Happenchance
One still and beautiful morning partway through a recent visit to Tasmania, we were preparing to leave Alonnah on south Bruny Island to travel to Strathblane, near Dover in Tassie’s southeast corner. We packed up without mishap, until an incident paused our getaway. It wasn’t a big deal, but it could easily have been so, had a number of coincidental occurrences not reduced a challenge into less of a stress test of our resourcefulness.
Everything was in the car. Unusually, my friend decided to walk down to Alonnah’s General Store for an early coffee and return our lodge keys to Hotel Bruny, across the track from the Store. Rather than meandering, he chose to walk in as straight a line as possible across the paddock to save time. On the way, ever observant, he noticed a bent tent hook in the grass. I was checking we hadn’t left anything in the room; then all I had to do was close the front door behind me, and drive the few metres to pick him up.
As I got there, he was already waiting, no takeaway coffee in hand. It was Tuesday, between 8:30 and 9 am, but the Store was closed for the day. (This was the third time in as many days its random opening hours had caught us out.) ‘See you Wednesday’, a rather annoying sign read on the door. Since I was driving, I looked to make sure there was a water bottle handy in the front of the car. (My friend tends to put both our water bottles in the cool bag, which is not always easily accessible in the back. We’d noticed on this trip that there are often few opportunities to stop by the roadside in Tassie.) ‘Where’s my water bottle?’ I asked, perhaps a tad irritated. ‘In the fridge,’ he replied, ‘in the lodge’.
Leaving the bottles behind wasn’t an option: they were new and not just any old water bottles. We glanced at each other briefly. I parked outside the Hotel. I got out, walked a few paces towards the beach, and gazed across the d’Entrecasteaux Channel, serene blue and glassy, before reaching for my camera. Photography focuses the mind, in this instance possibly redirecting me from a more predictable reaction.
Looking to where we were headed
My friend walked over to the key return box by the Hotel’s front door: there were no signs of life in the building at that hour. Luckily, the box had a hinged lid on top as well as a front slot for the keys. But I couldn’t quite get my hand in. I didn’t fancy forcing it and spending hours waiting for emergency services to arrive from god knows where to release me from entrapment. My friend called the Hotel, twice, and left a message. If any cleaners were due to see to our room, they weren’t in evidence yet. The Store was of no use, obvs.
The engineer went into action: did we have any wire in the car; or a magnet? Er, neither. I noticed two wooden takeaway forks on the ground outside the restaurant, but they were too flimsy and barely reached the keys. Then the engineer remembered the tent hook. He strode off purposefully into the paddock, confident he could locate it. I fiddled with the forks in the meantime, before losing my grip on them. The engineer returned triumphant with the hook.
At this point, we looked up to see 15 or more Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos flying silently and effortlessly over our heads. Their slow, deep wing beats were calming, reassuring.
There remained a tricky manoeuvre, however. My friend had to hold the hook at the very tip, so there was a risk of dropping it into the box, and he struggled to see clearly what he was doing. I couldn’t bare to watch. Fortunately, ours were the only keys in the box, plus the two forks. My dextrous friend was soon successful. I was reminded yet again of the advantages of living with a skilled handyman.
So… Take 2: back to the lodge with the keys; retrieval of the water bottles from the fridge; return to the Hotel to repost the keys in the box; as we were, heading off to the ferry across to Kettering. I left another message on the Hotel’s answerphone: ignore previous message; we managed to get the keys out of the box; but not to worry about the security of keys in the box; my friend happens to be an engineer and practical problem-solver.
I’ve thought a lot about that morning: how seemingly unrelated occurrences shaped the course of the episode. What if my friend hadn’t fancied an early coffee? What if he hadn’t noticed the tent hook? What if the key box hadn’t had a lid?
A dramatic course of events often revolves around a detail that may at first seem inconsequential. Remember in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, how Tess’s confession letter to Angel posted under his door the evening before their marriage slid beneath a carpet? She assumed the following morning that he’d read it and his feelings remained the same. What difference would it have made to their fate had he found it as she intended?
So, what are we talking about here? Coincidence? Serendipity? Good or bad fortune? Destiny? My friend would claim human ‘engenuity’. What role did our guardians, the Black-Cockatoos, play? I have observed many coincidences since, and more keenly.
Note White Bennetts Wallabies are found only on South Bruny. A rare genetic mutation resulted in an imbalance of melanin, hence the animal’s pink nose, claws and (sometimes) eyes. They are more sensitive to sunlight and have an increased risk of compromised vision and cancer. On Bruny Island, however, they have no predators and survive long enough to breed, passing on the gene. Standard brown Bennetts Wallabies do not discriminate.
