Into the Heart of Tasmania by Rebe Taylor

Author:Rebe Taylor [Taylor, Rebe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The last ride: Syndal Quarry, 12 June 1910

Westlake left Kearney Bogs, caught the coach back to Campbell Town and that same evening rode his bicycle to Ross, 16 kilometres away, in an hour—the fastest he had ever travelled on Tasmanian roads ‘and in the dark too!’ Before daybreak the following morning, he rode another 5 kilometres to ‘Tom Fiddler’s Ground’, ‘alias the Syndal Quarry’. It was the same place he had collected from in December 1908, when it had been dusty and windblown. This time it was wet and the wind had strewn so many fallen branches that he had had to leave his bicycle and walk the 2 kilometres. The quarry was a stony terrace, way up a hill—an edge broken by years of mining. Westlake was inspired to pose a mathematical question to his children: ‘If you can look at 50 stones in a minute, how many can you look at in 6 hours?’19 Westlake took away ‘50 pieces more or less chipped’ as well as a ‘few very finely so’. This ‘settled the question’ that had brought him back to Syndal Quarry: ‘the stones were sometimes really worked and finished in the quarries.’

He knew he had to finish at three o’clock in order to have enough light to get back; it would be ‘dangerous otherwise’. Westlake collected ‘to the minute’. Then, ‘as if it had waited for me to be done, it began to rain, a heavy soaking rain’. The wind was powerful and the terrace ‘caught the full force’. Westlake did not mind. He was ‘well wrapped up’ and his work ‘was done’. This was his final collecting trip in Tasmania. He ‘was bound for Canaan’s happy shore, otherwise England’s.’ Westlake walked 2 kilometres with 14 kilograms of stones, loaded it onto his bicycle and, in the ‘driving rain’, took his last ride in Tasmania.20

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