Beneath the Wild Fig Tree, page 11
The weather turned gusty. Bert rode it out in the gulch and the next morning, when the weather had moderated, he came up the hill for breakfast. Later, we sat on the veranda, and he told me how he makes craypots.
Mum reckoned Bert has the biggest hands she’d ever seen because of all the physical work he’s done over his lifetime. His fingers looked like burnt snags because of the oil on them. Nan used to say that beauty isn’t the front cover of Vogue. Beauty was wabi sabi, it lay in interesting lines, and colour, and texture. I thought Bert had mesmerising hands. I wanted to hold them down and stare at them – at the colour of them and the veins, the oil embedded in them, the blood blisters and cuts and scars, and the wrinkles, dry patches and age spots, and the fierce, wiry hairs on them.
Beauty wasn’t the Queen’s English either. If I could’ve, I’d have spoken like Bert, that country way.
‘Now you need your wire for the frame and your cane for the neck of the pot,’ he went on. ‘You need to make a come-on-in entrance and space for the little ones to wander on out.’
He explained how you weave the wood around the wire and then he paused. ‘And don’t you go thinking it’s easy, girl. It’s a skill. Some of my mates use plastic and steel mesh pots, but I tell you what – them cray can pick the difference. There’s nothing like the real McCoy to catch a lobster. Only these days they make you put them spawny shes back. It’s your newfangled regulations concocted up by city smarty-pants that know nothing about the ocean.’
He threw down his cigarette butt and I watched it roll away. ‘Wind’s eased, tide’s right. Time to move.’ He got up and wandered off.
I watched him go. I picked up the butt. If you had to slice off a gannet’s head to become a local, then I was happy to stay a smarty-pants from the city.
~
Bert had shown us how to bait and set the pot down in shallow waters. He said you often pull up other critters. He’s found pear helmets, roadnight’s volute and beerbarrel tuns in his pots. Later, we found a big, angry cray in there. A whelk was sharing the pot with it.
But Dad still prefers diving for cray. ‘I despair,’ said Mum when he left next morning without even telling us. I said I’d go and keep an eye on him.
‘What about your work?’ she called, but I pretended I couldn’t hear.
I meandered along the beach, keeping him in my sights. At the end of Restless he started boulder-hopping to get to Superstition Reef. I gave him time to drop into the sea before settling myself on a rock, and it wasn’t long before he surfaced with a cray in his gloved hand.
‘It’s berried,’ I said.
The closed season was in force for females. Even so, he came home with a berried cray a week back. Mum made him take it back to exactly where it came from. She stood on Mount Aeolian, watching through her binoculars. He’d thought we’d be impressed by the size of her, and we were, only not in the way he intended. A cray takes about five years before it breeds. What’s more, Dad was the person who told me this. He said that in midwinter, when we were arriving, crays were down on the ocean floor ‘copulating their little cray hearts out’ and that big ones can have about five hundred thousand eggs attached to their bellies.
‘Go home, Nicky!’ he shouted.
But I leaned against Kes, who had followed me, both of us focused on Wheeler’s diving. The sea was turquoise, and azure further out. That morning there was seaweed floating on the tide and probably cray larvae in the water and crays tucked on small shelves beneath the limestone reef, or walking in a line along the ocean floor, a red streamer against the white sand.
~
The easterly brought drizzle, and the humidity made the furniture sweaty. I had classes with Dad and later with Mum. I read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and stared out at the rain. Dad was in the lighthouse and Bert had just reported a one-metre swell on the sked from his position near Goose Island. Paganini’s ‘Love of Three Oranges’ was playing on the tape recorder. Bread was baking in the kitchen.
Meanwhile the mist was pressing up against the windows, sneaking in under the doors. I took my notebook out from under the chair where it was lying in a small drift of stardust, and this was our conversation:
‘Mum?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Did the first people on this island eat Cape Barren geese?’
‘I reckon. And they lined their huts with feathers and shaped bones into tools.’
‘Better check the bread,’ I reminded her.
She opened the oven and tapped the crust. ‘Perfect! Can you call your dad? He deserves a reward. He’s been working hard all afternoon.’
She slid the loaf from the oven. Steam rose. I breathed in deeply.
~
The sea was snitchy. Water smacked the rocks. The wind drifted, snapping at bushes. It had got inside us. It made us cantankerous too.
Mum came down from her study. ‘Let’s go and find out how Rob is getting along.’
I couldn’t close my maths books fast enough. Dad said to Kes, ‘Don’t look at me like that, Dog. You have to stay at home.’
We followed sheep tracks through the tussocks to Honeymoon Cove. Casuarina trees with dark tessellated bark and stringy grey needles were growing above and between the granite boulders. There were more boulders just off the beach. From a certain point, Lone Egg Island was visible to the south.
On the island, the whole life cycle of birds was impossible to ignore. We’d found heaps of nests and eggs, seen chicks, and stepped over bones and carcasses. As we approached the farm, I watched geese rising heavily into the sky, flying low, their necks outstretched, their large wings beating the air, their honking too loud for the wind to absorb. We had disturbed them.
Mum called us over to look at a particularly elegant goose nest. Little white feathers flew like flags from the tips of the tussock above the nest, which was clean and snug, a haven of tranquillity and secret goose life. The down was so deep that we only got the tiniest glimpse of the eggs.
‘Good parents,’ said Mum. ‘The last nest was so scrappy in comparison.’
‘Rob would have to know we’re here by the number of geese that have flown down to the beach,’ said Dad. We looked across the remains of the paddocks to the derelict farm buildings spaced out about us. The dilapidated sheds looked too large in the landscape. The broken windows were sinister. Long ago the Martin family cleared the bush, and built the drystone walls that run haphazardly across South Verloren. They burned to improve the pasture and then they grazed sheep and cattle. Their ‘improvements’ were disasters for the wildlife.
We couldn’t see Rob’s tent but two abandoned chicks peeped forlornly in the tussocks while the adults made a racket down towards Little Boot Point. A lone mother goose returned, anxiously circled the farm, crying out, then disappeared back to the coast.
Mum and I sat on the veranda. Some floorboards had rotted, and we could see the grass below. She took a bite of an apple and passed it to me. ‘Look at all the arum lilies growing around the house. They’ve been here since the farm began.’
To avoid an archaeological conversation, I went to find Dad. He’d found Rob’s empty tent on the far side of the drystone wall.
‘Let’s walk on to Little Boot Point,’ he suggested. We hadn’t gone far before Rob appeared, alerted to our presence by the geese.
He jammed his canvas hat down on his head. ‘If the wind stopped blowing this place would be magic,’ he said. ‘And really, the university ought to get an archaeologist out here. Look at all the cultural relics lying around!’
I looked at Dad, but he hadn’t seemed to have heard.
Rob suggested a cup of tea as Mum caught up to us, so we went to his tent and huddled beside the drystone wall because the wind was strengthening. While we waited for the billy to boil, Rob gathered flask tops and bowls that would do for extra mugs.
‘It’s going to blow all night,’ said Mum.
Rob pointed at the sky as a goose flew over. ‘Hear that trumpeting? Male bird. The females grunt.’
I told him I’d heard that the CBGs (which was what he called Cape Barren geese) nearly went extinct.
He poured the smoky tea and handed us our makeshift mugs. He said, ‘Now’s a time of plenty, because if there wasn’t so much suitable habitat, they’d have to disperse more widely.’
Mum told him about the research I was doing on the geese. She thinks I’m Einstein in a skirt. So embarrassing! Dad obviously thought so too. He pulled down his hat and pretended to doze.
Rob smiled. ‘The farmers on Flinders have been generous. Not that they see it that way, but when the vegetation on the smaller islands starts to yellow up at the beginning of summer all the juveniles and non-breeding geese head for Flinders. They can only eat green plants, and there are the paddocks laid out for them. It’s a gilt-edged invitation.’ He turned his mug upside down and the remains of his tea pooled on the ground.
Mum began muttering that we had to get back. ‘Rouse yourself,’ she said to Dad, giving him a little shake.
‘This teacher’s enjoying being off duty.’ But he got up slowly.
‘Come again.’ Rob said. ‘Come tomorrow. It’s my last day.’
Dad stood up. ‘Mate, I’ve got a message for you. Bert’s sitting out the weather off Cape Barren Island. You’re going to have to hang in here a while.’
‘No worries. I can’t think of many other places I’d rather be.’
Then, as we were leaving, he said, ‘Somebody else is camping down here. No sign of a boat.’
‘Spoken to him?’ asked Dad.
‘Or her?’ said Mum.
‘No, mate. Got the feeling they didn’t want company.’
It’s that boy. I’m sure of it.
~
The next day’s forecast was for highland snow across Tasmania. Grey-bellied cumulus congestus clouds moved across the sky. We didn’t see much of the mountain, but that evening, when Dad and I were singing along to a Men at Work album, he pointed at the window.
‘Here’s the goose boy!’ And he went to the back door to let him in.
‘I’m after that beer,’ Rob said, and helped himself to my chair.
They started drinking. The stew made slow, plopping sounds on the stove. Garlic and tomato aromas filled the air.
Mum and I continued with our puzzle. Kes slept, and Dad got into banter mode. Rob settled in for the long haul. He only opened his mouth to talk natural history, and then he wouldn’t shut up.
Dad got up to stir the stew. I reached for the pack of cards lying on the table and began to shuffle. Rob knew all about the Bass Strait islands. He knew their history. He knew how the Farsund got wrecked on Vansittart Island, where sea eagles nest in the Furneaux, the behaviour of terns and the migratory habits of species I’d never heard of. I thought, He’s quite interesting really, which was just as well as I couldn’t see how we’d ever be able to stop him talking.
And then the subject changed.
‘Look, the weather’s turning wild. My tent’s got a leak. Guess I could kip in the farmhouse, but I was hankering for a bit of company. Do you reckon I could have a bed for the night?’
‘No problem,’ said Dad. ‘There’s a spare room if you don’t mind the odd bedbug.’
‘There’s a ghost at the farm,’ Rob said grimly. ‘She sobs. I’ll take the mattress. Ta muchly.’
‘So,’ said Mum when my dad went to get another beer. ‘What’s led you to be doing this sort of work?’
Rob nervously tapped his knee. ‘You know, I just kind of fell into it?’
Freya leaned forward. ‘Yeah? Like how?’
I held up the cards. ‘Anyone want a game?’ I could see Rob wasn’t the kind of person who wanted to cough up a potted history. He looked at my cards and hesitated.
Then Mum, who was a big bulky shape in the corner with her shadow looming against the wall, said no on his behalf.
I began to deal myself a lonely hand.
‘I’m from Queensland, grew up on the Atherton Tableland,’ Rob began as Dad returned.
‘Aye, the Tableland.’ Dad was putting on some reggae. ‘Those mysterious lakes in those hot, damp forests. Quite the erotic landscape.’
I giggled, and he gave me a wink.
‘Volcanic.’ Rob tapped his glass on his knee. ‘Then I came here to do my degree and I stayed.’
There was a silence. I started to draw a picture of his emu-shaped head, his eyes large and alert, and the more I drew, the more I realised he wasn’t bad looking.
He was talking about islands and the endless number he’d visited and all the ones he still wanted to tick off his list. Under the table his leg swung up and down.
‘That’s quite an inventory,’ said Dad.
‘I guess.’
‘We all have dreams, whether we act on them or not,’ Mum said.
Dad leaned over and patted her arm. ‘Freya keeps a swag of them on my behalf too, don’t you Frey?’
I took a careful peep at her. She was rolling her tongue against the inside of her cheek and staring into her glass of beer.
‘One day I’m going to work on the islands along the Alaskan Panhandle.’ Rob closed his eyes and smiled rapturously.
‘Give me a hoy when you’re leaving and I’ll tag along,’ said Dad.
‘We’ll pay you to take him.’ Mum started getting the plates out, rather noisily.
I took careful note of the angle of his right eyebrow. I was on sketch number three of An Emu’s Head.
Dad opened another beer.
‘And I’m thinking of giving this island an international profile.’
‘The hell you are. It hasn’t even got a local one.’
‘I’m writing an article about the geese, and I’m coming back later with a friend, to help with her fieldwork. Might write an article on this island’s history.’
‘I may be able to help you.’ Mum had her back to us, dishing up.
‘Right,’ Rob nodded slowly.
I thought, He doesn’t think she can help him really.
‘Freya’s an archaeologist.’ Dad smiled at her as she returned with our meals.
Then a truly terrible thing happened. Rob hit his forehead with his fist. ‘I’ve got it – I thought I recognised you. I’ve seen you on campus. You hang around with …’ He glanced quickly at Dad, his face confused. Mum thumped his plate down loudly and Dad jumped up and asked if any of us would like water.
The air was static with alarm. My heart pounded.
She sat down slowly and smiled at us. ‘My archaeologist friends – we’re a tight bunch. Rob, I’m in the process of writing up my PhD.’
We all breathed again.
‘Your thesis is based on these islands?’
‘Actually, no – South West Tasmania.’
‘Well, I guess it makes sense on some level.’ Rob laughed, and some stew fell off his fork.
Hers was poised halfway to her mouth. ‘But I do have a small grant to do some work on this island.’
‘Hah! I’ll await your report with interest.’
‘Knowing my wife, it will be thorough,’ said Dad.
‘You know,’ Rob said. ‘The CBGs. The male makes the nest but the female plucks her breast to make a lining and she’ll lay an egg a day until she’s got about four. Then for the next thirty-five days there she sits. She won’t leave them for more than a few minutes, unless she’s disturbed.’
I winced, thinking about how often we’d disturbed them.
‘They usually pair up for life. Same as the shearwaters. Good, good stew.’ He wiped his mouth and nodded at Mum.
‘Wheeler made it.’
‘And they stay together to survive.’
‘For love,’ I insisted.
‘Animals don’t feel love.’
Beside the stove Kes gave a dreamy little grunt. I shook my head. ‘Why would we be the only species to feel love? It doesn’t make sense.’
Rob was amused. ‘Scientifically, you always need proof.’
‘Science has its limitations,’ said Mum.
I couldn’t mention my numinous moment or say Nan would back me up too.
We’ve had long talks about how intangible concepts, emotions, and ideas fill the universe and act through us. ‘I expect Einstein would agree with me,’ I said.
‘You seem bright, Nicky, but I doubt you know much about Einstein.’
Under the table Mum put a hand on my leg.
‘Me and Einstein, you and Descartes,’ I said.
‘Nicky,’ Mum said, a warning in her voice, but Rob laughed.
‘I do admire Descartes,’ he said. ‘Nice meal, people. Thank you.’ And he leaned back in his chair. ‘As I was saying earlier, I’m not denying these old-timers know these islands. Problem is, there’s a bit of pain involved in understanding the causes and consequences of the changes taking place. It’s hard to convince them of the facts.’
‘Sounds like you guys have got something to learn from each other.’ Dad stretched out his legs.
‘Guys like Bert? It’s like pissing into the wind.’
‘He’s a good bloke. More depth there than you’d imagine. He’s been around. Pays to listen first – you going to come and help me with the weather, Nicky? It’s a howler out there.’
Mum pushed me towards the door. It was our ritual, even in what Dad calls dreich weather. And I like being outside at night because he usually makes stargazing fun. We’re getting used to living by the phases of the moon, and saying goodnight to the mountain is what I do to keep nightmares away.
But, after Dad had turned off the generator and the house was in darkness, a lone eucalypt leaf fell against the vastness of my closed eyes and old uncertainties pressed in on me again.
21
Peramangk and Kaurna Country (Adelaide Hills) 2000
Bass Strait (Verloren Island) 1984
Learning How to Drown
