Two in the Bush (15 page)

Chris turned and stared at me with the slightly wide-eyed, incredulous expression that always spreads over his face when things have gone right. He summed it up with his normal masterly command
of understatement: ‘I think that’s okay,’ he said.

Plucking a large amount of Australian undergrowth from the regions immediately surrounding my umbilical, I rose to my feet and surveyed him with interest.

‘Yes, I think it will be okay,’ I said. ‘Of course, it would have been much better if we could have put him under contract and taken him to Bristol to repeat the whole thing in
the studio.’

Chris gave me a withering look and we packed up the equipment and made our way back to the ride.

‘Did you get anything?’ Jacquie enquired anxiously

‘Well, we got something,’ said Chris, with his air of an elder statesman who does not want to confess that neither he nor his party knows what his policy is, ‘but whether it
will turn out all right or not remains to be seen.’

‘It was a very dicey piece of work,’ I said to Jacquie, ‘and the dice were loaded against us. The only thing in our favour was that we were within four feet of a mentally
defective lyrebird who was going through his full display and short of actually pushing the microphone down into his crop, we couldn’t have got any closer, but as far as Parsons is concerned,
this constitutes a rather hit and miss type of natural history filming.’

Chris looked at me malevolently but his retort was cut short by the reappearance of Jim, who sauntered out of the undergrowth whistling happily but unmusically to himself. Beaming at us all
impartially, he laid the camera on the ground and patted it affectionately. ‘Every one a little Rembrandt,’ he said, ‘you’ve no need to worry, Chris . . . it’s in the
bag . . . I’ve got the lot . . . trust Jim.’

‘What have you got?’ enquired Chris, suspiciously

‘All the inner secrets of a lyrebird’s life,’ said Jim airily. ‘There they were, galloping to and fro, stamping their feet and carrying on like mad things. I’ve
never seen anything like it since I was at that Palais de Danse in Slough.’

‘What did you get?’ said Chris trenchantly.

‘I’ve just told you,’ said Jim, ‘everything, lyrebirds galloping about shaking their tails at each other, the lot. While you were all mucking about here, I just nipped
off into the undergrowth and got it. Saved the series, I have. Still, we can always share the Television Award between us.’

It was quite some time before we could get Jim to tell us simply and concisely what, in fact, he had got, which turned out to be one of the best bits of film that were taken on the trip.

Irritated by the lack of co-operation on the part of the lyrebirds, he had plunged off into the undergrowth when he had heard them calling, and had come upon a scene which very few people
witness, let alone are able to film. In a valley with sufficient light for photography to be possible, he had discovered a cock lyrebird who had wandered over the strict demarcation line into the
territory of another cock bird. The result had been something quite spectacular. The owner of the territory had cast his mist-like tail over his head and stamped forward to do battle, lurching from
side to side, stamping his feet and bobbing his head. The whole thing looked like a Red Indian war dance. The other bird knew that he was intruding but, in order to save face, he had to put up some
sort of aggressive show, so he, too, cast his tail over his head and proceeded to stamp and sway. Both birds were uttering loud, ringing and doubtless derisive cries at each other as they did this.
With their tails practically obscuring their bodies, they looked like glittering, animated waterfalls on legs, and the rustling of their tail-feathers was like the sound of wind among autumn
leaves. Eventually, honour having been satisfied, the intruding lyrebird retreated and Jim had come back to us in a state of jubilation. So, in spite of being incessantly rained upon and being
subjected to the coldest weather I have experienced outside Patagonia, we had been successful in filming the lyrebirds.

The next task we had to tackle was to try to film leadbeater’s possum. This is a small and rather enchanting animal that had quite suddenly disappeared – or so it seemed – from
the face of the earth. It had originally been discovered in 1894 and was known from several museum skins; then it vanished and everyone was convinced that, as its range appeared to be limited, it
had become extinct. In 1948, to the astonishment of incredulous naturalists, a tiny pocket of leadbeater’s possum was discovered in the eucalyptus forest not far from Melbourne. The exact
location was kept a secret, for fear that crowds of well-meaning naturalists and sightseers would troop up there and disturb the terrain.

Quite naturally, therefore, when I mentioned to Mr Butcher that we would very much like to film leadbeater’s possum, he gave me a look in which suspicion and commiseration were nicely
blended. He explained that, although they knew the location of the leadbeater’s possum, they knew nothing about the extent of its habitat nor, indeed, the number of individual animals that
inhabited the area, and therefore we might go tramping about the forest for weeks on end without catching a glimpse of one. With the cold dampness of Sherwood Forest still lurking in the marrow of
my bones, I smiled bravely and said this did not matter, provided we had the faintest chance of seeing this elusive marsupial. I added that of course we would still keep the exact location secret,
but if we could get some shots of the possum, it would be a tremendous achievement for us and would aid in the conservation story that we were endeavouring to tell on film. We were quite prepared,
I said (lavishly condemning Jacquie, Chris and Jim), to tramp about the forest for nights on end in order to try to catch a glimpse of leadbeater’s possum, if only Mr Butcher would unlock his
lips and vouchsafe to us the exact location.

Impressed, either by my imbecility or my devotion to duty, or both, Mr Butcher sighed lugubriously and said that he could arrange to send us out to leadbeater’s possum country, guided by
one of the young scientists who had actually rediscovered the creature, but he could not guarantee what results we would get. However, just in case we were disappointed, he said, if I cared to
follow him, he had something to show me. Whereupon he took me down to the large Wildlife Department laboratory, full of spirit specimens, charts, diagrams and other accoutrements of a
scientist’s trade, and led me to a small, upright cage, not unlike a cupboard with a wire door. Opening it, he thrust his hand into a small sleeping box inside and produced, to my incredulous
astonishment, a pair of wide-eyed, fat and exceedingly friendly leadbeater’s possums.

It was as incredible and as thrilling as suddenly being presented with a pair of live dodos or a baby dinosaur. They crouched, soft as velvet, in my cupped hands, peering up at me, their noses
and ears twitching, their big, dark eyes still slightly bleary from having been extracted from a pleasant siesta so unceremoniously. They were about the size of a bushbaby with sleek, soft,
mole-like fur, handsomely patterned in ash grey white and black, the hair on their busy tails so fine that it looked like spun glass. They had rather squat, fat, good-natured looking faces, and
tiny, delicate paws. When they had recovered consciousness to a certain extent, they sat up on their hind legs in my hands, portly and sedate, and accepted a couple of mealworms with an air of
condescension. Mr Butcher explained that, having rediscovered these charming little creatures, they thought it would be advisable to capture a pair and try to establish them in captivity in case
anything untoward happened to the colony. After we had gloated over the enchanting little marsupials for some time we took pity on them and returned them to their bedroom to continue their
interrupted sleep. Then Mr Butcher introduced us to Bob Wanerke, a handsome young Australian who seemed about seven feet tall and as wide as a barn door. Bob had been doing some studies on the
leadbeater’s possum, and he said he would be delighted to lead us to their last stronghold, although he did not guarantee that we would see any We said that we quite understood, as we had had
similar experiences before.

The night was moonless and bitterly cold when Bob appeared to lead us to the leadbeaters. The four of us sat huddled in the Land-Rover, wearing every stitch of clothing we could find, and still
our teeth were chattering. We followed Bob’s vehicle out of Melbourne and for some time we drove through fairly open country; then the road started to climb and we entered deep, tall
eucalyptus forest, the tree trunks looking even more weirdly distorted than normal in our headlights. As we climbed higher and higher it became colder and colder.

‘Come to sunny Australia,’ mused Jim, ‘that’s what they say. The country that’s ninety in the shade and where everyone has a suntan. All a load of old
codswallop.’

‘I must say that is rather the impression you get in England,’ I agreed. ‘I never thought it would be as cold as this.’

‘What we want are a few hot-water bottles or a warming pan or something,’ said Jacquie, her voice muffled from the depths of her sheepskin jacket.

There was a short silence while I tried to remember if I had packed a bottle of Scotch.

‘I once,’ said Jim reminiscently, ‘set fire to a bed with a hair drier.’

We absorbed this item of information in silence, each of us trying to imagine how even Jim could have achieved such a task. At length we gave up the unequal struggle.

‘Well?’ I enquired.

‘It was when I first got married. My wife and I were living in a furnished room. The landlady was a real old female dog – you know the sort: couldn’t do this and couldn’t
do that; scared the pants off me, she did. Well, it was damned cold then and the only way we had of warming the bed was my wife’s hair drier. Worked a treat, I can tell you. You put a couple
of pillows on each side, hair drier in the middle, pull the clothes up and Bob’s your uncle, you’ve got a lovely warm bed in half an hour.’

Jim paused and sighed lugubriously.

‘Then one night,’ he continued, ‘something went wrong. Before we knew what was happening, whoosh! Whole bed on fire. Flames, clouds of smoke, feathers everywhere. We were more
frightened of the landlady than anything else, in case she found out and threw us into the street in the middle of the night. I’d thrown water on the bed to put the fire out and this
contributed to the mess. Took us half the night to clean it up and we spent the rest of the night in chairs. Next day I had to smuggle the mattress out and buy a new one. Never again. Hot-water
bottles for me now.’

We were now quite high up in the hills, deep in the eucalyptus forest and a number of miles from Melbourne.

Presently Bob’s vehicle ahead of us turned off the main road and headed down a rough track that seemed to lead into the heart of the forest, but after a couple of hundred yards we came to
a clearing in which was a tiny hut. Here we stopped and disgorged ourselves and our equipment. Bob had brought a number of hunting lights with him (the sort that you strap to your head and that
work from a battery slung at your waist) and these we now put on. Then, when the rest of the equipment was ready, we set off in single file down the rough track into the forest. We walked slowly
and quietly, stopping every now and then to listen, flashing our headlights all around us. The silence was complete. It was as though all the eucalyptus trees the moment before had been performing
a wild, abandoned dance, and had frozen suspiciously into immobility at our appearance. You could have heard a pin drop; the only sound was the faint scruff of our shoes in the leaves. We walked on
for a quarter of a mile or so in this uncanny silence: we might have been in a cave in the depths of the earth, with the eucalyptus trees like weird stalagmites sprouting up around us. Presently
Bob came to a standstill and beckoned me.

‘From here onwards for about a mile is the area where we generally see them,’ he whispered, and then added depressingly,
‘if
we do.’

We moved slowly on and we hadn’t gone many yards when Bob suddenly froze and shone his light at the forest floor some twenty feet away. We stood quite still and held our breath. From the
bushes ahead we could hear a faint rustling, the tiniest whisper of sound. Bob stood quite still, flashing his lights to and fro like a lighthouse. For some time nothing happened and the rustling
went on, then suddenly, in his torch beam, appeared one of the weirdest-looking little animals it has been my privilege to meet. It was about the size of a rabbit with an elongated, whiffling nose,
bright beady eyes and pointed, pixie-like ears. It was clad in rather coarse-looking, yellowing-brown fur and it had a rather rat-like tail. It pottered through the fallen leaves, its nose working
overtime, pausing now and then to scratch with its neat little feet in the leafmould, presumably in search of insects.

‘What is it?’ whispered Jacquie.

‘It’s a long-nosed bandicoot,’ I whispered back.

‘Don’t be facetious,’ she hissed, ‘I want to
know.’

‘I can’t help its name,’ I whispered irritably, ‘that’s what they’re called.’

The long-nosed bandicoot, oblivious of my wife’s disbelief, was now walking through a drift of fallen leaves, ploughing them up with his nose, like a curiously shaped bulldozer; then he
sat down suddenly and scratched himself with great vigour and concentration for a moment or so. This relaxing occupation completed, he sat in a sort of trance for a few seconds, sneezed violently
and suddenly, and then bull-dozed his way off into the undergrowth.

We drifted on for a few hundred yards and came eventually to a clearing among the great trees, and here we got our second indication that the forest was not as lifeless as it seemed. Standing in
the clearing we shone our lights up at the topmost foliage of some giant eucalyptus trees and suddenly, in our torch beams, four eyes gleamed like gigantic rubies. Moving slowly round to a better
vantage point, we saw the animals to which the eyes belonged. They looked, at first sight, like a pair of huge black squirrels with long, smoothly furred tails: they were half in and half out of a
hole in the trunk where a great branch had been ripped away and left a hollow. Disturbed by the lights, they moved out of the hollow and made their way along a branch and this enabled us to see
them more clearly. They really were only squirrel-like in shape – there the resemblance ended. They had furry, rather leaf-shaped ears, and round, vaguely cat-like faces with little
boot-button noses; you could see along the sides of the body a loose flap of skin now, as they were sitting, folded along their ribs in scallops like a curtain. I knew they were possums of some
sort but I could not place them.