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Outside Magazine, June 2005
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The Hard Way
Bush Bashing (cont.)

ON THE LAST DAY of our bushwalk, Matt and I decided to climb 4,085-foot Mount Mueller, at the head of the Styx Valley. After walking one depressing logging road after another, we needed an overview of the landscape. But when we rose above the clear-cuts, the section of unmolested old-growth that we first passed through looked small and imperiled.

We thrashed up to the crest of Mueller and were rewarded with an expansive view northwest into the Florentine Valley. The upper Florentine is still blanketed with old-growth forest; much of what remains has been clear-cut over the past 50 years. But there aren't enough volunteers to erect another rescue station—and Forestry Tasmania knows this. Plans to log the upper Florentine are in the works for next summer.

After an hour on the summit, sitting, watching, wondering, we headed back down. Just below the rocks, hidden in a pocket of heath, we discovered a small, silvery pool—the source of the Styx. Matt and I cupped our hands and drank. In Greek myth, the Styx was poisonous.

I imagined the Tasmanian tiger stopping here en route from one primeval forest valley to another. Lowering its head to lap up the cool water, it would have seen its own doomed reflection. In 1888, the Tasmanian parliament placed a bounty on the thylacine. In 1936 the last known Tasmanian tiger died in captivity.
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