Birdbrain E-Book

Johanna Sinisalo

• Herausgeber: Peter Owen Publishers
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 333

Beschreibung

'A sense of lurking horror that will leave you troubled for weeks' - Sam Jordison, Guardian Book of the Year 2010. From the author of Not Before Sundown, this novel is a skilful portrait of the unquenchable desire of Westerners for the pure and the primitive. A young Finnish couple go on the hiking trip of a lifetime in Australasia with Heart of Darkness as reading material. The trip gradually turns into a tortuous thriller with belongings disappearing and, even more mysteriously, reappearing. The travellers come to be at the mercy of untamed nature. Birdbrain reveals the dark side of the explorer's desire: the insatiable need to control, to invade and leave one's mark on the landscape. But what happens when nature starts to fight back?

Leseprobe

Praise for Birdbrain

‘Birdbrain is a graphic examination of two very different people and a harrowing allegory of humankind’s problematic relationship with the planet.’ — Guardian, a Guardian Book of the Year 2010

‘A lyrical and occasionally sinister odyssey second only to making one’s own foray into the wilderness’ — Publishers Weekly

‘A startlingly good book’ — John Clute, Strange Horizons

‘A sense of lurking horror that will leave you troubled for weeks’ — Sam Jordison

Praise for Not Before Sundown (a.k.a Troll: A Love Story)

‘Blame global warming, but trolls are moving out of legend to scavenge at the outskirts of Finnish cities … Sinisalo’s strange and erotic tale peers at the crooked world through a peephole. The troll comes to life after hours, unleashing glittering desires … Is the troll becoming more human (hurt, jealousy), or does he merely reveal our own trollishness?’ — Guardian

‘Unsettlingly seductive … elegance, authenticity and chilling conviction’ — Independent on Sunday

‘Chillingly seductive’ — Independent, Best Reads of 2003

‘A sharp, resonant, prickly book that exists on the slipstream of SF, fantasy, horror and gay fiction.’ — Neil Gaiman

‘An imaginative and engaging novel of urban fantasy … Overlapping narrative voices nicely underscore the moral of Sinisalo’s ingeniously constructed fable: The stuff of ancient legend shadows with rather unnerving precision the course of unloosed postmodern desire.’ — Washington Post

‘Simple but very powerful … A thoughtful, inspiring and rewarding work.’ — Gay Times

‘A wily thriller-fantasy … Each discovery sounds like the voice of a storyteller reminding us of how the gods play with our fates.’ — The New York Times

‘A punk version of The Hobbit … Sinisalo cleverly taps the fabled legacy of myths while ditching the fairy-tale tone you might expect … Although the book exploits the conventions of the fantasy genre, it clearly transcends them … This smart, droll novel points out the absurdity of consumerism … [and] underscores how our ad-driven culture and its images permeate our lives.’ — USA Today

‘A brilliant and dark parable about the fluid boundaries between human and animal … Johanna Sinisalo creates scenes that make you laugh out loud; 10 pages later you’re holding your breath with anxiety. Such talent is not to be taken for granted.’ — The Boston Globe

‘Sinisalo takes us on a brilliant and sometimes horrifying multidisciplinary adventure through biology and belief, ecology, morality, myth and metaphysics, in a quest for a wild place where trolls can run free.’ — Creative Loafing

‘Sinisalo uses the relationship between man and troll to examine the hidden motivations in human-human interactions … Sinisalo sets up thematic connections between nearly every event in the book, but she handles them with a light touch … this would be Ibsen’s The Wild Duck — if the duck were the main love interest. Granted, Ibsen’s doomed waterfowl never ended up in a pair of designer jeans, but both creatures highlight the uneasy role of feral nature trapped within civilized humanity.’ — Village Voice

‘While trolls in legends and stories often resemble werewolves, changelings and demons, in Sinisalo’s book it’s the humans whose beastly qualities are familiar and threatening. Her in-translation language is marvelous, sexy, enticing … Blood and bone mixes with unique humor and wit.’ — San Diego Union Tribune

‘Johanna Sinisalo has created a strange, beautiful tale, expertly translated, and cinematic enough for movie scenes … Thought-provoking, uniquely imaginative, and brimming with circus-sideshow details… Sinisalo’s story ascends to more than just a freakish attraction by being intellectual and darkly comic all at once. The result is simply brilliant.’ — San Francisco Bay Reporter

‘Told as a modern-day fairy tale … haunted me long after I finished. It has all the elements, including some of the disturbing ones, found in so many of Grimm’s stories, but is nonetheless a truly original novel.’ — Powells.com

‘Offers an ingenious dramatization of the nightmare of blurred boundaries between species, and a disturbing dystopian vision reminiscent of Karel Capek’s classic War with the Newts. A fascinating black comedy, from a writer who has made the transition to literary fiction with a giant’s stride.’ — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

‘A sexually charged contemporary folk tale … Sinisalo’s elastic prose is at once lyrical and matter-of-fact … The troll brings out Angel’s animal instincts, representing all the seduction and violence of the natural world.’ — Publishers Weekly

‘The comedy is irresistible, the pages turn themselves, carried along by the quicksilver of an unbelievably imaginative pen … Run to this book … An entertaining variation on the eternal confrontation between man and beast, the light and dark angels which live in all of us.’ — Télérama (Paris)

BIRDBRAIN

From the author of Not Before Sundown (a.k.a. Troll: A Love Story) this is a compelling exploration of the desire of tourists to conquer the world’s last remaining pristine landscapes. A young Finnish couple — sports enthusiast Jyrki and his girlfriend Heidi — go on the hiking trip of a lifetime in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in their backpacks and the intention of being ecologically aware. As they attempt increasingly challenging trails their trek develops a sinister aspect as unsettling incidents occur. Belongings disappear and — more mysteriously — reappear. Finally the couple sense that, rather than these being random events, they are at the mercy of untamed natural forces directed by an intelligent being. The novel reveals the darker side of the explorer’s desire: the insatiable need to control one’s environment, to invade and to leave one’s mark on the landscape. But what happens when nature starts to fight back?

Johanna Sinisalo was born in Finnish Lapland in 1958 . She studied theatre and drama and worked in advertising for a number of years before becoming a full-time author, at first writing science fiction and fantasy short stories. Not Before Sundown (2000), her acclaimed first novel — also published by Peter Owen — won the prestigious Finlandia Award and the James Tiptree Jr Award for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore our understanding of gender. Also known in Finland for her television and comic-strip writing, she has won the Atorox Prize for best Finnish science fiction or fantasy story seven times and has been the winner of the Kemi National Comic Strip Contest twice. In addition to her four novels she has written reviews, articles, comic strips, film and television scripts and edited anthologies, including The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy. Her short story ‘Baby Doll’ was a Nebula nominee and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire nominee in France, and it was published in the Year’s Best SF 13 anthology in the USA. Her work has been translated into twenty languages, including twelve translations of Not Before Sundown.

Contents

South Coast Track, Tasmania

Lapland Levi

South Coast Track, Tasmania

Lapland Levi

South Coast Track, Tasmania

Helsink September 2006

South Coast Track, Tasmania

New Zealand

South Coast Track, Tasmania

New Zealand

Tasmania Surprise Bay to Deadman’s Bay Wednesday

New Zealand Kepler Track February 2007

South Coast Track, Tasmania

New Zealand Nelson Lakes February 2007

South Coast Track, Tasmania

New Zealand Nelson Lakes February 2007

South Coast Track, Tasmania

New Zealand Nelson Lakes

National History Digest

South Coast Track, Tasmania

Australia Grampians National Park

South Coast Track, Tasmania

Overland Track

South Coast Track, Tasmania

Hobart, Tasmania

South Coast Track, Tasmania

Hobart, Tasmania

South Coast Track, Tasmania

South Coast Track, Tasmania

South Coast Track, Tasmania

South Coast Track, Tasmania

South Coast Track, Tasmania

South Coast Track, Tasmania

South Coast Track, Tasmania

South Coast Track, Tasmania

South Coast Track, Tasmania

South Coast Track, Tasmania

Copyright

Some Authors We Have Published

Back Cover

‘Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!’ I shrieked, upstarting —‘Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door!Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!’

Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’

— Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven (1845)

SOUTH COAST TRACK, TASMANIACockle Creek to South Cape RivuletMonday, March 2007

HEIDI

Hanging around a modest distance from the Tassielink minibus terminus is a group of guys, their shorts boasting rips and tears, their T-shirts with stains, their armpits and backs with patches of sweat, their hiking boots with layers of dried mud. Jyrki gets out of the bus first, looks around, his brow furrowed, but as soon as he sees the row of trekkers his face brightens. He raises his hand in a gesture of calculated nonchalance, as if to say Hi, we’re cut from the same cloth, and the group manages a few mumbled greetings.

They’re standing in the shade at the edge of the dust track, a group of six young blokes, their bags a collection of bundles and straps, their beards scruffy and unkempt, as I step out into the sunshine and stretch my arms and legs. The drive from Hobart has taken over three hours. We’re the only passengers to travel all the way to the end of the line. The driver lifts the tarpaulin covering the trailer and dumps our rucksacks on the dusty verge.

The midday sky is like a bright-blue dome. Cockle Creek is full of gentle, grassy slopes, tidy bushes, footbridges across narrow, sandy channels of sea, families enjoying a picnic. Toddlers squealing with excitement and fear of the cool water are splashing about in the wash with their brightly coloured floats. My eyes automatically start scanning around for a café, a restaurant, an icecream stand, a souvenir shop. The only sign of civilization is an outdoor toilet cubicle hidden in the thicket.

I can’t help wondering what it must be like to be one of those grime-covered guys, the smell of sweat lingering in the air metres around them, to arrive here from South Coast Track only to discover that you’ve missed the only minibus of the day by a few minutes. From Cockle Creek it must be a good thirty kilometres to the nearest place offering any kind of facilities. You’ll have to wait a day for the next bus, sometimes two days, enjoying the pleasures of the non-existent local infrastructure. There is no through-traffic here, so even hitch-hiking would be limited to the cars of the families out on a day trip.

Still, I know exactly what Jyrki would say in a situation like that. We’ll walk, he’d say.

JYRKI

OK, now you can open your eyes. Three guesses where we are.

Beep! Wrong answer.

This was supposed to be the edge of the Southwest National Park. This was supposed to be almost in the Great Outback.

Correct answer: this is a nothing but a spruced-up, sanitized, middle-class playground.

Take that campsite over there, the one we just passed. Enormous caravans parked on the grassy parkland; giant awnings with multiple rooms and plastic windows hoisted up alongside them, tents bigger that your average downtown flat, crammed full of functional furniture fashioned in the best traditions of cheap plastic design. Wheezing outdoor barbeques, guzzling gas from cylinders, turning the air glassy and shimmering. On the camping table, the antennae of a travel television points up towards the sky like a victory sign.

These people leave their concrete suburban hell behind them, billowing litre upon litre of petrol into the atmosphere in the process, and for a brief moment set up a plastic hell here at the edge of the bush. All this so that they can tell their friends about how great it was roughing it for a couple of nights — standing there taking their GM-soya-fattened pork chops out of their polystyrene packaging and throwing them on the barbie to sizzle; fetching a six-pack of Fosters from the Winnebago fridge, chilled by keeping the car’s engine idling all day. It’s wild out there and oh so liberating. A real tale of survival.

If we put up our Hilleberg tent out here, it would look like a kennel on Millionaires’ Row. Someone might accidentally step on it, crush it like an ant.

At Overland Track the scent of untouched nature was much more distinct. Although there was a large guide centre, a café and even a hotel at the start of the track, everything about the place said that you only needed to walk a hundred metres and the sense of being in the outback would whistle in your ears like a bone flute.

The driver, a friendly man with a freckled bald patch, is already lugging the returning hikers’ rucksacks into the trailer at the back of the minibus. I exchange a few words with our fellow trekkers. The words ‘mud’ and ‘Ironbound’ come up again and again. The weather has apparently been all right. It’s rained a bit, but there’s been no flooding. At Cox Bight a wombat had spent all evening grazing right next to the campsite.

The guys’ chilled-out, relaxed, indirect way of bragging is an unspoken indication that we’re not quite in the same league. Picking up on their carefully suppressed blokish chest-beating makes the bottom of my stomach tingle, that same sense of expectation as when I was younger, going out on the pull after an evening shift. Without saying a word, the group’s body language makes it clear that they’d served their time while we were just arriving at the barracks.

She’s standing next to me, listening solemnly to our colleagues’ stories. They’ve reached that ecstatic phase, raving on about the first things they want once they reach Hobart: a cold beer, a hot shower, a bed with crisp linen and fresh food seem to be at the top of everyone’s list.

I tell them that in Finland the first thing men coming back from the front wanted was sex; only after that did they take their skis off. The lads give an uncertain chuckle.

I hoick my rucksack from the sand and up over my shoulder. You have to do this quickly, without any obvious effort, without catching your breath.

The driver says his compulsory farewells and wishes us luck. The doors of the minibus slam shut.

In a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes, our umbilical cord is severed.

I ask her if we’re ready. She nods, almost imperceptibly.

At the start of the track there is a wooden shelter with three walls featuring laminated guides to the national park and a couple of information notices. Also, on a small shelf, there is a registration book with a pen on the end of a piece of string.

She flicks through the book and asks whether we ought to write our names down.

Standing there, holding that book, she’s holding on to Cockle Creek with both hands, delaying our departure like a small child on her way to the dentist. When you leave something difficult alone, avoid it and procrastinate long enough, eventually it’ll go away.

HEIDI

I hesitate, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, because I want the group of three energetic-looking guys that arrived shortly after us in a car to go first so they’ll get enough of a head start on us. Then I might be spared the inevitable embarrassment of people trekking behind us first overtaking us, then hanging around taking photographs or stopping for a piss, then, before you know it, breathing down your neck again. Excuse me, but would the lady mind letting us past? It’s obvious they’ll be faster than us — faster than me, that is. We’ll meet them in South Cape Bay later that evening anyway — and why shouldn’t we meet them? It’s already half past twelve, and I doubt even a herd of testosterone-fuelled bulls like them could make it any further by nightfall.

Jyrki comes and stands beside me, rests a heavy, purposeful arm on my shoulder and looks around. In the battered old ring-binder someone has taken a ruler and a biro and drawn columns where people fill in their names, the date and an estimate of how long they think they’re going to be out on the trail.

Shattering the whiteness of the registration book and drawing a pen across the paper feels almost like taking an oath, a deed that would have repercussions far beyond the act of simply writing down my name.

But isn’t it precisely those kind of deeds I’ve come here to take on?

Jyrki’s fingers brush across the columns as casually as a tornado might whip through the American Midwest.

‘Nobody knows at this stage how long they’re going to be on the trail. They might have a fair idea, but the weather could play up, or you could sprain your ankle. Some people might even move faster than they’d planned,’ he says.

‘But if something happens … they’ll know to come and search for us.’

‘Think about it. We write down the day we expect to arrive at Melaleuca. Then we don’t turn up because the river’s burst its banks, leaving us stranded on the other side for a day. Before you know it there’ll be rescue helicopters chattering their way out here looking for people that are in no trouble whatsoever.’

‘So there actually will be such things, right?’

Jyrki squeezes my shoulder.

‘Of course. We’ll be crossing rivers and creeks, even a stretch of the sea. There could be strong winds or a freak high tide. You’ve just got to stay put and stick it out.’

‘I meant rescue helicopters.’

Jyrki gives a snort.

We’ll be covering our backs, I say.

We’ll be smothering our freedom, says Jyrki.

Neither of us says it out loud.

Jyrki leans down towards me; his lips gently touch mine.

‘Time to go, babe.’

Babe.

A word that has never once passed his lips before now. Not love, not sweetheart. Nothing.

I look at him and his smile, a smile that exudes a steely inner resolve, a great, burning enthusiasm, penetrating and deliberate.

At some point I started to know that Joseph Conrad book off by heart. It whispers to me.

I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that couldn’t talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there?

JYRKI

At first the track is the ultimate piece of cake, all duckboards and steps — we’d be lucky to encounter as much as a tree root once every kilometre. I know that the beginning of the trail gives us the wrong impression. The leg from Cockle Creek to the campsite at Lion Rock is clearly cut for people out on a Sunday-afternoon stroll. On the trail we pass plodding retired couples dressed in everyday clothes and shoes and families out on holiday. We even see a couple pushing their kids in a pram, which almost makes me want to cover my head with a paper bag for fear of ending up in a photograph with them.

I take a deep breath. I know this isn’t the start of the concert; this isn’t even the overture. This is just the murmur of the audience taking their places. That’s not the reason we’ve come all this way. This is just a necessary step we have to take, a stage that has little to do with what’s still in store for us. That’s when the real show begins.

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

LAPLANDLevi, The Rabid ReindeerSaturday, April 2006

HEIDI

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 shots 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 something 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 itself, 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 was the company new girl, 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 tall, about 190 centimetres, 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’d noticed Riitta was already displaying obvious signs of tedium.

JYRKI

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 could 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 fare better 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 back 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 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’d 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 out 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.

Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble.

— Anonymous philosopher in the registration book at Speargrass Hut

SOUTH COAST TRACK, TASMANIACockle Creek to South Cape RivuletMonday, March 2007

HEIDI

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 seductive; 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 anymore — not to mention 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.

JYRKI

From Lion Rock onwards the coastal path is treacherous. The strip of shore, cut 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’re even 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’d 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.

HEIDI

‘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’d 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.

JYRKI

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 only have to adjust 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 for 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.