The Forgotten Islands

by Michael Veitch

  It was a magnificent day. Yesterday’s wind had dropped completely and bright spring sunshine nourished us even as we bounded along in the truck. Robert kept commenting on how little it seemed to be used. ‘Almost couldn’t see it at first,’ he muttered. Stretches of it had long been covered with short, kangaroo-trimmed grass which deadened the sound. Chris slowed down as larger branches joined in the attempts to flick us away, but this made it exciting, and gave me a childish thrill at foiling the forest’s best efforts.

  Just as we cornered a bend, however, we pulled up short in front of a large tree, recently fallen, it appeared, across our path.

  ‘Ah. Well,’ someone said. ‘Here, it would seem, we walk.’ And walk we did.

  The many shades of this island’s temperament, with its ever-changing backdrop of foliage and features, were never better displayed than on this day. Leaving the car where it was behind the fallen tree, we followed the track through enormous tangles of spindly bushes where honeyeaters darted in and out, chirruping noisily at our approach. A little further on, it opened to rich grassy banks on either side, creating the impression of a sunken lane, not exactly cultivated, but tamed slightly. Soft patches of grass now made up our flanks as the path narrowed to the width of a footpath. We could have passed for ramblers crossing a sheep farm in Cornwall or Sussex. A natural archway of dense trails of vines and creepers formed above our heads, dappling the light as we passed underneath.

  At that moment, I started to become aware of a growing sensation on the surface of my leg. For a moment I thought the injury from The Nut had returned, but in a different spot. Not pain exactly, but an indefinable, nauseating sensation. For a while I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it. But, yes, there it was, and it seemed to be growing, like a distant, growling thunderstorm.

  ‘Nettles,’ said Chris up ahead. Instinctively, all eyes turned to Robert. He considered his surroundings for a moment. ‘Yes, there are a few around here,’ he offered obtusely. It was soon to prove an understatement of epic proportions.

  With every step, more of them made their appearance. As our little lane began to descend further, nettles sprouted from the banks of rich earth in increasing size and numbers.

  I had been stung by nettles before. They’re painful, certainly, but it’s a hot, shallow sort of pain and soon passes with a bit of rubbing. The stinging nettles of Three Hummock Island, however, are true monsters. ‘Yes, we’d best be careful,’ said Robert again, now with just the hint of urgency. ‘Actually,’ he added, ‘they’re the most toxic nettles in the country.’

  Even the hardy Kate began to sound alarmed. ‘Gee, I haven’t … seen them … like this before.’ No one had. These uber-nettles were killers, unique, according to Robert, to the Bass Strait Islands, and here we were, blundering into the heart of their domain. Now my leg was starting to hurt. I had, it seemed, with the most delicate of brushes to my threadbare, poorly repaired and frankly ludicrous-looking trousers, been issued with merely a warning, the barest indication of their potential, like a scowl from a border guard at the gates of an unfriendly country.

  As we went on, they seemed to inveigle their way more and more into the surrounding flora, eventually choking it, until we stood in the midst of an infestation that stretched well above our heads, a monotonous forest of pale, poisonous green.

  I paused to warily examine a frond waving in front of my face. The leaves were enormous, sharply serrated and covered in a fine down of translucent needles, each triggered to poison me at the merest touch. There was nothing subtle about the pain in my leg now. It was evolving fast, like a virus in a science-fiction film – a numbing concoction of the worst bite and the worst bruise I had ever experienced. But having already exhausted sympathy from my previous injury I refused to wince or even draw any attention to my plight. Besides, I needed to keep my wits about me.

  Our path descended further into what was now a dark-green, nettle-infested gully. I stopped dead. A little way ahead, Chris and Robert were, to my horror, attempting to push through a thick strand of the things with nothing more than a couple of sticks in their outstretched hands. Chris, amazingly, was still in his shorts. Were these people completely mad? ‘Careful here …’ was the last I heard from them as their cushioned voices were swallowed by the terrifying foliage, leaving me quite alone. How Kate managed, I never found out. I looked back along the path and decided there was no earthly way I was going to follow them. I turned and began to retrace my steps.

  My choices were to find some other way of following or simply go back and wait by the car. But no, I was here to see this place. In a split-second decision, I turned off the path and simply crashed sidelong into the bush. These nettles would not defeat me; I would find some way around them. Like a rugby player, I led with my shoulder against branches and bush while frantically surveying the thick undergrowth for the telltale saw-tooth green leaves.

  Tripping and stumbling over bracken, roots and branches, I pushed on blindly, eyes shut, while trying to maintain a sense of the path to my left. The bush was much thicker than I had realised, but step by step I pushed on into the virgin forest. The light became dim. Some kind of bird fluttered near my face. Then the light suddenly changed and I let out a sudden ‘whoah!’ and emerged into sunlight, perilously close to the edge of a series of huge boulders, with a sheer drop of many metres plunging to the sea below me. Behind me, the passage had already closed like a wall. The distraction of effort removed, the pain in my leg returned and I spent several minutes in vigorous cursing and rubbing.

  It was some time before I realised just how lightly the nettles had let me off. I was later to come across a vivid description of an early settler’s encounter with these savage plants from John Oxley’s 1810 visit to Bass Strait’s Kent Group of islands. In describing the natural flora, a special warning was reserved for any of those, like me, foolish enough to tangle with what he called these ‘noxious weeds’.

  … but the most dangerous and offensive plant we met with was a new species of Urtica, which grows to the height of five to Six Feet. The Sting of this Noxious Weed produces the most painful inflammation and Swelling, which terminates in a Torpor and Numbness of the whole limbs. When the feet and Hands were but Slightly touched with it, the Unguinal and Axillary Glands in a few Minutes become painful and Tumefied, if the parts are much affected, it induces Spasms and Lethargic Stupor to the whole System. Several of our dogs that were exposed to its effects whilst hunting Kangaroo, died in a few Hours after the Greatest Agony. They first expressed the Torture they suffered by howling in the most dismal manner, a remarkable swelling of the whole Body and numbness of the extremities followed, accompanied with frothing at the Mouth, Wildness of the Eyes, and every other Symtom of Madness, but hindered from doing Mischief by their excessive Weakness. Two or Three hours generally terminated their sufferings.

  I remained uncertain as to the exact status of my Unguinal or Axillary glands, nor could I be certain that any part of me had been ‘Tumefied’, but I was in pain nonetheless.

  Gingerly, I began to trace a path around the rocks but, forced to follow their shifting contours, my bearings began to fail. No matter, I reckoned; simply follow the waterline and we will all surely meet up at Eleanor’s Beach.

  Concentrating hard to ignore my sting and watch my footing so as to avoid plunging down the sides of gigantic boulders, I paused for a moment then looked up to the horizon and gasped at the truly wonderful view before me. There they were, the pristine islands of the Hunter Group, arranged before me like silent ships on a vivid, sunlit sea.

  To my right was Hunter itself, at over 7000 square hectares, slightly larger even than Three Hummock, a long and narrow undulating slope of greenery with small, tantalising coves and beaches. Tending it like an escort were the smaller rocks of Penguin Islet and Dugay, then, swinging further to the south, Edwards Islet and, on the far side, the enormous tapered cliff of Steep Island where, I had been told, a natural harbour that resembled a vast crater could be seen on i
ts north side.

  Many more nameless but no less majestic rocks and islets made up the fleet, arranged like a Spithead review on a sunny afternoon. How few people, I thought, have ever been lucky enough to witness this private parade? I even fancied I could see the gentle, triple fold of Trefoil Island lying off Hunter’s far side, so named – this time with appropriate flair – by Flinders after the symbol of the three-leaf clover. I called to the others – wherever they were – to join me, but my voice bounced back from the ranks of dense green undergrowth like an echo off a cliff.

  I sat down on the edge of a rocky outcrop, alone in the sun, to take in the panorama of sea and sun and islands.

  Something, though, nagged at the back of my mind. I looked again for the distant outline of Trefoil Island as a shadow tugged at my memory.

  Something about a family, the Kay family. A gaggle of Pacific gulls, large and imperious, flew by at eye level, their leader glancing briefly in my direction, surprised perhaps to see an invader trespassing on this remote rampart.

  Then it came back, the remarkable, tragic story of the Kay family.

  In the old photograph, a young Maria Kay has a sweet, rather timeless face standing next to her husband, Albert Kay, dressed in his finest suit, waistcoat and watch chain. Only the severity of his wife’s parted hair and their rock-like postures makes the idea of them existing in any epoch but the Victorian quite unimaginable.

  How the people of these times found time to do anything besides breed is bewildering, but the Kays with their typical family of eight children also ran sheep on Trefoil Island even though they could only visit the place occasionally for working parties. It was whilst on one such trip in the spring of 1895 that Maria, expecting her ninth child, suddenly required medical attention.

  Their only means back across the water to Woolnorth on Tasmania’s north coast was in a small, flat-bottomed dinghy, requiring a good hour of hard rowing, and to that end Albert took along his eldest, sixteen-year-old Walter Robert, as well as Sara Virginia, nearly four, and for safekeeping, little Robert Latimer Kay, just twenty-two months old. Perhaps Maria had a premonition; perhaps she could see the notoriously difficult tide swirling around the various shoals and reefs that dotted their passage, but at the last moment, she handed little Robert back to the safety of his siblings, who stood anxiously on the beach watching their departure.

  Albert intended to return as soon as possible with Walter to collect his remaining family. With a wife in distress and two children on his small boat, he pushed away from the sand into the current.

  They seemed to make some headway at first, Albert manoeuvring the dinghy through the current as best he could, but, not far from the shore, a sudden wave rose as if from nowhere, lifting the hopelessly inadequate boat like a paper toy. As the watching children later described, the boat seemed to rise up, throwing the four of them into the sea. Their father Albert could swim but was hampered by a badly set broken leg. In any case, against the furious, swirling rip-tide, even the strongest of swimmers was doomed.

  The last the children remember seeing of their father was his desperate attempts to hold up the youngest, Sara Virginia. Then, in an instant, all of them vanished forever. Belinda Maud, Lydia May, Albert Boys, Jane Georgina, Wintena Alberta and little Robert, having just witnessed the death of their parents and two siblings, were now entirely alone on an inhospitable island, without a soul knowing of their plight. The eldest, Belinda, was just thirteen and a half.

  In one of those tales of fortitude that was held up to exemplify the pioneering spirit, and which delighted the romantic press of the day, the six Kay children, under the guidance of the remarkable Belinda Maud, survived alone and unassisted on Trefoil Island for six weeks.

  They organised food and shelter, undertook daily patrols of the beaches looking for the remains of their parents and siblings and lit signal fires that were never allowed to go out. The food they had carried over soon ran out so Albert Boys, aged ten, would kill the occasional sheep to provide fresh meat.

  Finally, the fire was spotted by one James Parker of the May Queen, and the starving and bedraggled children were rescued and placed in the care of astonished relatives. Their names would become legendary throughout the district for generations. (The May Queen herself survives to this day and, now restored, adorns Hobart’s Constitution Dock.)

  The children never found the remains of their parents or siblings. Instead, a plaque in their memory was placed in the little cemetery at Stanley for Albert Kay, fifty-three, his wife Maria, thirty-seven, and their two children. I had stood there under The Nut, reading it, as small birds darted among the headstones, just a few days before.

  How unfriendly and large this same beautiful sea must have seemed to six lost and terrified children all those years ago on that remote island.

  How long had I been here sitting on this rock? Minutes? An hour? And the others had no reason to think I was anywhere but immediately behind them. Scrambling back, worried with the burden of others’ worries, I rejoined the path once again at a spot just metres from my companions, who I found standing curiously, in a bunch, completely oblivious to my disappearance. ‘Ah …’ was all one of them said as I approached the huddle around some kind of native orchid. Nettles now apparently well to the rear and forgotten, with no one seeming any worse from their encounter, we proceeded, a group once again, along the path towards the sea, and in a short while emerged onto the most wonderful beach I have ever seen.

  11

  A PERFECT BEACH

  From what I could see, it was only a little beach. The track sloped suddenly towards it, guiding us down into a protected bay, defined at one end by one of Three Hummock’s enormous sentinel boulders, this giant the largest I’d yet seen, its surfaces a vast expanse of pink and grey, flecked with black, under a dramatic topcoat of the same bright orange lichen that coloured much of the island’s shoreline. A shelf of undulating rock stretching seaward marked the beach’s far end and, cradled between them, a vivid pool, shallow close to shore but dropping quickly away to depths of emerald green. The water was so clear as to be nearly invisible.

  ‘Jump in,’ called Robert as, suddenly naked, he plunged in beside the vast wall of rock. I waved as his head re-emerged, acknowledging his expression of sheer delight. ‘Magnificent!’ was all he said, or needed to say, across the water. I gave a hearty thumbs-up, but was happy to leave him to it in the water.

  I lay down, eyes shut, feeling strangely protected by the enormous granite flanks of the nearby boulder, knowing that in less than twenty-four hours, I would be back in my home city, but wondering if I would ever again experience such a complete moment of unconditional happiness as this. My sole desire – one which ran through every part of me like an unstoppable river as if it were the only true desire I had ever known – was that I should forever remain exactly in this spot, on this beach, on this perfect afternoon, allowing the sand to run like water through gaps in my clothes and absorb every sense of this magical place.

  A crunching sound announced the arrival of Chris, standing tall in sodden shorts between Kate and me, smoothing his white hair and beard with his hand. ‘Wonderful patch of Macrocystis out there,’ he said enthusiastically.

  ‘Ahh,’ said Kate, maintaining her repose, eyes still shut, stretched out in the sun. I was somewhat more attentive and he switched focus.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, panting a little. ‘Just at the base of that rock. Wonderful colony of them. It drops away to 5 metres almost immediately. Quite magnificent. Macrocystis pyrifera. Giant kelp. Some big abalone too. I tried to wrench one off and it broke. That’s what attracted the wrasse.’ I drifted off a little, as he described swimming in the amber light of a forest of kelp among the parrotfish, who couldn’t believe their luck as the flesh of a succulent abalone was exposed before them.

  Eleanor’s Beach had a profound sense of perfection. Not in a postcard way: it was, to the critical eye, probably a little too rocky; the sand was coarse in patches and the beach i
tself seemed to be engaged in an epic, slow-motion battle with the greenery advancing from the forest behind it; but it was perfect nonetheless. No single element, it seemed, could exist here without the other, and each in turn would seem diminished if removed from the frame before my eyes.

  A shadow passed over us, and the pure white belly of a sea eagle tilted and banked just above our heads. This was enough to get Kate up too, and Robert soon joined us, still naked, as we watched it glide to a stop, astonishingly, atop the giant rock next to us.

  ‘Oh, look at that! Look at you, my beauty!’ called Robert, his face a contortion of glee. Then its mate arrived, circling as well, its near-metre wingspan swishing audibly above us. ‘A nest, there must be a nest up there. Amazing! I’ve never seen them nest this close. No one ever comes here, you see, they’re not used to us.’ A raven swooped in from somewhere to be immediately pounced on by the eagles that proceeded to give us a primeval contest of black against white. ‘Oh, look at you! You go! You go and protect your babies, go on!’ Perhaps with a little help from Robert, the raven in its gleaming, stygian livery was driven off. This was the unspoken signal for us, too, to leave.

  The route back, thank goodness, took us nowhere near nettles. Instead, we climbed over a brief headland and followed the beach. I listened as Chris and Robert picked out more of the natural features as we passed through them, the rocks that had taken millions of years just to cool. ‘Very unusual granite, this,’ Chris said, standing square on to the shoreline, examining a car-sized rock as it was revealed by the receding tide. ‘It has these very big crystals, you see. And look, black mica, or biotite, as you see here …’ Robert in turn pointed out stands of greenish shrubs that seemed bent on encroaching across the rocks towards the sea, and the larger trees standing in rows, having come as close to the sea as they dared. ‘Coastal wattle, although it’s not really a wattle at all… and here, Melaleuca ericifolia. Swamp paperbark they call it in the nurseries …’