Carnivorous Nights (9 page)

After Tasman's departure, Van Diemen's Land was not called on again for more than a hundred years. But in the 1770s there were a rash of short visits. Captain Marion du Fresne stopped in on behalf of France in 1772, Commander Tobias Furneaux investigated for England in 1773 (as part of the expedition of Captain James Cook), and Captain Cook himself dropped by in 1777.

In 1770 Cook had claimed the Australian mainland for England, and this visit ultimately resulted in the Sydney area's being settled as a prison colony for British convicts in 1788. A few years later, when French explorers and scientists aboard the ships
Géographe
and
Naturaliste
began surveying the area around Van Diemen's Land, the British decided it was time to stake another claim. In 1803 they set up a second convict settlement on the southeast coast of Van Diemen's Land. From 1803 to 1853, about seventy thousand prisoners were transported from England and Ireland, and the island quickly earned a reputation as a cruel “convict hell.” If the condemned weren't doing hard labor under threat of the lash
in prisons such as Port Arthur and Macquarie Harbour, they were “assigned” to work for private landowners. As one convict ballad from the early nineteenth century warned:

Wolves
and
tigers? The confusion was understandable. Van Diemen's Land was a strange place—unknown, unfamiliar, and filled with bewildering plants and animals. When the colonists spotted their first thylacine, they weren't sure if it was a wolf, a tiger, or
what
it was. In 1805 William Paterson, one of the island's first lieutenant governors, reported that an “animal of a truly singular and nouvel description” and “of the carnivorous and voracious tribe” was killed by dogs on the is-land's north coast. At the outset, the colonists couldn't agree what name to give this unfamiliar beast. Paterson thought it looked like a hyena or a “low wolf dog,” and for many years it was variously dubbed hyena, hyena opossum, zebra opossum, dog-headed opossum, zebra wolf, panther, tyger, tiger wolf, striped wolf, and Tasmanian dingo. Sightings were rare in the colony's first years, and in 1810 the explorer John Oxley wrote that the tiger “flies at the approach of Man, and has not been known to do any Mischief.” This status as a benign new animal didn't last long, however. The first reported killing of a sheep by a thylacine was in 1817. From that moment on, thylacines had a price on their heads.

We headed back down the metal stairs, experiencing an increasing sense of vertigo. The ship was designed to focus passengers inward. The size of a cruise ship, it had once plied the Adriatic Sea. Its built-in stabilizers and size insulated it from the roughness of the strait. And when we
were inside—out of the wind—we barely noticed we were on the water. There was a bar, a restaurant, a tiny dance floor, a sitting area with TV monitors showing the Australian Open and the movie
Police Academy
, and a room filled with slot machines called the Admiral's Gaming Lounge.

When we visited the onboard gift shop, we were thrown for a loop. If Tasmanians historically had not cared much for the thylacine, they obviously liked it now. Tasmanian tiger T-shirts, jerseys, and hooded sweatshirts lined rack after rack. There were tiger snow globes, decorative plates, pewter figurines, sun visors, key chains, refrigerator magnets, collectible spoons, shot glasses, tea towels, and “stubbie” holders for keeping beer bottles cold. One long, multi-binned shelf was devoted exclusively to stuffed animal versions of the tiger. There were also numerous tiger books—from children's stories to scientific treatises. And there were even little striped jackets you could buy to dress up your dog as a thylacine. Apparently being branded extinct was no barrier to marketing.

We couldn't decide if the tchotchke-ization of the tiger was cute or disturbing. The Tasmanian devil ran a close second as the icon of choice. The devil toys had red tongues and big white fangs. Alexis quickly began criticizing the form, coloring, and texture of the stuffed animals. “What is this? This looks like a dog. What's wrong with these people?”

He picked up a book that showed a mummified version of a Tasmanian tiger. It had been found at the bottom of a cave in the Nullarbor Plain on the Australian mainland in the 1960s. The dry air and constant temperature in the cave had desiccated and preserved the body. Though the tiger was shrunken and dried-out-looking, you could still see its weird wolfy shape, several dark brown stripes, rows of sharp teeth, and even its tongue. When the tiger mummy was first found, some people thought the animal had died in recent times, which would mean that thylacines had somehow survived on the mainland. But when scientists radiocarbon-dated the mummy, they discovered it was more than four thousand years old.

Alexis pointed at the photo. “I have a mummified fox that looks exactly like that.”

“Where'd you get that?” we asked.

“It was a present.”

We spent the rest of the evening sampling Tasmanian wines from the bar on the foredeck. When we went to return our glasses, a tipsy woman
at the bar was whispering to a friend and leaning her head toward Alexis and Dorothy. “Those two there. Wasn't he one of Carrie's boyfriends? And she's the rich one. Not Miranda, but—”

“Charlotte.”

“That's the one.”

They had mistaken them for actors on
Sex and the City.

Around midnight, we decided to retire to our cabin and fell asleep immediately. After what seemed like twenty minutes, a tiny intercom positioned next to our heads tinnily blared, “We have arrived. It is six A.M.” This announcement was repeated every few seconds until we were finally rousted.

Looking and feeling haggard, we trailed behind Alexis and Dorothy to the outer deck and looked out expectantly as the ferry approached the island and the city of Devonport. In the distance, mist shrouded a low mountain. In the foreground were a medium-sized industrial port, a McDonald's, and a multiplex cinema.

Alexis looked at the McDonald's. “We may have more to fear from globalization than we do from land leeches,” he said.

Straggling off the ferry, we passed an old-looking beagle. This canine cop was the last line of defense in the effort to stop the importation of exotic species. As we filed past, he wagged his tail and panted at us. Alexis smiled at the beagle and patted the sleeping bag strapped to the bottom of his backpack. When we were just out of earshot he muttered, “That dog should retire if it can't sniff out this shit. He should be put out to doggy pasture.”

W
e had arrived in Tasmania, the land of the tiger. And along with intense fatigue, we felt a sudden sense of urgency. “Alexis,” we said blearily. “We need to get out into the bush … to walk where the tiger walked … watch its stripes melting into the forest.” Our eyes must have looked slightly wild.

“Wake up!” snapped Alexis. “You're babbling. You need some strong coffee.” He pointed at a tour bus parked next to the ferry with a picture of a thylacine on the back. “See. The thylacine's right there. Go commune.”

“I wonder if there's anywhere good to eat breakfast,” Dorothy mused. She looked fresh as a daisy in a new pair of hiphugger jeans she had bought specially for our trip.

We went to pick up coffees in the ferry terminal. As we walked off, we observed Alexis beginning a series of stretching exercises. They looked like yoga positions crossed with the moves of a contortionist. He laid his
palms flat on the ground and stuck his butt in the air. Then he tucked a foot behind his ear. The people on the thylacine tour bus looked on with interest.

After getting some caffeine, we found the car hire agency and rented a big white four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi Pajero. Then we drove with Alexis and Dorothy to the Backpacker's Barn, a local camping store. We had agreed to meet Chris Vroom there after he flew in from Melbourne, and we needed to purchase a few supplies. The proprietor of the barn greeted us heartily. “Welcome to paradise,” he shouted in our faces. The veins in his forehead looked like they would pop with enthusiasm. “Tasmania
is
paradise,” he added. We weren't ready for this so early in the morning.

His name was Carl Clayton, and inside the store, he kept a white sul-phur-crested cockatoo as a pet. This is a raucous species of parrot given to decibel-bashing screeches. But Carl's cockatoo also knew how to talk, and it was one of those parrots that seemed always to be making snide remarks in our direction. While we were browsing amid the flashlights and water bottles, we thought we caught it saying, “Polly wanna—SCREW YOU!”

We bought some topographic maps and a compass. Most compasses made in the Northern Hemisphere don't work properly Down Under. The compass needle, which is counterweighted for use in the north, bogs down and doesn't rotate. We didn't want to risk getting lost: the Tasmanian bush is full of hazards. You could be fanged by a tiger snake, jabbed by a venomous bull ant, drained of your blood by land leeches, chewed on by a Tasmanian devil, or even spurred by a rogue platypus. More common (
much
more common) though was getting lost on a hot summer's day while hiking and dying of hypothermia when Tasmania's mercurial weather suddenly turned freezing.

Alexis didn't seem to share our concerns about the hazards of the bush. In fact, he looked like all his problems had been solved now that he'd brought his stash safely into Tasmania. He bought a lighter that looked like a tiny blowtorch to use with his pot pipe. Dorothy bought hundreds of dollars' worth of camping equipment—sleeping bag, inflatable sleeping pad, backpack, hiking boots, thermal socks, and a thick woolen shirt.

As we made our purchases, Carl goggled at us and waggled his head. “Am I your first two-headed Tasmanian?”

Two heads? We looked at him blankly.

“You came from the mainland, didn't you? Didn't they tell you that Tasmanians were supposed to have two heads?” He seemed disappointed.

We knew mainlanders typecast Tasmanians as being backward and inbred—kind of like Appalachian hillbillies. But we weren't aware it was a stereotype Tasmanians promoted. We wondered if Carl would appreciate hearing that several people on the mainland had advised us to “watch out for Tasmanians with six fingers.”

Carl seemed to forgive our ignorance and informed us that in addition to running the barn, he was an environmental activist. He was working to get a nearby rain forest protected. It was called the Tarkine, and he had a novel idea for preserving it. Under his plan, the Tarkine would not only be maintained as a roadless area, it would also be a “no go” area. People—even hikers, his own clientele—would not be permitted to enter the Tarkine under any circumstances. “Humans,” he informed us in a low voice, “are dirty, dirty, dirty animals.” We were inclined to agree and promised to stay out of his rain forest.

When Chris showed up with a green compact he had rented, we suggested that he, Dorothy, and Alexis take the day off and explore some of the north coast's beaches. We told them we would scout ahead and meet up with them the following day. We wanted to get our heads together to think about the best way to pursue our quarry. Plus we had to see a man about a devil.

From Devonport we drove onto the Bass Highway, a long stretch of two-lane blacktop that runs along the northern coast of Tasmania. Tasmanians, like all Australians, drive on the left side of the road, a practice we found disorienting even while driving in a straight line. Every time we signaled to turn, the windshield wipers came on.

Our destination was the far northwest corner of the island, and once we left the port cities behind, we saw nothing but rolling pastureland, occasional glimpses of the Bass Strait, cows, and a few sheep. The only other attractions worth noting were the huge logging trucks that barreled toward us and the numerous roadkills—many of which we pulled over to examine. Though unable to identify any of the flattened remains, we perceived that most had fur, four legs, and a tail. These creatures had literally
been pounded into the pavement. We diligently checked the bodies for stripes, but there weren't any as far as we could tell.

Back at the ferry terminal, we had picked up a copy of the local
Visitor Gazette
, which tried to put a positive spin on the roadside carnage: