Creatures of the night

For the uninitiated, the eastern quoll is a small, scavenging marsupial found only in Tasmania. It’s a funny little beast, with a ratlike face, a long furry tail and white spots. It’s not rare – but it is nocturnal and it’s not super easy to see.

I’d been in Tasmania all of 36 hours when I saw my first quoll. I was sitting in a deck chair in the South Esk valley, a little bit too full from the supper that our guide, local bushman Craig Williams, had cooked, when I noticed these shapes scampering around in the darkness outside the range of our lights.

Craig had put some leftovers on the ground, and within a few minutes one or two had come right up to where we were sitting to steal some grub. During the next hour, there was a constant stream of visitors, with up to eight at one point competing over the scraps. There was no scrapping, however – this was a civilised dinner party (we were drinking Pinot Noir) and besides there was plenty for everybody. When I looked behind me, there’d generally be one little fellow creeping up as if playing grandmother’s footsteps. The quolls are not dependent on the food, however, because Craig’s tours do not happen that often. “They frequent the cabin regardless because they are inquisitive and cheeky,” Craig says.

That’ s the essence of the Quoll Patrol – if you really insist on trekking for two days into the middle of nowhere to get a fleeting glimpse of a backside disappearing into the bush, then this trip’s not for you. Earlier Craig had taken us round the area’s old-growth forests with eucalyptus trees close to 100 metres tall (that, believe me, is very tall indeed), picked a few things to chew on that wouldn’t kill us and found two platypus, all without breaking sweat. Hard work indeed.

We finished off the evening spotlighting wallabies, wombats and possums, and as we headed back to our lodge, the jetlag kicked in and I fell in and out of consciousness with spots before my eyes.

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