Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [123]
As we were treading water, Alexis looked out toward the ocean and began musing. “The giant squid's the thylacine of the sea—but in re-verse—people thought Architeuthis was a mythical animal and then it turned out to be real. So the giant squid is still in the process of being discovered. The thylacine's a real animal that's in the process of becoming a myth.” He paused, his thoughts turning to more practical matters. “Do you think they still have the ink from the squid that washed up here? It would be great if I could get some giant squid ink to do a drawing.” Like other squid, octopi, and cuttlefish, giant squid secrete ink that they expel to cloud the water and confound their enemies. He gazed off determinedly, as if he were mind-melding with a squid and forcing it to wash up on the rocks. “I would give all the wombat scat in the world for one vial of giant squid ink.”
Just then we noticed Alexis's lips were beginning to turn blue. “We better get out before a male Architeuthis decides to impregnate you,” we said.
We swam back to the shore and, as we attempted to haul ourselves up on the boulders, realized our energy was sapped. While the octopus's garden was beguiling us with its charms, we had nearly gotten hypothermia. After using the last of our strength to drag our leaden legs out of the water, we sat there panting in the heat.
That night, we stayed in a town called Swansea. In the 1880s, the farmers from this region—the oldest rural municipality in Tasmania—had been the first to demand an islandwide bounty on the thylacine. At a local history museum, we found a bleak display. Hanging from the wall was a huge, rusting metal apparatus labeled “Tasmanian Tiger Trap.” It had massive metal jaws and an evil serrated grin. Beneath the trap was a blowup of an old black-and-white photo of a bearded hunter posed with his gun beside a strung-up Tasmanian tiger. The tiger is hanging upside down, its body stretched out to the fullest extent and its huge head and snout just inches from the floor. The tiger's long tail arcs stiffly behind its back. Dating from 1869, this is the only surviving nineteenth-century photograph of the thylacine. Interestingly, the Tasmanian tiger was never photographed in the wild.
In the morning, we headed for Hobart. As we got closer to the capital, the number of logging trucks coming toward us began to increase, about one every three minutes.
“This really upsets me,” Alexis said after about ten huge trucks had left us sucking their wind. “Tasmania's lifeblood is spilling onto the blacktop.”
Hobart was originally founded as a British penal colony in 1804. But much of its early prosperity derived from the sea. Built near the mouth of the Derwent River and surrounded by channels and bays, Hobart is a port city. And when we crossed the bridge over the spectacular Derwent and found ourselves in the city's center, we were immediately charmed. Along the waterfront was a huge marina, Sullivan's Cove, filled with yachts, fishing boats, and long piers lined with seafood restaurants and fishmongers. The far end of the cove was fronted by a long row of yellow sandstone buildings. Once countinghouses and warehouses, they now housed fashionable bars, restaurants, shops, and art galleries. Up above on a bluff called Battery Point, winding streets were lined with historic homes, many of them originally built by the owners of whaling vessels. In the early days of the colony, whalers went after right whales that literally swarmed in the bays surrounding Hobart. They made fortunes on whale products—blubber from the whales was rendered and used for lamp oil; the whales' baleen was sold