Once he put it together, enough to look at me with new eyes, Dan was silent a very long time. So long I felt as if time had stopped and he, we, might never speak again. He went off for a long walk. When he came back, I made us both tea. We went and sat outside on his balcony.
‘The moment I saw you walking along the road towards me that night down at the pier, I thought, here’s trouble,’ he said.
‘I know it was your bridge.’
‘I hated that thing, you know that. I hated it even more when I knew what I’d built. If I could have blown the thing up myself …’
‘You know if this ever …’
‘You’ll have to kill me.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Not if I kill you first,’ said the ex-paratrooper.
I wasn’t smiling. But he was. ‘Astrid Coleman,’ he said, ‘conflict resolution specialist, you have outdone yourself. I don’t think there’s going to be much conflict after this.’
Of course there was but, in the wake of it all, I saw the good more than the bad in people. When Tasmanians finally went to the polls six weeks later, they voted in ways they never had. Afterwards, as they exited the polling booths, they didn’t give anything away. They just shook their heads at the media and smiled that kind of slow, quiet smile Tasmanians have when they are amused by life.
A year later, the broken roadways leading to the Bruny Bridge had been removed and replaced with viewing platforms where people could come and observe the sea and think on what nearly was. A statue was erected on the Bruny side of a man and a woman, both more than three metres tall, staring back towards Tinderbox. It was called Resistance—a memorial to whoever had rid Tasmania of the bridge. The artist received an anonymous commission. The rest was up to her.
The federal government won’t rebuild that bridge any time soon. Apparently, the payout crippled an insurance company in London. After the first bombing, no-one had thought there’d be a second.
The sale of Tasmania to the Chinese is not going ahead either, at least not in the foreseeable future. Far too much public outrage. More than I might have expected. Dan had been right. Tasmanians were not driven by money. They’d given that up a long time ago. They were driven by something else. Belonging. Community. A simpler life. Beauty. A whole lot of things that money can’t buy.
The election outcome? Labor won eight seats, the Greens ten and the Liberals six. It was the Liberal’s worst loss in history. Labor’s too. And Gilbert Farris was elected as the twenty-fifth member of the new parliament.
The Mercury predicted that Coleman brother and sister would form a Liberal/Labor coalition, but that was never going to happen. Amy O’Dwyer and Max began negotiating. Then Max did something unexpected. The week after JC stepped down, she held a media conference and resigned. She said that Tasmania had borne enough from the Coleman family and, from now on, she’d be returning to private life.
She took a trip to Western Australia, where she met a wine grower she’d been corresponding with. The only thing to add is the wine grower is a woman, and Max has never been happier. They’ve bought a vineyard three hours from Hobart. Max and JC have vigorous discussions about the alcohol market when she and Sandra come south.
The new Tasmanian parliament changed the rules for development applications and lease agreements. It changed the rules on foreign home ownership, too. Government compensation was negotiated for those businesses that had to surrender their Chinese partners and were returned to local ownership. Private leases in national parks and on Tasmanian beaches in foreign hands were also returned. It was considered a wise investment.
The rest of Australia was in uproar about the Tassie deal that first year and into the next, a lot of people worried it might be them next. Western Australia put their hand up and said they’d be grateful for a similar offer, but the federal government wasn’t having a bar of it. Too many mines in WA. Couldn’t have all those resources in foreign hands.
Farming land across Australia that was foreign-owned was secured by new laws, ensuring that half of anything produced on it had to stay in Australia. Power schemes that were foreign-owned were slowly returned to majority Australian ownership or state control. A recession came, but it was no worse than the last one, and somehow people got through it. Amy O’Dwyer secured the universal basic income for Tasmanians as a ten-year trial. Gambling licenses were wound back, so people couldn’t give it all to pokie machines. Already the metrics on health and education are improving. More than that, it’s as if whole suburbs have a new sense of pride.
Further afield, the very rich keep getting richer. The middle class keep sliding a little further behind. A lot of people have learned again how to fish and grow potatoes, how to cultivate their front yards, darn their clothes and make do with less. The global mechanisms continue. More governments are becoming dictatorships. Wherever that happens, women’s rights are rolled back. More and more jobs are mechanised. Unemployment is increasing. There’s more outrage, more unrest, more refugees, more climate chaos, more religious extremes, more terrorism. More depression and anxiety. Especially in young people. Nothing anyone didn’t expect, if they’d been thinking at all.
Maybe it’s only a matter of time before another deal is proposed. There’s been some recent talk of water being shipped to China from Tasmania, but everyone is nervous now about Chinese deals.
What will it take to stop the next major threat? I have no idea. Hopefully by then I’ll be an old lady up on the hill and my children and grandchildren will make those decisions.