TT Day 11: Some Recent Highlights
Just a few highlights from the past few days:
The geology of Tasmania is unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been. It is made up of 50% soil and rock, 25% wallaby droppings, and 25% wallaby roadkill. I have been here 12 days, I’ve seen exactly one live wallaby, and in just the 2 km between the highway turnoff to Bronte Park and the town itselfI counted 45 wallaby carcasses. This was only on my side of the road. Some were recent, some were just skulls or scattered bones, but unless the left side of the road is somehow more dangerous than the right, that’s about 90 wallaby corpses en route to a town so small there’s only one place to buy things.
I’m sitting there now, the Bronte Park General Store—“now” being a while ago, but I dictated this to my phone then because according to the proprietor (a friendly, grizzled guy called Shane) there’s not a single place in town I can go to get wifi to post this through my normal app.
From where I’m sitting, I can see for sale: deer pelts, doorknobs, Christmas cards, lighters, fishing maps, potato chips, motor oil, jackets, children’s school backpacks, candy bars, vinegar, handmade fly fishing lures, a breathtaking supply of all the feathers and thread and hooks you could ever need to tie lures of your own, cake mix, pure local honey, microwave popcorn, secondhand luggage, crossword puzzle books, a Nick Fury coloring book, a large assembled and framed puzzle of an African savanna, and a badass telescope that looks like something Charles Bronson would slot onto a rifle in the 1980s to assassinate somebody from 2,000 yards away. Oh, and if you want a fresh-caught flounder Shane will cook one up for you on the spot.
He keeps the store hot, which is wonderful because I haven’t been warm in three days. Sweaty, yes, but always cold, even in the occasional sun beam. I think I’ll stay until closing time.
OK, fast forward to the future again. Shane is one of the many Australian men who could be a six foot tall talking wombat and it would change nothing of your impression of the country. Furry, a little guarded, and then suddenly and nonchalantly kind—a kindness expressed in a way that makes it seem easy for everybody to be that kind all the time. He asked where I was camping that night, I told him the caravan park, and he said, “Why don’t you just camp around the back, mate? Lot less noise back here than over there.“ Behind his store he’s got plenty of space to pitch tents, plus a fire pit, giant piles of firewood (which he would not accept money for; just a pile of rubbish, he said), a water spigot (no need to filter! yay!), flush toilets, and an electric grill. He won’t allow me to pay him to camp, but he does sell me a $22 pair of gloves made of, I shit you not, a blend of merino wool and possum fur.
They are far warmer than the gloves I brought with me, which also happen to be beat to hell at this point. (I use them as oven mitts too.) Never in my life have I heard of a possum farm, but they are worth farming, because these gloves kick ass.
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One of the many idiosyncrasies of the Tasmanian Trail is that it crosses both private land and federally protected preserves. So you run across gates like this sometimes, which explicitly keep everyone out, but TT folks get a pass.
It was here in the nature preserve that I finally started seeing wildlife in real numbers, including my first real live wombat. No idea what this little fella was doing up in the middle of the day; pretty much everything that evolved on Tasmania is nocturnal. But there he was, and he was chubby and huggable.
I also saw my first pademelon, which despite its melony name is like a much smaller wallaby. The way to tell the difference between a juvenile wallaby and a pademelon is wallabies are found in the wild while pademelons are found in the produce section.
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This crude log bridge was built by whatever twisted, mutilated species of elf escaped Sauron before he could mutate them into orcs. As you can see, these Tasmanian cousins are not nearly as elegant as the high elves and wood elves that live in New Zealand.
Seriously, though, look at this weird-ass forest of skeleton trees and tell me there’s no elvish necromancer living in there. I mean, there has to be.
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Last thing before I sign off:
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Derwent.
Derwent who?
Derwent Booster through the Derwent Valley.