We leave Tasmania and we return – like waves, we ebb and flow with our pilgrimages back to the land of our birth. It might be a wedding, a birthday, a reunion, or a death. It might be purely for the yearning to set foot on familiar paths redolent with memories and meaning. It’s harder, in these strange days, to assuage the calling in our bones for the land of Antarctic winds, snow on the mountain and bright blue days.
My 2020 pilgrimage began with a gentle warning. The Chief Medical Officer suggested all citizens stock up on two weeks of supplies. There was a virus, a murmur from a distant land. I kissed my husband goodbye, hoping all would be well.
In Strahan the hotels and tourist cruises were at capacity. On a yacht trip up the Gordon, past Butler Island and to Sir John Falls, we slipped through a landscape I’d only seen in photographs and videos. A part of Tasmania’s heritage was made real, binding me more closely to this island and its stories. Back in Strahan, there was a question hanging lightly in the cool air of Macquarie Harbour: what if the tourists stop coming, what then?
In Hobart I lined up interviews for the book I was researching. One of my subjects suggested we meet in a park. He’d returned from the mainland and his wife insisted he keep a safe distance. I thought she was overreacting. My resentment rose as light rain spattered on my notebook, smudging the ink. However, as the murmuring became more insistent, it appeared she was right. My hostess pressed a pocket-sized bottle of hand sanitiser into my hands as I left the house. A friend with a sore throat cancelled our lunch date, just in case. A family dinner was called off. At the Female Factory I thanked the staff for keeping the historic site open. It shut the next day. I hurried to the State Library, cramming in as much research as I could, worried the doors would close at any moment. The front page of the Mercury featured a satellite photograph of Tasmania. The headline shouted, “We’ve got a moat and we’re not afraid to use it”.
The murmuring became a loud thrumming in my head.
My flight home was cancelled without notice for the second time. The customer phone line went unanswered. I found a different phone number at the bottom of an email and finally got through. I was told the last flight out of Hobart was leaving that Friday. The thrumming grew louder, with an edgy syncopated beat.
The point of a pilgrimage is to undertake a journey to a place of significance, in search of meaning, connection and, if we’re blessed, transformation. When the pilgrimage is complete, the pilgrim returns to their home and their daily life. My pilgrimage was cut short in the panic and fear of a country grappling with an invisible threat. I longed to return to my daily life and my loving husband. Anxiety took hold. Would I be able to?
At the airport, I was confronted by a restless, angry crowd. When I asked what the problem was, a fellow pilgrim pointed to the departures board. Every flight was cancelled. The edgy thrumming became a howl. I was marooned, along with hundreds of others. When I discovered another airline had a flight leaving that afternoon I rushed to their counter. I bought yet another ticket, unsure if the flight would be cancelled, but desperate to get home. When the plane finally took off, the howling subsided, but a restless buzzing remained.
Transiting through Tullamarine, we were mute and tense. The airport was a ghost town, inhabited only by Border Control and police ushering us to our connecting flights. Do not step outside the line. Dare I breathe? Would I become infected?
On arrival in Brisbane we were greeted again by Border Control and more police. Residents were shepherded through quickly and told there was no need to self-isolate. When I finally arrived home, I took a deep breath of gratitude. I kissed my husband. I was safe.
But as in the Hero’s Journey, it was a false victory. There was more to this pilgrim’s story. Other lessons to be learned.
Four days later, two plain clothes police with guns strapped to their hips stood outside my door. I was handed a quarantine order and threatened with fines and possible arrest if I disobeyed. I asked them why. Was someone on one of my flights infected? They had no answers. I was just a name on a list. The buzzing mutated into a roar.
I rearranged my writing room with space to exercise now that I was banned from visiting my beloved beach. This room was to be my world for the next two weeks. I tried to write. The buzzing/roaring/thrumming in my head blocked the words. The news was distracting. The world was unravelling. My muse was incoherent.
The police called. “Have you been to the beach this morning?”
“No,” I answered. “You told me not to leave the house.” Were they going to check up on me every day?
“Well, you can. A mistake was made. You don’t need to quarantine.”
I asked for an explanation. There was none. An email had been sent releasing me; that was all. I was free to leave the house for the same four reasons as everyone else.
“Enjoy the beach,” he said before hanging up.
The beach was a balm for this weary pilgrim, but I still couldn’t write. Instead, I continued pitching a manuscript that was completed before the murmuring, buzzing, thrumming, roaring and howling hijacked my mind. When my novel finally found a home, I was grateful and relieved. The publication date was set as August 2021. I relaxed in the knowledge that all would be well by then.
. . .
August 2021, and my book is released into multiple and ongoing lockdowns. Book launches are postponed, events cancelled. I feel as though my novel has been cast adrift on a dark and menacing ocean.
The postal system unravels. Most of the population can’t get to a bookshop. I plunge into the winter sea every morning trying to break the circuit of anxiety and despair. It works, but only momentarily.
My publisher assures me they have pivoted. Adapted. I buy a ring light and update Zoom. The support from other authors is a balm. Many have now seen more than one book launched into a pandemic. We retweet and post each other’s books on our socials. We interview each other online and write reviews.
I wait on tenterhooks for the Tasmanian border to reopen. I am desperate to reunite this book with the land where it belongs – my island home. I am yearning to undertake yet another pilgrimage, to revisit the places where this novel is set and to celebrate with those who helped the book become a reality.
The border opens and I fly into the waiting arms of a land so familiar in a time so unknown, curious about the transformation that awaits.
Mary-Lou Stephens was born and raised in Tasmania, studied acting at The Victorian College of the Arts and played in bands in Melbourne, Hobart and Sydney. Eventually she got a proper job – in radio, where she was a presenter and music director, first with commercial radio and then with the ABC. She received excellent reviews for her memoir Sex, Drugs and Meditation (Pan Macmillan) the true story of how meditation changed her life, saved her job and helped her find a husband. Her debut novel, The Last of the Apple Blossom was published by HarperCollins (Harlequin HQ) in 2021. She lives on the Sunshine Coast with her husband and a hive of killer native bees.