It pays to gamble in Tasmania: if you build it, they will come. 

And so we went, following everyone’s demands (‘you must go!’) and warnings (‘it’s really cold!'). 

We spent the first day walking the pristine ruins of Port Arthur, a site of historic horror and thriving gardens. Nothing is what it once was. A gothic church misses its entire roof, the jail cells lack bars. The past has clearly escaped. 

We stayed for the ghost tour. Our guide wore a predictable long coat and carried around his flickering shadow. It took five minutes for the site’s real terror to sink in – we were trapped in a situation that we couldn’t control. 

Later that night, it took much longer to find our Airbnb, hidden somewhere in the hidden countryside. Our host appeared waving a torch, a newborn lamb under his arm: ‘It barely made it alive’ he announced, nonchalantly, and walked us to our door. 

I foolishly asked for a key. 
‘Nothing happens here’ he assured me. ‘I’ve thrown a few logs in the fire… should be enough till morning.’

There was complete absence of electricity so we slept immediately.

When we opened our eyes, the light had found its way to the lake outside our window. The sky must have seen our nakedness; how else to explain the colours on its cheek and its sudden awkward disappearance behind the weather’s patterned modesty. 

I turned my head and whispered something. 

We got up, washed our hands, and drove north (We thanked our host much later, electronically). 

We arrived at MONA just in time for the famous mechanical denouement (‘it smells so bad!’), although we were more disturbed by a room stacked with empty books and papers (‘lol, that’s his tax return!’).

That evening, in Hobart’s other museum, the last captive thylacine yawned on repeat, completely unaware that it lacked any colour or that it failed to make it to the next century.