Blacky Blasts Back (6 page)

Within five minutes we had our stuff loaded and the bus took off. I was surprised how quickly we left Devonport behind. I sat at the front of the bus behind Mr Crannitch and Phil. Jimmy was driving and occasionally muttering something unintelligible.

It was a good view up front. Plus, I wanted to keep well away from John. Apart from Dyl, the other boys were crowded at the back. There's a scientific law, like gravity, that says boys – especially those with behavioural problems – always sit at the back of anything. Classrooms, buses, the gym during assemblies.

It might have been Einstein who first discovered this.

Mr Crannitch, however, was the first to discover something else. He turned in his seat and crinkled his nose.

‘Can anyone smell something nasty?'

There were whoops and cheers from the back of the bus.

‘That's John, sir. He's full of crap.'

‘Am not!'

‘Are too, ya stinkin' mongrel.'

‘It's Brodie's armpits, sir.'

‘Who's dropped their guts?'

There was plenty more, but I didn't follow any of it. Maybe I've become conditioned, but whenever there's an inexplicable bad smell I always jump to one conclusion. I didn't have to wait long to receive confirmation.

‘Cat poo,' announced Blacky's voice in my head. ‘With a soupçon of well-digested furball marinated in urine. Top-quality odour.'

‘Where are you, Blacky?'

‘In the luggage hold, tosh. See how considerate I am? I could have hopped on board with the rest of you. You know I am a master of disguise and can infiltrate anywhere.'

I sighed. Judging by the smell, which was really starting to get a hold, I suppose we should have been counting our blessings.

I could see Jimmy's nostrils flexing in the rear-view mirror. Given their size, he must have been copping it worse than the rest of us. Phil went around and opened windows. A cold breeze flooded the bus, but it was better than the alternative.

I glanced at my watch. There was a long trip ahead. Maybe this was a good opportunity to get the lowdown on the mission that Blacky had promised before we set off. I reminded myself, however, that Blacky's promises normally don't amount to much. This time, to my surprise, he kept his word.

‘What do you know about the thylacine, tosh?' he said.

‘Is it a painkiller?' I replied.

He snorted.

‘Modelling putty?' I tried.

‘Slap me in the belly with a wet fish,' he said. ‘I despair of modern education. Kids today. You probably think a one-man sub is a large sandwich.'

‘You mean it isn't?'

‘How about the Tasmanian tiger, mush? Does that ring bells?'

It did. I'd done an oral once on endangered species, and I'd looked up the Tasmanian tiger on the internet.

‘It's extinct, Blacky. The last one died in . . . the
1930
s, I think.'

‘The last captive Tasmanian tiger died at Hobart Zoo in
1936
. Quite right. But the thylacine, to give it its proper name, was only officially declared extinct in
1986
. It would be an unlikely coincidence indeed for a captive animal to be the last remaining specimen.'

‘But no one's seen a Tassie tiger for over seventy years.'

‘Wrong, tosh. Quite wrong. Why does that not surprise me? There have been hundreds of sightings of the Tassie tiger. What you mean is that no scientist has captured one and been able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it exists, which is probably very good news for the tiger.'

I was starting to get excited. I could see where this was leading.

‘You mean there
are
tigers out there, Blacky? It's not extinct after all?'

There was a long silence.

‘Do you know why the thylacine, once plentiful in Tasmania, became endangered, tosh?'

I'd done enough reading to know the answer to that one. Human behaviour. It always has been and always will be, unless we do something really, really soon to change our ways. It is the main reason why Australia has the worst record of any continent for loss of species. Nearly half of all Australian mammals have become extinct in the last two hundred years. It is astonishing until you realise that two hundred years is precisely how long white settlers have been on the land. I can never think of this without tears coming to my eyes.

‘Destruction of the environment, Blacky,' I said. ‘Land clearing, wiping out habitats.'

‘You're learning, mush. Very good. But in the case of the Tassie tiger, humanity took a more hands-on approach in addition to all that. In the late
1800
s the tiger was so plentiful that the government believed it was responsible for killing sheep and chickens introduced by settlers –
introduced
, note. It decided to offer a bounty, a reward for killing them. A pound in the old currency – a lot of money in those days – for each skin. Hunters and farmers slaughtered as many as they could. And do you know the really funny thing, tosh?'

I didn't. And I had a feeling it wasn't going to be funny at all.

‘The tiger wasn't responsible for the vast majority of the attacks. That was feral dogs, with a little input from the Tasmanian
devil
. Yet the thylacine was slaughtered to the point of extinction. How do you like that?'

I didn't. I didn't like that at all.

‘You haven't answered my question, Blacky,' I said. ‘There
are
tigers still out there. I'm right, aren't I?'

The silence was even longer this time.

‘You might be, mush. But you need to know one thing. If there are tigers still out there, their fate is entirely in your hands.'

I spent the rest of the journey looking out of the window. I suppose, living in a city, I'd become used to shopping centres, roads and housing estates that stretched to the horizon. Tasmania isn't like that at all.

Most of the time we travelled on empty roads, every so often passing through a small town. It was the number of trees that surprised me. They were everywhere. And we seemed to be moving deeper and deeper into vast forest.

Just after ten o'clock we stopped at a small town in the middle of nowhere. Phil produced an esky full of sandwiches and cold drinks and we ate in a park under the shade of a tree. After that, we hit the tiny supermarket to stock up on rations. I bought chocolate. Mum had already looked after the whole toothpaste and shower gel department, so I just had to consider my stomach. I took the opportunity to have a word with Phil about food on the camp itself. If necessary I'd buy my own vegie burgers. It turned out he was a vegetarian and he assured me there were sufficient supplies for both of us.

Dylan bought two cartons of cola. He'd have bought more, but Jimmy wouldn't let him stow them into the luggage hold. He barked something in his foreign language and Phil translated.

Incidentally, there was no sign of a small, dirty-white and smelly hound in the bowels of the hold. Bowels was probably the right word. It
stank
in there.

Dyl was worried. He tried to do the maths, but that's never been one of his strong points.

‘Seven days, two cartons of cola each with twenty-four cans. That's how many cans, Marc?'

‘Forty-eight.'

‘Seven goes into forty-eight how many times?'

‘That's seven cans a day, Dyl.' I didn't mention that this would give him one day with only six. It was another need-to-know thing.

‘W
HAAAT
? Seven! I can't exist on seven. I have seven cans before breakfast.'

‘Dyl, you have seven cans
instead
of breakfast,' I pointed out.

‘Oh, man.'

I tried to take his mind off this catastrophe by filling him in on what Blacky had told me. He perked up immediately. That's a good thing about Dyl's short-term memory problem. You could tell him that he was two minutes away from being run over by a Mack truck, change the subject and he'd be as happy as Larry.

By the way, I've always wanted to meet someone called Larry, just to see if he is constantly laughing.

‘Cool, Marc. A tiger, huh? Huge thing, slashing jaws, claws that can rip you apart. Fantastic.'

‘It's more like a medium-sized dog, Dyl,' I said. ‘In fact, it's a marsupial.'

Dyl looked baffled, so I explained. ‘It has a pouch for its young. The reason it's called a tiger is that it has stripes over its body, particularly towards the tail.'

‘And everyone reckons there aren't any left?'

I nodded.

‘It would be so cool if we got to see one, hey?'

Having successfully distracted his mind from the cola crisis, I got back on the bus. John gave me a vicious kick in the shin as he shimmied past.

‘Sorry, Mucus,' he growled. ‘Accident.'

The last forty-five minutes of our trip was down a dirt road into a huge forest. Occasionally, I would catch a glimpse of a river sparkling off to one side, but then the trees would sweep in again and block the view. It was cold. Mr Crannitch had shut the windows after our last stop, but even so Jimmy had been forced to put the heating on. And
he
was insulated by half a metre of thick hair.

It was eleven in the morning. I hated to think what the temperature would be like at night.

Finally, we came to a stop at a large gate that blocked the road. There was a sign on it that read, P
RIVATE PROPERTY.
T
HE
W
ILDERNESS
L
ODGE
R
ETREAT
. N
O
U
NAUTHORISED
E
NTRY.
Phil hopped off the bus, unlocked the padlock on the gate and we drove through. Jimmy didn't bother to wait for his mate, but swung the bus around a bend into a large clearing and cut the engine.

We were here. Wherever ‘here' was.

I jumped down from the bus. It was good to stretch my legs after so long. The biggest building in the clearing was a log cabin off to my right. Well, I say cabin, but it was more the size of a single-storey house. A few other, smaller, cabins were dotted around. I instantly deduced that one of them was a shower room and toilet block. You can put this down to the fact that I'm a gifted detective. Mind you, a big sign saying S
HOWER
R
OOM
AND
T
OILET
B
LOCK
gave me a slight clue. On the other side of the dirt track where the bus was parked was a wooden-framed barbecue area. The air was so cold I could see my breath.

Thank goodness Mum had insisted on packing thermal underwear. I'd thrown a huge hissy fit when she suggested it. I swore I would sooner have my teeth torn out with red-hot pliers than wear them. Pack my jocks with ice and I'd still not wear them. She'd ignored me, though.

We all got off the bus and the two instructors opened the luggage compartment. Phil pointed to the large building.

‘Your dorm,' he said. ‘Twenty bunks, so there's plenty of room. Get your luggage, make yourselves at home and we'll see you out here in fifteen minutes. Sharp, guys.'

I was relieved it wasn't Jimmy giving the instructions. We'd still be there scratching our heads.

The dorm was basic and you could smell years of sweat soaked into the woodwork. But at least it had a wood-burning stove. Unlit at the moment. I waited until John chose his bunk before putting my stuff on the one furthest away. It was going to be difficult enough getting to sleep as it was. I hoped that if John did try to make a night-time visit to my bunk I'd hear the groan of shifting floorboards. Or his head scraping against the ceiling. Even then I could have done with additional resources. Like a moat. Or a missile launcher. Maybe both.

Phil and Jimmy were pacing up and down when we reassembled outside twenty minutes later. My impression was that Jimmy, in particular, never relaxed. Probably went swinging through trees while everyone else slept. He took a pace forward. His eyes bulged and his face was red. It looked like a relief map of Mars.