‘Sort all that out in the morning,’ he replied cryptically as he let me out at the exact same spot he had picked me up.
I decided to have that drink in the front bar that I hadn’t quite been able to manage earlier. Looking around, it seemed now a much friendlier place. They were a varied bunch: farmers with faces like polished leather, rowdy teenagers flirting around the pool table, a solitary punk, and a table of women in their thirties, well underway with jugs of beer shuttling back and forth from the bar. I ate some local fish, which tasted like it had just been caught, and was greeted with a ‘hello’ from people as they walked in.
Over-lit by fluoros and in need of an upgrade as it was, there was something special about this pub. Unlike just about every other drinking establishment I had ever been to, this one appeared devoid of any kind of age barrier. Groups of young and old chatted, drank and laughed, not just among themselves but to each other, completely free of the usual prejudices towards young and old that dictate social life in a big city. It was subtle, but opened up the atmosphere, making it easy and safe and accessible. Perhaps it was always this way in small places with limited venues for young and old to mix, but the only other time I seem to remember experiencing it was years ago on a visit to another island, Mull, in the Scottish Hebrides. Here, in a village called Tobermory, in a pub not dissimilar to this one, with its odd collection of mismatching furniture, harsh lighting and fruit machines, I sat, as a twenty year old at a table of people my own age as well as those three and four times older, talking and drinking into the night, with not a moment of awkwardness to be felt. The Whitemark pub felt just the same.
Soon, the young punk kid was standing next to me. Close up, he wasn’t much of a punk at all, and not really a kid, either.
‘I’m actually not an island person,’ said Shane, in his skull T-shirt and jeans with chains that crisscrossed over his waist. ‘I’m more of a city slicker.’ That said, he was, at twenty-three, finding it hard to leave his island home. He looked down at his feet and shuffled them across the pockmarked floor as he spoke. ‘Yeah, it gets into your blood, this place, I suppose. Not a place for young people. Nothing to do. And you can’t go out with a girl because she’s probably your cousin.’ I asked where he’d like to go when, or if, he leaves, but his ambitions were vague and unformed, muttering something about hanging out in Melbourne or Sydney, or possibly New York. ‘Thanks for talking. I’ll see you round,’ he said, resuming his place slightly apart from a group of friends, observing but not quite participating.
The crowd built up and the alcohol flowed. ‘Come and have a smoke,’ said a voice in my ear as my arm was grabbed by a woman who I thought I’d noticed earlier. A little alarmed as I was at being propelled through the front door with not inconsiderable force, I was relieved to be placed outside at a big wooden table with three other local girls. Was this a special night? I asked. ‘Yep. Thursday!’ said one to the chuckling of the others. Two worked for the island’s administration in some capacity, and the other, sitting opposite me, was a nurse. They seemed to all be single, some with teenage children, and were happy to live here with the island’s government tax rebates and free medical services, including flights to mainland hospitals when needed. They loved the quietness and the closeness and seemed to adore each other’s company. They smoked and drank with gusto, quizzed me for a moment, tried to get me to take a cigarette, then become engrossed with stories of their own. Soon my energy drained away, and I became an irrelevant factor in the social dynamic. A little while later I got up, and quietly left the table to drift back to my room, alone.
20
THE PHANTOM RANGER
I had been told several times that my very first priority on Flinders Island should be to make contact with one who knew the Bass Strait Islands like no other. Christian had first mentioned him by name to me and by the time I arrived on Flinders, I could almost sense the presence of one Wayne Dick. ‘You’d have to get permission to do that. Best ask Wayne,’ people would say, or ‘I don’t think you can get out there. Wayne would know.’ These were usually the contexts in which his name was spoken. Wayne is a ranger for the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service based on Flinders, with special responsibility for many of the islands of Bass Strait: a job I’m told he carries out with meticulous care and attention. He is attuned to the strait’s nuances and all its comings and goings. Several times I was warned that my approach to him must involve an appropriate level of seriousness and respect, or else my journeys onwards might not, let’s just say, prove as easy as they could.
He was also particularly hard to catch. We’d communicated cursorily by email, but I hadn’t informed him of my final arrival date, as the trip had been postponed a number of times. I was told he might be in his office and if so, just to knock and walk in. ‘If his truck’s there, he’s there,’ I was confidently informed. After a two-minute walk from the pub to the modest Parks and Wildlife Service office, I was presented with a conundrum: no truck in sight, but the door was ajar. Cautiously I called out and went in. ‘Hello …?’ The lobby was covered with maps and brochures, and a partly open door with Wayne’s name on it told me this was indeed the right place. But the entire office was, like the Marie Celeste, devoid of humanity.
I retreated across the road to a cafe where a tall, elegant girl with reddish hair had gone to great efforts to make hers the best cafe on the island, even if it was the only one.
‘Yes. Wayne. He comes and goes but he’s usually pretty easy to catch,' she assured me. Then after a while, ‘His truck’s back, if you want to try again.’ I dashed across the street to find the truck in place but the front door now locked. Was someone playing a game with me? A wait, then a walk to the end of the main street where a broad stretch of wetlands began. It was full of birds – coots and ducks and large gulls in abundance darting about the thick beds of reeds. How had I failed to notice this on the way in?
Girding my loins, I hoped for ‘third time lucky’. This time the truck was there, and the office door open, but still no sign of the enigmatic Mr Dick. Another man carrying a small fuel container approached me. ‘Have you seen Wayne?’ he asked. I told him I hadn’t but was on the trail as well. ‘But… his truck’s here!’ he said indignantly. ‘Yes … it is,’ I replied. Unsatisfied, he shrugged and walked off. I too decided to abandon the search, for the moment.
21
LEEDHAM’S LIST
The old hotel was something of a rabbit warren and several times I became lost within its contradictory layout of stairs and passageways, returning frequently to a large sign attached to a varnished door that read ominously, ‘No Escape!’ Sufficiently warned, I made no attempt to open it. While on one such expedition to find my room, I heard a woman’s voice from somewhere downstairs say, ‘There’s someone here to see you,’ but it was faint and from an uncertain direction. Finding my door at last, I watched some plumbers in the courtyard tearing up concrete and lay on the bed. ‘There’s someone here to see you,’ called the voice again. Could it possibly be addressing me? ‘Hello?’ I called, without rising from the bed.
‘Yes …’ the nebulous voice replied. I bolted upright. ‘… There’s someone here to see you …’ it said again. Finding my way down several flights of stairs, a youngish woman stood at the bottom.
‘You’re calling me?’
‘Yes,’ she said turning away. ‘Man to see you.’
‘G’day, cobber,’ announced a beaming Leedham Walker, framed in a doorway of blinding sunshine. ‘Now, that car you were after. My son-in-law’s fixed you up. You know where he is?’ I didn’t but he quoted me a price that sounded completely reasonable. ‘Oh, and here’s a couple of people you should chase up while you’re here. They’re the real thing. The real deal,’ he said, and handed me a carefully written list of names and phone numbers. I thanked him a couple of times as he wandered back across the street to his supermarket. ‘No worries, cobber,’ he replied. ‘See you for afternoon tea.’ I ran my eyes down the list in the morni
ng sunlight, folded it carefully, and put it into a pocket. I was starting to get the feel for the island way of doing things.
Meeting Wayne also fell into place when I gave it one more shot an hour later. He was not what I had expected. Nuggety in stature, his Parks uniform was pressed and neat as he sat at his desk, quietly sizing me up, nodding slowly at the details of my interest. He spoke slowly and seriously, sometimes eking out a single word at a time. At first he seemed almost unaware of my existence, only barely acknowledging our email exchanges, and despite my efforts to lighten things with the description of my first disastrous foray into Bass Strait, the tone remained strictly professional. Then, after a lull in the conversation, ‘Yes … I heard you arrived on yesterday’s flight. Okay at the pub, are you?’ A little surprised, I told him it was fine. ‘And you’ve met Leedham already.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘He’s worth knowing. Tell me, how do you propose to get to Deal Island?’ I told him I had no idea and laid myself open to his suggestions. ‘Yes … well …’ (it was the way he began most sentences) ‘… James is the person you should be talking to. He has the fast boat. Takes out the caretakers. There might … be one leaving in a fortnight. Not easy to get to Deal … as you know … weather unpredictable of course … it might be worth contacting James … or I could put in a call … perhaps.’ I had a secret loathing of contacting people unannounced and told him I’d be most grateful for the introduction. ‘Yes, well … call back … in a while … okay?’
Elated, I searched out the place where my hire car was waiting. It involved a walk, almost back to the airport, where Leedham’s enterprising son-in-law also ran an all-in-one camping ground, caravan park and motel – still partly under construction. I signed, and collected the keys to a tidy six-cylinder Falcon sedan of an unspecified vintage. The radio didn’t work and there was a crack in the windscreen, but it went like the blazes and its size was a luxury for one used to driving politically correct, compact city cars. It was time to see the island.
Flinders’ only substantial road runs up the west coast then cuts south-east to its port of Lady Barron. At the top of a particularly long and grand rise, I was compelled to pull over to absorb my first decent view, at least from the ground. To the east and west, the two coastlines were clearly visible, as well as some of the surrounding islands of the Furneaux Group, particularly the mist-covered Cape Barren Island to the south across the waters of Franklin Sound. This looked truly enormous with a dominating ridge of mountains, and all but uninhabited except for a small Aboriginal community of a few dozen people. Flinders stretched away in the opposite direction to the north, a tumbling patchwork of paddocks cut through by an extensive central mountain range. The east by contrast looked flat and swampy with a large series of inlets and estuaries. Right beside me, though, was the wondrous site of Flinders Island’s highest and most famous mountains, the Strzeleckis.
Named by the famous Polish explorer and geologist who climbed them in the 1830s, I had seen these on the flight coming in, but being close was something else entirely. It was not the highest peak I had ever seen, but certainly one of the most dramatic. Mount Strzelecki’s sheer 756-metre walls rise dramatically in a way that I have never seen anywhere else in Australia. To me, they resemble more a northern hemisphere mountain range, such as in the Scottish Highlands, which I had explored in my youth. Even the way the sunlight falls on its stone flanks speaks of another place, the mountain seeming to subdue the sun’s intensity, as in Europe, and even on a sunny day such as this, a faint pinkish mist hovered around its summit.
Placed there almost like an afterthought, the Strzeleckis rise up to form the backbone of a largely flat island, towering up in buttresses of rock with little gullies and high culverts which could just be seen near the top of its many crowns. Looking way up, I could see places where the occasional tree had made a precarious foothold and taken root.
There is, I was told, a walking track into the Strzelecki National Park, and even one to its summit, which, I later gathered by the shaking of several heads, was not for the faint of heart. I would definitely attempt it, I thought to myself, looking up at its granite towers. One day.
22
AN OLD BOOK IN A BIG LIBRARY
Deep within the bowels of the Victorian State Library is a small and very special room for very special books. When I had found what I was looking for in the main catalogue and handed my request to the librarian at her post in the main section, a solemn look suddenly darkened her amiable countenance. ‘Oh,’ she said hesitantly. ‘This is … you need to go to Rare Books!’ I could almost sense her hand sliding under the counter to silently press a button.
I was sent up a flight of stairs I had long seen but never used and, diagram in hand, walked down a long corridor to one of the unre-stored wings of the great building. An older female attendant behind a desk spoke in nothing more than a whisper, but every word was as clear as if said into my ear. After surrendering all pens and bags, she examined my catalogue slip with disdain, smouldering at the notion that one of her ancient, precious tomes was yet again to be groped by the grubby paws of a member of the public. ‘Please wait for your selection over here,’ she said, pointing to one of the tables.
A small, fragile and very old-looking book was eventually delivered into my hands in a plastic sachet. As if transported back thirty years to one of my (regular) Saturday morning detention classes, I was placed within a watchful eye of the woman. Slowly, and with a quiet thrill, I opened the bible-black cover to the first page of a work regarded as the holiest of grails among those with an interest in Bass Strait, the first (and only) edition of the Reverend Marcus Blake Brownrigg’s 1872 account of his Bass Strait island odyssey, the wonderfully titled Cruise of the Freak.
The book is barely the width of my outstretched hand, and so rare that the sole copy I could find for sale online had an asking price well in excess of one thousand US dollars.
‘Excuse me, can I photocopy this?’ I asked my overseer, holding the ancient volume in my hand for her appraisal. She glanced at it, took a long pause, cleared her throat and slowly began to speak.
‘Photocopying … requires the spine of the book to be … stretched out … and laid flat. Photocopying damages books. These books are rare books. Photocopying is therefore not permitted under any circumstances.’
Sufficiently humbled, I returned to my desk and began to read. Even with a little book such as this, however, I find concentrating in public libraries difficult, but pushed into the first of its eighty-five pages nonetheless. Leaning back into my chair I felt a hard object in my pocket press against me and for the next minute or two contemplated another plan of action, certain as I was to be once again shot down in flames. With nothing to lose, however, I approached her eminence again.
‘Er,’ I muttered, holding up my small digital camera. ‘I suppose I couldn’t just … photograph a couple of pages?’
She looked up again, and to my shock, managed a smile. ‘That’s fine,’ she said, and looked back at her work.
Fifteen minutes later I walked out, a little smugly, a digital copy of this very expensive work safely stored in my very cheap camera.
The Reverend Canon Brownrigg’s evangelical journey through the islands of Bass Strait, offering succour to its spiritually neglected inhabitants in the good ship Freak, has become something of a legend. As he puts it himself in his introduction:
The present narrative furnished details of a recent mission, and is published in the hope of awakening a more extensive and real interest on behalf of the Straits’ islanders, whose spiritual necessities claim to be considered, and, as far as possible, supplied.
Attending to the needs of the far-flung members of his parish of Launceston, Reverend Brownrigg journeyed out the heads of the Tamar River in the summer of 1872 and into the strait. He passed the rocks of Barren Joey and Tenth Island and made his first stop at the narrow, 4-kilometre-long Waterhouse Island, where he administered to its entire population of just two people, ‘a Mr.
Samuel Barrett and a lad’. Today, sadly, the legacy of sheep and deer on Waterhouse Island – tended no doubt by the Reverend’s diminutive congregation – not to the mention cats, mice and an array of foreign plant life, is severe erosion which has devastated the native colonies of birds, including the short-tailed shearwater.
From Waterhouse, he visited the outlying islands of Flinders and the Furneaux Group, then dashed north to the Kent, where he carried out the Lord’s work on Deal, Dover and Erith, all in the space of several weeks.
Brownrigg’s book is unique, giving us in the no-nonsense narrative of a Victorian gentleman a vivid snapshot of a brief time in the life of Bass Strait’s islands that had vanished just a few decades later as people abandoned the smaller islands for good.
Today, little evidence exists of the human habitation he found on many of the places he visited: Green, Kangaroo, Prime Seal, and other islands, but the portraits he paints are testament to the toughness of its early settlers, for example, Goose Island, west of Flinders, where he dropped in on its lonely lighthouse-keeping family.
The island itself contains, indeed, very few attractions. It is small, not exceeding some three hundred acres in extent, and very low … the southern end, where the lighthouse has been placed is so low that spray is often carried completely over from one side of the island to the other. Throughout the entire area not a tree is to be found … good water is not to be obtained, except as when collected when rain falls. That which springs naturally, being too strongly impregnated with some mineral substance to be suitable for drinking or cooking purposes …
The Forgotten Islands Page 14