I imagined that my last short trip (here and here) was to be the end of a horrid summer of fire and flood: in other words, I was thinking Release!!! But, that very weekend, in Sydney, the babysitting gig I had committed to was cancelled at the last minute, and while I was there my daughter got an email telling her to start working from home immediately. I said, I might as well throw my winter clothes into Bertha and drive back to DB's. Two days later, back home at my place, my GP had to do a telephone consultation with me because he was already in quarantine. The word telehealth was still in the future then. When I told him that I was thinking of going to the country for the winter he said, Just do it. ... Think six months. … I told my family, We'll be fine. I have 14kg of rice and DB has a sack of potatoes. I spent ten days sorting out stuff, taking photos of the toilet paper queues and worrying about the crazily anxious atmosphere in the town. So I put into Bertha a pile of woolly socks, sweaters and scarves, the contents of my kitchen cupboards and a great pile of art materials. It felt quite unreal that there was so little traffic on the motorway: no trucks at all, and very few cars. I filled Bertha's tank with diesel in Braidwood, worrying that fuel supplies might dry up. Then, during the final thirty-minute drive down the hill, I heard the Prime Minister announce that non-essential travel would be banned from midnight. Gotcha Scotty!! I thought. It was a great place to self-isolate. The property is beautiful and the house seriously winter-proofed. There is time to meditate. There is space to exercise without going out of the front gate. What we didn’t realise for almost a month was that - ironically - the night I arrived was when the number of infections in NSW started falling. When the restrictions were lifted DB said to me, I suppose you'll want to think about going back soon, and I replied, Not as fast as all that.
Bertha, outside behind the shed, didn't manage the stay quite as comfortably as I did. There was a fierce and blustery storm one night that blew water under her retractable rooftop and soaked the mattress and bedding right through. But everything dried thanks to a good log fire and some sunny winter days.
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AuthorIn mid 2018 I started recording each night I sleep in Bertha: sometimes just for myself, sometimes to share with friends and other travellers. Archives
February 2024
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