Mon Nov 30, 1992

e) Life, love and belonging

The Death Wish Cowboys

Death and hope on Tasmania's unforgiving West Coast

(published in Island, December 1992)

In Rosebery the deep green forest sweeps down off the ring of mountains around the town and doesn't stop till it reaches your backdoor. At night the town is shaken by explosions as men root out iron ore thousands of feet below the surface. But what has always struck me most about Rosebery is the one road to the outside world. This road is thin, tenuous and vital like an Amazonian tributary connecting an isolated settlement to the sea. As it winds its way through rainforest and between cliffs it is the only certainty in an otherwise capricious world.

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