The Forgotten Islands

by Michael Veitch

  The entire afternoon was spent rambling through this curious, deceptively complex bushland attic. Some parts were open and grassy, only to vanish into odd little glades and gullies and patches of forest. In parts, stands of southern eucalypt guarded the view to the ocean, so once or twice I left the track to push through and emerge abruptly at the top of sheer black cliffs where seabirds searched out their nests in the folded crags, wheeling and calling above the breakers way, way below.

  Eventually, fading light and a sudden drop in temperature made me realise it was time to head back down the path to the village. But if I thought the climb up The Nut had been hard, the effects of my descent would stay with me for days.

  As a child, my mother would often say peculiar things which I never understood. She had a stash of favourite idioms, commonplace ones like ‘a watched pot never boils’, or ‘the exception that proves the rule’, or someone or other couldn’t ‘cut the mustard’ or was ‘going to Hell in a handbasket’. But there were also the obscure ones like ‘it’s not what you eat, it’s what you don’t eat’, or her odd rhyme she used to bring out with no accompanying explanation about a ‘Mary’ putting her finger on a ‘magpie’s head’. Even today I’m still a little shaky on what she meant by one or two of them.

  But making my way back down that vicious path from the top of The Nut, her voice came back to me with one of her favourites, which, until that moment, I had assumed she’d just made up: ‘Getting down is twice as hard as going up’. Finally, on this rock, more than a decade after her passing, I knew exactly what she meant.

  There is plainly something unnatural about forcing one’s entire weight onto one’s knees and thighs, particularly if you happen to be a forty-something and not-particularly-fit male, and although I’m an occasional flat-footed jogger, the punishment I unknowingly inflicted on myself during my descent was, I would realise later, nasty indeed. My memories of it are murky, but I recall feeling a little light-headed in the evening air as the mutton-birds appeared above me, arriving home from their daily feeding on the ocean. I took the path quickly – too quickly it seemed – each leg alternately holding my weight, then revolving with a jaunty sideways movement to prevent me toppling on the treacherous camber, an odd, jolting movement combining elements of long jump, netball, and possibly interpretative dance. To anyone looking, I must have appeared completely ridiculous.

  It was actually an exhilarating feeling, bolting crazily down that path that seemed even more vertiginous in the cool twilight, each step lowering me dramatically towards the lights of the little town below, like descending in an aeroplane. By the time I reached the bottom, my legs felt both hot and cold, and I basked in my achievement. As some pallid cuckoos made their mournful evening call from a patch of low gums, I headed off to find the Stanley pub, glancing back occasionally at the lofty forest in the sky where I had spent a happy day. Now I was to meet the man who would get me started on my journey to the Bass Strait Islands with an escorted trip to his childhood home, that magical place I had spied in the distance from atop The Nut: Three Hummock Island. First, though, I would have to survive the flight.

  5

  THE BUSH PILOT

  There was only one aircraft sitting on the small tarmac of Smithton airfield that chilly Sunday morning, but I didn’t for a moment suspect it was the one we were expected to fly in. It looked so terribly old. Not as in ‘restored museum-piece’ old, like the pristine 1940s-era Harvard trainer that makes regular joy flights over Melbourne and which is doubtless subject to a rigid maintenance regime to preserve its certificate of airworthiness; just simply ‘old’ old.

  Robert and I pulled up in his small car not far from the runway. There was no fence and only one small building, which was locked. I was happy not to get out, as a faint burning sensation was starting to creep into the upper part of my legs. I hadn’t noticed anything at first, but after dinner the previous night, over which Robert and I had awkwardly attempted to get to know each other, I retired to a motel room and began to feel the effects of my unique descent from The Nut. So, for the moment, waiting in the car at the little aerodrome for our pilot, I was happy to just sit. Besides, it was early and still cold.

  Robert checked his watch and muttered something. After a few minutes, a man in shorts emerged from behind a hangar, seeming to have just relieved himself behind it.

  ‘Ah. Geoff,’ said Robert with a note of affection.

  ‘Geoff?’ I asked.

  ‘Our pilot,’ he said. Geoff did not exactly fit my image of a pilot. He was wearing a long-sleeved thick cotton check shirt, which flapped about over his old canvas shorts; his sockless boots looked too big and were missing laces. But he was friendly enough, and waved to us with a genial lack of concern while removing the tether from under the wing of his retro aircraft. ‘You’ve … flown with him before?’ I asked, feigning nonchalance. ‘Oh, no,’ he said without hesitation. ‘But I know of several people who have.’

  Geoff was nothing if not engaging. Quietly spoken, he shook my hand while looking me squarely in the eye. ‘Off to Three Hummock, eh?’ At least he knew where we were going, although a thick beard growth of many days unsettled me just a little.

  Three Hummock Island seemed to me the perfect place to begin my island odyssey. It is substantial, situated in an area that could be seen as the beginning of the strait – on its far left-hand side – and, most important of all, someone had asked me to go there. Not just any old someone, either, but a man who knew the place very well indeed.

  Robert Alliston spent the bulk of his childhood on Three Hummock Island, one of several children of John, a Royal Navy officer and his glamorous Adelaide wife, Eleanor. In the early 1950s, with absolutely no farming experience between them and armed with nothing but post-war resilience and a determination to have a go at something, this adventurous pair had arrived at the curious conclusion that acquiring the lease on a virtually uninhabited island in the middle of Bass Strait was a sensible thing to do.

  From the look of deep joy on Robert’s face as we strapped ourselves into Geoff’s Cessna, I could tell that for him, this was to be no simple trip of nostalgia, but a reaffirmation of his very identity. Looking around the interior of the aircraft, however, I was unable to share his enthusiasm.

  I’d been in light aircraft many times: sleek ones with handsomely laid-out instrument panels, radar screens and transponders; neat, modern aeroplanes which gave off a little of that ‘new car’ smell mixed with the heady odour of aviation fuel. Geoff’s was not that type of aircraft. His was more the aviation equivalent of a 1973 Valiant Regal. Mustard-coloured vinyl peeled off the inside door, which itself gave a buckled screech as I tried to close it. After a couple of half-hearted attempts, Geoff leaned across me and slammed it shut with a grab of a crusty hoop of leather held in place by a large screw. The windscreen was opaque and yellowy and thick little squares of black paint had begun to peel off the non-reflective dash. My chair felt thin and slightly wobbly and despite being offered the front seat next to the pilot, I felt nothing like my normal enthusiasm for powered flight.

  A few pumps of the primer, a push of a button and the engine started up as Geoff began a methodical pre-flight check. I started to feel better. The noise of this thing! The interiors of all small aircraft are noisy, but this thing roared like a large, angry bull. I could feel the torque of the big engine pulling the airframe and shaking it in odd, irregular directions. Glancing down at the starboard wheel, I watched it begin to roll as we started our brief taxi. Seconds later, Geoff drew out the large, plastic knob of the throttle and, taking a bumpy short cut across a dirty patch of grass and gravel, bolted up the runway, like a large African animal suddenly released from a cage.

  The power in this old bird was immense. Barely halfway down the runway, she seemed to spring into the air, pulling us upward like we were in a lift. We were airborne and I was on my way to the islands of Bass Strait with absolutely no expectations of what I would find.

  As we crossed t
he coast and headed north-west, a small and all-but-forgotten volume I had purloined from a bookshelf in my father’s library sprung disconcertingly into my mind.

  There is no ‘official guide’ to Bass Strait and her islands, although many excellent books about them have, over the years, appeared. Biologist Nigel Brothers has given us the fabulous and expensive Tasmania’s Offshore Islands, exhaustingly describing each and every one of them, group by group, rock by rock, with wonderful maps and lists of the local birdlife. There’s also the glossy Islands of Tasmania by Richard Bennett, a worthy ornament to any coffee table, and not to forget Patsy Adam-Smith’s delightful series of reminiscences from her days doing the island’s mail run. All these and many more are excellent and informative works, but for sheer entertainment value, nothing beats Mysteries of the Bass Strait Triangle by Jack Loney, published in 1980. As the back cover lets the reader know, in no uncertain terms, ‘others may have written about the triangle, but only Jack Loney tells it like it is!’

  Jack Loney was almost unique in the literary world: a successful self-publisher. In a career spanning many decades he pumped out over a hundred little volumes on all aspects of Australian maritime history, about which his knowledge was encyclopaedic. He held a particular passion, though, for disasters and shipwrecks, and the gorier the better. My father used to love reading them, quietly picking up one or two in newsagents and petrol stations where they could reliably be found wedged next to road maps and publications about caravans or greyhound racing. Being a writer himself, he was probably a little embarrassed about being seen reading Jack’s books, and would occasionally wince vocally at some of the thwarted grammar and mangled sentence structure. But despite many cullings of his library over the years, Jack’s Early Shipping in the Port of Geelong, Shipwrecks along the Great Ocean Road and Victims of the Corsair Rock remained an inviolable part of his collection till the day he died.

  As a kid, I occasionally took one off the shelf and flipped through it, reading about the odd shipwreck here or there, but nothing was as exciting as his work on the evil waters of Bass Strait. How’s this for an opener? (The punctuation is all Jack’s.)

  Whether you are a seaman, fisherman, pilot, passenger on a ship or plane, or just a small boat owner who enters the ‘triangle’ seeking the exhilaration of the blue water. Watch Out! You may be the next to disappear; – Forever!!!!

  According to Jack, Bass Strait is nothing less than Australia’s very own Bermuda Triangle where unpredictable, even unnatural forces have conspired to lure dozens of ships of all sizes into its watery maw to vanish forever. None are safe, from the smallest of ketches to big clippers such as the Loch Marie – last seen off Wilson’s Promontory in 1881, loaded with wool, on her way back to England. Says Jack, ‘… no man living could tell of her ultimate fate and her bones still might lie fathoms deep in the Bass Strait triangle.’

  To be fair, the tally of vessels that have indeed disappeared in Bass Strait is astonishing: there’s the Harriet, a schooner lost with all seven hands in 1848, the Leven Lass, vanished off the Victorian east coast in 1854; the schooner Reindeer, 104 tons, foundered in 1862 with the loss of ten lives; the Whistler (1855), the Britomart (1839) and the Toroa, a 300-ton steel steamer which had survived an Antarctic voyage to re-supply Douglas Mawson’s 1911 expedition, only to wreck itself on a Bass Strait reef five years later. Even the sturdier steam vessels of the 1930s weren’t safe, with the SS Paringa, Coramba and Christina Fraser similarly coming to grief or simply vanishing.

  Modern yachts too have found disaster in Bass Strait, such as the tragic story of Great Expectations, a little sloop returning north across the strait after a successful completion of the 1990 Melbourne to Devonport yacht race, which disappeared without trace along with six lives. Up to a year after her loss, wreckage, life jackets and even human remains were still being found on shores from Wilson’s Promontory to the northern coast of Tasmania. As Jack says about the strait’s deceptively changeable moods, ‘Don’t be fooled! Within a few hours, the strait’s pent up forces may be relentlessly seeking to destroy the intruder!’

  Sitting in the cockpit of Geoff’s well-worn Cessna, I could not help but recall that Jack’s theory also extends to aircraft, several having disappeared above its waters, by far the most famous and disturbing incident being that of pilot Frederick Valentich, who vanished along with his single-engine Cessna – of similar make and vintage to this one – on a flight from Melbourne to King Island one evening in ideal flying conditions in October 1978. His famous dialogue with the Melbourne control tower, as he reported being stalked by a mysterious ‘long shaped’ craft has dazzled UFO believers for decades:

  Tower: Delta Sierra Juliet, roger and how large would the – er – object be?

  Valentich: Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne, it seems like it’s chasing me. What I’m doing right now is orbiting and the thing is just orbiting on top of me also. It’s got a green light and sort of metallic like, it’s all shiny on the outside …

  After several unexplained noises, and Valentich declaring, ‘It’s hovering and it’s not an aircaft,’ he disappeared without trace and the mystery endures to this day.

  Geoff, I have not the slightest doubt in my mind, was an excellent pilot. Watching him at the controls of his dowdy but undoubtedly tough old kite, it was hard to imagine a man more at ease. If only I could have shared something of his demeanour. Having a lifelong love both of aeroplanes and flying, I am rarely one to feel ill-at ease in the cockpit. But the turn we executed to the north-west after taking off from Smithton that morning was steep enough to make me hyperventilate. We seemed to be almost standing on the wing, and glancing warily to my left I was startled at the sight of wave tops directly below.

  Levelling out, a small line of sweat broke out across my scalp. At least we were horizontal again as we began to cross Robbins Island, the most mainland of the Hunter Group. As my brain cleared, I had the sensation that we were not flying at all, brought on, I suspect, by the view, which more resembled that from the window of a car. Small hills reared up in front of us and Geoff gave the gentlest of squeezes on the column with his fingertips to ease us over. Rocks and grass tussocks sped by what seemed like inches below.

  I reached up and tried to open a circular ventilation valve above my head but it had long perished, gummed up with the remains of the masking tape, which was the only thing holding it in place. I glanced around at Robert to see if he was sharing my terror but his face was a portrait of pure joy. He smiled and nodded at me angelically, adoring the view and feeling no doubt that every second in the air was bringing him closer to his spiritual home. Geoff too smiled at me and pointed out some of the outlying islands in the group. Their nonchalance, despite the impromptu aerobatics and alarming lack of altitude, had a calming effect, and I finally began to settle down.

  ‘Black Pyramid Rock,’ said Geoff, his voice sounding tinny in the old headphones, and over to the west, there it was: a great dark wedge of granite pointing skywards with its apex rising at the northern end. ‘Can we go out to it?’ I asked, but I could see that something about it unnerved him. ‘It’s … it’s a bit, uh … tricky, that one,’ he said cryptically, glancing at it warily, like one giving a snake a wide berth. I didn’t push it further, but noticed him bank a little closer in deference to my curiosity. This, I could tell, was as close as he cared to be. Black Pyramid rises sharply from the ocean, with near vertical cliffs offering no obvious means of access. ‘Ever been onto it?’ I asked hopefully. ‘No, no,’ said Geoff. ‘I don’t think anyone has.’ Robert and I took it in as long as we could through the opposite window, a great dark sail of stone rising dramatically from the water, giving it the strange illusion of being in motion, carving a path through the ocean. Geoff chose not to look at it again. Robert, beaming, gave me an encouraging thumbs-up. I was starting to enjoy myself.

  ‘Three Hummock,' someone said, and there it was, dead in front, an enormous expanse of rolling bush hills stretching back from a gold ring o
f perfect, empty beaches. Gigantic boulders carved by the westerly winds marked coves and inlets as we passed over them, some looking utterly inaccessible by land or sea. Geoff flew up the coast for a while to give us an extended view. A few meagre tracks seemed to spider intermittently across hills and flatter parts from one nameless feature to another, but Three Hummock was a wild and lonely-looking place.

  Out the far window to the south-west, the Southern Ocean’s endless horizon of black water pulled the eye towards infinity. ‘Here we go,' said Geoff and again I felt my stomach tighten as we went into another roll, banking over a mound of green, and levelling out once again above the ocean. Suddenly we were a metre off the ground. A blur of trees, an open paddock, the shapes of animals scattering in all directions. This was much too fast to land. What was he doing? The image of a white Land Cruiser with two figures waving flashed into my startled brain, then another snarl from the engine and we were again up over the trees. This time, I was unable to restrain myself. ‘Jeez!’ I gasped.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I always do a pass to clear the ’roos,’ said Geoff, apologetically. ‘Otherwise they just stand there and stare at you. If you’re not careful, they’ll let you land on top of them.’ We turned again, shallower this time, and for a magic moment my vision was filled with a tantalising glimpse of a perfect little bay: clear water, white sand flanked by greenery and large ochre-stained sentinels of rock at both ends. Then in an instant, it was gone again.