Birdbrain (2 page)

They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force
—
nothing to boast of when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

—
Joseph Conrad
,
Heart of Darkness

The guests were beginning to get pretty wasted. By this point they wanted to see who could drink the others under the table, ordering rounds of vodka
sh
ots flavoured with Turkish pepper or Fisherman’s Friends and challenging each other to knock them back in one. The atmosphere at the table was loud and raucous. They referred to the alcohol content of their various drinks in ‘octane ratings’, as though the other customers in the bar hadn’t realized from the logos on their college sweaters that the group of revellers worked for an oil company.

The company was the biggest catch our PR firm had reeled in. They had been clients of ours for over two years, and the relationship of trust between us had finally been sealed in a scandal involving the accidental dumping of
so
mething unwanted into the Baltic Sea. On an impossibly tight schedule, our team came up with a press release that was such an effective combination of admitting making the mistake in the first place, expressing the necessary level of regret and resolving to improve company procedure — combined with just the right expression of hurt pride (‘After all, our company is responsible for alleviating the bulk of the energy burden in Finland’s challenging climatic circumstances and, in doing so, plays a vital role in upholding the very infrastructure that supports the wellbeing of our nation. . .’)— that what do you know? It’s a surprise the company didn’t receive a public apology for the damage the scandal had caused them.

As an assistant who had only recently joined the team, I didn’t have all that much to do with the success story, but the donation of a substantial sum of money to Greenpeace and the ‘accidental’ leaking of the story to the press had been my idea. Apparently, the gesture’s PR value had played a part in hushing up the fact, much touted by Greenpeace, that the company was buying oil from a supplier drilling in the Yosemite National Park.

According to a recently published study, the image of our oil sheikhs was more glowing than it had been for years — and even a bit greener. Because of our work, every citizen who drives a car or warms their house with an oil burner might feel that their conscience — and perhaps even the environment — was just a little bit cleaner. And it was the triumph of that tiny change in public perception that we had travelled north to celebrate. It was only because this, too, had been my idea (I’d just happened to be bringing coffee into the conference room when the team, was talking about it and said something along the lines of ‘Hey, never mind a stuffy champers party, we should take them skiing in Lapland for the weekend . . .’) that I’d ended up being one of the group of six that was to spend the weekend giving our tanker boys a not-so deserved pat on the back. Because I had the shortest CV, and because I happened to be a woman, I traipsed backwards and forwards to and from the bar as soon as the glasses started to look half empty. Or maybe I’d drawn the short straw because, even though I thought I’d done pretty well in the job so far, everyone seemed a bit too certain that Daddy Dearest had swung me the job in the first place.

Working as a cocktail waitress and trying to stay relatively sober could have mightily pissed me off, but I didn’t have a problem with my constant trips to the bar: the bloke behind the counter was a fairly decent specimen. He was almost two metres tall, slim, with broad shoulders. His eyes were a light-grey colour, and there was a darker circle around his irises that gave his stare an almost paralysing intensity. No ring on his left hand, but he had a large golden earring dangling at the side of his shiny shaved head. The most impressive thing about him was that he never seemed to make a single unnecessary or unconsidered movement.

I glanced back towards the rabble sitting at our table and tried my best to suppress a shudder. Erkki had given our merry troop very specific instructions to do anything and everything to make sure our guests had a good time. This was one gig that we couldn’t afford to screw up, despite the fact that I had noticed Riitta was already displaying obvious signs of tedium.

She was small and nicely proportioned. Black hair flowed evenly down past her shoulders. There was just enough blue in the colour that you could tell some of the tint had come from a bottle. A bit too much sirloin around the rump. A nice pair of apples bobbed on the upper shelf.

Her eyes bore the expression of the most pissed-off person in the world as she appeared at the bar and ordered eight shots of salt-liquorice vodka. She told me they had a tab open. I took the glasses out of the freezer, poured the shots and fished around for the right credit card in a glass on the shelf behind the counter.

I made a joke about how thirsty the young lady must be. She gave an exhausted, crooked smile. By now the racket at the table in the corner had increased as they broke into a round of rowdy drinking songs.

I said I’d bring the shots to the table. I didn’t really have the time — the joint was packed, just like every weekend during the skiing-holiday season.

She’d gone back to the table and sat down between two ruddy-faced men. You
coul
d tell straight away that they were small-time bosses. Tall good-looking men climb the career ladder at lightning speed. These two, on the other hand, were typical middle-management material, who for years had probably been making up for being vertically challenged with a diet of cutlets, cognac and calling the shots. One of them had put his hand on the back of her chair and sat there panting something in her ear. You could see a mile off that the situation really annoyed her, but there was no way she could reject his advances.

When I put the tray on the table and started handing out the shot glasses, the other red-faced piglet pretended to move out of the way and placed his hand on her thigh. She gave a start, struggling somewhere between politeness and disgust.
Well
, she tapped his hand,
tut tut
, and with that she lifted his paw, in a friendly but firm manner, back on to the table then gave him another companionable tap on the wrist for good measure.

I told them that last orders would be here quicker than they could say Judgement Day and that those who were well prepared would have a far better time than those who hid their talents. This revelation caused a wave of complaints. Not yet, eh? The party’s only just getting started. An after party, that’s what we need. An after party! The pig-faced bloke put his hand across the backrest of her chair again and started stroking the tips of her dark hair — absentmindedly, apparently. I heard him mutter something about a bottle of cognac that had conveniently found its way up to his hotel room.

She glanced over at me and realized I’d overheard. It may have been only a glance, but I could see a flash of real panic in her eyes.

I remembered something and cleared my throat. I said that the group who had booked the sauna had cancelled at the last minute and that I could make an exception to the rules and give it to them instead. It shouldn’t be too hard to get a couple of crates of beer down there, as long as we can come to an agreement about what would be a suitable price. I might even be able to organize some other drinks if the gentlemen fancied having a good long soak. I stressed the word
gentlemen
.

The idea of a sauna gained enthusiastic approval. The hands holding the shot glasses flew up to their mouths like cobras lunging in a chicken hut.

She looked over at me, and I saw I'd made the right move. As the empty shot glasses hit the table in a clacking staccato, she cleared her throat and suggested she could stay here and settle the bill. The older of the two women in the group gave a relieved motherly nod of approval: the idea of the men going to the sauna was wonderful — more than wonderful — the gents would doubtless have plenty of fun on their own, boys will be boys, and they have their manly things to talk about by themselves. She said she would go to the kitchen and ask if they could whip up something savoury to satisfy the masculine appetite — some potato casserole and reindeer sausage maybe.

I saw the look the two women exchanged. They were reading each other’s thoughts as though the air were thick with a blizzard of Braille.

Within a few minutes the noise of the plastered posse had disappeared ou of the door. After a moment’s nodding and dividing up the labour, the older woman finally left the deserted table.

The dark-haired one remained sitting there for a moment amid the chaos of empty shot glasses. She took a breath, stood up and walked straight up to the counter.

Ad
venture is just a romantic name for trouble.

- Anonymous philosopher in the registration book at Speargrass Hut

It is at Lion Rock that I catch my first glimpse of the southern coastline and get a taste of what it actually looks like. After all that park-like landscape, the rugged desolation really takes you aback. New Zealand was one big dramatic, postcard, as though a top Italian designer had drawn the landscape on a computer using top-of-the-range software with the aesthetic-maximizer function cranked up. This is different: primitive and rough, so beautiful, in a way I’ve never seen anywhere else, that at first it’s hard to call it beauty at all. The southern coast of Tasmania is beautiful in the same way as the rocky fells of Lapland are beautiful. There’s nothing inviting about it, nothing alluring; it’s a landscape that is perfectly aware of its own qualities and doesn’t feel the need to try to please anyone. It can afford to be aloof. It’s like one of those ageing Hollywood stars, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, someone whose features have become so layered with the passing of time that no one can really call them handsome any more — let alone beautiful — but whose robust, manly charisma can silence people with its mere presence.

No trees, just ragged undergrowth clinging with teeth-grinding perseverance to the steep, erratically angular cliffs. Further down the ridge, South Cape Bay curves around in a crescent of white sand and black rocks. To the left is the sea; if you were to swim out, your next stop would be in Antarctica.

Although my rucksack is bloody heavy — how can such a small amount of food weigh so much? — at least we’ve been walking along a fairly level wide path that is clearly well looked after. Just like at Overland, wide duckboards have been built across the damper patches of buttongrass.

I glance at Jyrki. His face is that of a little boy waiting for Father Christmas. Can’t you see I’m bursting with the sense of adventure, too, my expression tries to communicate to him.

From Lion Rock onwards the coastal path is treacherous. The strip of shore, rut off on one side by the cliffs, is narrow, rocky and vulnerable to large waves. More than a few ramblers on this leg have been caught off-guard by a freak wave and carried off to sea. Thankfully it’s low tide at the moment, and the wind is only moderate. You can just focus on the baking sun, the bracing wind, the billowing sand dunes and the smell of seaweed.

We arrive at South Cape Rivulet well before five o’clock. The campsite is just how I imagined it: right next to the beach on a small strip of land beneath the eucalyptus trees, a number of tent-sized squares have been worn away on the flat areas of terrain and are now covered in several layers of dried leaves.

You could see right off that this was something completely different from Sabine Circuit or Kepler. This was no Overland, let alone Queen Charlotte.

As we trekked along Overland I had heard that slightly off the track there were hidden luxury cabins for organized rambling excursions, complete with indoor toilets, wine cellars and breakfast services.

Overland was a shell, nothing but civilization disguised as wilderness.

Here there are no huts, no cabins, no rangers. There are no foam mattresses, washbasins, water tanks, fireplaces, compost toilets. Soon there probably won’t be any mobile-phone signal either. The most luxurious public facility here is the pit toilet, and even they can only be found at designated campsites.The rules concerning rubbish are just as strict, if not even stricter than at Overland. At ecologically sensitive areas you are actually advised to collect your own excrement and take it away with you. At the very least you have to bury it properly. Hiking stores sell special tapered spades for this purpose.

There are already a number of campers here. A group of people rattling their cooking equipment gives us a relaxed wave. More people will doubtless turn up as evening draws in. I examine possible tent sites with a critical eye. I would rather not be shacked up side by side with other people — and preferably not too far from the nearest water source either.

I find a small patch of land next to the beach. A driftwood trunk dragged up on to the shore will make a suitable seat for cooking and eating. There’s foliage on three sides to give us some privacy. On the fourth, the sea view opens up before us.

You could almost call it romantic.

I lay my rucksack down against the tree trunk, take an empty
water bottle out of the netting on the side and remove the rolled-up Platypus bottle from the upper pocket. Time to go and milk the cows, I tell her.

‘That water’s really brown.’

Jyrki is already crouching in the brook with the Platypus in his hand. ‘It just looks brown; the tea-tree leaves have stained it. In small amounts you don’t even notice the difference.’

Jyrki submerges the Platypus and holds its mouth against the current for a moment before pulling it triumphantly into the air as though he had just caught a fish. ‘Take a look at that.’

The water in the steamed-up plastic container is still a distinctly yellowy-beige colour. Jyrki looks at it, and the excitement on his face disappears.

‘Anyway Tasmania is one of the cleanest places on earth. There’s no cattle or farming out here in the middle of Nowheresville — let alone industry or traffic. What could possibly pollute this water? This is perfectly good for drinking. We drank water from the streams at Overland, didn’t we?’

He can see my expression and steps out of the brook, water splashing from his hiking boots. ‘OK, I admit a kangaroo might have shat in the water. Let’s run it through the Katadyn.’

‘I believe you,’ I say quickly. Jyrki looks at me, nods, lifts the Platypus and drinks, savouring the water in long gulps. I really do believe him; filtering Southern Tasmanian stream water would mean wasting more time and unnecessarily using up the running capacity of an expensive piece of equipment.

Perhaps it would have been easier to accept had the water not come so openly, so brazenly from between Mother Nature’s legs.

She’s taken off her hiking boots and changed them for her Crocs, and now she says she’s hungry.

I take the tent out of its protective bag and unroll it. I hand her a smaller jangling bag and ask her to put the poles together. I explain that we have to put up our house first. This is the first commandment of hiking: the weather can change in an instant, and at times like that having shelter for yourself and your equipment is the first priority.

This is the first time we’ve put up the tent, although we’ve been on the road for weeks. Back at Overland Track a tent was part of everyone’s required inventory, and so we dutifully lugged it a full sixty-five kilometres without using it once. At Overland the staff restrict the number of hikers to make sure everyone will fit into the huts, although no one can predict how fast individual groups will progress along the route. That’s why they insist on a tent, to make sure no one ends up sleeping outdoors, even if the route is furnished with buffed-up huts for lightweights a few hours apart.

Makes you wonder what kind of dopey idiots they’ve let loose there in the past. Someone must have keeled over with hypothermia after not fitting into a hut and not having the strength to walk a mere two hours; probably took out a threadbare blanket or something and lay down in a snowdrift with predictable results.

She’s a fast learner. She manages to work out how the poles fit together and how you slide them into the tunnels without having to be told. I prop up the vestibule and the far end of the outer tent. She fixes the other guy ropes fairly well; I have to adjust only one of the pegs.

She asks whether we can eat now. Again I tell her that first we have to get our home sorted out. After dinner, when we’ve done all our tasks for the day, at least we’ll have something to collapse on. I throw the sleeping-bag, the sleeping-mat and the night bag into the tent and crawl in after them. I ask her at least to zip up the mosquito net if she’s going to hang around outside.

She goes to her rucksack to fetch her own things and hurls them through the door. The sleeping-bag hits me; I think that was the point. I manage to catch the sleeping-mat in mid flight, take it out of its bag and open the vents so it can suck in some air. My own mat has already inflated enough to be finished off with a couple of breaths. I place the mat on the left-hand side of the tent and roll out the sleeping-bag on top of it. Then I take the feather travel-pillow out of its compression pack. I neatly lay my thermal underwear and night socks on the pillow. I put the headlamp and the guidebook in the corner pocket at the far end of the tent, along with the map to orientate myself lor the next day’s leg.

She crawls in beside me and starts clumsily putting her own bed together. We bump into one another again and again. It’s only once we start pottering around like this that we realize the tent is pretty small for two people; it’s barely wide enough for two to lie down side by side. For one person it has always felt luxuriously spacious.

She says she’s ready and asks what we are having for dinner.

I clamber outside and say I’m going to wash myself first. She looks at me for a moment, but we’d already had all these conversations back at Nelson Lakes.

I walk a few metres from the tent to a spot where a thin broken tree trunk rests diagonally against another tree. I hang my civvies and towel over the trunk, take off my clothes and pour water from the Platypus straight over my head. I rub my palms against my cheeks and grunt aloud. I splash my neck, armpits and groin with water. I scrub my hand against my shins, which are now caked in salt and sand dried into the sun-cream and sweat. I can almost see the old dirty, sweaty layers of skin lying wrinkled and pathetic on the bed of eucalyptus leaves beneath my feet.

I pull on my civvies. The air is starting to cool. You only really notice it once you’ve put on your lounge trousers and a dry long-sleeved shirt. She comes out of the tent carrying her own stuff, tight-lipped. From the cargo pocket on her shorts she takes out a small bottle with water she’s carried all the way from Cockle Creek.

The bottle originally came from the aeroplane. It was lying on its side on the Qantas dinner tray. The bottle is round and angular, like a small, chubby whisky flask. She decided to call it the wombat bottle the first time she saw some swollen cubes of wombat shit on the duckboards at Overland. As the wombat’s shit so uncannily resembles the shape of the animal that made it, she decided the design aesthetics of this bottle clearly must have had something to do with wombats, too.

My first thought is, Jesus Christ, she won’t even wash herself with the brown stream water; that’s why she’s taken out the bottle. Then I get it. The sun and her thigh have been warming that water all day. The wombat bottle holds about a quarter of a litre of water — a generous amount for washing yourself at the camp. By now it’s probably warm to the touch.

Damn, she’s not giving up. It almost makes me smile.

She crouches down to wash herself but doesn’t wet her head. She might as well: her half-centimetre crop, which sometimes makes her look like a little Latino boy, would dry in no time. She pours water over her neck and back, letting it run into her armpits. She keeps her Crocs on her feet, just like I did: wet feet will only gather up more crap. With water in the palm of her hand, she splashes her groin, then stands up and dries herself on a sarong.

She pulls on her civvies and hangs up her hiking socks, shorts and T-shirt to dry.The sarong is left flapping on the fallen tree. I’ve already taken out the camp kettle.

'How about some super-delicious chicken noodles?’ I ask.

This is the first time I’ve slept in a sleeping-bag in years. I’d forgotten how claustrophobic it can be. I’d forgotten what it feels like not being able to poke your toes out of the end of the duvet, not being able to move your legs properly from side to side and how difficult it is trying to turn on to your side or stomach.

As I lie awake and listen to the sea, I realize that I’d also forgotten just how thin a piece of fabric it is that separates me from the night outside.