Heather's Exquisite Map of Tassie

Heather turned to Tim. "Do you feel like playing some real football?"

He gave her a cheeky smile. "What, we're going to play rugby league? Down here?"

"Don't be ridiculous. These two'll arrest you for even suggesting it! Some work mates like to organise social games of AFL every now and then and generally they're happy to have anyone along."

"Sure, aerial ping-pong could be fun. What about our international friends?" He pointed at Kathy and Javier who were checking out some hand-made soft toy animals a few stalls up. Kathy was holding a friendly-looking soft-toy snake with tiger stripes up to Javier and laughing.

"They can join us too if they like. It'll be a cultural experience."

They drove to the oval in the afternoon and Heather introduced everyone to several of her police colleagues. Tim recognised Vanessa and Notcha, now in civvies, plus Chris 'Angle-arse' Sidebottom, who'd volunteered as hut warden at the first camp on their Overland Track hike. Angle-arse paid Heather extra attention, but was friendly with Tim. "G'day, cobber! Enjoying your time in Tas?"

"Yeah, havin' a ripper of a time, ay."

Clearly many of the blokes were keen to show off in front of their female friends and colleagues, and those with the bodies for it stripped off their shirts. Several were bantering with Heather and giving her appreciative looks. There was a whole bunch of people Heather didn't know too, and many were clearly checking her out and getting chatty. However, after everything she'd told him in recent days, Tim was confident she wasn't interested in anyone else and the attention she was getting didn't make him jealous in the slightest. When the two captains picked their teams, Tim and Heather ended up on opposite sides, both playing on the wing. They grinned at each other, slagging one another off with friendly sledging, which mostly ended in laughter.

As it turned out Kathy was also a distraction for many of the men, who underestimated her ability, not knowing she'd played Gaelic Football which shares some similarities with Australian Rules Football, and was first to kick a goal for Heather's team with considerable skill. Javier, on the other hand, was completely oblivious to AFL, but completely familiar with soccer, or as he called it 'real football'. He was generally clueless, but gave it a good go, considering his recent interaction with a tiger snake.

Being a Queenslander Tim wasn't as versed in AFL as he was with rugby league, but he loved sport and occasionally watched the Brisbane Lions games, and despite never playing the game, he was generally familiar with the rules. He ran hard, and with Heather playing opposite him he decided to treat her like anyone else on the field, using his rugby skills to tackle her, making sure he was careful not to hurt her, of course.

One of Heather's teammates hand-passed the ball, which she took and tried to side-step around Tim, who pre-empted her move, wrapping his arms around her arms and waist, lifting and carrying her for several metres. Half-laughing and half-yelling in protest for an illegal tackle, Heather unsuccessfully attempted wriggle out of his grip as she lost possession of the ball. He gently placed her on the ground and partly in a fit of laughter, she said, "Dangerous tackle, cobber. By my book you've given me a free kick!"

The designated umpire was laughing and claimed he saw nothing and Tim extended his hand to her, helping her to her feet. "Seems our friendly ump doesn't read your book. But it was worth it to get my arms around you."

Despite their shenanigans, her competitive nature unleashed and she ran all over the place with hardly a loss of breath, and tried to tackle Tim on several occasions, or push him across the boundary into out of bounds. Light on his feet, he'd developed a handy sidestep perfected over years of avoiding real tackles in a much harder-hitting game, and managed to get past her nine times out of ten, kicking the ball down the field. He handled the ball better than most on the field too with his league skills, because let's face it, AFL sometimes looks like a game where mishandling the football is the player's key objective. Tim scored several goals and each time he'd flash Heather a grin, and sometimes he wasn't sure if she was grinning back or grimacing. All's fair in love and football, he supposed.

Until one of his teammates passed him the ball and Heather barrelled in, tackling him about the waist and knocking his legs from under him, sending him to the ground and leaving him winded. The ball went flying out of his hands and Heather pinned him down.

"I finally caught ya!" She grinned, sitting triumphantly on top of him.

Tim looked up at her, trying to get his breath back. "I dunno whether to kiss ya or fight ya."

"I'd kiss ya, but me mates over there would never let me live it down. So I'm gonna have to fight ya."

Wheezing but trying to laugh, he declared, "Your fighting talk is turning me on right now."

She pinned him there for a moment longer before someone yelled out, "Hey, Cogsy. Nice tackle, but we have a game to play here. You can fuck him later."

Tim noticed Heather blush a little, before she stood and offered him her hand, pulling him up. "You're lucky we're in the middle of a game," she said in a serious tone.

He grinned at her. "Or what if we weren't in the middle of a game, what would ya do? Punish me?"

"You wait till we get home and I'll show ya."

The game degenerated into a free-for-all with little regards to rules, causing Javier to comment, "Does this sport even have rules?" At some arbitrary point the umpire declared the game over, and so haphazard was its nature, even the final score was in dispute. However, the biased umpire agreed with Tim's side they were the winners, resulting in loud protests from Heather's team. Someone dumped a large esky cooler near the boundary line and called, "Beer o'clock, come and get one before they're gone!" Everyone kept arguing with the umpire as they trotted towards drinks.

Tim fell in beside Heather and said in a cheeky tone, "Good game, Cogsy. You weren't half bad out there."

"Yeah, but this one bastard was on me like friggin' superglue. I thought he fancied me, but the prick picked me up in a dangerous tackle and everything!"

"That bloody bastard, I'll have a word with the cunt." Tim gave her a grin and she couldn't help but grin back.

Notcha patted Tim on the back and handed him and Heather a cold stubbie each. "Well played, cobber. Nice sidestepping. Cogs, ya clobbered him out there though when ya finally made yer tackle. What a cracker! Wasn't sure if you were gonna hit or root him!"

Tim gave Heather a wry smile, and she raised her eyebrows back and once again her face flushed. Later she grinned at Tim and whispered, "Remember, when we get home I'm goanna punish you."

He replied with a cheeky smile, "Are you going to hit me or root me, eh, Cogs?"

"Ha! You wait and see, cob."

Driving back to town was a short trip, but offered enough time for one last drama. A large spider the size of a hand's palm crawled across the windscreen, right in front of Heather's face. In a calm voice, as if she were talking to a friendly dog, she said, "Oh, hello little mate. That's not the smartest place to be right now."

Kathy shrieked and called from the backseat, "Argghhh, kill it with fire! What crazy deadly animal is yer country going to throw at us next?"

Tim laughed, secretly glad Heather hadn't panicked behind the wheel, unlike Kathy's performance. "It's only a huntsman. They're harmless. Mostly. They prefer the taste of backpackers."

Javier called out in a worried voice, "Heather, it's coming back to my window."

"It's okay, keep the window closed. But like Tim said, they're harmless." Heather drove on, completely concentrating on the road.

Tim looked over his shoulder to the rear passenger window, where Javier was keeping a close eye on the spider clinging to the sill on the outside.

"Don't look harmless to me," Kathy said. She shook involuntarily. "I hate spiders. What purpose do they serve?"

Tim chuckled. "What purpose do we serve?"

"We're here to destroy the planet, which we must do because it's inhabited by giant fucken spiders like that one," Kathy stated assuredly.

"Does that make spiders superheroes, out to save the planet by biting us?"

Heather chuckled. "One man's spider is another spider's superhero."

"Pfft," Kathy snorted. She pulled out her phone and took a photograph of the giant arachnid. "The bloody thing looks like it's going to attack Javier's face through the window! I'm totally putting this on Facebook if yer don't mind."

With one eye still on the spider, Javier replied, "You can tag me as a survivor of Australia who was bitten by a snake, played some crazy no-rules football and was almost attacked by a huge spider. I don't know which one was the crazier?"

The spider made itself scarce by the time they pulled up out front the backpacker's hostel, allowing a tentative Kath and Javier to open their doors and jump away from the car. There were laughs and hugs and well wishes all round.

Kathy gave Tim a cheeky smile. "You and Heather make such a cute couple. I'd put money on yer bein' married in two years and with a couple of babies in about four or five."

"What makes ya so sure about these things, Kath?"

"Maybe I'm just shittin' ya," Kathy said with a wink. "But have I been wrong yet? Just don't forget to invite me to yer weddin'." She gave him another cheeky smile and turned, leading Javier into the hostel.

The temperature dropped considerably by the time they arrived home at Heather's house and she lit a fire in the slow combustion heater located between the living and dining room. Walking over to her small stereo beside the bookcase, she inserted a CD and the first track up was Paul Kelly's Dumb Things. Heather danced across the living room to Tim and placed her arms around his neck, singing to him, "Saw the knives out, turned my back, heard the train coming, stayed right on that track..."

Tim put his hands on her waste and looking into her eyes, smiled and sang along, "I've done all the dumb things."

"Haven't we all," she whispered and gave him a gentle kiss, then rested her head on his shoulder.

"Mum and Dad listened to a lot of Paul Kelly back in the day. Have you heard the recent A.B. Original version of this song with Paul Kelly? It's pretty good, ay."

"Yeah, such a good version. It's funny you mention your parents listening to Paul Kelly. All the songs on this disc are songs Mum and Dad used to listen to when I was a kid. I burnt this mixed CD back when I was in high school because all the songs remind me of road trips we used to take to Grandma and Grandpa's up near Triabunna, back before dad's accident. Mum and Dad would play the tape in the car and we'd sing along. Even Justin sang. I've taken this CD with me everywhere I've been, to remember the good old days."

They held each other, slightly swaying side-to-side through to the next song, which Tim didn't recognise. The melodic chorus went something like, My mum was laughing, you should've heard her, the more she laughed, the more you got away with murder...And dad was laughing, it was the same thing, to hear him laugh, well it would tug upon your heart strings...

Tim felt Heather hold him tighter, and she convulsed ever so slightly against him. "Are you okay?"

She took a deep breath and sighed. "Yeah. This song. Island of Humour by Weddings, Parties, Anything with Billy Bragg. Mum loved the Weddos and played 'em all the time. This song always reminds me of how Mum and Dad and our family were throughout the nineties and early two-thousands, before everything fell apart. Everyone laughing, including Justin. Our house was tiny and not in the best area but we thought nothing of it because our home was our safe place, full of love and happiness. Our little island of humour most of the time. I put the song on the CD cos I thought it'd make a happy memory, but I tear up every time."

They held each other tight, Tim wondering about the complexity of pain lying beneath Heather's tough exterior. Wondering about all she'd lost. "Are you okay?" he asked again.

She took her head from his shoulder, a tear in each eye blurring her green irises, and gave him a warm smile. "You're a persistent bugger, aren't ya. But truly, I'm okay. I'm a big girl." She paused, then added, "I don't normally cry, as a rule, especially not in front of a fella. But I've let my guard down with you."

He gave her a smile. "It's okay. No judgements here. Just free hugs."

She gave an embarrassed laugh, more like a snort, and looked down at his chest. "You must think I'm some pretender, acting tough but really an emotional girly girl."

It was Tim's turn to make a snorting laugh of disbelief. "I spent the first couple of days of our walk together admiring your toughness, and thought you weren't like girly girls I usually like. I thought you were...amazing, and to be completely honest I was more than a bit intimidated by you. In the sense that I didn't think I'd have the slightest chance. You awed me. But I've learnt your hard façade is a front for a wonderful, generous person, which is nothing to be embarrassed about at all. You're beautiful, in every way imaginable. And you awe me even more now."

"I don't feel awe inspiring," she said, initially looking down again, then back into Tim's eyes. "Family's the most important thing in the whole world to me and I wear that on my sleeve. Mine came apart and so I took off and found a new family in the army. And now I've seen the world, and people's lives destroyed by terrible conflict and true poverty, so I know I should be grateful for what I've got. Yet all I've wanted was to come back here and wished everything to be okay again and all the bullshit before was a bad dream."

Tim pulled her against him and she held him tight. She bit her bottom lip when Dire Straits' Romeo and Juliet came on, and turned from Tim, wiping her eyes and said, "Let's make something to eat."

It was drizzling outside now, with a bitter cold wind blowing over the Southern Ocean all the way from Antarctica and gusting spray off the Derwent. A huge white cruise ship was leaving its berth at the docks across the river and began pushing down estuary in spite of the wind and choppy white-caps. The city on the western shore sat under a thick grey rain cloud which hid the mountain from view, and Heather and Tim ate a warm vegetable curry at the dining table near the fire rather than out on the deck. Daryl Braithwaite's The Horses emitted from the stereo, one of the few songs Tim was reasonably familiar with. "It's funny, everyone plays this song at parties these days."

Heather finished her mouthful. "Yeah, what goes around comes around. Some of the songs of our parent's generation getting rediscovered by our generations." She smiled and started singing along with the chorus, Tim joining her in a duet. "That's the way it's gonna be little darling, we'll be riding on the horses, yeah, cos way up in the sky little darling, and if you fall I'll pick you up, pick you up." They both laughed.

"Our singing is terrible!" Tim said.

"Speak for yourself!"

After dinner they dimmed the lights and sat on the lounge chair in the glow from the firebox, kissing and fondling each other. Her CD finished about the time Tim kissed her neck gently, whispering in her ear, "There's nothing terrible about you, Heather Coughlan. I think you're the most beautiful girl on Earth. But you've forgotten my punishment."

Her reaction was to take his face in her hands and kiss him deeply, their lips and tongues joining in loving sweetness. He reached for her top, interrupting her kiss as he pulled it over her head, then unstrapped her sports bra. Her hand snuck down his pants, finding its mark with palm and fingers wrapping around his meat, squeezing firmly, while her other hand tugged at his shirt.

Before they were fully naked, Heather stood and walked topless to the sliding glass doors leading to the deck, and closed the curtains. While she was facing away, standing there completely perfect in the orange fire glow, Tim admired her athletic body with impressive map tattoo distinctly striking on her back. She turned and smiled as she caught Tim worshiping her, and he smiled back. She walked towards him, like a vision, truly the most beautiful girl he could imagine, from the hair on her head glowing and eyes sparkling green in the dim light of the fire, gorgeous smile, breasts with hard nipples on display, muscular belly, and long athletic legs. If someone said Heather was an Olympian, it would be hard not to believe them. She stopped in front of the lounge, shimmied out of her black shorts and undies, exposing her wild bushy map of Tassie to Tim.

His cock was straining in his pants, wanting straight up to visit its special place, but his mouth arrived there first. He placed his hands around her firm bum cheeks while sliding his tongue up her slightly protruding pussy lips. She moved in closer, standing between his legs, and reached down, spreading her hands on his shoulders, massaging him. His tongue slipped inside, tasting her flowing juices as he licked up her slit to its apex, where he gave her clit the attention it throbbed for.

Her hands rubbed his shoulders and back, needing the contact with his skin, and his tongue gave her nub pleasure, making her feel amazing. She pushed him back on the lounge, leaning down and removing his shorts and undies so they were perfectly naked, together.

"Lie on your side," she commanded, and he complied. She lay next to him, her head at his crotch and her pussy in his face. Taking his hard cock in her mouth, she sucked him slowly, while he pulled her into a better position to kiss her cunt. He sucked on her clit while she sucked his dick, holding their arms around each other.

Heather grazed her teeth near the end of his knob, doing no damage but giving the signal his manhood was on painful tenterhooks. Pausing for a moment, she cheekily said, "Consider that your punishment for tackling me."

"I promise I'll make it up to you," he said before continuing his oral exploration of her vaginal pleasure zones. His meat, hard in her mouth, feeling her lips travel firmly over his cock skin, and sensitive pleasure tickle of her tongue playing with his bulging glans, then throbbing and pumping cum down her throat. She came with pulsating pleasure soon after, her cunt dripping with wetness, droplets catching on both her pubes and around Tim's mouth and nose.

No words were spoken as their lips found one another again, combining their sex wetness between their mouths. Tim placed his hand behind Heather's head, feeling her wavy hair and pulling her face into his. They kissed a kiss of two lovers on their final night together, as if they may never see one another again; desperately passionate.

With faces joined firmly at the mouth, tongues completing the circuit, they breathed heavily through their noses. Tim held Heather tightly, his arms around her, palms splayed over her skin, fully feeling her, and she held him tight, hands rubbing up and down his back. They manoeuvred into position, Heather below, her back on the leather lounge, and Tim between her legs, raised and bent at the knees.

He slid into her, all the way, man in woman, heart and soul connected, joined together in blissful joy. They pushed against each other, grinding and sliding, throbbing and pumping, their bodies mashing and sweating. Air trapped between their hardened abdominal muscles and expelled out under pressure of their love rhythm, making the loud farting noises, which they ignored, fucking onwards, harder and faster. Their mouths locked together in a salivary embrace, and Heather began the make muffled noises. 'Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm."