The forest itself is the most thrilling living entity here. Along with its famous Huon pines, sassafras and eucalyptus trees, there are giant ferns and the widest variety of moss and lichen.
“ARE YOU REBECCA HUNTLEY or Rebecca Crawford?” asked the young man as he emerged from the General Store and walked towards us, holding up two brown bags, each containing keys and a torch. Under normal circumstances this would have been an easy question to answer, but these were not normal circumstances.
My teenage daughter and I had just driven slowly for almost two hours without mobile reception in darkness on an unsealed road through the densest forest imaginable. The potholes looked ominous. Bats darted across the windshield and pademelons jumped onto the road in front of us. I spent most of the time hoping and praying that our destination – Corinna Wilderness Village in takayna/Tarkine in north-west Tasmania – would indeed exist at the end of this seemingly endless road winding deep into one of the most ancient natural environments in Australia. So extraordinary was this journey, it did feel and tried to lighten the mood with the occasional joke about Vecna, the evil protagonist of the Upside Down world (also known as the Mind Flayer).
