'd seen 20 years before at the side of the road in the southern badlands of Mexico: a young couple in white, followed by a group of friends also in white. Except the blood-red sun and the clay-red empty land had turned them all shiny and dusty and dirty-red so they seemed to have come out of the earth together.

And so it appears to be with this gypsy band of peacock and hens: lovely to behold, seemingly birthed from this life-rich, wind-torn place.

FAST FACTS

Getting there

Airlines of Tasmania flies to Flinders Island from Melbourne's Essendon airport, from $215 one way, including tax. See airtasmania.com.au

You need to hire a car as there's no public transport. Holiday packages include car rental, accommodation and flights.


While there are caravan parks and cabin options, they're not much cheaper than staying in a local house, either in Whitemark or Lady Barron on either side of the island, or in a farmhouse somewhere in between.

Bucks at Lady Barron has three bedrooms, a big comfortable lounge with wood fire, great kitchen and a beautiful garden, from $136 a night for two. See flindersisland.net.

Groceries can be expensive ($4 for lettuce) and you can't take fresh food to the island; a customs officer greets every plane. But the seafood is superb. At Lady Barron there is a big general store and a pub with meals. At Whitemark there are a couple of cafes, a supermarket, an old pub and a butcher.

See visitflindersisland.com.au.

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