Owen and Eleanor Make Things Up

by H. M. Bouwman

  If I had hit either side of that stringer, I think I would have put a massive ding or a hole in the board, or snapped it, because I would’ve landed on super-thin fibreglass and soft foam. If … if … if …

  I was flying through the air, and then my life changed instantly. In a click of the fingers I went from pure bliss to near death.

  We were flying super-low over the ocean. I’d learn later that this was because we could have easily been shot down as an unidentified aircraft – the helicopter wasn’t registered, Michael didn’t have the required licences, and we had no way of telling anyone who we were. We only had that yellow Nokia phone. It was turning to dusk when land finally appeared on the horizon.

  Right, we’ve made it. We’re here.

  But no, we were a lot further south. Michael needed to dodge the authorities with a different flight plan, so we still had a long way to go.

  As we flew up the coast I could hear Michael saying stuff, but I couldn’t make sense of anything because of the noise. After a few hours of flying I was convinced that I must have been close to safety, but Michael picked up his phone with a worried look and signalled that it wasn’t working. I had a hundred questions going around in my head: Where are we? Why aren’t we there by now? Who is this guy, really?

  All of a sudden I saw an opening in the middle of the jungle below, which turned out to be a big soccer field. As we got lower I was trying to add two and two together. Then we started circling, and I realised we were about to land.

  This can’t be it. Something’s wrong here. This doesn’t look right.

  I had been expecting ambulances. Everyone was going to be there, like when the helicopters land in M*A*S*H. There were lots of people around, but they were playing soccer in the middle of the bloody jungle. I couldn’t see any houses. There were no lights, no obvious roads, nothing.

  We landed.

  I had gathered that something was wrong, because Michael kept picking up his phone. He turned off the chopper and turned sideways to try to face me. ‘I’ve had to land here,’ he explained. ‘It’s getting too dark, we’re running out of fuel, and I can’t get in contact with anyone.’

  ‘Are you fucking serious?’

  That’s just … That’s just fucking great. Here I am, stranded in this jungle with a stranger in a fucking helicopter that can’t fly, and I can’t fucking move a muscle.

  But I had to throw all my trust in him; I had to trust that he knew what he was doing. After we landed, I was still thinking things were under control.

  All the local villagers ran to the helicopter out of curiosity, and we were soon surrounded, like a big stand-off. It felt like there were a hundred people staring into the helicopter, all thinking, We’ve never seen this before in our lives. I sat in the helicopter, staring out, thinking, I’ve never seen this before in my life.

  Michael kept saying, ‘Okay. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be cool.’

  I watched as Michael got out of the chopper – that was all I could do. I could see him making hand gestures, and he spoke some sort of Indonesian, but I had no way of knowing what he was asking or where we were. There are hundreds of languages spoken in Indonesia, so I had no idea whether people could understand what he was saying or not.

  Meanwhile, I started getting really hot. Michael was out there with his back to me, trying to communicate with the villagers, and I felt like I was sitting under a big magnifying glass in the late afternoon sun. My arms were strapped down, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t talk, let alone yell, although I was trying my hardest. It took about fifteen minutes before I finally managed to get his attention.

  He could see that I needed to get out of the helicopter so he enlisted some of the locals to open the door. I got a breath of fresh air, which settled me a bit. Then suddenly I had these hands all over me, because everyone wanted to help, but I started freaking out, shouting, ‘Just don’t touch me!’ But no-one could hear.

  They lowered me out of the chopper and lay me on the ground. My peripheral vision wasn’t great, so all I could do was listen and try to work out what was going on, but it was all gibberish to me with everyone talking at once in a language I didn’t understand.

  At first the crowd was twenty metres back as Michael tried to keep everyone away. For around twenty to thirty minutes he kept coming to check if I was okay, and then he went back to the conversation, trying to see if anybody there could help. I stayed pretty calm, thinking, Everything’s under control, he’s just organising an ambulance. It’s just about being patient … just try and be patient. I’ve done well so far. I knew he wasn’t going to be able to ring triple zero exactly, but I was confident that he was going to organise some sort of help. He must have been able to communicate well; he’d been out in these islands for however long.

  But after a while I started getting really nervous, thinking, What the hell’s happening? I haven’t freaked out at many things in my life, but I knew things weren’t right. The conversations went on for a while before Michael finally came back; the crowd started surging in as well. He looked at me and said, ‘I’ve got to leave. There’s no-one here who can help, the phone’s out, and we’re kind of lost. We’re not where we should be and I need to go and find some sort of transport.’

  He was my only hope, so I was thinking, No, you can’t leave me here. Don’t leave me alone – you can’t!

  But I knew if he didn’t go for help, none was going to appear. I just had to keep fighting my thoughts and weigh up what was going to be beneficial. What are we going to do? Sit around in the jungle and wait for someone to find us? No-one is going to find us. No-one knows where we are. Michael hadn’t been able to ring anyone with coordinates. We are all on our own. I’m guessing my eyes were wide with all the adrenaline. I probably looked terrified.

  Michael stood, turned his back and walked through crowd until he disappeared from view, leaving me on the ground, unable to move, in the middle of a frigging jungle with all these strangers around me who I couldn’t communicate with. It was another case of telling myself, We’ve got to do it, otherwise I just lie here and die.

  Once Michael had gone, I was suddenly aware that I had no idea who he was, where he’d gone or whether he’d come back. I had all these things rattling around in my head as the last of the daylight faded. I was imagining what was happening back on the boat, hoping everyone was cool and not freaking out, but I knew I was out of reach, even to them. I wondered if they had any idea that we hadn’t made it to the medical team in Padang. They were probably feeling as helpless as me. They might search for me for as long as they could, but I knew they would never find me, no-one would, so I could throw that hope away. The realisation hit me: I was absolutely alone, lying on this dirty pitch of a soccer field, lost in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by villagers.

  This was the most terrifying part of the whole journey. More and more people kept arriving every minute to see the white guy lying on the ground strapped to half a surfboard. They were mostly dressed in shorts and t-shirts, but many of them looked like they were coming home from work. It was like I had landed in rush hour. I was still dressed in just board shorts, with no top, covered in blood from the head wound I’d received when I broke my neck. I kept trying to talk, but it all came out in a whisper.

  By this stage I was feeling weary because I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink. As it got dark, my body clock started to slow down – or shut down – and I felt like I was in a bad dream, but I kept telling myself that I had to stay alert, I mustn’t go to sleep. I’m a good sleeper, so that was a really hard thing to do.

  If I fell asleep, what would these guys do to me? Sumatra has a long history of ritual cannibalism … More and more people started arriving. Everyone was staring down at me, talking among themselves, and all I could do was look up in silence, while in my head I was screaming, What the fuck’s going on?

  7

  Alone in the jungle

  I lie there alone, thinking of Bowie and Aimee back home,
and how I’ve still got to look after them. They never leave my mind. I have to sharpen my focus and not panic. I had already been missing them. This is my first trip away since Bowie was born, and even though I knew I’d miss her, I’m surprised by just how much. She’s a bit over a year old, learning to walk and talk; it’s so much fun hanging out with her.

  Aimee was happy for me to go on the trip. I surf most mornings, and obviously, being in the industry, I do sales trips here and there, but my life is surfing; she’s always understood that. The conversation wasn’t that this was going to be my last-ever big surf trip – I went on one every year – but with a very young child, and looking to have more kids in the future, this would be the last one for a while. There would probably still be surf trips, but the shift would be to more family-friendly places.

  When you have a kid your priorities change. I didn’t think I could surf every morning for much longer, so this trip would allow me to binge-surf for a week to balance that out.

  Aimee handles things well in life; she gets things done, so even though having a child is still fresh and new, she deals with it like a pro. We’re also lucky enough to have family around who give us a lot of support.

  As the light fades in the jungle, I wonder where they are now. I imagine I’m at home, having just eaten dinner, sitting down and reading Bowie a story while she cuddles into me. How I wish it could be.

  I left instructions with my mates on the boat not to call anyone until I was okay. My plan is to try to stay as calm as possible, let the body heal as quickly as it can. I might be in and out of hospital before they even know something’s happened. I foolishly think I’ll be able to ring Aimee while walking out and say, ‘Look, I’ve hurt my neck but I’ll be fine.’

  I’ve injured myself plenty of times before. I was surfing Boneyards, our local reef break, one morning. It was a good size and there were only a couple of other people out when I got clobbered by my board and my fin left a big, nasty cut on the back of my head.

  Normally you get banged and it just hurts a lot, but ironically when you get sliced up you don’t really feel it. I’ve probably had over a hundred stitches in my life, and they’ve all been in my head, so I think it must be pretty hard. But this time at Boneyards, I remember blood going everywhere. I didn’t feel groggy or anything, so I got out of the water and walked up to the car. I saw a friend of mine called Chad and called him over.

  ‘Hey, Chad, can you look at the back of my head for me? I’ve got a gash; tell me how bad it is or if it’s okay?’

  He looked, jumped a metre and freaked out. ‘Aaaaargh!’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good, mate,’ I replied. ‘Thanks for making me feel better. Sounds like I need to get stitched up!’

  I got changed, wrapped the towel around my head and drove myself to hospital. On the way home I rang Aimee to explain why I was late, that I’d just got ten stitches in my head.

  Lying in the jungle now, I have that same thought process: I’ll get myself to hospital, they’ll fix me up, I’ll walk out, and I’ll give Aimee a call on the way home.

  I’d give anything to be home right now.

  I feel my heart racing, so I close my eyes and take myself away to a different spot. Not for long, but I need to collect my thoughts, to have a bit of a rest so I can focus on what’s actually happening.

  When I need to, I think of places I love. Out in the water by myself, I would do a lot of thinking. In the Kiama area there’s not a lot of guys to surf with in the mornings, so I’ve often found myself surfing alone. I really enjoy sitting out in the ocean, listening to Mother Nature, watching and feeling the constant motion of water, the sun sending curious colours across the sky as it comes up. I always take myself into that still space. It gives me a break and replenishes me so that when reality pops up again I can use that energy to paddle for the next wave.

  Back in the jungle, the very real thing in my mind is that I have to try to stop these guys from taking me somewhere, and that somewhere could be a dinner table. I know I might just be hallucinating but I have this image in my head, like in cartoons – people get lost, end up in a village, and there’s a big cauldron sitting on a roaring fire with people dancing around it, tipping spices in. Only it’s me they’re seasoning for a great tribal feast. At first the image seems funny, but the more I think about it in my panicked state, the more it feels like a possibility.

  As darkness settles in, the crowd continues to surge and the chatter grows louder. I’m feeling more claustrophobic, and I yell out to stay away, but of course no-one can hear me. I can’t get away, can’t defend myself, and my adrenaline starts firing as I begin to panic even more. The crowd presses in and all I can scream is, ‘FAAAARRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!’

  Tears run down my face and around my ears. They just aren’t listening. More and more people want a closer look, and all I can do is hope for help, hope for Michael to come back, to come back now.

  The injury still doesn’t feel real. I know I have a broken neck, but I’m holding on to the idea that it’s just going to get treated, the same as a broken arm. The doctors will put a brace around my neck and then I’ll be good again. The seriousness of it isn’t playing too much on my mind – I have other priorities – but those Why me? questions start coming up. I was the one who organised the trip. I got everyone together …

  Good ol’ Captain Johnny was one of the original charter captains in the area, and the Barrenjoey was recognised as one of the best boats, even though it was older. John knew everything about the place – that’s why I’d always wanted to go with him. His wife, Belinda, and son, Finn, were on the boat too. Finn was about three or four, and he was like a little Tarzan boy, running around the boat with speedos on, just a happy surfy kid.

  It’s the idyllic form of surfing: you’re on a boat with your friends, searching for waves. There are perfect waves everywhere you look, but they’re all breaking over shallow coral and rock, so that means there’s potential for smaller injuries.

  I still remember my first trip to Hawaii – big waves and everything. I was paddling out at Sunset, a legendary place I’d always wanted to surf. I was thinking, Oh, I don’t know how I’m going to handle this after years and years of watching it on film … And then I saw these guys trying to take off on huge waves, and they had trouble getting up. It shocked me: these guys could hardly surf. They were taking off on waves and almost making it. If they could do it, I could do it.

  You go around the world and there’s no shortage of guys who aren’t very good, but they’re giving it a go. And you wonder why there aren’t more serious injuries. I relate it back to skiing and snow-boarding. The steeper the slope gets, the easier it is – to a point. The faster you go, the more control you have because you’re not forcing anything; you’re more in the flow.

  A lot of waves are perfect because you can time them more easily. You don’t have those random sections popping up and landing on your head like you do at home. We call them skate parks, because they’re mechanical, predictable. Every wave is the same; you know what’s coming. It doesn’t take away from the experience, it adds to it. But these waves in the Mentawais aren’t just the typical skate park waves we get in Australia. These are the waves you drew on the school table when you were daydreaming. And when you know everyone is going to be like that, you’re salivating the whole time, because you know what to expect.

  Most people charter boats in the Mentawais for ten days. The boat is like a motorhome on the water – it gives you the freedom to come and go as you please. Many of the islands are uninhabited, and they’re a mix of reef and coral. In that type of formation there are lots of reef channels, so you can get in and out pretty easily, but having a boat means you can go anywhere you want, chase down any swell.

  The Mentawai Islands was pretty much the last spot in Indonesia that I hadn’t been to. I’d always wanted to go, but I’d been waiting for somebody else to organise it. Guys within the surf industry are always going, but somehow it was never the ri
ght moment for me, and time was getting on.

  After Bowie turned one, I thought, This is the time.

  All through my life I’ve been the kind of person who says ‘to hell with it’ and organises things themselves. Once I’d decided to go I put the feelers out to the crew to see who wanted in, and the boat filled pretty quickly between some of my best friends and guys I knew from the industry.

  At first Captain John didn’t have an opening, but once I told him we were keen and who was coming on the boat, he moved some dates around and found a slot for us. It was on.

  As well as me and Sparkes, there was Dwayne, whose nickname is Zombie – another friend of twenty years or longer. Like Sparkes, Dwayne’s from Dapto and a really good surfer. He’s about four years younger than me, but he started catching the train with us in school. He’s my good mate Troy’s younger brother, so he’s like our little brother too. Well, I tried to look after him like a little brother, even though he didn’t need any help. We nicknamed him Zombie because he always had the same smile on his face every minute of the day. When he was young he didn’t talk much; he usually just returned that smile. I love him dearly and was stoked to have him on the boat. (Coincidentally, Dwayne broke his neck too, about three years after I’d done mine, but, thankfully, he was only paralysed for a day.)

  There was Matt Goodwin, who we nicknamed Goody – a younger local guy from Jones Beach in Kiama. He lived right on the beach where we hung out surfing most days. Even when there were no waves at Jones, all our friends used to meet on the hill, check out the conditions and have something to eat. We befriended Goody and he became part of the group.

  Then there was one of my good mates Todd Prestage, who we call Prezzo. He’s from Gerringong, the next town south of Kiama, and I grew up surfing against him. There was one point where he was a top-ten surfer in the world. He ended up becoming a really close friend. He’d been off tour for eight years or so when we organised the trip, but he was working in the industry as well.