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 1930s, 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 1800s 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.
‘WHAAAT? 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, PRIVATE PROPERTY. THE WILDERNESS LODGE RETREAT. NO UNAUTHORISED ENTRY. 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 SHOWER ROOMAND TOILET BLOCK 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.
‘Fifteen!’ he yelled. ‘Ya barkin’ wee minkers. Ya bahmpots. Ya choobs. Awa’ and boil yir heids.’
Phil stepped in.
‘Jimmy’s right, guys,’ he said. No one argued with this, for the very good reason we had no idea what Jimmy had just said. ‘When we say fifteen minutes, we mean fifteen. Not twenty. Not thirty. Fifteen. Got it? Okay.’
He put his hands behind his back. ‘Here’s the plan for today. We are going to start with a simple team-building exercise. After lunch, we’ll take a small hike into the bush. No more than two kilometres. This will be preparation for a longer hike we’ll take the day after tomorrow. When we return, depending on time, we might take the kayaks out onto the river.’
I put my hand up. Phil nodded at me.
‘Won’t it be cold in the water?’ I asked. The temperature had dropped even further. A penguin would have been on the lookout for a fleecy jumper and a hot-water bottle.
‘And?’ said Phil.
‘I was wondering if there was heating in the kayaks?’
Phil laughed, but Jimmy appeared to get even redder. I worried the top of his head might explode. He took a couple of paces forward, elbowing Phil out of the way. He turned the twin bores of his nostrils towards me.
‘Heat, is it?’ he yelled. ‘I’ll give ya heat, lad. Do ye know why yir kayak wud freeze the wee bits oaf a brass monkey?’
At least I understood most of this. It seemed like progress.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Because ye cannae huv yir kayak an’ heat it,’ he said. Then he burst out laughing. ‘Geddit?’ he spluttered. ‘Yir kayak an’ heat it. Tha’s a wee cracker, so it is.’
Phil stepped in once again.
‘After that,’ he said, ignoring his colleague, who appeared to be on the verge of suffocating on his own laughter, ‘you’ll be preparing the evening meal – a barbecue – and cleaning up afterwards. Bed will be at eight-thirty, ready for a six o’clock warm-up run in the morning. Any questions?’
This time he did pause, but no one said anything. I think we were too stunned. I’d been hoping for an opportunity to read a book, maybe catch a quick afternoon nap. Possibly a swim in the resort pool, some television in the games room, a leisurely buffet dinner before settling down in front of a new-release DVD on a forty-two-inch plasma screen. That’s my idea of doing it tough. Unfortunately, we appeared to be lacking a few of the essentials. Like a pool, a games room and a television.
We trailed after our guides as they led us down to the banks of a slow-moving river. It wasn’t a big river, maybe twelve metres across, but it looked cold. I half expected to see the odd iceberg floating past. Or even a normal iceberg.
Jimmy still hadn’t recovered from his own wit, so Phil gave us instructions.
‘Your task is to construct a way of getting across this river. Three rules. One, the members of your team must all travel together. You can’t go one by one. Two, the only tools you have are a length of rope and a small machete. Three, you cannot cut anything down from the forest. Anything you use must already be lying around. Two teams. Start when you’re ready.’
Dyl and I were on the same team. Unfortunately, the other two members were John and Kyle. Kyle had a face like roadkill, a home-pierced eyebrow and the attention span of a goldfish. He didn’t fill me with confidence. We got into a huddle, which was a good idea since we exchanged heat. I was starting to lose feeling in my extremities. Unfortunately, we were also exchanging body odours. Kyle was part fish. Fish that had been left out in the sun for a couple of days. I broke away.
‘Any ideas?’ I asked.
The signs weren’t good. Kyle shuffled songs on his iPod and Dyl drained his fifth cola of the day. At this rate he’d run out by the weekend. John, meanwhile, did a stunning impersonation of a tree. Time for Marcus to take charge.
I had two ideas. The first was to spread John across the river and use him as a bridge. I didn’t suggest it. The second involved building a raft.
‘C’mon guys,’ I said. ‘We need to work together here. There’s no I in team.’
‘No Z either,’ said John. ‘What’s your point?’
‘There is a B in banana, though,’ chipped in Kyle. ‘Isn’t there?’
‘And plenty of As,’ said Dyl. ‘Why? Has anyone got a banana? I’m starving.’
I sighed.
‘Forget the bananas,’ I said. ‘We need to build a raft.’
‘Hate fruit,’ said John. ‘Not a monkey. Need Mars bar.’
It took some time to get the subject away from food, but eventually we fanned out along the bank of the river and collected logs and fallen branches. I kept a firm hold on the machete. I didn’t trust John.
The other team were also collecting wood, but I got the impression they were just copying us. We dragged the bigger branches down to the riverbank. The key, I reckoned, was speed. We didn’t need to build a catamaran with carved figurehead, sundeck and tennis court. Just a bog-standard raft, big enough to take the weight of three boys and a human giraffe.
I selected eight branches and lopped off unnecessary foliage. Dyl and John took each branch as I finished it and lashed them together with rope. Kyle scrolled through his iPod.
John surprised me. He knew what he was doing with the rope, first of all dunking it into the river and then weaving it through the individual branches. Finally, he tightened the whole structure with a slipknot.
‘Rope wet,’ he said. ‘Tightens when dry.’
‘Cool, John,’ I said. I felt brown-nosing wouldn’t hurt. ‘Were you in the Cub Scouts?’
John snorted.
‘Nah, Mucus,’ he replied. ‘Executioner. Career aim. Read a book once.’ I tried to keep the surprise out of my face. I’d have put money on John being incapable of colouring in a book, let alone reading one. ‘Knots. Need knots to hang people.’
It wasn’t the right time to point out that we don’t have capital punishment in Australia anymore. It’s not a good idea to upset a potential homicidal maniac.
Both groups finished their rafts at the same time. It wasn’t fair. The other group had just imitated us, move for move. But I had
a secret weapon. True, I was banking on the other kids being idiots, but nothing I’d seen so far suggested I might be mistaken. As soon as our misshapen raft was finished, I jumped about like a frog on a sugar rush.
‘Hurry, guys,’ I yelled. ‘Get this in the water. We can’t let them win.’
It was a simple plan, but it worked. The other group grabbed their raft, flung it onto the slow-moving waters of the river and leaped on board. The whole contraption rocked violently, threatening to send the boys into the water. Then it settled. I had my hand on the edge of our raft, stopping it from being launched. I wanted to see if I was right.
I was. The other group panicked for a moment, shuffled to get their balance. Then, when they saw they were safely floating and we weren’t even on the water, their expressions turned to glee.
‘Ha! Losers.’
‘Eat my shorts!’
One of the boys dropped his dacks to moon us, but the movement caused the raft to wobble alarmingly. The rest of his group grabbed and steadied him.
‘C’mon, Marc,’ said Dyl. ‘They’re going to beat us.’
‘No, they’re not,’ I said. ‘Watch.’
I loved the way the expressions of the boys on the raft changed from triumph to despair. They had forgotten one thing. Adrift on the river, they had no way of steering. The current caught their raft and took it gently downriver. The other bank was only ten metres away, but it might as well have been ten kilometres. They drifted off into the distance.
I held up the long poles I had been saving as a way of pushing us across the river. We could have used John for the same purpose, but I figured he might resent it.
‘Wave goodbye, guys,’ I said.
The four of us waved at the dwindling raft in the centre of the river. One of the other group even waved back. ‘Bon voyage,’ I yelled. ‘Send us a postcard.’
After that, it was simple. We stepped carefully onto our raft, making sure it wasn’t going to capsize. I handed one pole to John and kept the other. Then we carefully punted our way across. When we landed on the opposite bank we’d only moved a few metres downriver. One by one, we stepped onto land.
Blacky Blasts Back Page 4
