He drove slowly up the main street, surprised at how busy it was. Parking spots clogged with cars. Muddy kids in footy jerseys. People pushing trolleys and lugging shopping bags. Tourists spilling from a coach outside the visitor centre. He checked out the shops: post office, pharmacy, butcher, baker, bank, cafe, takeaway next to the supermarket, hardware at the top of the street. Back home in Adventure Bay where his parents lived, peak hour was twice a day for sixty seconds when the bus came through with tourists for the scenic boat trip around the coast. The only shops were the general store and cafe, so this place was a metropolis in comparison. He would be set here for most things he needed. Anything else he could buy down near the Parks office, in the last town he’d passed through. He could have rented closer to work, but he’d decided to live here, at the foot of the mountains—the springboard to his new future.

He crossed the highway into a quiet street lined by weatherboard houses with white window frames, walls of firewood piled along fences, smoke wafting from chimneys. Turning a corner, he headed uphill past a brick house half-hidden by rose bushes, a log truck parked on the kerb, a vacant block with a scarecrow in an overgrown vegie patch, then another weatherboard with an old blue car set on stumps down the side.

Further upslope were his new digs: a little pink house backing onto bush—he recognised it from the photos on the website. It was part of a deceased estate, cheap rent and semi-furnished, which suited him because he didn’t have furniture. Before moving back in with his parents he’d been in a student house in Hobart with shabby old armchairs and a stained sofa, none of which had been worth keeping.

Pulling up on the gravel driveway, Leon assessed his new premises. The agent had said it was occupied until recently, but it looked closed-up and neglected. The grass was long. No front fence and no garden. The uphill boundary with the bush had five-strand barbed wire, and the low paling fence that divided him from his neighbours was bolstered by firewood, all on their side.

He slid out into cold air that was heavy with wood smoke and the sweet smell of cows in the paddock across the road. Next door, a red heeler with a big belly and long teats trotted to the fence and barked at him—the welcoming committee. Leon mounted the steps to the front door and poked the key in the lock. It was stiff and the door wouldn’t budge, so he shoved it with his shoulder to get in.