Lost Worlds (42 page)

A face peered at mine through the cobwebby window. A large man, red cheeks, big nose bulging in odd places (a drinker’s nose?), richly tanned face etched deeply with lines (or scars), and firm chin set on a thick-muscled neck.

No, it wasn’t Deny. From Phil’s descriptions, Deny was a small, wiry kind of man who walked with a bit of a stoop.

The newcomer was altogether larger; his face folds moved like thick lava from a scowl to a pleasant, open smile.

“Thought I might find you here,” he mouthed through the glass. “Okay if I come in?”

“Fine.” I tried to smile back but felt embarrassed to be discovered trespassing in Deny’s hideaway.

As soon as he entered the door, bending his huge head to avoid the low beam, the room shrank. He was a giant, or at least appeared so against the modest scale of the space and its meager furnishings.

“Hey—sorry to disturb you, but I thought I might find you here. Just came back in the boat from the beach. Saw your fire at the hut. You’re a good fire man. S’going beaut now. Toasty as all blazes back there.”

I must have still looked a little confused by his sudden appearance.

“Sorry mate—forgot me manners—Bob Geeves. Wilderness Tours. Out of Hobart. I do the honors at the camp down the beach there.”

Obviously my confusion confused him.

“Er…the camp, y’know—on Melaleuca inlet by Bathurst. I take the camping trips….”

My voice finally returned. “Oh—Bob Geeves. I’ve heard of you from Phil. Hi. Good to meet you.” I introduced myself.

“Well—and g’day to you, Dave. Heard you might be stayin’ over awhile. Thought I’d come up and see you’re all right and stuff like that. Y’okay for food?”

“Food? Oh, yes, fine. I was just going back to cook some dinner. You want to join me?”

“Sure thing. Brought a couple of fish. Caught them on me way back. You like fish, right?”

“I’d prefer anything to that dehydrated rubbish I’m carrying with me.”

He exploded with a sudden gale of laughter. The small room seemed to shake. “Good on yer, mate! Yeah—that’s crap in’t but s’bout all you can carry on the trail. And it keeps you goin’. But I’ll tell you, five days on and you’d give your left testicle for a plate of fish ’n’ chips in a sweaty snack bar.”

Together we strolled slowly back to the hiker’s hut, past Deny’s studio, past his neat rows of gardening implements, past the blue and red house, and up over the moor ridge.

The fire was indeed “beaut” and the bunk room toasty. I prepared the bread and a salad I’d carried in with me while Bob grilled the fish by the fire and started to tell me about my newfound friend-of-the-spirit, Deny King.

“He was a real outback man—tin miner, naturalist, meteorologist, artist, and—when you got him going—a great storyteller. God, he’d tell tales that’d scare the beejeez outa you. He was ’bout eighty when he died just a while back and—I tell you—he’d done jus’ ’bout anything a man has to do down here to stay alive. The only thing he didn’t do was go hunting whales like some of the crazy boyos did here ’bout a hundred years ago. Did a bit of lumbering—big trade in Huon pine from Bathurst early on. But what he and his dad, Charlie, were really after was gold. They first came on down in 1930, but nothing panned out and they went back to their farm—Sunset Ranch—not far from Hobart. Then they hit bad luck—loads of it. Bush fire wiped out the ranch in ’34, Charlie’s wife, Olive, died ’35, so he and Deny came back here to get in on the tin-mining bonanza in 1935. Deny was twenty-four, m’be twenty-five, then. He wanted to be an engineer but gave it up to help his dad until the war. Came back again in ’45 and built that house you saw—called it Melaleuca, after all those trees down by the creek.”

“It must have been a tough life.”

“Well, early on they had plenty of company. Twenty men or more working the peat beds for tin. But the price got bad and after a while it was just the two of them. They got mail and supplies every month or two from fishing boats that came into Bathurst. Made a bit of extra cash from the Bureau of Meteorology—he built that wooden tower with a wind gauge—didn’t you see that? Y’must have come in the back way. He clocked a real roarin’ forties gale there in ’48—more’n a hundred and twenty miles per hour! Told me when he climbed up to take the readin’ he lost all his clobber down to his vest an’ boots!”

“You get winds like that?”

“Dead right we do—and rain—a hundred and ten inches average—some years double that. This is crazy territory down here. Remember that Snowdon fella from Buck Palace, photographer, married Princess Margaret—he came here doing a book on Tasmania in 1980. Got stuck down in Melaleuca with Deny for three days. Planes wouldn’t fly in from Hobart. Said it was suicidal. Fella only came for a day to photograph Deny. Ended up becoming a mate for life! Hillary came down too—y’remember Sir Edmund Hillary—fella who got up Everest? Called Deny “a real pioneer.” Deny liked that. Y’know, they even named a plant after him
—Euphrasia Kingii—
some new specimen he discovered on one of his botany expeditions. I tell you, Dave—he was a rare man.”

“Did he ever marry?”

“Deny—sure he did. Margaret. Lovely girl. Gave her a wedding ring made out of gold he’d panned ’round here. He always said he’d find the lode—somewhere in there with the tin an’ all. Never did. Just flakes and a few nuggets. Nothing much. They got two daughters—Mary and Janet. They still come down—painting like their dad. He did a lot of that when the price of tin went down.”

“I saw one of his paintings. Looked pretty good.”

“Oh, Deny was an okay painter, all right. Sold all his stuff. When he died he had twenty on order.”

Crash!

Our chat by the fire over Bob’s grilled fish was suddenly interrupted by a great bang on the hut door.

I jumped. Bob looked up and smiled.

“Cheeky bugger,” he mumbled.

“Who—what?” I spluttered and fish bits flew from my mouth.

“Bloody possum,” said Bob, and stood up. “Cheeky as hell. She always knows when I’m eatin’…bangs on that door like a bloody landlord!”

He extracted a particularly succulent piece of fish from the pan.

“You do without this?”

I was hungry but decided to be polite. “Sure.”

He strolled to the door, his huge frame making the floorboards groan, and opened it slowly to reveal the cutest, cuddliest kangaroo-type creature I’d yet seen in Australia.

“There y’are, you cheeky bugger. Get that down yer.”

The possum extended delicate raccoonlike fingers and took the offering gracefully. It was not much larger than a big cat, with a thick woolly gray coat, long bushy tail, pink ears and nose, and what looked like a permanent grin set in a cherubic round face. Its eyes glowed deep red in the reflected light of the hut lamp.

“She’s weaning, Dave. Y’see that—a little Joey!”

Bob pointed to the possum’s pouch set way down her stomach, out of which peered a miniature version of the mother, grinning too.

“That little whippersnapper’ll stay there till it’s five months old. Watch her when she feeds it.”

The mother carefully tore off pieces of the grilled fish, chewed them up with the discerning air of a professional food taster, and then fed morsels to her baby, who winked at us every time it got a mouthful.

“Cute little buggers. Call ’em brush-tailed possums. Used to be real popular for fur. Still are, even though they’re protecting ’em now.”

The fish vanished fast. I hoped Bob didn’t plan to feed her the last piece. I needed sustenance for my hike.

“Okay, darlin’—bloody cheeky sheila—that’s it. Come back tomorrow for scraps.”

The possum seemed to understand. She nodded, gave what looked like a gentle curtsy, then hopped off into the woody thicket near the outhouse toilet. Bob closed the door quietly and smiled. “Sorry ’bout your fish.”

“Forget it. It was worth it. She was beautiful.”

“Yeah. Real beaut.” For such a tall backwoodsman, Bob’s face looked almost childlike as he returned, grinning, to the fire.

“I’m glad it wasn’t a Tasmanian tiger,” I said.

“Oh—y’know about those? The thylacine—that’s their right name. Big weird things—like a huge dog, with tiger stripes all down their backs. Been doing some reading?”

“I saw some articles about them. Didn’t sound like the kind of creature I’d like to meet alone on a dark night.”

“Yeah—they were pretty fierce. My dad killed one once—when I was a lad—way up in the northeast. Not too many around now. M’be none. They said one was shot at Sandy Cape in ’61. ’Course, y’always get people claimin’ to see ’em. M’be they’re the same oddballs as claim to get kidnapped by Martians!”

His great boom of laughter rocked the hut again.

“You think they’re extinct?”

He stopped laughing. The light outside was sliding into evening gloom; an eerie yellow-purple glow sheened the cobweb-encrusted windows.

“Y’know, Dave, Tasmania’s a funny place. North islanders laugh at it ’cause it’s so small. But when you live here it don’t seem that small. There’s so many places where no one’s really been. Like where we are. We get the hikers and that, but they stick to the paths—if they didn’t they wouldn’t last ten minutes in some of these bogs. So most of this area—this South-West—well, no one’s really ever seen it. Could be all kinds things out there…. Sometimes, well—sometimes…”

He was searching for the right words.

“…I dunno. Sometimes you see odd things. Just for a few seconds or so…y’know…things that don’t make any sense.”

“Like what?”

He smiled a half smile. “Well—no matter….”

“C’mon, Bob. Don’t do that. Tell me.”

He studied my eyes to see if I was likely to laugh at him.

“Well…I haven’t told this to many folks….”

I decided to say nothing and wait until he was ready.

“Okay. No worries. If you laugh I’ll belt you one, but I’ve seen some weird things in my time—real odd—but the strangest time was just a few weeks back when I was down at the beach, the place where I take the campers—if you hang around another day I’ll show you there.”

“Great. I’d like that.”

“Well, anyway, like I said, it was a few weeks back and I was down there by myself just checkin’ on things. It was ’bout this time. Evening. Bit cloudy like tonight. Not much light. And I was sittin’ on the beach, doin’ nothin’, just sitting and looking…Mount Rugby was up there, right across the water, all purple and red on top…beaut…like there was a light inside it…. So—I was sitting, doing nothing. No worries. Then there was this noise. Further up the beach a ways. Up where it narrows and the pines comes real close to the water. Now, you get kangas and your possums and all that ’round here. Quite a few, if you know where to look. But this was something I’d never seen before. I mean, Dave—it was big. Bloody big. Bigger than anything I’ve spotted anywhere on Tassie.”

“How big? Like a cow—a gorilla?”

“Never seen a gorilla. M’be big as a big steer calf. It was hard to tell. But it had a low back end—high up front.”

“Aren’t the Tasmanian tigers like that? Bit like a lynx or a hyena? Low in the back?”

“Yeah, bit like that. Only this was lower. Maybe it was hurt. I dunno. It seemed to drag its back end.”

“It wasn’t a forester kangaroo? I read they grow pretty big in Tasmania.”

“No—not a forester. I’ve seen plenty of them up in the midlands. No—this was something I’d never seen before.”

“What was it doing?”

“Moving down the beach to the water. Slowly like. Maybe for a drink, I dunno. It was very wary. Kept moving back and forward. Maybe it was pickin’ up my scent. There was a bit of breeze. Nothin’ much. But enough.”

“So what happened?”

“Well—it turned my way and looked down where I was. And…” He paused. The memory was obviously very powerful. He even looked uneasy. “Well, I’ll tell you, Dave, I’ve never seen a head—a face—like that. Body was a bit vague in the light, but that face…I mean, maybe it was a freak of some kind—a badly hurt kanga, who knows, maybe even a Tassie tiger. Its jaw seemed to hang loose. Huge teeth. Massive bloody eyes. I mean…it was a bloody monster. Head wasn’t symmetrical. Sort of lopsided. But I’ll tell you. It scared the crap out of me. Really did. I’ve been a bushman on and off since as long as I can remember and I don’t get scared easy—but this bloody thing…”

I waited.

“Well, it must have got wind of me. It stopped dead—right there in the sand by the rocks—then it turned and sort of pulled itself back into the trees. Stopped once and looked at me again. I mean, David, it was really the worst-lookin’ thing I’ve ever seen. Evil. It looked pure evil. I was beginning to think where I’d run if it came at me…but it didn’t. Seemed to want to growl or cry or something—opened its mouth real wide…jeez, those teeth…but no sound came out….”

I wondered if he was putting me on, inventing tall bushman tales. The embers in the fire rose in a flurry of sparks and sprayed Bob’s face with scarlet light. The lines in his forehead and cheeks had deep shadows and there was no sign of laughter in them.

“Then it just disappeared. No noise. No nothing. I mean, a thing that size makes some noise, right? Cracking twigs. Whatever. But there was no sound…nothing.”

It was very quiet in the hut. The last of the evening light had gone from the window. A shiver scurried down my spine and across my buttocks.

“Do you think it was a Tasmanian tiger? Maybe wounded or something?”

“Honest, Dave, I’ve no idea what it was. If it was a tiger it was the most disfigured one that I’ve ever heard of. I know they’re strange-looking buggers—they’ve got heads a bit like wolves, fifteen or so stripes across their back and a rear end, with kangaroo-type legs, only upright, and a long rigid tail, bit like a real tiger. They’re real vicious too—blood feeders. Only eat fresh meat, and from what they say they weren’t too fussy ’bout whose meat.”

“But they’re extinct now, right?”

“That’s what they say, Dave. But…in places like this…well, you never know. Might be other things too. Things no one’s ever seen. It’s not impossible….”

I pulled closer to the fire, wondering what creatures, other than that “beaut” of a possum we’d fed, I might find on this walk through one of the least-explored parts of the world. I had to ask him.