SOUTH COAST TRACK, TASMANIA
Louisa River
Thursday, March 2007
Jyrki
You shouldn’t really wash your clothes in the creeks, but Louisa River is large with plenty of flowing water, and she’s not using soap, so I turn a blind eye as she rinses her socks. She hangs them on the branches of nearby trees and tries to find a spot along the riverbank still bathed in the rays of the setting sun.
As I cook some food, she sits mending the seam of her trousers with duct tape, cack-handed endearingly.
It’ll soon be dusk.
I use the wombat bottle as a tooth mug. I rinse my toothbrush and hand her the bottle.
When she starts brushing her teeth I ask her for some paper, tell her I'm going for a pit stop. She raises her eyebrows: either she hasn’t understood or she thinks the use of motoring terminology is strange and out of place for someone who enjoys spending time surrounded by nature. She mumbles something incomprehensible with the toothbrush in her mouth and digs around in her pocket, and instead of a packet of tissues she hands me a yellowy-brown sheet of paper.
I stare at it. A religious pamphlet.
She shrugs her shoulders. She removes the toothbrush from her mouth, and, squinting, says if I think this is neither the time nor the place for blasphemy, I can wipe my arse with a stone.
Heidi
When the terrain is nothing but mud and rock faces, with no prospect of a break in sight, no real rivers to cross but only paths running with water that you have to negotiate, you forget to drink enough. You forget to drink when it’s snowing, and it’s not the least bit warm; you don’t remember that your body is losing fluids all the time, even though you’re freezing your tits off in the wind.
Dehydration has built a nest in my head, rhythmically pecking and scratching away behind my temples.
Apart from falling over on the pavement and grazing my knee as a kid, the greatest physical torment I’ve endured as an adult has come in the form of hangovers and the occasional bout of period pain.
Compared with this, the minor muscle aches I had experienced after our first stretches at Queen Charlotte seem positively enjoyable. I remember asking Jyrki if he had any painkillers. He said he was saving them in case we seriously sprained anything. Used in the right place, they could make or break the whole trip.
When Jyrki comes into the tent I turn on to my side and face away from him. If I had wings, I’d wrap my head deep inside them and spend a moment breathing in my own comforting cosily stuffy scent.
Jyrki
After sleeping in the overcrowded peak-season cabins in New Zealand you might think that moving into the tent would create an altogether new sense of intimacy — there we would lie, in the cosy, tight green embrace of the tent walls, in our very own space, warmed only by our very own breath and the glow of our very own body heat.
I imagined it would be easy and natural to turn to her, kiss her, slowly undo the zip on her sleeping-bag or gently stop her as she’s getting ready for bed. Put my hand on her naked back and move it higher and higher; caress her cropped hair, press my lips against her neck.
How come it’s so damn easy when we meet up for the first time in two weeks, but it’s so difficult now?
Maybe it’s because there just isn’t time for things like romance in a routine like this. We haven’t agreed on the logistics, and there’s no space here for improvisation. How can you undress seductively when there isn’t even enough room to kneel up properly?
And what about the practical side of it? Soon there would be blotchy secretions all over the sleeping-bags and the silken bag liners. Every last piece of textile we have with us has some other important function, too. And imagine getting up in the middle of the night to wash downstairs with a mug and some cold stream water.
But she wouldn’t say no. She’s never said no — to anything.
At first I thought she was one of those rare women who don’t use their pussy as a bargaining chip. But as time went on I realized that her cheerfully consenting to anything and everything was something even craftier: if you never give the other person reason to feel unsatisfied you end up wielding even greater power.
Just thinking about this causes unavoidable action in my trousers. It’s been a while, because you can’t exactly get down to business in berth accommodation. I have to put the guidebook to one side, curl up next to her and kiss her ear. She smells faintly of sweat and strongly of woman.
She mutters something indistinct. I can hear floating tears echoing around her sinuses.
I tell her I just wanted to say goodnight.
She utters an almost inaudible goodnight.
The forest around us clicks and crackles.
There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination — you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.
—Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
HOBART, TASMANIA
February/March, 2007
Jyrki
Even though the Moo lager I had in the pub at the Lark Distillery microbrewery was the best beer I had tasted since arriving in Australia, I was still pissed off. Big time.
She asked me why I was so down in the dumps.
I showed her the guidebook. South Coast Track looked like a hell of a trip, I said, but there was one fundamental problem with it. If we wanted to get there we’d have to fly.
I showed her the rough map in the book. As the name suggested, the route wound its way along the southern Tasmanian coastline with a couple of diversions deep inland. One end of the track was at Cockle Creek, the southernmost point in Tasmania — and the whole of Australia — that could be reached by car. The other end was in a place called Melaleuca, eighty-six kilometres to the west. Melaleuca had a few trekkers’ cabins and a bird-watching station, but there was no road link whatsoever. It did have a runway — the story goes that a light aircraft once had to make an emergency landing there, and the only way to get the thing out again was to clear enough space for an airstrip.
If you wanted to start at Cockle Creek, which was at least reachable by bus from Hobart, the only way to get from Melaleuca back to civilization was to fly or to trek back the way you came. It would have been madness to try to hike there and back — I can’t think of anything more boring that covering ground you’ve already seen but backwards. Repetitive stretches of the journey become even more mind-numbing if you already know how boring they’re going to be. Dangerous and exhilarating spots are no longer any kind of challenge but are simply a nuisance because all the excitement has gone. It doesn’t take long before your motivation drops below freezing.
However, if you wanted to start from Melaleuca the only option was to fly there.
I cursed the arseholes that come up with these sorts of schemes.
She offered to pay, thinking it was just a question of money. She was always waving her traveller’s cheques around every time we talked about making decisions, as if money were the answer to everything.
I told her I wasn’t planning on burning any more fuel, given the amount I’d already burnt in getting here.
I felt hot, and I had ants in my pants every time I thought about the route. I’d gone online to find out more about it. Back at the tourist information centre in Hobart National Park I had bought a map of South Coast Track. It was no joke: the path really was in the middle of nowhere, just like Jonas and Mike had told us at Overland.
She looked at me quizzically.
I said that at Narcissus Bay I had decided that Overland would be the last time I ever went out on a route that was designed for amateurs crawling in ten- kilometre legs. I reminded her that all the guidebooks and tourist leaflets had split Overland’s sixty-five kilometres into six one-day hikes. We covered it in four, and we would have done i
t in two or three if the cabins had been sited a bit more sensibly along the route and if bus timetables had been coordinated with our plans.
I read her a section from the Great Walks of Tasmania leaflet: This is a coast where one’s place in the universe is never in doubt. Money, position, education and status don't count and don’t help.
She asked me whether I thought South Coast Track was going to be terribly difficult.
I told her it was recommended for experienced trekkers and that there were a couple of people around this table who met that description.
She shrugged her shoulders uncertainly.
Fuck it.
At least out there we wouldn’t bump into any more hen parties.
I took a deep swig of Moo and opened out the map of Tasmania again, as if staring at the southern coastline would offer some kind of solution.
Heidi
Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’ was playing in the background.
Jyrki was flustered and talking non-stop; in his excitement he had forgotten all about his pint as he scribbled notes in his jotter of squared paper. He had found a faint line of dots on the map, leaving Melaleuca and heading roughly to the north-east; it was a four- or five-day route, an extension of South Coast Track. This route, Old Port Davey Track, seemed to run through areas even more remote than the main route and looked as though it ended up where no man has boldly gone before. OK, it appeared to meet up with some kind of dirt track, but even that was still a good few hours’ arduous drive from civilization. A Tassielink minibus operates a service between Hobart and the Scott’s Peak end of the track three times a week. That way we wouldn’t have to get a flight, and we wouldn’t have to double-back on ourselves. Jyrki had already fallen in love with his plan.
It felt so silly. Here we were, in Tasmania, an island no larger than Ireland, and we were about to become more isolated from civilization than you could ever get in Finland, no matter how remote a place you found in Lapland. Except maybe if you got lost around the Russian border area.
Jyrki was talking like a man possessed, his overly long limbs thrashing around. He was sure, he had decided, he had found an extra sugar coating to the enthusiasm that Jonas and Mike had planted in him at Overland. He was already calculating the number of days these two combined tracks would take; he counted how many hours it would take per day and stared at the contours on the map in the hope that they might give him some idea of the route’s degree of difficulty. The trek from Cockle Creek to Scott’s Peak would apparently take us about ten days.
I asked him whether it might be smarter to trek the opposite direction, to start at Scott’s Peak and make our way towards Melaleuca and from there onwards towards civilization, to Cockle Creek — how much nicer it would be to end up somewhere with other people and some traffic. But that wouldn’t do, that simply wouldn’t do, because we only had a finite number of days left down under, and we had to use them cost-effectively, and as there would be a bus from Hobart to Cockle Creek tomorrow morning, why wait? Now we had to buy food and ask about getting seats on a suitable return bus.
But because this is Jyrki we’re talking about, that really meant only asking about seats, not actually reserving them. Jyrki found out that some seats had already been booked on the buses leaving around the time we should be arriving in Scott’s Peak, which meant the bus would definitely be running.
‘They won’t leave paying customers in the middle of the woods,’ he said. ‘It’s too big a risk to book seats and pay for them in advance, then end up missing the bus because of some unforeseen change to our schedule. If that happens, you’ll never get your money back. If we know the bus is running we can always get a ticket from the driver; we’ll always be able to get away. It might mean sitting on the floor of the bus for a few hours, but so be it.’
‘Ring of Fire’ started blaring out of the speakers once again. The tape loop in this pub must only have been about ten minutes long. It was as if the same obsessive bird had taken flight, singing at the top of its lungs in an attempt to protect its territory once again.
I was still at school back then; it was a while ago. The bus stop was on a slight slope. Snow was packed hard across the surface of the road. You could see the bus’s skid marks in the snow. The tyre tracks were hard and shining, and if you slid back and forth along it with your shoes it soon felt smooth and frictionless.
Sprinkled some fresh snow on top.
The bus arrived and the driver braked. Jesus, you shoud’’ve seen the way it lost control, sliding and swerving at speed towards the embankment of snow. Like watching a mammoth keeling over.
This one comes to mind quite often. Nobody thinks about what’s hidden somewhere out of sight. Nobody knows which packet of porridge oats has a needle pushed in through the seam, or where exactly the shards of glass are buried in the kiddies' sandpit.
Nobody can see.
If I kick a white stick out of your hand, it’s your own fault for being blind.
SOUTH COAST TRACK, TASMANIA
Louisa River to Cox Bight
Friday, March 2007
Jyrki
As I’m taking down the tent the next morning I see that the left guy rope at the back of the tent is dangling loose. The rope and its knot are lying casually on the carpet of leaves.
She must have pushed the tent peg in too deep when we put the tent up last night; the loop of rope has managed to come away from the hook. I’ve shown her a hundred times how you’re supposed to leave the tent peg sticking out between one and one and a half centimetres above the ground, then it’s at the right angle to make sure that the guy rope is taut and stays in place. Either that or she stepped on it when she went for a piss. The peg has been pushed into the ground, and the rope has come loose.
I ask her.
She says she hasn’t trampled on any of the hooks.
I let out a few uncontrolled buggerations. First of all, they’re called tent pegs, I say, and now this particular one is stuck in the ground.
By pulling the guy rope tight and holding it to the ground at slightly different angles, I try to find the spot where the tent peg must have sunk into the earth. The layer of dried leaves and detritus on the ground is pretty thick. I brush the rustling scrub to one side, but I still can’t see the tent peg.
If it’s gone in so far that we can’t even see the top; we’ll never find it.
She doesn’t seem to appreciate that tent pegs are equipment. You don’t go around losing them.
She claims she put the tent peg at the agreed height and asks whether we couldn’t make a replacement peg out of wood. Then we could buy a new one at the Mountain Design store once we’re back in Hobart.
I ask her whether she’s ever seen the heavy, cumbersome lumps of metal they sell as tent pegs around here. Hilleberg’s pegs are light and compact: aluminium, European, smart.
Really. A wooden peg.
Eventually I’m forced to admit that I packed a spare peg. But only one, and that’s why this can’t happen again.
She nods with that bloody-minded look on her face, as if she genuinely doesn’t understand what’s really important.
Heidi
When I crouch down for a morning piss I notice something.
I pull a piece of pamphlet from my pocket, soften it for a minute by rubbing it between my fingers and gently press it between my legs.
When it comes back into my field of vision it’s a reddish colour — or what was the biblical term? Though your sins he as scarlet.
Great. I knew this would happen.
Jyrki
Ironbound is still impressive when we see it in the Tasmanian dawn. The hillside rises up behind us high up into the sky. On the bare rock face there is a clear diagonal line, so thin it could almost have been drawn with a stick of chalk: the path we came down yesterday.
Compared with yesterday’s trek, today's path feels ridiculously easy, nothing but duckboards across the damp, even clumps of buttongrass; the same pla
in, reaching as far as the eye can see, that we saw as we were coming down Ironbound.
She starts talking about gaiters again; they wouldn’t have been completely redundant on Ironbound. I don’t say anything. Then she thinks about how the word is pronounced. Imagine sending someone off to buy some gaiters, she starts explaining, and they came back wearing a couple of alligators on their feet.
I can’t help but laugh. It’s like something straight out of a Gary Larson cartoon.
I tell her I’ve always wanted to come up with a computer game that’s really violent. It would be set in Australia, and its name would be ‘Combat Wombat’.
She laughs.
We can still feel the previous day. It’s lurking cold beneath our skin. You can tell because we’re babbling like idiots.
After yesterday’s exertion the even, undulating terrain here is a real treat. Now that we don’t have to spend all our time concentrating on our every step, the air is full of our incessant chit-chat and jokes that are abysmally bad but that, for that same reason, seem just right.
I have time to watch how she walks: full of energy, warmed up and finding the rhythm in her step.
Christ. She’s just crossed Ironbound, and there she is striding across the duckboards, one hiking boot marching in front of the other and trying to look serious as she witters on about some stupid wannabe wallaby story, and something inside me is deeply moved.
Ironbound was something that had to be shared. Nothing would have been the same if we hadn’t shared it, without knowing every step of the way that another pair of eyes and ears, another group of muscles, was sensing the same as I was; knowing that at any moment you could pull Southy out from between her ears like a box of treasure that only we could open. And, boy, how she’d already shared it. She’d come out here, her body almost entirely untrained, the reach of her limbs so much shorter than mine, without the benefit of a year in the army, with almost zero experience. And not once had I sensed that she was about to sit down on the nearest tree stump and say, ‘Listen, Jyrki, I’ve fucking had it. I’m never putting on this sticky shirt again, heavy with grime and stiff with spots of salty sweat. I want a foamy bath, a litre of perfumed moisturizing cream and a Greek salad, or I’m going to scream.’