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“Wake up!” snapped Alexis. “You're babbling. You need some strong coffee.” He pointed at a tour bus parked next to the ferry with a picture of a thylacine on the back. “See. The thylacine's right there. Go commune.”

“I wonder if there's anywhere good to eat breakfast,” Dorothy mused. She looked fresh as a daisy in a new pair of hiphugger jeans she had bought specially for our trip.

We went to pick up coffees in the ferry terminal. As we walked off, we observed Alexis beginning a series of stretching exercises. They looked like yoga positions crossed with the moves of a contortionist. He laid his palms flat on the ground and stuck his butt in the air. Then he tucked a foot behind his ear. The people on the thylacine tour bus looked on with interest.

After getting some caffeine, we found the car hire agency and rented a big white four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi Pajero. Then we drove with Alexis and Dorothy to the Backpacker's Barn, a local camping store. We had agreed to meet Chris Vroom there after he flew in from Melbourne, and we needed to purchase a few supplies. The proprietor of the barn greeted us heartily. “Welcome to paradise,” he shouted in our faces. The veins in his forehead looked like they would pop with enthusiasm. “Tasmania is paradise,” he added. We weren't ready for this so early in the morning.

His name was Carl Clayton, and inside the store, he kept a white sul-phur-crested cockatoo as a pet. This is a raucous species of parrot given to decibel-bashing screeches. But Carl's cockatoo also knew how to talk, and it was one of those parrots that seemed always to be making snide remarks in our direction. While we were browsing amid the flashlights and water bottles, we thought we caught it saying, “Polly wanna—SCREW YOU!”

We bought some topographic maps and a compass. Most compasses made in the Northern Hemisphere don't work properly Down Under. The compass needle, which is counterweighted for use in the north, bogs down and doesn't rotate. We didn't want to risk getting lost: the Tasmanian bush is full of hazards. You could be fanged by a tiger snake, jabbed by a venomous bull ant, drained of your blood by land leeches, chewed on by a Tasmanian devil, or even spurred by a rogue platypus. More common (much more common) though was getting lost on a hot summer's day while hiking and dying of hypothermia when Tasmania's mercurial weather suddenly turned freezing.

Alexis didn't seem to share our concerns about the hazards of the bush. In fact, he looked like all his problems had been solved now that he'd brought his stash safely into Tasmania. He bought a lighter that looked like a tiny blowtorch to use with his pot pipe. Dorothy bought hundreds of dollars' worth of camping equipment—sleeping bag, inflatable sleeping pad, backpack, hiking boots, thermal socks, and a thick woolen shirt.

As we made our purchases, Carl goggled at us and waggled his head. “Am I your first two-headed Tasmanian?”

Two heads? We looked at him blankly.

“You came from the mainland, didn't you? Didn't they tell you that Tasmanians were supposed to have two heads?” He seemed disappointed.

We knew mainlanders typecast Tasmanians as being backward and inbred—kind of like Appalachian hillbillies. But we weren't aware it was a stereotype Tasmanians promoted. We wondered if Carl would appreciate hearing that several people on the mainland had advised us to “watch out for Tasmanians with six fingers.”

Carl seemed to forgive our ignorance and informed us that in addition to running the barn, he was an environmental activist. He was working to get a nearby rain forest protected. It was called the Tarkine, and he had a novel idea for preserving it. Under his plan, the Tarkine would not only be maintained as a roadless area, it would also be a “no go” area. People—even hikers, his own clientele—would not be permitted to enter the Tarkine under any circumstances. “Humans,” he informed us in a low voice, “are dirty, dirty, dirty animals.” We were inclined to agree and promised to stay out