In Tasmania by Nicholas Shakespeare

Author:Nicholas Shakespeare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2004-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

‘Someday when we meet up yonder

‘We’ll stroll hand in hand again

‘In the land that knows no parting

‘Or blue eyes cryin’ in the rain.’

XX

NEXT MORNING I WENT WITH DUSTY ON HIS TRACTOR, BOUNCING along a sandy path to the rookery where Tas and Angus stood in the tussock grass.

They staggered towards us, two stooped figures in a thunderstorm of feathers. Each carried a spit of 50 birds across his shoulder and the backs of their hands were scratched red. Tas complained that the beaks were starting to toughen up and that the burrows near the shore were occupied by penguins with beaks like pairs of bolt clippers. He said that he had to put on antiseptic cream every night and bathe his cuts in salt water. ‘Main thing in birding is all the time look after your hand.’

He slithered his harvest onto the back of the tractor.

‘How many will you catch today?’ I asked.

‘I reckon if you get a hundred birds a day you’re doing a pretty good job.’

‘If we’re not getting them, it’s a dirty bastard of a job,’ Angus growled. ‘Matter of upstairs agreeing with us.’ He cursed the work, the distance from the shed, the rain darkening the sand.

But for Tas the rain was a good thing. It made the birds scratch their pen feathers out, and so the flesh was firmer and easier to pluck. ‘Without rain, they’re soft and shitty,’ and he pulled out a feather and snapped it. A dark colour half-filled it, the shade of ink in a quill. He said: ‘When they fly, they don’t have blood in their feathers. They drink salt water and it dries up the blood.’

‘Couple of days of this, that’s enough for me,’ grunted Angus. He offloaded his spit and I saw that he had ‘Hate’ and ‘Love’ tattooed across his knuckles. Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter.

Dusty started up the tractor, and I walked into the field with Tas and Angus to catch my first mutton-bird.

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