Even though every part of my body is aching, I have to admit that Tasmania is in some unfathomable way both age-old and fresh as the day it was born. Old and experienced enough that it is knows how to touch a nerve but at the same time so young that it almost feels as though we are depriving a newborn creature of the peace it has just discovered and needs.
The bushes rustle and crackle - always to the left, always behind us, incessantly - as though Tasmania itself were following us, invisible, smart enough constantly to devise little pranks and childish enough to carry them out.