Lost Worlds (47 page)

But—ever restless for movement and momentum—I didn’t do any of that. Instead I set off around seven-thirty into the moist morning, leaping swollen creeks, plowing along a trail that had now become a mire as I crossed the undulating moor, and climbing up into mists on Red Point Hills. Somewhere below me was Louisa Bay, but all I could see was more mist, cold and clammy. I’d planned to take a detour down to the bay to catch a glimpse of fur seals and other summertime visitors from the Maatsuyker Islands just a few miles offshore, or leopard seals from Macquarie Island to the south, or watch the breeding rituals of the shorttailed shearwaters on adjoining Louisa Island. Most of all I wanted to see the three-thousand-year-old Aborigine middens that were said to dot the shoreline.

I was particularly curious about these few tangible remnants of Tasmania’s Aboriginal culture. This little state has a notorious and embarrassing reputation as instigator of genocidal policies against the thousands of natives who had enjoyed a relatively tranquil subsistence life since around 1000
B.C.
in the forests and along the coastal bays. Tranquil, that is, until the arrival of the nineteenth-century explorers and settlers who interpreted occasional protests by the Aborigines as tantamount to anticolonial rebellions. When George Arthur, governor of the fledgling colony of Van Diemen’s Land, failed either to destroy or round up the natives in a campaign mounted in 1830, he sent the explorer George Augustus Robinson as a conciliator to find them and “persuade” them to relocate on the uninhabited islands of the Bass Strait. At that time Louisa Bay was a key focus of Aboriginal settlements, but within a short period of time not a single native was left on these wild shores. In fact, so effective were the government’s destruction and relocation strategies that by 1876 no pure-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine existed anywhere except in the form of mummified specimens which toured the world in gaudy anthropological displays.

I remember reading a moving passage in a magazine that captured the terrible sadness of this decimated culture:

And so it was done. Rapidly, cruelly, and, for decades, without remorse. Today, however, I found a belated sadness in many Tasmanians I met and a sense of shame, occasionally tempered with claims of “benevolent relocation” or such odd rationales as “Look—disease had almost wiped them out anyhow. There were so few left. They were moved to help them help themselves.” But generally it’s not a subject of discussion likely to enhance beery camaraderie at the local pub. “Best leave it alone, mate,” one elderly farmer advised me in a smoky bar in Hobart. “Stick to Alan Bond or dwarf tossing. Much safer.”

And I left Louisa Bay alone too. I missed the detour track completely in the clouds on Red Point Hills. When I realized my error I was so bogbound and disheartened by the constant gray drizzle that I just plowed on to my muddy camping ground at the foot of the notorious Ironbound Range.

Some things are inherently amusing—like nose hairs and tables full of empty stubbies; some are not, like gray drizzly days in deepest Tasmania.

It was a day I’d prefer to forget.

And the next day too. Although for different reasons.

Dawn was promising enough: a crystal-clean light pushing the night clouds out to sea and touching the land with gold. No rain, no winds. A fine day for walking. The surly Ironbounds rose up in front of me; gilded peaks with jagged summits, flecks of ice and snow on the ridges. An ancient bulwark of Precambrian metamorphic rocks. Very impressive.

A majestic bird flew overhead as I collapsed the tent and loaded the backpack. The large white head was hawklike and its white belly sparkled as it soared the updrafts with a broad wingspan of five feet or more. I learned later I’d seen a sea eagle, a voracious eater of reptiles, other birds, and, when available, even penguins. Not a very pleasant creature—but on that sparkling morning it seemed an omen of better days ahead.

The path climbed steadily up open sedgeland onto a broad subalpine zone. Pockets of King Billy pine clustered in gullies and sheltered places, their deeply furrowed trunks and branches contorted, juniper-fashion. Small white daisies with golden centers glowed in the wind-scoured scrub; compact clusters of dainty red Christmas bells rose among the grasses.

In spite of their ominous name, the Ironbounds peak at little more than three thousand feet, and while the climbing was tough going, it was made easier by the benign weather and ever-broadening vistas of mountains and bays. The wind increased as I approached the summit and I spotted places where previous walkers had camped, huddled in the low bushes. I considered calling an early halt to the day and hunkering down to enjoy the views, but my legs kept on moving and I followed the contours around the northern rim of the massif, humming happy songs and wondering how to prepare a celebratory feast of my one solitary steak (another gift from Bob) for dinner that night.

I saw new patterns of vegetation from these heights, patterns that were invisible at lower elevations—brilliant green swatches of sphagnum moss invading the small ponds and pools that lay scattered across the mosaics of darker green and bronze cushion-plant plains. The patterns were jigsawlike, thousands of micro-environments from the sedge grasses to the mosses to the lichen-blotched rocks and strata. Patches of pink mountain rocket and cheeseberry bushes adorned with bright red berries gave a rich resonance to the more muted tones of the buttongrass plateaus.

On a dull day the colors would doubtless be leeched out to an army-tent khaki, but today the sun revealed the land’s true richness: a brilliant panoply of tones and textures that made me wish for canvas, palette, and brushes; a magnificent display of the subtleties, the intricate juxtapositions and meldings of plant colonies set beside the milky whorls and snakelike doodlings of sand patterns beneath the blue-green waters of the bays. And yet, despite all these delights, I could sense the restless riot of the land itself: towering broken cliffs; spars of brittle basalt; fjord-like incisions where the warmer, higher post-ice-age waters had penetrated deep into once-forested valleys; bold bluffs and phallic intrusions of dolerite into the spuming surf; the bleedings of frost-shattered ridges and razored escarpments in the form of peat-brown streams pouring from the hills; the bleached bones of ancient bedrocks protruding through the sloozy-oozy mud; the wind-torn trunks of trees, blasted of bark, blanched and twisted by a tempestuous climate that just never lets up—scratching and scraping the land down to its ultimate peneplain in the hollow howling vastness that is South-West Tasmania.

I had a sudden flash of the neat little hedge-rimmed fields, ordered orchards, and Ireland-green, sheep-studded vales that awaited me way to the east around Hobart, far beyond these tumultuous ranges. I thought of the curling country roads, the pie shops smelling of fresh-baked pastry, the rowdy smoke-filled pubs, and the demure tin-roofed bungalows adorned with red and white trim and set in gardens of privet, hollyhocks, and geraniums.

I would be there soon, I promised myself—showered, deloused, primed up on Foster’s ale, choosing dinner from menus with frilly borders, sleeping on soft mattresses, dry and warm, and savoring all the wonders of a world that, up here, seemed very far away.

But enough of such hedonistic imaginings! I was less than halfway to such bucolic destinations, with a lot of tough hiking ahead and challenges to be overcome.

And the challenges came fast. Actually a mere hour or so after my contemplations on that Ironbound ridge, as I left the heights and began my descent toward the long beach of Prion Bay, everything changed. The bare, wind-tossed tops gave way to some of the thickest, most tangled and tortured rain forest it has ever been my misfortune to encounter. Out of the bright light and into a gray-green gloom of a nefarious netherworld.

Now, rain forests have their fascinations. Even that eerie dwarf forest I’d discovered at Cox Bight possessed, in daylight, a certain rampant, raging charm. But this was altogether different—a far more intense, menacing place where there seemed to be little in the way of order or subtleties. The forest just flared up and thrust me into it, following a trail that had the remarkable ability of vanishing in the difficult places, leaving me scrambling through mud and slime and decaying moss beds without any sense of direction—except down.

And down and down, deeper into the sticky gloom of ancient Gondwanaland species—more tall King Billy pines, eucalyptus, myrtles, celery-top pine, and a tangled understory of laurel, whitey wood, waratah, dwarf beech, and ferns, all competing for scarce light and root space—oh, and mosses too, in strange and exotic forms: pillars, mattresses, balls, bouquets, and furry smotherings of trunks and branches. Had the mood been more conducive I might have dallied here and undertaken a photographic essay of these myriad species, possibly even bagged a few samples for later identification. But the mood was definitely not conducive to anything except survival and eventual extrication on the beaches of Prion Bay, far, far below.

And then I noticed the leeches.

Well—not so much noticed. I merely sensed something peculiar on my left arm under layers of damp clothing. Something moving very slowly. Almost like an involuntary muscle spasm except it was happening in three distinct places simultaneously.

I looked down. I’d forgotten to fasten the Velcro cuff of my parka. Either that or it had been ripped open in my frequent fights with vines and branches. And so there it was, dangling loose, allowing whatever it was easy access to the soft flesh of my lower arm.

Actually, I knew what I would see even before I pulled back the layers. Once before, during my adventures in the marshlands of the Caspian Sea (recounted in a previous book,
The Back of Beyond
), I had experienced the stomach-wrenching sight of slimy black creatures growing bigger by the second as they sucked the blood from my legs and shins.

And, oh, yes, there they were. Three big ones this time, happily slurping away on my precious life fluid, oblivious to the discomfort they were causing in the pit of my stomach….

Think back. How did my friends tell me to get rid of them in Iran? Something hot. A cigarette tip, a match—burn their tails and off they drop. But I remembered that method had not been too successful. In their haste to remove their blood-gorged, balloonlike bodies from my flesh they forgot to coagulate their incisions and left oozing wounds in their abandoned snacking spots. But what the hell? Anything was better than watching these miniature monsters have their way with me. So out with the lighter: flick…another flick…and another…and nothing. Not even a spark. Certainly nothing like a flame. Useless damned things, these lighters. A bit of damp and they seize up like oil-starved engines.

Okay. Next solution? Salt. That’s it. A scattering of salt on the tail and off they come. But I didn’t have any salt. All the dehydrated fare I carried in little aluminum pouches was already presalted. I had a tiny bottle of soy sauce I always carried with me to perk up bland restaurant meals, but…aha! I did have one possible resource. Bob’s bag of “emergency goodies.” I’d already found his antihistamines for the bites of jumping ants. But what other delights had he shoved into the left-side pocket of my backpack?

With amazing grace and delicacy, I removed my backpack and used my right hand to burrow into the pocket. His gift was larger and more varied than I’d realized—mosquito repellent, high-energy health bars, Band-Aids, a large bandage, iodine, hydrogen peroxide, and—voilà—a small cylindrical container of common table salt. A message was scrawled on the outside. “So—they got you too! Best. Bob!” Yes, very amusing, my friend. Quite droll, really. You knew the damned creatures would find a way in somewhere. Well—you were right. And thank you for your gift of salt.