The sergeant was talking to the first man who’d come down from the tree. Even at a distance in the dusk, Sarah could see the man wasn’t Matt. About the same height, but slimmer and with a rope of pale hair. Instead of Steve Irwin khaki, he wore tatty jeans, a heavy homespun jumper two sizes too big and a black-and-white beanie. The man shook the sergeant’s hand, then strolled towards her. Sarah looked past him to see Matt make a neat landing. The man blocked her view and extended his hand, forcing her to pay attention. He took off the beanie. A halo of dreadlocks swung free, revealing a rainbow headband.
‘Drake Logan.’
‘Dr Sarah Deville. UCLA.’
Drake arched his eyebrows, shook her offered hand with his right and cupped it with his left. ‘You are an uncommonly beautiful doctor.’ His eyes held hers for a long time. Then, like some sort of overgrown Mad Hatter, Drake pulled an enormous antique fob watch from his pocket. ‘Goodness gracious, look at the time. You will be my guests for dinner. A night of fine food, finer conversation and a welcome to country.’
He behaved like the matter was settled. She had to admit he had a certain style. Good-looking too. Very. At the airport, Sarah’s sister had made her customary tick-tock body clock remark, and then gone on and on about the hunks Sarah might find Down Under. Her sister was right. Most of the young loggers could have been male models back home. Not to mention Matt, who was absolutely her type. Sarah had lost interest in Los Angeles men. The pale, bookish academics at the University, wedded to their intellects and egos. Or the self-conscious gym junkies, all spray tan, body wax and hair product. They couldn’t hold a candle to the simple rawness of these Aussie men. Penny had certainly had some talent to choose from.
Drake took a swig from a flask at his belt and announced that dinner would be at seven. Sarah checked her phone. Six forty-five. How on earth could Drake produce dinner by seven o’clock? They were in the middle of a forest, at least an hour’s drive from Binburra, and by all accounts he’d spent the last twenty-four hours up a tree. ‘Are you a magician?’ she asked him as Matt strode over.
‘Not a magician,’ said Matt. ‘But he’s quite the performer. An artist too. A bullshit artist. How’d you talk your way out of this one, Drake? I expected the coppers to cart you off.’
‘I simply made a pledge not to climb Pallawarra. Nick knows my word’s good.’
‘He does, but don’t expect the same from the city coppers.’ There was a grim set to Matt’s jaw. ‘As from today, this is an exclusion zone. You’re trespassing, along with us and everybody at Camp Clementine. Word is that tomorrow they’re bringing in a show of force from Hobart. Private security as well.’
Drake shook his head. ‘I don’t need advice from you, Matt. What I do need is a lift’ – he paused theatrically – ‘and to know more about this delectable young doctor.’ Sarah surprised herself by blushing. ‘Why haven’t we been introduced?’
Matt grinned. ‘Righto. Dr Sarah Deville, meet Dr Drake Logan.’
Now it was Sarah’s turn for raised eyebrows. Drake took her hand, kissed it, then snapped shut the giant fob. ‘Hurry folks, or we’ll be late for cocktails.’
They piled into the jeep and bumped back past the police and heavy machinery. A small group of loggers were having some sort of a powwow with the officers. A few cries of piss off and you need your heads read followed them down the track. In a mere ten minutes, a crudely painted sign in the headlights announced their arrival at Camp Clementine.
‘This protest camp is in the centre of the area to be logged,’ said Drake. Sarah peered out the window, but couldn’t see much in the dark. Drake plucked the watch from his pocket again and shrieked. He dived out the door, extracted Sarah, and hurried her off in the direction of a camp fire. Somewhere nearby a generator throbbed. Sarah crossed the threshold into the flame-lit circle. Silhouetted forms turned into people, sitting and eating by the fire, speculating quietly about the size of the force they might face in the morning.
‘We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land upon which we gather today,’ said Drake solemnly. ‘We pay respect to their elders – past, present and emerging – and to the Lia Pootah and Palawa people, who are the custodians of this land.’ Then Drake cuckooed loudly, declared the hour, and magically pressed a plastic glass of red wine into Sarah’s hand. Vanishing for a moment, he reappeared with a paper plate full of golden-brown samosas, all delicately poised on a steaming mountain of jasmine rice. Drake slid a curled gumleaf of dipping sauce onto her plate.
Everything smelled delicious. Sarah hadn’t realised how hungry she was. Balancing her wine on the arm of a folding chair, she jabbed a crisp samosa into the sauce and took a bite. Drake held his breath in fake anticipation, then pressed his palms together when she gave the nod. He really was a centre stage sort of person.
Matt joined them, plate piled high and with a can of Bundaberg Rum in his hand. A young woman followed him over to the fire. She had tangled, dirty-blond hair, gypsy earrings and intense blue eyes. Drake introduced her as Lisa Bade – singer, songwriter, photographer and tree-sitter. Sarah nodded hello. Lisa knelt down and held her hands out to the flames. She oozed charisma. These people were so full of passion. It dripped from their bodies and seeped through their clothes. Sarah admired their courage and indisputable resolve. There was something to be said for having a cause.
For a time they ate in silence. When Sarah finished, Drake sprang to his feet and gestured to her empty plate. ‘Seconds?’
‘You do know,’ said Lisa, ‘that our food comes from supermarket dumpster diving?’
Sarah looked to Drake for confirmation. ‘Perfectly good tucker,’ he said. ‘It’s a crime to waste it.’
The samosas didn’t appeal quite so much anymore. ‘No thanks, no seconds.’ She raised her empty plate. ‘Where’s the bin?’
‘There is no bin,’ said Lisa.
‘Where do you throw things away?’
Lisa rolled her eyes. ‘There is no away, don’t you get that? The concept of throwing things out, throwing things away – it’s just shifting your rubbish somewhere else, making it someone else’s problem.’
Sarah felt out of her depth, out of her comfort zone, as Drake took her plate. Beyond him, three children emerged from the fog and played a noisy game of chasey around the fire. ‘How do children manage here?’ she asked.
‘As well as they manage anywhere. Probably better,’ said Matt, accepting a second can of rum and coke from Drake, who seemed to have an endless supply tucked away in an icebox beneath his chair.
‘But what about school?’
‘What about it?’
‘Don’t they go to school?’
‘Of course not.’ Lisa made an expansive gesture. ‘Their school is the forest. Their teachers are the trees.’
A shocked Sarah tried to keep her expression neutral. Drake and Matt burst out laughing.
‘They go to Hills End Primary, every day,’ said Drake. ‘Their dad, Ken Murphy, owns the local sawmill. He’s here to add numbers for tomorrow’s stoush, and their mum’s camp cook this week. As a matter of fact, I’m driving those little terrors to school myself in the morning, but they’ll go to their aunty’s afterwards. Things are going to escalate.’
The joke at her expense made Sarah feel foolish, excluded. ‘You said their dad owns the sawmill. Why is he here?’
‘What?’ said Lisa. ‘You think because Ken owns the sawmill that he’ll automatically be on Burns’s side?’
Everyone looked at Sarah. She’d clearly put her foot in it again, but didn’t know how. ‘Well, it stands to reason—’
Lisa exploded in a torrent of words.
‘Enough,’ said Drake and Lisa stormed off.
‘What did I say wrong?’ asked Sarah.
Drake crouched in the empty place beside her. ‘There’s old-fashioned logging and then there’s what’s happening here in the Tuggerah. Burns Timber clear fells old-growth forests and sells the lot for woodchips. Our rarest Tassie trees are being turned into Japanese toilet paper. Sawmills are closing down for lack of logs. According to Ken, if this keeps up, our famous craftsmen and furniture makers will run out of wood. There’ll be no Wooden Boat Festival, and we’ll be restoring historic Port Arthur with plantation pine.’
Lisa returned with a plate of food and sat next to Matt, while a broad-chested, middle-aged man joined the conversation. ‘I’m Ken Murphy and I’ll speak for myself. Used to be we let the small trees grow. We harvested the forest selectively, in patches, and we didn’t waste one single piece of a tree. We sawed the best logs, tanned the bark … even the leaves went for oil. Now they chip the lot – myrtle, sassafras, leatherwood. Leatherwood’s bloody priceless. It breaks my heart.’
‘Sorry,’ said Sarah. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘That’s our main problem – nobody bloody knows,’ said Ken. ‘Between Premier Logan and our sorry excuse for a union and the Hobart papers? You’d think Burns was the saviour of Tasmania’s timber industry. We’re labelled traitors if we speak out.’ Ken spat in the fire. ‘Well, not anymore. It’s time to take a stand.’ And with that he stomped away.
Sarah sighed. First she’d upset Lisa, now Ken. She couldn’t take a trick with these people. Better change the subject. She turned to Drake. ‘So, you’re a doctor? What sort of a doctor?’
Drake gave her an amused look. ‘What, don’t you believe me?’
Sarah looked to Matt for help. He was standing nearby, spinning Lisa some sort of ghost story. Sarah took a second look at him – relaxed, happy, as though he was free of something. The fire flared and turned his hair to an attractive bronze. She liked his eyes, a sort of smudged brown. When they smiled it brought a pleasing balance to his face. His body was muscular, baked brown, with no hint of softness around the belly. He moved like an animal, swift and sure.
The rumble of approaching vehicles disturbed the quiet night. Several people left the fire’s circle, including Lisa, who checked her watch and hurried off. Sarah reached over and touched Matt’s leg. ‘What kind of doctor is Drake?’
Matt sat down beside her. ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but our friend Drake here has a seriously impressive resume. A medical degree for starters. A PhD in zoology and marine biology from Princeton. A Eureka Prize for entomological research. Um … and he’s written two books. Have I left anything out, Dr Drake?’
‘I do a bit of sailing.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Matt, drawing a noughts-and-crosses board in the dirt. ‘Drake spent last year as chief research officer on the Sea Steward.’
‘Shall I start?’ Drake traced a cross.
Sarah whistled low. Wow, the Sea Steward. How different Tasmania was to home. With its curious culture of understatement, of not big-noting oneself. She wished she could transport all her Los Angeles friends to this dark camp. Have these odd people look straight through them, catch them out, see the plain truth behind their masks.
The Sea Steward’s Captain Peter Weston was a hero among Sarah’s neoliberal friends back at UCLA. He’d founded a group to take direct action against sealers and whalers and long-line fishing vessels. Other conservation groups distanced themselves from Weston’s organisation, alarmed by the fearless tactics he used to disrupt Japanese whaling ships.
Matt frowned and drew a victory line in the dirt. ‘Don’t be too impressed. Drake was seasick for the first two months.’
Not missing a beat, Drake turned his weak stomach into a badge of honour. ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re sick as a dog, not when the whalers go after a mother and calf. You put yourself on the line. That’s just what you do.’
‘How far south did you go?’ asked Sarah.
‘Right to the ice shelf.’
‘I’m impressed.’
‘I do hope so,’ said Drake.
Headlights shone down the road past the campfire, spotlighting Lisa and another man, both dressed in climbing gear and carrying helmets.
‘Where are they going?’ asked Sarah.
‘Up Pallawarra.’
‘What, at night? In this weather?’
‘Only way to get past the loggers,’ said Drake. ‘Don’t worry. The storm won’t hit properly until morning.’
Sarah was speechless. She couldn’t imagine the zeal that sent Lisa off to risk her life in the dark, windy forest. She felt a sharp pang of envy and fear. Drake touched her knee and topped up her glass.
‘Are you married?’ she asked him.
For the first time that night, Drake seemed wrong-footed. ‘I suppose you could call it that.’
He wore no ring, but for some reason she wasn’t surprised. ‘Children?’
‘Tell her, Drake,’ said Matt, his tone daring. ‘This should be interesting.’
Sarah leapt abruptly to her feet, swatted her knee and flicked a large insect to the ground. With a little shiver, she ground it beneath her heel.
‘Stay still.’ Drake reached across and stroked her bare leg. Sarah shivered again, not from fear this time. He coaxed a second insect, a shining beetle, from her thigh onto his hand. ‘A jewel beetle. Lovely, isn’t he?’
Sarah took a closer look. ‘Why, yes,’ she admitted. The beetle’s shell glowed electric blue or emerald green, depending on its angle. The beautiful beetle unfolded stained glass wings and flew away.
‘Insects are evolution’s greatest success story. They saw the dinosaurs come and go. But their numbers are plummeting all over the world, so we really shouldn’t stomp on them.’
‘I asked if you had children,’ said Sarah, irritated by Drake’s disapproval.
‘No. I’m a voluntary extinctionist,’ said Drake.
‘A what?’
‘Our motto. May we live long and die out.’
Matt grinned and cracked another can.
‘The basic concept,’ said Drake, ‘is that we don’t breed. The alternative to the extinction of millions of species is the voluntary extinction of just one – us.’
His words made Sarah’s skin prickle. What on earth was he talking about? These people were utterly bewildering.
Drake went on. ‘Deciding not to have children is the morally correct choice. Humans are a plague, doctor, a planetary disease like the tumours on your devils. Their actions over the past few hundred years exhibit all the characteristics of malignant process. Rapid, uncontrolled growth. Invasion and destruction of neighbouring ecosystems. For metastasise, read colonise and urbanise. For dedifferentiation, read loss of diversity. Read a McDonald’s in every country on earth. And what are the usual implications of a malignancy?’
‘Death of the host,’ said Sarah.
‘Exactly. As special as we think we are, humans present a clear and present danger to life on this planet. It’s time we went extinct.’
‘You’ll never convince me,’ said Sarah, although there was a certain insane logic to his position. But there was also a logic to survival. More than that, it was a biological imperative. Any extinction was a disaster. That was why she’d got involved with the devils in the first place – so they wouldn’t go the way of their cousins, the thylacines, vanished from Tasmania within living memory.
‘A woman at the post office swears that she once saw a thylacine,’ said Sarah.
Drake laughed. ‘Half the population of this island thinks they’ve seen one, but there’s not a scrap of proof. No remains, no photos, not even a footprint.’
‘What do you think, Matt?’ Sarah turned to him in the firelight.
Matt took his time answering. ‘People want to believe,’ he said at last. ‘But there are no thylacines anymore. And do you know what?’ He snapped a stick in half. ‘I’m glad.’
Sarah gasped. ‘How can you say that?’
‘Since it seems to be a day for stories, let me tell you the story of the last thylacine known to walk this earth. A young female called Benjamin – they couldn’t even get her sex right. The only person who cared about this extraordinary animal was a woman called Alison Reid.’
‘The museum curator told me about her,’ said Sarah. ‘Forced from her job running the Hobart Zoo because she was female.’
Matt nodded. ‘After that Benjamin was left alone, twenty-four seven, in an open concrete cage without access to her den. No shade from the sun or shelter from the cold. Benjamin died of exposure sometime during the night of the seventh of September, 1936. They didn’t even bother to preserve her body – it went to the tip. And Australia has the nerve to declare the seventh of September, National Endangered Species Day. Let’s celebrate our grand indifference, shall we?’ Matt hurled his can into the fire. It caused a little hissing explosion. ‘Benjamin and her kind are better off dead. What’s the point of all this striving for life anyway?’
Sarah was speechless.
‘Matt’s drunk,’ said Drake. ‘You two had better stay here tonight.’
Matt burped loudly. ‘Fine by me.’
The three of them were the only ones left at the fire.
‘And what about you, doctor? Is it fine by you?’ Drake sneaked his arm around Sarah’s waist.
She let it linger awhile before slipping sideways. ‘I’d better turn in.’
Drake sighed. ‘Come on then, Lisa’s bunk is empty.’
Sarah wrapped herself tight in Ray’s coat and followed him to the tents.
Drake returned as yet another vehicle arrived to help fill the camp. ‘You’re in quite a mood tonight.’ He tossed Matt a swag. ‘Want to talk about it?’
Matt looked away. Of course he wanted to. He longed to take up his friend’s offer, longed to unburden himself. But he couldn’t risk telling Drake about Theo. He couldn’t risk telling anybody. So instead he shrugged and slapped a mosquito into oblivion.
‘Does it have anything to do with our beautiful young doctor?’
‘Mate, you know me. I’m happily married.’
Drake fixed him with searching blue eyes. ‘So happily married that you haven’t called Penny?’
Matt groaned and buried his head in his hands. He’d messaged her about going to the Tuggerah, but that was hours ago. He hadn’t called to say he wouldn’t be home tonight. The alcohol that had made him briefly forget about Theo, had also made him forget about Penny. It was unforgivable.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Drake. ‘I rang her for you – said your phone had no reception.’
Matt let out a great grateful breath. ‘I owe you one.’
Drake offered him the last can from the icebox. ‘All yours. I need to be good for the morning.’
‘Bit late for that, isn’t it?’ Matt tossed the can in the air, caught it and opened it. He’d have a hangover tomorrow.
Drake tucked the camp chair under his arm and gave Matt a final look. ‘Remember mate, I’m here when you want to talk.’
After Drake had retreated to the tents, Matt poked at the dying fire. Its embers flamed once and died in a sad twist of smoke. The black forest pressed in around him, eerie and quiet – not even the friendly call of a boobook owl to punctuate the night. According to Penny, boobook owls were spirit guides of the dreaming. Lucky charms. But Camp Clementine was on the rim of the logging coupe, and the wise little owls had fled. Good fortune would have fled with them. He sat for the longest time, drinking alone while a chill seeped into his bones. Only when his teeth began chattering did he zip up his jacket, climb into the swag and close his eyes.
Matt awoke in the dark with a searing jolt, burning up by the fire, unaware at first of where he was. He rolled away from the hot coals and lurched to his feet, the dream still vivid. His eyes slowly adjusted and objects emerged from the gloom. His scorched swag lay where he’d fought his way out of it, ripped at the zip, in a crumpled heap on the ground. Why was this happening again? This nightmare where he turned into a monster.
Matt shivered. He’d seen his reflection in the dream river. The square head of a lion stared back at him; a marsupial lion, with fangs bared in a snarl – a creature extinct for twenty thousand years. It always ended the same way, this dream. It always ended in a successful hunt. And it felt very right to pound through the spectral forest after his shrieking prey, so sure in the dark. To seize it in his jaws, to gut it with his clawed thumbs in a rain of blood. The face of his prey came into focus – his father’s face.
It began to rain. Matt pulled his swag under the cover of a canvas awning near the tents, climbed back in and lay rigid. The wind moaned like a banshee through the trees, and he hoped sleep would not come to him again that night.