Heather's Exquisite Map of Tassie

"Good thanks, cobber. I'm Pat. Yer had a good flight?"

"Yeah, was alright. Stopped over in Melbourne for a few hours, but it was all pretty cruisy."

"That's the way, cobber. Cruisy's the best way to be."

Tim noted Pat was maybe in his mid-to-late fifties and looked rough-as-guts, with perhaps three days' worth of reddish stubble, and the little hair left on his head was a reddish-brown tangle around a prominent bald spot. He wore an old blue singlet, colloquially known as a 'wife-beater' for its association with blue-collar types who were, in turn, associated with domestic violence. There were a number of tattoos on his arms, including a Hawthorn hawks-head tat, and another in cursive writing on his forearm simply reading 'Kelly Anne Bell 1987-1994'.

Despite his rough looks, Pat was a talkative bloke, and once they were on the highway, he asked, "So you're Ryan's house mate in Brisbane. What's he like to live with?"

Tim thought for a moment, wondering how much detail he should tell Ryan's immediate family. "He's alright. A bit messy. Sometimes I wonder how he's survived up till now to be honest."

"Yeah, I sometimes wonder that too," Pat said knowingly. "Does he have a girlfriend up there yet?"

Tim decided to have a bit of innocent fun at Ryan's expense, and despite Ryan's lust for Georgina, he said, "Nah. I've never really seen him with a girl."

"And to think he used to think he was a bit of a ladies man," Pat said, slapping his leg. "A hit with the older women, remember. Grab a granny night down the grope-and-spanker."

"I heard that was a one off," Heather said with a laugh. "And you always look for an excuse to bring it up, like it's your proudest moment!"

"Well he did hook up with Mandy Hayes. She looks like she's at least sixty!"

"Mandy's only in her early fifties, Pat. She's younger than you!" Heather looked over her shoulder and spoke to Tim. "About four years ago Ryan ran into an old family friend at the Hope and Anchor pub, not long after it reopened, and they spent the evening catching up. It's such a small town that word gets around down here if things happen. But anyone would think Ryan and Mandy's fling was Uncle Pat's proudest moment the way he tells people about it!"

Tim laughed. "I'm surprised he hasn't bragged about it to me. Maybe it's why he escaped to Queensland. Couldn't handle the fame."

Pat chuckled. "If you'd slept with Mandy Hayes you wouldn't be bragging and you'd definitely flee the state too! Anyway, what about you, cobber. Do you have a girlfriend?" The way Pat asked his question it sounded to Tim like he might be about to ask if he'd be interested in meeting Mandy.

"Um, sorta. Not really. My girlfriend went back to New Zealand a year ago to see her Mum and Dad, then six months ago she decided she didn't want to come back here at all."

"A Kiwi bird, eh. Grew some wings and flown back home? Well, don't worry, cobber, if she's flown the nest for good there's plenty more fish in the..." Pat's sentence trailed off, unfinished, before he spoke again. "Do you mind if I turn the music up a little?"

"Nah, go for it. It's your car."

Pat increased the volume of the car's stereo and a classic Angels' guitar riff began to blare from the speakers with Doc Neeson's distinctive voice singing, Without you near meee I got no place to go...wait at the barrr maybe you might show...Am I ever gonna see your face again, at which point Pat suddenly sang at the top of his voice, "NO WAY, GET FUCKED, FUCK OFF!" Am I ever gonna see your face again, "NO WAY, GET FUCKED, FUCK OFF!" When the song finished he turned the volume down slightly and simply proclaimed, "I love that song. What music do you listen to, cobber?"

"Um, mostly hip hop. Thundamentals, Drapht. Lately I've been listening to a bit of Kendrick Lamar.

"Kendrick la-who? Hip hop, eh," Pat said as if questioning the youth of today's poor musical tastes and probably wondering if it was a contributing factor to Tim's girl leaving him. "Not even rock and roll?"

"Nothing wrong with a bit of Hip Hop," Heather interjected. "I don't mind Bliss n Eso. They came over to Afghanistan to play for us when I was there, which was great."

Despite Heather's support, Tim felt defensive about his musical tastes. "I don't mind rock. I saw Violent Soho recently. They were sick as. And Ryan and I went to a Dune Rats gig a couple of months back."

Pat grunted. "Violent Soho? Dune Rats? Never heard of 'em. I only listen to the real stuff." The stereo broadcast a stream of songs from classic Australian rock bands such as Cold Chisel, The Screaming Jets, and Hunters and Collectors, mixed with international bands such as Iron Maiden, Guns N' Roses, and Metallica. Tim wasn't even familiar with some of the music Pat occasionally sang along to, sometimes at the top of his voice despite the presence of Heather and himself in the car.

Looking over her shoulder again, Heather spoke up over Pat's exuberant rendition of AC/DC's TNT. "So you've brought plenty of warm gear?"

"Yeah, I packed a few layers like you advised. I've borrowed some of Ryan's stuff. He gave me his sleeping bag. He reckons it could snow?"

"You're not in Queensland anymore, cobber," Pat said over his music. "We get four seasons in one day here."

"Yeah, Ryan said those exact words."

They sped down the highway past fields full of green crops and pastures with sheep and cattle, all under the grey sky. Tim noted the imposing mountain ranges on the horizon to their left. For the first time he began to feel truly excited by the upcoming adventure.

Despite growing up as a generally outdoorsy kid, Tim spent most of the time playing sport, mainly rugby league and cricket, rather than hiking. The closest thing to hiking he did as a kid was exploring the bush on Magnetic Island behind his parent's friend's holiday house with his brother and sister, plus other local kids. At university he'd been on the occasional camping trip with friends, but those expeditions were mostly about drinking around a fire at night, getting pissed.

He'd accompanied Ryan on his training walks up several of South-East Queensland's rugged peaks, but those were in the sub-tropics where his main worry was the heat, but now he was a long way from the warm latitudes he was used to. What he was about to undertake was a week of walking through rugged mountains where it could possibly snow. Even in summer, if Ryan's tales were to be believed! Four seasons in one day, as everyone who knew Tasmania kept telling him. He'd only seen snow a couple of times in his life, all on his trips to New Zealand with Abigail, and never up close.

"So what do ya do for a crust?" Pat asked, snapping Tim's thoughts back to the present.

"Me? I'm a nurse."

"A nurse? I guess it's quite normal for blokes to be nurses these days. Equal opportunity and all that."

Heather laughed, "Uncle Pat, you're such a dinosaur! There are plenty of male nurses. Many of me old army mates have gone into nursing, so don't worry about him, Tim."

"I'm not worried. It's not the first time someone's pointed out I'm a bloke and a nurse."

Pat briefly looked in the rear-view mirror. "I bet they like a strong bloke like you around the wards. In case of unruly patients. I've heard stories."

"I guess. In the ED we regularly have to deal with the drunks and druggos and bogans. Often they've caused their own problems, then come in to hospital making more. How about you, Heather? Ryan tells me you're a cop? You must see a lot of this kind of behaviour."

"Yeah. I joined the police when I moved back here and so far dealing with drunks and druggos is our main bread-and-butter. Seems like most violent crime is alcohol or drug related, so it goes with the territory."

"What about you, Pat? What do you do?" Tim asked, more out of politeness than anything else.

"Nothing as exciting as dealing with drunks and druggos. Sometimes I'm a truck driver. Other times I'm a concreter. I used to be a fisherman in a past life..." Pat's voice trailed off with a hint of melancholy. There was no more talking in the car and Tim stared out the window, noting fields of a dark green crop with light pink flowers on tall stalks. At regular intervals there were signs on the fences, proclaiming 'DANGER. KEEP OUT. Illegal Use of Crop May Cause DEATH.'

"Poppy fields," Pat said, as if reading Tim's mind. "It's funny, I used to know a girl named Poppy Fields. Never ploughed her but she sure had an intoxicating effect on me."

"Uncle Pat, stop it," Heather said with tone of amusement. "He's right though. They're opium poppies. We grow about half the world's opium here. The legal stuff anyhow. Still, every now and then someone breaks in and steals the poppy heads to brew up some nasty concoction, sometimes resulting in their deaths."

The sight of poppies jogged Tim's memory of a recent article he'd read about poppy crops in Afghanistan, reminding him Heather previously mentioned she'd served there in an earlier conversation. "So, Heather, you were in Afghanistan?"

"Yeah, I deployed there twice. It was pretty brutal." She didn't elaborate further.

They left the highway and drove south through rolling hills covered in pastures towards an impressive mountain, its summit a broad craggy escarpment. Past the great mountain the road wound through open forest and Pat drove with a heavy foot, taking the corners much too fast for Tim's liking. And then suddenly there was a huge parking lot on the left and Pat slowed, pulling up in front of the visitors centre. He hopped out and helped Heather and Tim retrieve their rucksacks from the boot.

Pat held out his hand to Tim, squeezing it in a tenacious grip. "Good luck, cobber. You look after yerself up there."

"Thanks, Pat. And thanks for the lift."

"No worries." Pat then turned his attention to Heather. "And you look after yourself, young lady. I know yer tougher than most men I've met, but don't go busting yer guts or breaking yer leg like that silly brother of yours."

"Don't worry about me, Uncle Pat," Heather replied, wrapping her arms around her uncle. "I can look after myself."

"I know ya can, love. I just don't want ya causin' yer mother any grief." His last words were spoken with genuine affection.

Pat smoked a quick cigarette by his car before climbing in and driving off. Heather looked at Tim. "Let's go set up camp for the night. We're at the caravan park across the road."

They checked into the park and found their tent site. Tim's green tent was a two person shelter he'd bought for university camping trips years before, then never used again. It weighed about three kilograms, which was twice as heavy as Heather's grey tent of approximately the same size.

"I try to keep me gear as light as possible," she told him. "Hey, I hear there's a bar up the road at the lodge. Fancy a drink?"

"Sounds amazing," Tim said, feeling like it had been a very long day. Walking along the road they came across several grazing wombats at the road's edge. "Holy shit, how cool is this?"

They spent some time watching the wombats, with Tim taking several photos on his phone and Ryan's camera.

"Did you know," Heather asked, "wombat poo is square?"

"Fair dinkum?"

"It's true."

Tim thought for a moment. "Do they have square bums or something?"

"Maybe."

"That's fucken crazy," Tim said, half in amazement and half in disbelief. When they reached the lodge they found the bar and Tim ordered two schooners of Boags Ale, but was told they only came in pints or half-pints. "That'll do us," he told the woman behind the bar. Because the temperature was dropping they sat with their drinks by the fire.

"You'll find in the more classy joints down here the beer glasses are mostly pints," Heather stated. And then added with a smile, "The way it should be."

Tim laughed. "Well, at least beer glasses are standardised then. We have schooners and pots in Queensland. Apparently a pot is called a middy in New South Wales, but unless you're sharing a jug who orders a pot glass anyway? But then again I went to Adelaide once and asked for a schooner and they gave me a beer in a pot glass. Then they called their schooner a pint! The variety of beer glass sizes and names in this country do my head in."

Heather chuckled. "Well, this'll blow your mind, but a pot glass is called a ten ounce here in Tas."

"Fuck! Why can't they simply make one standard beer glass size and name it the same thing in pubs all across the nation?"

"What, the pint glass?"

"Sure, sounds awesome. Just standardise the effen things." He smiled at Heather, raising his glass to her.

"You'd never get the states to agree cos each one'd want the glasses their way, or demand additional funding to transition over to the pint," she laughed, clinking their glasses together. "It'd be like getting them to agree on a standard national railway gauge! Wars have started for less!"

"Yeah, I dunno much about railway gauges, but for a start we'd have to get those South Australians to agree a pint is not a schooey, and a schooey's not a pot. Even I'm confused!" After a chuckle and taking a long pull of his beer, Tim looked at the amber fluid in his five-hundred-and-seventy mil pint glass and said, "This is really good beer, ay."

"Sure is," Heather said with a hint of pride in her voice, as if she'd brewed it herself. "But Cascade's way better. Hey, do you fancy a meal here? From now on in it will be dehydrated stuff so this might be our last chance for some decent grub."

They ordered dinner and sat back down, while the bar began to fill up with other travellers. Tim enjoyed watching people and had a knack of listening to several conversations at once, gathering there was a small group of older walkers from a local bushwalking club chatting with a young Japanese couple. There was a bloke, maybe Italian, with thick curly black hair, who was big-noting himself to two young women who Tim suspected were Irish and Danish respectively by their conversation. Alone in one corner was a tanned young man, sipping on his beer and like Tim, watching the room.

"I think we need to save those poor girls from that man," Heather said, pointing in the direction of the two women. "He reckons he's the shit and they're not falling for it."

"Yeah, I think he's Italian. He's telling them about his worldly adventures, but he's not letting them have a word edgewise. He has no chance with them."

"Yeah, but see how he leans forward into them and touches the blond girl's arm all the time. She looks uncomfortable and moves back from him, but he keeps moving in. She's being polite. Let's invite the girls over if we get a chance, to give them a break."

The man left for the bar and Heather walked over to the young women, inviting them to join her and Tim by the fire. "I'm Heather and this is my friend, Tim."

The girl with the Irish accent was Kathy, from Cork, and the Dane was Anita from Roskilde. They'd spent the day exploring around Dove Lake and climbing Cradle Mountain, and were beginning the Overland Track the following day, as was the Italian man, Antonio. He returned with a drink and joined them, taking a new interest in Heather.

"You are Australian?"

"Yep, born and bred," Heather said. "Where are you from, Antonio?"

Antonio came from Verona in northern Italy, where Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was set, as he told them enthusiastically. But he'd travelled the world too and loved to tell anyone who'd listen to his adventures. If he was trying to impress Heather she wasn't buying it. And oddly enough, Tim found himself relieved. Realistically, he'd known Heather in person for all of a few hours, and previously spoken to her via Skype two times only, and yet he was glad Heather thought this Italian bloke was a bit of a tool.

Their meals came, and so they shared their chips with their new companions, while Tim and Heather ate juicy Scotch fillet steaks and salad. Heather made sure she addressed Kathy and Anita, giving them a chance to speak where Antonio previously dominated. Kathy was a nurse, so she and Tim chatted, while Anita was a graphic design student.

"I'm an engineer," Antonio spoke up, then fixed Heather with a look. "Though I prefer to be outdoors in the wilderness, surrounded by natural beauty."

Heather gave Tim an exasperated eye roll and Tim replied with a little smirk. For the first time since meeting her Tim felt there was something between them. And why not? Heather was gorgeous. There was, however, an undeniable hardness about her, no doubt about it. In fact, except for her sweet voice and cute heart-shaped smile, plus her floral sounding name, everything else about Heather was hard. She'd taken off her warm polar fleece jacket by the fire, revealing a tight fitting long-sleeved polyester shirt stretched tight over her muscular torso and arms. She gave off a hard vibe, where despite her calm appearance, Heather looked as if she could fight the room at any moment if any shit were to break out.

Every now and then a muscle in her jaw flexed, and though he was usually attracted to girls with softer attributes, Tim found Heather's toughness alluring, and he felt somewhat chuffed he was developing a rapport with her. Even if she was Ryan's sister.

"Hey, Antonio," he said to distract the Italian, "how long are you in Australia for?"

"Oh, perhaps a couple more months. I'll see how it goes. You never know, if I find a reason to stay I might do so." He turned to Heather. "Are you and your boyfriend Tasmanian?"

Heather hardly hesitated when Antonio described Tim as her boyfriend. "I'm from Tassie and my friend's from Queensland."

Tim noted Heather was capable of looking after herself and he found it rather curious she'd neither denied nor confirmed he was her boyfriend, simply referring to him as her friend.

"Your state is very beautiful." Antonio completely ignored Tim, despite the remote possibility of him being Heather's partner.

Heather gave Tim another look of semi-exasperation and Tim gave her another smirk and thumbs up. She was doing a great job at diverting Antonio's attention from Kathy and Anita, giving Tim the opportunity to chat with them. The girls were easy to talk to and it wasn't long until Tim had them feeling at ease and laughing, discovering they'd met in Melbourne three weeks previously and begun travelling together.

"I think your friend is flirting with his new friends," Antonio said with a bemused look on his face, emphasising the word 'friend'.

"Why wouldn't he?" Heather replied, then leaning in towards Antonio and speaking in a quieter tone, only just loud enough for Tim to hear. "They're very pretty. I like the contrast of the Irish girl's black hair and blue eyes. But I reckon my friend will go for the Dane because she's blond. He likes blonds and they're all he ever dates. He used to have a crack at me back in the day, but sadly for him I bat for the other team, if you know what I mean, and have no interest whatsoever in changing sides."

Listening to the exchange, Tim almost burst out laughing, but kept under control as Heather made Antonio know he was wasting his time with her. It was a mere setback to Antonio, but he no longer persisted so hard and once he wasn't trying to big note himself he wasn't half bad to talk to. Even if he had no perception of personal space, especially when talking to the women.

"Well, we all have a big walk tomorrow, so I think it's time to catch some sleep," Heather declared once she and Tim finished their meals.

"Yep, anyone want to walk back to camp with us?" Tim offered. Of course Antonio and the two girls were all camping at the same caravan park, so they all walked back together. The night air was chillier than Tim anticipated and he couldn't help but shiver, wishing he'd worn an extra long-sleeved layer under his polar fleece jacket.