Wild One Tasmania
Mount Donaldson
Originally published in Australian CountryExcerpt
The myrtles and eucalypts that rise to 90 metres were saplings when Queen Elizabeth I ascended the English throne.
They cast soft shadows on floors tangled with moss and fern, vivid puce and white fungi sprouting like sea creatures on damp timbers. Traveller, beware, for enchantment has a sting in its tail. Get lost and you may never be found.
The spectre of the thylacine, an Alsatian-sized carnivorous marsupial, still haunts these glades. Shadows lurk behind locking walls of ancient Huon Pine. Look, over there! A glimpse. Gone. Species vanished.
There’s another flicker just after dawn up the Pieman River. Something is skulking, paws padding noiselessly over logs encrusted with fungus and fern, snarled boughs curtained in silvery-green lichen. What’s that? A scurry. A scat.
A thylacine?