Birdbrain (17 page)

‘Kea: The Open-Programme Bird’

by Jiselle Ruby and Anthony Verloc

Over the last few decades the kea has demonstrated a clear determination to move closer to human settlements. This is down in part to an attempt to find sustenance but is also linked to these birds’ need to explore and affect their surrounding environment.

In the national park at Arthur’s Pass, keas destroyed a total of fourteen tents during a single summer season. At the car park in the same area of the park, the fabric roof of a jeep was torn to pieces, the upholstery on the seats was ripped open and all the wires within the dashboard were pulled apart in the space of only five days. In addition, windscreen wipers, the seals around windows, antennae and even tyres are all at risk. Some cases have been recorded in which the kea has succeeded in deflating the tyres by correcdy opening the valves. With the help of its beak and talons it can easily manipulate objects and devices that normally demand human dexterity.

Some theorists consider this behaviour an example of social facilitation, which teaches younger individuals constantly to acquire new skills and to adapt their behaviour to an ever-changing environment.

It’s sunny, and there’s a gentle breeze, dry as tinder.

We’ve left the sludgy, boggy land and reached a plain slightly higher up. Dotted with clumps of grass, scrub and stunted bushes, the brown-green terrain is an undulating, rocky moorland — with no shade in sight. It’s only now that I remember the suncrean, and we stop to put some on. The path beneath our feet reveals how thin the layer of humus really is. Our hiking boots have scuffed it and broken it, like a layer of dry epidermis, making it crack and reveal the rough chalk-white gravel beneath. The path is like a thin, white ribbon stretching out in front of us, winding its way across the low-lying hills before veering off to the west.

The start of Old Port Davey Track feels good under foot — wonderful, rolling terrain. Melaleuca disappears behind us in less than an hour. The path roughly follows the Melaleuca lagoon inlet, which is nothing but a narrow sound that looks more like a river. Every now and then we catch a glimpse of the waters between the hills to our right.

There is nobody out here. Not a soul.

Although Southy felt wild and untamed, you could always sense the presence of other people. You knew you would meet other hikers at the campsites or see people overtaking you or walking in the opposite direction.

There were duckboards and fallen tree trunks made into bridges.

From the sheer scrawniness of this path, you can tell that walkers here are few and far between. In places it's almost entirely overgrown as it presses its way through the dense thicket. As you step on the path, rough twigs and small sharp leaves scratch at your calves. You can’t see your feet; you think about snakes. Whenever we come across a slightly damper dip in the path, there is no trace of the muddy, boggy areas extended metres in both directions as trekkers prefer to walk around them, thus trampling the tussocks to a mush in ever increasing circles, a phenomenon we had seen back at Southy. Here you can see that the last time someone walked along here must have been last week some time. Or maybe last month. Or last year.

‘Does anyone ever come out here?’ I ask as, for the thousandth time, I’m yanking my hiking pole out of a thorny heather-like bush that has stretched its limbs across the path.

‘This path isn’t all that dramatic. It hasn’t got features like Ironbound. And maybe this is too far away, too cut off. The guidebook only mentions this track in passing. Good job the map gives us timed legs for each day.'

Only
in passing
?’

‘Yes, it doesn’t really go into much detail.’

Jyrki doesn’t seem to understand that there’s always a reason why particular treks become popular. The mere fact that a path exists is not the reason.

We continue like ants through a terrain that makes me feel smaller than at any other point until now.

This is like something straight out of Conrad.

The sun was low; and, leaning forward side by side, they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal length that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without lending a single blade.

Joan Point is noble.

The raised isthmus reaches out into Bathurst Channel like an outstretched finger: Go north, young man.

The treetops edge the beaches and the coves with a greenish foam. Other than that, the terrain is open. Resilient plants cover the hills like a coarse, grey- green layer of roughcast. Across the sound you can see Farrell Point low on the horizon and Lindsay Hill rising up behind it. Nothing but desolation as far as the eye can see. We’re so high above sea level before descending towards the beach that, even from this distance, I can make out the next night’s campsite. It’s situated on the western side of Farrell, and there are trees there. Shade, protection from the wind.

I’d like to have seen this place when it was still covered with impenetrable pine forests. But it’s still beautiful. It’s not hard to see why this whole region is a World Heritage Site.

We’re here together.

Just the two of us — and Tasmania.

Crossing Bathurst Narrows gives me the tingling sensation of traversing a strange final frontier. Like crossing the deathly quiet Styx, basking in the glowing afternoon light.

Bathurst Harbour is an enormous bay, a basin the size of a huge lake only separated from the sea by a narrow sound. It’s partially sheltered by its steep shores and features a number of gentle, even peninsulas reaching out into the water.

I’ve never seen a place that would suit a hotel or a chalet complex better. That hillside over there is positively crying out to be terraced and fitted with rows of tidy holiday bungalows. Tourists could take boat trips to those islands over there. Cruise ships would chug out here all the way from Cockle Creek and lower their anchors at Bathurst Harbour Marina. Fair enough, there aren’t any sandy beaches around here, but small yachts could quickly drive out towards the sea where there are dozens of small pristine golden beaches just waiting to welcome sun-worshippers. Mainland Australians would flood out here to cool off and breathe the purest air in the world; the innumerable secluded coves would provide prime locations for luxury villas.

There would be a road running along the even, eastern shore of Melaleuca Inlet, a road along which four-wheel-drive vehicles would shuttle holidaymakers to the serene shores of Fulton Cove.

It goes without saying that I’d get commission for all of this.

It can’t be more than four o’clock by the time we’ve got the tent up, the beds made, collected water and gone for a wash.

Imagine what we could have achieved today if we’d carried on from Melaleuca and arrived here yesterday. This timetable has deteriorated so much that there’s absolutely nothing to write home about any more.

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.

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 dente
nonsense, 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.

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.

‘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.

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.

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.