Still, Like Yesterday – One Shot Story

My wife and I were seen as the lucky ones when we settled in Tasmania. We called it the great escape.

Imagine this: fewer than six hundred thousand people living on a land of sixty eight thousand square kilometers, with endless sunshine, salty seabreeze, sheep and cattle grazing on soft hills, and a slow, quiet life behind every door.

Now imagine waking up in a tiny studio in a city of over ten million, standing in a packed subway train for more than an hour each way, then leaning against ten other people in an elevator, pressed shoulder to shoulder.

When our friends visited a few years ago, they said this must be what heaven feels like.

Yes, and perhaps no.

The more we settled in, the more we began to feel a different kind of exhaustion. We love the people and the place, but nothing seems to stir within us anymore. Life here is so remote and peaceful that something feels absent. Something thrilling, something exciting, something that makes us jealous, something that urges us to change… none of it is here. We are not sure if it is the isolation, or simply that we entered our midlife crisis a little too early. We are slowly decaying.

It is like that old lady we know.

She was born in Hungary during the Soviet era and grew up as a devoted communist. In her youth, she met Joseph Stalin in person. As a reward for winning a multinational sports competition, he might have shaken her hand or even kissed her cheek. Years later, she became an activist, standing against the Soviet invasion of her country. She fled, first to the United Kingdom, then to New Zealand, and finally to Tasmania. Each move was shaped by a different reason: a foster family, a marriage, a series of puzzles unfolding one by one.

What a life it was. A life filled with belief, honor, resistance, and escape.

And yet, she told me that after all of that, she has lived in Tasmania for thirty years, and nothing has really changed, except the flowers in her garden. Her first day here, she said, still feels like yesterday.

And then there is this photo.

A meaningless photo, taken with a Nikon F3T made in 1985, the year I was born, using a 50mm prime and expired negative film that had sat untouched for over a decade. It was shot during one of our once-a-month road trips to the Great Lake in central Tasmania. It is so meaningless that it does not try to say anything grand, nor to inspire anyone. But it was the only excitement I felt during that trip.

I am not trying to make a statement like, look, these rocks must have been here for millions of years, and now my beautiful, naked wife, curled beside the dead tree roots, becomes a vivid addition to this eternal and peaceful landscape.

No. Not like that.

It reminds me of a recent exhibition here in Tasmania by a Chinese artist. In a television interview, she explained how she had deliberately painted Tasmania’s native flowers alongside artificial Chinese objects, attempting to create a meaningful fusion. It was intentional, symbolic, and carefully presented. But that is exactly the opposite of what I want.

I want to believe there’s something waiting beyond the lake and the mountains. Something unknown. Something worth chasing.

But I know what’s over there. Another winding road through silent forests. A few sharp turns, then the same ranches stretching out under the same sky. A vineyard here and there. The same small shops with the same old women behind the counters, unchanged, as if time forgot them.

It’s all familiar, all already seen, just like the old rocks on this side of the lake.

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