Better the devil you know

摘要

Marrawah, in Tasmania's far north-west, is truly one of those places that feels like the end of the world. Cut off from the rest of the island by an expanse of temperate rainforest and with nothing to the west but some 15,000km of Southern Ocean (until you hit Argentina), it's also one of the best places on Earth to come face to face with the devil.The Tasmanian devil, that is. Until his untimely death last year, beef farmer-turned-conservationist Geoff King ran the renowned 'Devil Restaurant' here. The menu was pretty basic: a single roadkill wallaby or wombat (staked out in front of a wooden hide, no seasoning required) that lured diners by the bus-load. "One night I saw 13 different devils," Geoff told me when I visited the restaurant back in 2005. "The next night I saw 22.1 can tell them apart by the white stripes on their chests."