Long live the skipper. There’s no way I’ll be able to get this contraption going without him.
The Inga Viola at top speed, Madagascar.
We loaded our stores and out we chugged at top speed, about 4 knots. Not surprisingly we broke down on our second day, or rather one of the cylinders did; a con rod broke. The skipper, not in the least fazed, unbolted the sump under the disabled cylinder, removed the con rod, wrapped a diver’s weight belt around the crank shaft to balance the weight of the disconnected piston, and off we went again, chug chug chug at a new top speed of 2 knots. Not only were we dependent on that one cylinder for propulsion, but it also drove the scuba compressor and the generator; we couldn’t even operate the ship’s radio without it. God help us if we needed a mayday.
Mechanical problems aside, the diving was good and the offshore reefs were in excellent condition, but as far as I was concerned, the boat was a floating coffin; it had no chance of getting away from a cyclone, and it was cyclone season. With an uncharacteristic concern for safety, I got off the boat after a couple of weeks and worked on my coral collection in a guesthouse in Nosy Be, usually surrounded by inquisitive locals. While I was there a cyclone threatened, prompting me to start planning a rescue mission, but fortunately the cyclone missed the boat, which by chance was in a protected inlet still with the others on it.
‘We didn’t hear of any cyclone,’ the skipper later said. That would have been because the cyclone had veered to the north and his radio wasn’t on since the engine wasn’t running. The following year another cyclone hit the same place and the mighty Inga Viola went down at anchor. I hope someone salvaged the engine.
Curiously, we recorded more species on our first dive than the French had during the years they occupied the marine station at Nosy Be. This made me wonder just what they’d done with their time: enjoyed their wine and cheese perhaps? By the time we’d finished our work we had confirmed that Madagascar had the highest diversity of corals in the western Indian Ocean, something we’d expected from previous reports but which had never been proven.
Reef slope, Chumbe Island, Madagascar. This is a favourite photo of mine because it shows the many growth forms corals have.
Back in Antananarivo, the capital, a rebellion broke out the day before we were due to depart and the airport was closed. We had no way of getting off the island, try as we did, even looking out for a passing yacht. However, the rebellion was peaceful, apparently enjoyed by all, and it allowed us to see something of the island. Most interesting of all were the fascinating animals the island is so famous for and which live nowhere else, including several species of lemur and chameleons. Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world, so slash-and-burn land clearing goes on unabated. All the forests, including some which were national parks, had been heavily logged; the only tree I saw that was thicker than a telegraph pole was on a privately owned patch of land, and had its own armed guard. That one tree would be worth several months’ income for a would-be tree thief. The outlook for that wonderful place is grim indeed.
Unfortunately, although I have studied its corals in museums, I’ve never been to Chagos, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. This must be a special place for marine life, because it’s the stepping stone that links the western Indian Ocean with the east. It is an extensive atoll complex, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the three studies made of the corals there yielded very different accounts.
In preparation for a book I was planning, I made a string of field trips across the Indian Ocean in the late 1990s. These included a study of the corals of the northern Seychelles, and an all too brief look at those of the Maldives, but I did a thorough job in southern Sri Lanka and western Thailand.
Having done so much work on the Western Australian coast and seen the role that currents and temperature play in determining coral diversity there, I became interested in the opposite – in isolation. There are many places to study isolation in the Pacific, but there are not many in the Indian Ocean that are distant from major coastlines and the influence of strong coastal currents.
The Cocos (Keeling) Islands form a true atoll about halfway between Sri Lanka and Australia. I joined a Western Australian Museum trip there in 1994 out of curiosity about the corals that might occur in such isolation, and also because of the place’s unique history. There are many islands making up the atoll, one inhabited by about five hundred ethnic Malays, mostly Sunni Muslims, and another by a small number of Europeans. At least that was the case when we were there; now there are five hotels. The Clunies-Ross family had occupied the atoll since the early nineteenth century and ended up running their own feudal government there, even minting their own currency. Not surprisingly, Australia took offence at this and put an end to it in 1978, so by the time we turned up, no family members were in residence. The original 1888 mansion, Oceania House, an extraordinary sight for such an out-of-the-way place, was empty but as the front door was wide open I had a peek around the ground floor. It was very impressive, with tiled floors and an ornate bar complete with glasses, full decanters, and bottles galore. The bar looked much like a traditional English pub, except for a dozen or so hens that wandered in and out, happily clucking away.
The locals there were obviously a law-abiding lot. The one and only policeman on the island told me there’d only ever been one misdemeanour – someone had helped themselves to a little money from the shop cash register, but that was many years ago.
One day a German photographer turned up and asked us to drop him off on one of the small islands. He took some underwater photos of the wreck of the SMS Emden, the German light cruiser that had been fatally damaged by HMAS Sydney during World War I. He made a lot of money from those photos: why weren’t we smart enough to think of that?
The corals were rather disappointing. The atoll lagoon had turned anoxic (devoid of oxygen) due to a rare failure of the usual tidal flushing, and there were no corals left alive when we arrived. But we dived a lot on the outer faces, which were in good shape. Biologically there were few surprises. The isolation of the islands was always going to dictate that the diversity would be low, and the presence or absence of species appeared to be a matter of hit-and-miss, rather like terrestrial island biogeography, about which theories then abounded.
Over many subsequent years we eventually made sense of the origins of eastern Indian Ocean corals, most of which are exports from the equatorial central Indo-Pacific. The key to these migrations is, as I’ve said, the capacity of coral larvae to make long-distance journeys, something we still have a lot to learn about, but which is fundamental to all coral biogeography and evolutionary theories. That corals have a great ability to disperse is taken for granted today, but before this was realised most theories put forward on the subject read like fairy tales, with no possible basis in reality.
A sad end and a lifeline
Throughout much of the mid-1980s Kirsty had been increasingly feeling that while I was getting on with my life – travelling, having all sorts of adventures, working, travelling again – she was stuck at home bearing the brunt of family responsibilities and unable to exploit her own talents, except when in a theatre production. And when she was, she had a long drive, at night, to wherever she was rehearsing. I knew this was unfair; it was no small matter.
Coincidentally, in 1988 the husband of a schoolfriend of Kirsty’s who ran adventure tours as a hobby asked me to be the guide on a trip to the northern Great Barrier Reef for writers and photographers. As this was a perfect opportunity for Kirsty to see The Reef for the first time and to do so in her sort of company, I agreed. The trip, to take place the following year, would require some time to organise and in the meantime we took a long-planned holiday in Israel, arranged by our Israeli friends.
In those days it was still possible to travel anywhere in Israel and we did, even wandering freely around Jerusalem, which was soon to become impossible. Katie, whose health had continued to improve, enjoyed floating on the Dead Sea (as oppose
d to in it, due its extreme salinity) and we were all entranced by Masada, the mountain fortress where the Jews made their last stand against the Romans. Kirsty and I enjoyed the company of the Israelis, including new friends we made, but Kirsty felt that I was still working. One day I went diving at Eilat, Israel’s tiny strip of reef at the tip of the Red Sea, and received a hot reception when I inadvertently surfaced in Jordan. I also looked for fossils when we went into the desert. In that sense, I knew I was always working. I still am, and always will be; it’s who I am.
Perhaps our return home highlighted the problems Kirsty was having with me: it seemed to her that I was never there for her, and it was true. From my point of view, no amount of work or travel seemed to stop the relentless decline I’d been in since Noni’s death. Kirsty announced that she’d had enough; she decided to leave Rivendell, with me or without.
So in May that year we bought a house in town, and heartbreakingly I put Rivendell up for sale. Kirsty moved into the new house and offered me a room where I could come and go as I pleased. I tried doing that, and spent a couple of nights listening to the neighbour’s dog barking instead of possums arguing, and smelling the neighbour’s cooking instead of wattles. It felt horribly claustrophobic. I lasted only those two nights, then withdrew Rivendell from sale and went home.
Kirsty’s move wasn’t just about real estate. Our once idyllic marriage had seen such unrelenting bad times that it had become little more than a survival mechanism. I started to slide into bouts of my old pill-popping depression, taking the phone off the hook when at home in the evenings for fear someone would call. Buffer, my much loved labrador, was always at my side.
The trip to the northern Great Barrier Reef went ahead later that year. Kirsty’s friend had chartered a 200-ton converted Scottish collier, the Noel Buxton, which seemed just about due for the scrapyard. Fortunately the weather was good, so she stayed afloat and we were able to see the far northern ribbon reefs without too many of our number getting seasick. We stopped off at some of my favourite places, including Raine Island, which we could only see from the sea, as by then it was under strict protection and my special-exemption status had expired. We kept going until we reached Mer Island, where I met again some of the locals I remembered from visits long before.
It was an enjoyable trip for all aboard, which included Issie Bennett. It was always good to catch up with her, and as usual we had many long talks. I was only just beginning to realise how the freedom I’d had to be in the natural world as a child had moulded my future, and I found myself talking to a kindred spirit on that score as well. It was only then, too, that I learnt it was Mrs Collins, my old teacher, who’d persuaded my mother to take me to see Issie and who’d later told Issie about my scholarship to the University of New England.
I think Kirsty, who’d come to know Issie, would have enjoyed the trip, but she had decided against going. Being married in theory but not in practice had left us with nowhere to go, and so we agreed to separate. Divorces are never nice things, especially after twenty-two years of marriage, and more especially after all we had been through, but if anyone must have one, let it be like ours.
The Family Law Court judge was an amateur actor and had been in a production with Kirsty.
‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘you are aware that I know Kirsty personally; do you think this might influence these proceedings?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Kirsty,’ he said, ‘you are aware that I know Charlie personally; do you think this might influence these proceedings?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Well,’ said the judge, ‘you guys know what you’re doing. Done.’
Kirsty and I then had a very sad dinner. It was all rather surreal. There were no lawyers telling us what to do. Kirsty had her house and such investments as we owned; I had Rivendell and Buffer. It wasn’t until much later that Mary, forever alert to social justice, pointed out that this wasn’t a fair division. I had a career and a good salary; Kirsty had neither, for it was she, not me, who’d sacrificed a career for our children. I needed to remedy that, Mary said. I suppose these sorts of issues occur with most divorces, but Kirsty’s and mine was unusual; we were able to settle such matters ourselves, and we remain close friends.
I first met Mary Stafford-Smith when she came to my office at AIMS to talk about her PhD project – the effects of sediment on corals, which she was doing at Lizard Island on a scholarship from York University. All I remember of that conversation is Mary telling me what she thought I should think of her project. At any rate, she did most of the talking and seemed to have things well under control.
A couple of years later I was sitting at a table in the AIMS canteen having lunch. There were several other people there, including Mary, who was telling engaging stories about life on Lizard Island, and in particular her encounters with Agro, the island’s crankiest sand goanna. By the end of lunch she had me entranced. This was no small thing, as I’d been alone at Rivendell, shunning any contact with humanity, for a long time. I decided to invite her to dinner, then took a week to summon up the courage.
Shortly afterwards, Mary headed off to her mother’s home in England to write up her thesis. I visited her a few months later and she took me to see Cheveley Park, the horse stud her family had owned and where she’d lived until she was seventeen. I was flabbergasted. The grounds, the trees, the main house and the hundred-odd horseboxes (stables), complete with red-tile roofs and clock towers, were staggeringly beautiful. There were fields of freesias and daffodils everywhere, and giant cedars of Lebanon, more than nine hundred years old.
Mary immigrated permanently to Australia in the latter part of 1990. I met her at Townsville airport, a small figure almost entirely hidden behind 120 kilograms of luggage on a trolley, which she, Mary-style, had talked herself out of paying any excess baggage for. My new life had begun, one that Mary was to transform into something I could never have imagined.
Early on, she decided that we should have our own seagoing boat. It needed to be a displacement hull, not a speedboat, and one that could be towed on a trailer by our Troop Carrier. After much looking we found the perfect design, a boat with a solid fibreglass hull and diesel engine. We also found someone who could build it for us in Brisbane. Wanda (named after the fish) was a terrific little boat, incredibly seaworthy if a little slow.
She proved her worth when Mary, having obtained a post-doc scholarship at James Cook University to continue her studies on coral, spent most of her time in 1993 at the Orpheus Island research station doing experiments. Her field work was done from Wanda, with me turning up at regular intervals, helping here and there and enjoying the working holiday.
This was a good period for my own work too. In 1992, with a monograph on Japanese corals published, I followed with another on coral biogeography, which brought together all that was known on the subject at the time.21 Mary helped a lot with these, as well as several other studies I was doing. She had computer skills I could only dream of, and in return I helped her with my knowledge of corals and with technical aspects of her experiments. She was becoming a good critic of anything I wrote – we forged an extraordinary working partnership on top of a loving personal one. I had a guardian angel somewhere, even though it had a lousy track record.
Everything seemed rosy indeed until, in passing, Mary mentioned the subject of children. She wanted children! With all I’d been through, wasn’t this the last thing I wanted? But after a rethink I realised I had to stop the tragedies of the past from dominating my future, so the ensuing conversation was brief. A short time later, Mary’s pregnancy test was positive. Another new beginning had just begun, but in the meantime we had a journey to make.
Our Troop Carrier wasn’t just good for towing Wanda, and Mary was keen to see the outback, especially after hearing of my travels there as a student. Back then I’d met up with several groups of Aboriginal people in very remote places and made a point of talking to the elders about their spiritual affinity wi
th the land. I imagined I understood that, at least a little, for it seemed not so different from how I felt about my own world. And so in the winter of 1994, with Mary six months pregnant, we teamed up with her brother Mark and his partner Jenny, who reassuringly was a doctor specialising in obstetrics, and made a seven-week pilgrimage along the Canning Stock Route, which runs inland from the Great Victoria Desert in the south to the Great Sandy Desert in the north.
At the northern end of the Canning we farewelled Mark and Jenny and continued on by ourselves to the southern border of the King Leopold Ranges Conservation Park. We stayed there a week, camping under the stars among the many branches of the Drysdale River, at least 100 kilometres in all directions from any other human and perhaps where only Aboriginal people had ventured before. It would have taken months for me to get my fill of that lovely peaceful place. I sat and watched the river for hours: a freshwater crocodile might come and go, and if I was really still, all sorts of other wildlife came close by – jabirus and even a small mob of emus. I regularly cooled off in the river, freshwater crocodiles being harmless (something Mary took a degree of convincing about), then explored a little or did nothing. Unhappily, doing nothing wasn’t what it once was. Thoughts persistently invaded my peace: I was losing the gift of not thinking, and felt much the poorer for it.
A Life Underwater Page 21