Even crossing Bathurst, exciting as it was, didn’t take up that much time, didn’t make you feel like you’d done a decent day’s leg. Although the journey was far longer than at New River Lagoon and the wind was strong enough that it kept pushing the dinghy to one side, the shenanigans with the boat were just more of the same. It’s not an adventure any more; it’s just an inconvenience.
The sky is almost entirely cloud-free. Only around the tops of the eucalyptus trees can we see a few fan-like cirrus clouds. It doesn’t look like rain, but now that we’ve got plenty of time it’s a good opportunity to have a rain drill.
I show her how to build a base on the ground in the vestibule using loose branches piled on top of each other, small palettes on which to place the rucksacks. You should always build these palettes every time you set up camp, no matter what the weather looks like. Just to be on the safe side. Everything you don’t need inside the tent at night should be placed in watertight containers and packed into the rucksacks. Then you stretch the rain covers over the top. The rucksacks are placed inside the vestibule on top of the palettes. Then it can piss it down as much as it likes.
I reject a few of her attempts. The branches she’s collected are twisted or too thin. Seeing as we’ve got so much time, we might as well learn things properly.
Heidi
Finally we get the rucksacks standing in the vestibule like soldiers on parade, and I realize I’m absolutely starving. Yesterday’s meal must have stretched my stomach, made it think similar quantities of grub would be on offer in the future, too.
Jyrki’s sets up the cooker to boil some water; it looks like it’s a mashed-potato day. I dig out the bag of food and take out the plastic bag of flatbread, Mountain Bread, as these tortilla-shaped pancakes are called. I look at the slices of bread through their plastic covering, and at first I think I’m seeing things.
Then I take a closer look. Oh shit.
I open up the bag. No, I haven’t been seeing things.
The surface of the bread is covered with small, dark patches radiating out in lighter, greenish-grey blotches.
Mould.
I turn the packet in my hands. How am I going to tell him this, when there’s still the matter of the missing pepperoni?
Thank God we had a decent meal yesterday; the taste of garlic still lingers in my mouth. How amazing it felt to fill my mouth with heaped spoonfuls of soft, juicy, slightly overcooked pasta. None of your al dentenonsense, but wonderful, pink-and-orange tomatoey baby food that you hardly needed to chew.
Jyrki looks over at me and the packet of bread. From the position of his eyebrows, you can tell he’s sensed there’s something wrong.
It’s too late to back-pedal.
Jyrki
Half a packet of pepperoni — lost?
Three whole flatbréads — mouldy?
She asks whether we could cut off the good bits and eat them. I shake my head: the whole packet could be full of mould spores, and that means myco-toxins.
She asks whether we should just throw it away. I ask her where exactly she thinks she can throw something out here.
Then I enquire about what the hell happened to the slices of pepperoni.
She can’t answer. They just disappeared into thin air.
I can feel my jaws tensing.
She sits down on the ground, props her arms on her knees and hides her face in her hands.
I hear her saying that she can go without something.
I give an unintentional sigh.
I quickly count things up in my head. Why did we have to go and eat rice cakes for breakfast ‘for a change’? We should have eaten the things that were likely to go off first. There are still a few days before the bread’s best-before date, but the bag was already opened — of course — and then came the dampest of damp nights at Cox Bight.
Without all this fuss they would have survived almost until the end of the trek. We’ve already eaten four rice cakes; only eight left. One each every morning.
We’ll have rice cake with onion and tomato purée in the morning, I tell her. There’s half an onion left. That’s decent food, too. And as for the tomato purée - it’s full of lycopene, which helps protect the skin from burning in the sun.
Heidi
‘I could carry the food from here on.’
There isn’t all that much left, but I suppose he doesn’t want to take the risk of anything else going missing.
The thought of his insinuations makes a red curtain descend before my eyes, and I can’t stop myself.
‘That’s manly of you. Very chivalrous.’
It hits the spot.
Jyrki glowers at me, expressionless, so expressionless that I have to continue as if nothing had happened.
‘What about me? Should I take the gas or the cooker?’
‘How about you keep on carrying the rubbish?’
That mouldy bread? In my rucksack? No way.
The mere thought of that green rash on its surface growing and spreading, becoming furrier, sprouting disgusting light-grey hairs, and doing all this on my back, only a plastic film and a sliver of rucksack material away from my bare skin is enough to make me itch and shudder.
Once Jyrki is done with his tom yum tuna noodles and walks off into the woods with his little spade — out here in the oh so authentic wilderness there isn’t even a pit toilet — I hand him the first few pages of Natural History Digest and start to think.
Those slices of bread will go mouldy, rot and biodegrade, for crying out loud. With the grateful help of all those mould spores, they have already begun their journey back into nature’s grand recycling scheme.
Not in the bushes we’ve used as a toilet. Jyrki would see them straight away if he went to the loo again.
If I take them out of the plastic bag and leave them somewhere, the first rainfall will turn them to porridge and then all the lucky Tasmanian worms and happy little insects will take care of the rest.
I find a good spot a few metres behind the tent. There’s a suitable hollow in among the tree roots, hidden by bushes at the front. I scrape up some loose leaves to cover them.
Jyrki
That night there’s a great commotion going on behind the tent.
An animal or a group of animals has found something to eat. Maybe a bird of prey has found a small rodent. The sounds are like something out of the jungle. Scratching, flapping, scraping and scurrying.
She’s sleeping as though nothing could possibly disturb her, breathing almost too evenly.
Heidi
With any luck, here in the green dimness of the tent, comfortably tucked inside his sleeping-bag, his aching legs finally in a resting position, it’ll be too much trouble to get up and see what’s going on. I can hear Jyrki put down his guidebook for a moment, then hold it up again and bring it into the headlamp light.
Now that we’re wrapped up inside, the thought of leaving the tent’s safe womb is almost impossible; outside the Tasmanian night is alive and holding its own clandestine feast to which we have not been invited. I don’t know whether I’d want to take part even if we had been invited.
Conrad forces his way into my mind, just as the fatigue is about to lull me to sleep.
And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night. . .
And just then Jyrki snaps, as an exceptionally loud thud can be heard from the bush. No, even closer than that. Through the chink in my eyelids I see him furrow his brow, put down his book, get up and unzip the tent door.
Feels warm next to my heart. There in my jacket pocket, glowing with its own heat. It’s a butterfly, a claw, grown on to my chest, but still separate. At any moment I can take it out, and when it hits something stupid and annoying and irritating everything changes colour and the air turns and everything changes. Someone
walking past, full of himself, he doesn't know how close it is. Guys shoving me about at the bus stop, talking shit, they dont know bow close it is.
I can pull it out any time. You there, laughing, staring too much, the wrong look on your face. It will appear, ready to take a breath. It hisses as it draws air, then it's time. Any time. Any time it feels like it.
SOUTH COAST TRACK, TASMANIA
Farrell Point to Spring River
Monday, March 2007
Jyrki
She’s walking behind me, her head lowered.
I should have made her bury the rest of the bread properly, but there was almost nothing left of it.
When we stop to eat our muesli bars I show her the list of additives listed on the wrapper. I try to bring a note of reconciliation to my voice as I run my finger down the list and read the names out loud.
Everything that doesn’t form part of wild animals’ natural diet is potentially harmful. Refined sugar. Processed wheat. Hard fats. Salt — particularly salt.
She nods her head, but there’s a stubborn look on her face.
That expression annoys me just enough that I feel I’ve got to put things a bit more pointedly. We have a responsibility to take care of our environment. Of course, any animal will eat something that tastes good and that it instinctively senses will give it sustenance. But animals can end up being poisoned. Animals can become ill just from the quantity of salt in some foods. Animals can react in unexpected ways to different food additives. Animals can develop behavioural anomalies.
I tell her about seagulls, crows and rats. No animal in this world is as unpleasant as one forcing its way outside its natural environment, feeding itself off human waste like a parasite. A creature eating only rubbish saturated in additives with no nutritional value will change its form and forget all about its evolution and its ecological niche.
I tell her about crow fledgelings whose mother feeds them with food she picks up at the bins outside fast-food restaurants. Because of this, the feathers in their wings grow so weak that the young birds will never be able to fly.
She gobbles down her muesli bar quickly, as easily as drawing breath, and I don’t know whether she’s listened to a word I’ve said.
Heidi
‘That’s just the kind of thought process that’s probably been left over from your job,’ Jyrki lectures me, his nostrils as wide with indignation as if I’d just suggested his trekking equipment included a wooden cup and a flannel shirt. ‘We feed people shit that’s made to smell nice, and we don’t give a damn about the lasting effects it might have. Just so long as they swallow it.’
The shock makes my teeth miss the final raisin in my muesli bar. Jyrki has never said a word about my work. At least he’s never said anything to make me believe he has something against my job. Well, my former job, that is, but he doesn’t know about that yet. He thinks I’m only on unpaid leave.
‘Isn’t it nice that at least one of us does something decent for a living. I mean, you sell poison — openly and with society’s blessing.’ I manage to find a lingering, unhurried tone in my voice. ‘Shall we count up the bodies?'
Jyrki is taken aback; he wasn’t expecting a counterattack. For a moment he has to fumble to find the right words.
‘People know what they’re doing. They know the risks. I can’t be held responsible if customers walk into a pub completely compos mentis. I don’t pour booze down their throats. You, on the other hand, create nets, then you ruthlessly drive people into them. You manipulate people and have them believe only spin, only see one side of things.’
By now my throat is totally dry.
‘OK, we put ideas in people’s heads. They either believe them or they don’t. Your business makes its money by treating people like ducks in the park. You feed them for a while, then they can’t live without you.’
Jyrki is silent like someone cut to the very core.
‘And besides . . .’ I can’t help myself. The words just bubble from my muesli-sticky mouth. ‘Besides, I don’t work there any more. I quit. For this trip. I actually quit. So think about that: what have you really been prepared to sacrifice for all this? For anyone? I sacrificed my career.’
Jyrki stands up, his mouth set tightly and starts hauling his rucksack on to his back.
‘And my hair.’
He doesn’t respond, just slips his other arm through the strap and strides off in great bounding steps along the path, his lopsided hiking poles making him look endearingly crippled and imperfect.
Jyrki
We cross the shoulder of Lindsay Hill in utter silence. Yet again today’s leg is for fucking lightweights. It’s not easy; it’s just far too short. For a while we walk at a higher altitude, about a hundred metres or so up. The path roughly follows Spring River, which looks like a frilly strip of verdant undergrowth to the left. The mouth of the river is in Page Bay, our last glimpse of the sea on this trip. A string of hills rises up on both sides of us: Erskine Range and Rugby Range. They are both about six hundred metres high, worn and curvaceous. By the early afternoon we’ve already started making our way down into the damp, almost boggy valley at Spring River.
Today might be a good opportunity to air the sleeping-bags properly, the silk bag liners, all our extra clothes. The tent floor could be cleaned of all the eider feathers that have come out of the bedding. Someone could scrape clean the rucksack pockets and seams of all the fine stubborn sand stuck in there. After all, there’s plenty of time and idle hands.
Heidi
I step into the bushes, crouch down, pour water over myself. The cool water is always a shock to the system as it runs along your warm back. It feels like acid. I soak off the layer of salt that has dried at the sides of my face and around my hairline. I splash my armpits, my neck, wipe away the grime and sand and sweat from around my calves, then look towards my crotch, where a weary-looking thread, reddened at the root, dangles limply between my legs.
I look at everything I have with me. My sarong, the wombat bottle, my clothes and a scrap of magazine — and the all-important resealable bag.
I reach down between my thighs, take a firm grip on the thread and pull. The tampon comes out gracefully, slippery with redness.
I stand upright and dangle it in my hand like a hunter examining a small rodent, perhaps weighing up its nutritional value. I look at it from all sides, this hazardous human waste, this podgy self-satisfied parasite that has sucked my blood and with whom I have an involuntary symbiotic relationship.
I straighten my body and raise my arm.
It starts spinning in a dizzying, deliberate circle, building up great centrifugal force, so much so that I can almost feel the blood collecting at one end of the tampon.
And when I release my grip and let the tampon hurtle into the air, it flies, glides into the distance, so jubilantly that I can almost hear the air whistling. It reaches its zenith, then disappears in a glorious curve deep into the Tasmanian wilderness, and for a moment I am small yet defiant, the rebellious David, with his tiny, insignificant weapons, crushed on all sides by the mighty Goliath.
Jyrki
The moon shines brightly that night.
Our camp is protected by the trees, but if you look up you can see the stars.
For people used to the northern sky and the glow of city lights, seeing this sky is like diving into the depths ol darkness. There are more stars than I’ve ever seen, as though sugar crystals had been sprinkled on black velvet, with Ithe Milky Way running through the middle like a widie strip of sulver dust. There are far more stars here than in the Northern Hemisphere, as the Southern Hemisphere faces right towards the centre of the Milky Way while lthe Northern only faces its edges.
Apart from the Southern Cross all the constellations are strange to me.
An alien sky.
This is the closest I'm going to get to being on another planet.
This is why I don’t like staying in huts but want to sleep in the great outdoors.
&
nbsp; She comes back from her evening piss. The LED light on her forehead kills the three-dimensional landscape in an instant. The brightness of the moon, filtered through the swaying boughs of the trees, is flattened into a wedge of banal light, into a two-dimensional photograph of a field of vision in which there are no longer any colours, any depth or subtlety.
Lanterns, the assassins of moonlight.
She goes into the tent. Once the LED light is only shining through the green fabric of the tent the magic returns, and the trees are bathed once again in glints of silver.
There’s a sudden rustle in the bushes, so loud that it can’t possibly be the wind.
Her startled voice comes out of the tent, asking what it was.
Maybe some representative of the local fauna has turned up looking to see if there’s another party, I tell her.
'That animal has a charmed life,’ he said; ‘but you can say this only of brutes in this country. No man —you apprehend me? — no man here bears a charmed life.’
—Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
SOUTH COAST TRACK, TASMANIA
Spring River to Watershed Camp
Tuesday, March 2007
Jyrki
The region opening up in front of us today has possibly the greatest name I’ve ever heard.
Lost World Plateau.
When I wake up that morning my first thought is that Melaleuca and the Tasmania infested with surfer dudes and aeroplanes is behind us now. And that’s where it will stay. Two day’s trekking and the sound at Bathurst separate us from them. Now we’re on our own.