The text message on Claire’s mobile phone read, “The eagle has landed.” It could be from only one person. And it was: Dave, in a boyish mood, had just arrived in Hobart. Claire had been in town for several days for work, and now, freed from a workshop, it was playtime for a weekend before climbing back onto the treadmill in Brisbane on Monday morning. Snow during the week had cut several roads, but workers had bulldozed it off and we putted across the plateau in the dinky hire car to Strahan, on the west coast. On the way, a few stops, including the Franklin River roaring its way south, Nelson Falls, looking primordial in the rain, and Queenstown, lying shuttered beneath its denuded hills. Queenstown was a mining town Australians learned about in primary school,
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