by Louis Nowra
Night were coming and I heard Ernie say, Time to go home. There were no other words to say. Mr Carsons wrapped his dead daughter’s body in a blanket and roped her to his horse. I sat with Ernie on his horse. I still didn’t believe Becky were dead. Even looking at her tied up like a bundle of clothes to her father’s horse couldn’t make me believe me she were gone. We rode off in silence. I looked back and saw Corinna staring at the bloodstained snow and then looking back at me. She seemed awfully weary and I knew she wanted to die and die she would soon, very soon.
We were all so knackered that during the four-day ride back to Mr Carsons’s farm, we said barely a word. It were enough that we had the strength just to remain on the horses.
I s’pose I have to laugh rather than cry cos the reason Becky went back to the den were cos of Ernie’s soft nature of giving her the ambergris that brought back all those memories for her. I reckon it must have took her six days of non-stop walking to make her way back to the lair. She made it to the den but I weren’t there. It were only a sick and starving Corinna. Then not too long afterwards she heard me singing to her. It were no wonder she thought I were playing a trick on her.
We buried Becky on the farm with only Ernie as a mourner besides me and Mr Carsons. It were a sunny day. She would have liked that. I were hollowed out with grief, but Mr Carsons were even worse. He stayed in bed when he should have been up and working and he moved through the house like the living dead - he were a ghost but didn’t know it yet.
There were no spirit or soul in him any more. I saw a death wish like Corinna’s in his eyes. Ernie must have seen it too cos he stayed on the farm caring for us, but Mr Carsons wouldn’t eat. He were just waiting for death to come and get him but maybe death were taking too long and Mr Carsons were too impatient cos one night as me and Ernie were sitting on the back porch we heard a shot from the bedroom. Mr Carsons had finally given up waiting for death so he decided to go and meet death himself.
We buried him next to Becky. Ernie said he would care for me. I returned to Hobart to live with him. Me grief for Becky were deep and long-lasting. Ernie recorded me talking and singing, but only for short bits cos that’s all the cylinders would take. I were growing into me teenage years with Ernie and he were growing old, not so much cos of real age but cos he were becoming fatter and he found breathing and even walking a trial at times. He knew he should take off weight but he said he couldn’t. I am a weakwilled man, he said to me more than once. He tried to teach me to speak better but I only got as good as this. I never did learn to write or read properly. He was scared of what would happen to me if he died, so he wanted me to be able to earn money. He thought I should go back to whaling but there were few whalers now cos the whales were becoming less and less. He got me a job as a housemaid in a large house at the bottom of Mount Wellington. It were hard work and the woman of the household would yell at me, calling me simple. Simple Hannah.
I used to visit Ernie cos he were me only friend. One day he didn’t answer the door. He used to lock it cos he were afeared someone were going to steal all his cylinders and recording equipment. I crept in through a back window and seen him face down in the corridor. I heaved him over. He had a terrible look of fear on his face. Like he’d seen or thought something dreadful before he died.
The rest of me life has passed without big things happening to me. I were a housekeeper and housemaid for several years. I hated the work I were doing but I knew I could do nothing else. I saved every penny I could cos before he died Ernie had made sure I were the owner of me mother and father’s property. I thought if I saved up enough I could fix up the house without having to work for anyone, and live simply by meself. I never had a boy or man in me life, nor anyone else. How could I explain to them what I been through? Who would understand? Only Becky knew. I had me dogs, me chooks, me pigs, me freedom. There were a general store seven miles down the track and it were an easy walk there. The people of the town think I’m strange and now I’m old some children think I’m a witch.
I never went into Hobart again after visiting Becky’s school although I heard there were a zoo that held the last Tasmanian tigers. I didn’t believe they were the last because out here I used to see them, smell them or I seen their dung. They were cautious of me cos I’m a human and I stayed me distance but sometimes of a night I’d sit on the verandah and see them moving silently through the bush. Bit by bit, over the years there were less and less tigers til now I can honestly say I haven’t seen one for ’bout five years. Maybe they’ve gone further inland cos of the number of people shifting into the area - I want to believe that, I got to, cos tigers saved me life and Becky’s.
I never felt alone cos I sensed the spirit of Becky all round me. Every night I have the same dream. It’s not quite a dream cos it seems real to me. I find meself back in the bush on a sunny day. A girl comes out of the woods with two tigers. They stand and wait for me. It’s Becky, Dave and Corinna. I walk towards them with a feeling of great happiness. We are together again. I grab Becky’s hand and we walk back into that forest with a tiger either side of us. I wake up happy cos I know that they are waiting for me to join them. And I will.
AUTHOR NOTE
Into That Forest is based on a story by Louis Nowra and Vincent Ward, originally titled ‘Hannah and Rebecca’. Eventually we decided to work on other projects but Vincent urged me over a decade ago to turn it into a novel. The novel I have written is very different in many respects from the original; however, at its heart it is still the story of Hannah and Rebecca and the two Tasmanian tigers.
The novel has a factual basis in that I have been to Tasmania many times and consulted a number of sources, including the following:
Q. Beresford and G. Bailey, Search for the Tasmanian Tiger, Blubber Head Press, Hobart, 1981
Maureen Brooks and Joan Ritchie, Tassie Terms: a glossary of Tasmanian Words, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985
E. R. Guiler, Thylacine: the Tragedy of the Tasmanian Tiger, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985
E. R. Guiler, The Tasmanian Tiger in Pictures, St
David’s Park Publishing, Hobart, 1991
Charles Maclean, The Wolf Children, Allen Lane,
London, 1977
Herman Melville, MobyDick, various editions
Robert Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger: the History and Extinction of the Thylacine, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2000
I also consulted Australian Geographic and other magazines, plus various articles on early gramophones.
LOUIS NOWRA was born in Melbourne. He is an author, screenwriter and playwright whose novels are The Misery of Beauty, Palu, Red Nights, Abaza and Ice. Plays include The Golden Age, Summer of the Aliens, Radiance, Cosi and The Boyce Trilogy. He created the television series The Last Resort and The Straits and co-wrote the documentary First Australians. Screen credits include Map of the Human Heart, Cosi, Radiance, The Matchmaker, K-19 and Black and White. Besides libretti for operas he has written the memoirs The Twelfth of Never and Shooting the Moon.
Louis Nowra lives in Sydney and is married to the writer Mandy Sayer. They have two dogs, a chihuahua called Coco who has appeared on television in The Straits, and Basil, a miniature pinscher who never stands still.