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The Hunter

Author: Leigh, Julia
Year: 1999
Type: Novel
Edition: Penguin film tie-in 2011

Synopsis

A man who goes by the assumed name of Martin David and who is hunting for the last Tasmanian Tiger stays at the home of a young family grieving the loss of their missing father on Tasmania's Central Plateau. 



Adaptation of: The Hunter (Nettheim, Daniel, 2011)
Julia Leigh's The Hunter was adapted to film in 2011. The film was written and directed by Daniel Nettheim.

Narrative Locations

Central Plateau, South West Wilderness, Tasmania  

Temporal setting: 1 January Circa 1999

Location notes:

The novel is set in a remote area of the Central Plateau above a former logging town. 

The Hunter takes place on Tasmania’s Central Plateau where, “One hundred and sixty-five million years ago potent forces had exploded, clashed, pushed the plateau hundreds of metres into the sky.” [page 14]

Quotes

“This is no god’s country, this is god-forsaken: it is perfect and precise. Perfect thousand-year-old trees, their lowest feathered branches almost tip-tipping… No tracks can be left on this hallowed ground, not even by the wind.” 

(p. 118)


“Down an easy boulder-studded slope, the smooth legacy of an ice cap spread over sixty-five square kilometres some 20,000 years ago. What must the plateau have been like before? Ragged and jagged, teeming with animals, giant fauna now extinct.”

(p. 30)


“Here, a little bluestone house sits quietly on the edge of the rippling flats, and rising beyond the house is the steep dark escarpment which climbs to the Central Plateau itself.”

(p. 5)


Climbing up to the Central Plateau: “The track they are on was cut by old trappers. In his study of the area he’d read that a hundred years ago the same ground would have been regularly used by men carrying up to seventy pounds of wallaby and possum pelts across their shoulders. Tiger pelts, too, or carcasses: once upon a time. Up on the plateau more tigers were caught than anywhere else on the island.”

(p. 15)



Lake, Central Plateau, South West Wilderness, Tasmania  

Temporal setting: Circa 1999

Location notes:

The novel features beautiful descriptions of the landscape and a lake that is probably near Julian Lakes, high on the Central Plateau.

Quotes

“Out of the forest he follows a pad that runs, speeds through the tussock grass until it comes to a white sandy cove and drowns itself in a lake. The lake is braceleted with dark pines, and rising beyond them is a giant semi-circular [dolerite] wall.”

(p. 89)



Launceston, Launceston, Tamar and the North, Tasmania  

Temporal setting: Circa 1999

Location notes:

The novel begins with the protagonist, M, arriving at Launceston airport and driving south-west out of town through what is probably Longford, or even Deloraine (one of the filming locations) toward his destination: a small bluestone house at the base of the Central Plateau in the Tarkine.

Quotes

“‘Welcome to Tiger Town’ reads a sign by the highway, ‘Population: 20 000’.” This sign is actually on the way into Launceston, as Leigh notes in her May 2000 article for the Sydney Morning Herald, “Mystery that burns so bright.”  

(p. 3)



Tiger Creek, Launceston, Tamar and the North, Tasmania  

Temporal setting: Circa 1999

Location notes:

Tiger Creek is a fictional setting, but there is a real Tiger Creek southeast of the narrative setting in the Butler’s Ridge Nature Reserve and the Arthur-Pieman conservation area. The fictional Tiger Creek is located near Sassafras Hill, which M passes through on his way from Launceston to the the Central Plateau. The girl in the novel calls herself Sass, short for Sassafras. In addition, there is also a Tiger Road near the town of Sassafras, situating the fictional location within actual landmarks and regional locations. 

Quotes

“He crosses Tiger Creek, Break O'Day Creek, this creek, that creek.”

(p. 4)





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Synopsis
Narrative Locations
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Related Texts


The Hunter (Nettheim, Daniel, 2011)

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