Carnivorous Nights (33 page)

When we got on the road again, we checked the map and decided to drive over to the wildlife park where Trudy said she used to work.

“So what did you think of her story?” we asked Alexis.

“Her embarrassment made me feel she believed she'd really seen one.”

“And?”

“It's straight out of central casting—the craggy local who holds the key to the mystery, the earnest reporters.”

“And?”

“What do you want me to say? It's like a combination of mythology, cryptozoology, and conspiracy theory. She's off the grid.”

T
he wildlife park wasn't hard to spot. On the edge of the highway, a ten-foot-high wooden sculpture of a Tasmanian devil with pink ears and parted jaws greeted visitors. Next to it, a folksy-looking sign read, “W
ELCOME TO THE
T
ROWUNNA
W
ILDLIFE
P
ARK, THE STATE'S NO. I WILDLIFE PARK
. C
OME UP AND PAT A DEVIL, CUDDLE A WOMBAT, OR FEED SOME OF OUR MANY FREE RANGING ANIMALS
.”

We walked into the park through a series of gates and found what
looked like an outdoor petting zoo. Kangaroos hopped about. A young wombat in a little wooden enclosure came up to the edge of its fence and gave us a friendly look. Eucalyptus trees—stringy barks—grew up between and among the pens. In the center of it all, a young man with multiple piercings and a shirt that seemed to be covered in animal shit was giving a stunningly erudite lecture on Tasmanian devils. He stood inside a small enclosure with four young devils. We knew they were young because their heads weren't big and hulking. Their fur was sleek, shiny, and black. Most of them were snoozing through the talk. Perhaps they had heard it before. A sign posted outside had the words “Devil's Den” carved into it.

As the young man lectured to a group of about twenty people and one attentive devil, a spiny echidna wandered by our feet and a four-foot-high kangaroo hopped over and sniffed Alexis's hand. The kangaroo had light gray fur, a black nose, tall broad ears, and an athletic-looking neck. This was Tasmania's largest macropod species, the Eastern gray or forester kangaroo. We suspected this shrewd-looking kangaroo could box if given a chance. It had been called a boomer by Tasmania's settlers and could tear open a dog if cornered.

When the little crowd around the Devil's Den dispersed, we buttonholed the keeper. His name was Chris Coupland and he gave us the lowdown on Trowunna. “The animal park is a sanctuary on eighteen hectares of remnant dry sclerophyll forest, surrounded by state forest. We rehabilitate and raise animals that are brought to us back into a wild situation.” The place was run by Androo (“that's spelled with two
o
's”) Kelly, who was said to be a distant relation of Ned Kelly, Australia's most famous outlaw. When Androo took over the park sixteen years before, he had expanded what had been a kitschy petting zoo into a conservation facility.

“Androo is amazing with animals,” Chris said. “He shifted the focus from display to animal rehabilitation, captive breeding, and research.” For example, all the wombats in the park had been orphaned, most pulled from their dead mothers' pouches on the side of the road. They were being hand-raised and ultimately would be released into the wild. “Some wombats quite literally release themselves when they're ready, digging themselves under the fence and ranging through the eighteen hectares. From the eighteen hectares, they range into the surrounding forest. It's a soft release program.”

In addition to rescuing animals, Trowunna bred them—quolls, devils, and many smaller marsupials—and released the offspring into the wild. With so many threats to Tasmania's wildlife—the fox invasion, speeding cars, animals being shot and poisoned as pests, the lethal disease racing through the devil population, the chopping of Tasmania's forests— captive breeding was now more important than ever in the fight to save species.

“As an example, we've captively bred bettongs for six or seven years now. The bettong's a small macropod that weighs about two kilos. On the mainland, it's called the Eastern bettong, but now unfortunately a lot of people are referring to it as the Tasmanian bettong. Tasmania is the only place it still exists due to the fox. With the foxes in Tasmania now …Well, we're stepping up our breeding program.” As if to punctuate Chris's remarks, a devil gave off a guttural shriek.

We thought about the Tasmanian tiger. Dozens, possibly hundreds, had been kept in zoos. But they had never been bred in captivity. Chris and his boss Androo were not going to let that happen with the native animals in their care. They didn't want any more animals to disappear into the Styx.

We looked at the four young devils. Two were walking about, sniffing at everything in their path. They looked perky and alert. A big sign behind them warned, “Devils May Bite.”

“How did you get to be so comfortable with devils?” we asked.

“This isn't a vicious animal,” Chris said. “Their jaws are massively powerful, but devils are actually very timid and shy. All my practical handling experience has been learned off Androo. He's taught me the safe way to handle them and be confident with them.” Certainly, he was confident enough to give a devil a friendly pat.

Unfortunately, Chris told us, Androo wasn't around. But we could find his partner, Darlene Mansell, in the café next to the gift shop.

Darlene was having coffee and chatting with some visitors. We introduced ourselves and explained we were doing a project on Tasmanian wildlife. “Oh well, you must meet Androo,” she said. “The wealth of information he has, it's really important to hear. I won't let you leave the island without speaking to him.” She said we should come back in the morning.

“What do
you
do here?” Alexis asked.

“Presently I'm running the café. But I've been mucking around with Androo up here for about twelve years. We have a ten-year-old son, Rulla, which is the totem of the owl. This place was formerly called the Tasmanian Wildlife Park. Now it's Trowunna, which is actually the aboriginal word for Tasmania. I'm a Tasmanian aboriginal woman.”

We found ourselves looking at Darlene more closely. She was attractive, her hair chestnut brown and wavy, her nose broad and strong, her skin tan. We realized we were staring and immediately felt self-conscious. It was an odd feeling meeting an aboriginal person from Tasmania. According to a lot of history books, they were all supposed to be long dead.

Darlene said she got that all the time. She put on a snooty Britishsounding accent, “Oh
dahrling
, you're not the
real
thing. What are you carrying on about?” Then she switched back to her own voice, a measured Australian twang. “But we're here. Indeed.”

Tasmania is frequently described as a place where colonization led to the total genocide of its native people. A woman named Truganini is usually cited as the last surviving Tasmanian aboriginal. She died in 1876.

“That's a great myth,” said Darlene. “She certainly wasn't the last Tasmanian aborigine and she wasn't even the last tribal aborigine. She's used as an iconic symbol for white Australia—and for science.”

Darlene's use of the word “science” caught us off guard. Wasn't Trowunna a place that engaged in science? Chris, the animal manager, had an honors degree in zoology. Darlene said she meant that science— supposedly so objective—was actually highly
sub
jective, manipulated to an appalling degree at times by whoever held the reins of power. She said science and its labels had been used to marginalize and denigrate her people.

From the very first days of exploration, Europeans had a great curiosity to see how the aboriginal Tasmanians lived, but very little interest in whether they continued their way of life—or even kept living at all. Aboriginal culture was a source of fascination, and when Europeans first visited the island, they had a strong desire to “study” the Tasmanians.

Captain William Bligh's encounter with the island's aboriginals was not the first, but it was illuminating. He and his crew from the HMS
Bounty
spent three weeks in Tasmania in 1788, resting and refueling after an arduous two months at sea while en route from the Cape of Good Hope to Tahiti. Bligh (who had earlier visited the island with Captain
James Cook) was eager to be the first to make an anthropological study of the Tasmanian people. To Bligh's chagrin, the islanders proved uncooperative, disappearing into the trees whenever he approached. Finally when one of the
Bounty
's crew made contact, Bligh rushed over hurling trinkets. Alarmed by this ham-handed assault, the Tasmanians ran off. Later, Bligh wrote bitterly in his ship's log that the Tasmanians were “the most wretched and stupid people existing.” Or perhaps the residents of Trowunna were quick studies, knowing better than to face down British guns. Incidentally, Bligh's crew visited Tasmania eight months before their famous mutiny.

The Tasmanian aboriginals had more interaction with a French crew a few years later. In 1792, the ships
Recherche
and
Espérance
led by Bruny d'Entrecasteaux landed on the southeast coast of the island. And the meeting was amicable. Unlike Bligh, the French crew wrote that the Tasmanians' eyes “expressed sweetness and kindness” and that they displayed “surprising intelligence.” Many gifts of goodwill were exchanged, with the sailors receiving kangaroo skins, shell bracelets, and throwing stones. The French watched Tasmanian women dive for crabs and shellfish, and the men demonstrated their spear-throwing prowess, repeatedly hitting a target at thirty paces. The Tasmanian aboriginals also submitted to all sorts of bizarre measurements being taken. One sailor took thirteen body measurements of a Tasmanian man, including full height, length of forearm from elbow to wrist, width of mouth, length of ears, and length of male member (natural state). In their turn, the Tasmanians couldn't quite believe that there were no women on board and performed their own examinations, frequently checking the sailors' private parts to make sure they were men. This was the last time relations were so friendly.

After the British colonized Tasmania—then still called Van Diemen's Land—in 1803, the relationship between the settlers and aboriginals turned sour within a very short time. The Tasmanian aboriginals were seminomadic. They lived completely off the land, returning each year to shellfishing grounds in one season and to kangaroo-hunting grounds in the next. The settlers began eating up all the aboriginal people's food, killing kangaroos en masse with guns and dogs. And frequently when the aboriginals would return to a coastal spot they had been living in for perhaps thousands of years, they would find it occupied by settlers and soldiers. These encounters led to bloodshed and exposed aboriginals to
European diseases to which they had no immunity. At first the colonial government maintained a policy of détente with the native people. But by the 1820s, the situation had completely deteriorated. In 1828, aboriginals were banned from entering settlement areas and some settlers interpreted the ban as a shoot-on-sight policy. In 1830, the colonial government staged an exercise known as the Black Line. Colonists, convicts, and soldiers marched across the settled parts of Tasmania in a long line in an attempt to capture any and all aboriginals in their path. Though only two aboriginal people were captured during the seven-week-long sweep, the Black Line effectively drove the aboriginals permanently from their ancestral homes around the colonial settlements.

It was in response to these hostilities that George Augustus Robinson began to round up Tasmania's aboriginals at the behest of the government. Robinson, who was a housebuilder from London before he turned missionary, thought he could save the aboriginals by moving them to concentration camps in the Bass Strait and converting them to Christianity. An aboriginal woman named Truganini assisted him. Truganini was born in 1812, nine years after settlement, and her clan was decimated by colonization. Her father had been shot by settlers. Her sister had been kidnapped by sealers and later killed. With Truganini as translator, Robinson went around to the furthest reaches of the island, convincing aboriginals (sometimes at gunpoint) to follow him to a better place. Where he took them were isolated islands in the Bass Strait. There, in camps cut off from their way of life, the aboriginal people died at a rapid rate from disease, poor nutrition, and squalid living conditions. In her last years, Truganini became the symbolic last survivor. And when she died in 1876, her bones were taken by the Royal Society of Tasmania, strung up, and eventually put on display like an animal's. They remained on public view until 1947. They were supposed to be the icon of a lost race.

Darlene called the last aboriginal story a convenient fiction. Tru-ganini's bones, which were displayed for “scientific” reasons, were nothing but a trophy, wrapped up in a phony aura of regret. When the Europeans had eliminated the Tasmanian “aboriginal problem” and taken over all the aboriginal lands, they could pretend the aboriginals were no longer there.

“Science will say that I can't be a black woman, because I'm not blackskinned.
I can't be an aboriginal woman, because I can't speak lingo. Science will tell you that we're just descendants or half-castes. That's what I was brought up being called, little half-caste girl.”