ABORIGINAL ALCATRAZ
I was crouching like a robber in the old tin bath, tipping water over myself with a pot, when a loud bang on the outside of the hut startled me.
Jamie’s back, was my immediate thought. Back from Flinders with some cold cans and the boat all nicely tied up and secure. Legend.
I waited for the usual crunch of gravel and the double thump as he stamped his sandy boots on the splintery pallet outside the door. Instead came the clunk and jangle of a plastic bucket as it bounced and skidded down the hill, followed by a low rumble of thunder off to the west. A dense squall seized the hut. The shampoo wobbled off the driftwood shelf, splashing cold, milky bathwater into my face.
Shit.
I dried and slung the towel around my waist. My mind was sharp, now, with adrenaline. I had been on this island a long time – long enough to trust my senses when it came to the weather. As I stepped outside, the wind snatched the door from my hand and slammed it open against the cladding. Sand and dust blew in. One of my pet hates was a dirty floor and I’d swept it out with the rigour of a slave every morning and afternoon since starting the job. But now, as I looked up at the front rolling towards me, clouds low and moving fast in a long, black, churning line – unnaturally symmetrical – I no longer gave a fuck about the sand or the floor.
With a knot in my guts, I scanned the boat harbour and the open water between the islands. I couldn’t see Jamie, as I had hoped, winding up the steep track on the tractor, arm draped around a carton of Boag’s Green. The workmate I was responsible for, and my only companion on the island, was somewhere out on that sea. The rising tide had brought on the rollers, and they dashed the granite sentinels at the mouth of our harbour. White, foamy plumes – streaked with ribbon weed – rained across the coastal plains with the aid of the westerly, salinating thin soils and crystallising the blue-grey cobbles above the beach. It was there, within that miracle combination of salt crust and sparse tussock grass, that the kunikung grew. It never failed to surprise me, even amid the distress and turmoil of this very moment, how it managed to survive, let alone produce the sweetest and most nourishing bush tucker.
Calm to violent; sweet to salty; alive to dead. That is the islands.
This duality, I had come to understand, was ingrained into this place; deep rooted like peat in a fine Scottish dram. And, just like whisky, the islands had a good side, but a bad one too. In this moment, I was seeing the bad side, and my brain was in overdrive, cycling through every possible scenario and returning to the worst ones.
The terrible ones.
The ones that iced up the marrow in my bones.
Over here, the weather got moody. Sometimes it wanted to kill you. I felt it right then, trying to send me back to the sea. All I could do was squint into the wind and shiver as the westerly drew the spit from my open mouth and replaced it with saline mist. My towel finally worked loose and sailed into the blackening sky, creating lunatic shapes on its jagged trajectory towards the distant blue hills of Cape Barren Island.
~
I stumbled back inside, wrapped myself in an old hospital blanket and placed my iPhone on the windowsill – the only place that got reception – and watched as one bar of signal appeared. The wall flexed as the draught ebbed and flowed under the door and through the gaps in the cladding. My ears popped. We made a mistake when we cut the windows in. It had compromised the strength of the wall. I called Jamie – once, twice, and again for good luck. Voicemail. I dialled the Flinders Island Pub. I knew the number off by heart.
‘Mike, it’s Ray here from Chappell Island.’
‘Who?’
It was my idea to do the grog run. I knew Jamie would be keen. He’d been jonesing for a beer for the last few days. This afternoon, when he dropped the chainsaw a bit too hard and screamed ‘Fuck you!’ to nobody in particular, I could tell he’d reached the end of his shit. It had been a long week of hard work. I loaded the gun when I mentioned how nice a beer would be after work. He gave me a look that said he would do it, and I gave him a nod that said he could. Then he was gone. A quick scan of the ocean had shown calm, relaxed water; the only movement was the tide rippling through the channel between this island and the next. And daylight saving meant there was enough light to get home. Now this.
‘Yeah, Mike. It’s Ray, from Chappell Island. One of the Aboriginal—’
‘Oh, yeah, Ray – how’s it going out there?’ Mike half yelled above the din of the jukebox. In the background, a woman yelled for ten dollars on Imperial Jack, for a place.
‘Yeah, okay. Is Jamie there?’
There was a pause and some muffled speaking. I closed my eyes and hoped this meant he was putting Jamie on the phone.
‘Sorry, Ray, the punters are on fire tonight. Who were you after, sorry?’
‘Jamie.’
‘Jamie … Jamie – oh, one of your fellas. Yeah, he was here earlier.’
‘Is he there now?’ I cleared my throat to disguise the desperation in my voice.
‘Nah, he left a while ago – maybe an hour. With a carton and some rollies. Said he was heading back to Chappell. Look, it’s pretty noisy in here …’
‘Yeah, I can hear.’
‘You boys gonna fix your tab up soon? It’s getting up there.’
I held my phone in front of me and squeezed it. There was a cracking sound and the screen went blank. The bastard chooses now to ask about our goddamned tab? I tapped the display and it lit up again. ‘You there, Mike?’
‘Yep.’
‘I’ll fix that up next week.’ I ended the call and expelled a long sigh before trying Jamie’s number a few more times.
Fuck you, Jamie. Answer.
Reaching for the marine radio that was mounted on the wall near the window, I realised my hand was shaking.
‘Calm down, ol’ boy,’ I said out loud, being careful not to depress the button on the side of the handpiece. It looked like a sharp key on a piano. The channel dial rolled between my thumb and forefinger, reminding me of a woman’s nipple. I found some momentary comfort in the numb, toneless clicking of the dial as it turned. I watched the tiny screen. The red segmented lines of digital numbers rearranged themselves in a chaos that was hypnotising.
I stopped on channel sixteen: the emergency channel.
As I put the mic to my mouth, my bottom lip started to quiver. I noticed for the first time that I had been labouring for that deep, satisfying breath we don’t realise we take until we can’t get it. I hadn’t felt like this since I was a kid: the involuntary meltdown. The feeling that you are losing it.
I stood motionless for a while, willing myself to make the call. Once you contacted the emergency services, there was no going back. Once they were notified, it was on record. It was against work rules to use the boat for anything other than work, and that included going to Flinders Island for grog. In fact, the rule had been made to stop people going to Flinders Island to get grog. Until now, we had always got away with it. Mike the publican wasn’t going to tell. He’d be doing himself out of business. Ours was a dry island and a dry program, but a beer or two after work reminded you that you were there of your own free will. Made you feel human. Those who had actually been to jail compared working on the island to a stint. It was tough: the physical work, the isolation, the rules.
I put the mic down, went to the window and scanned the ocean again, as if giving it my attention would bring Jamie back safe. It didn’t.
~
I knew Jamie had had it tough growing up. He was the youngest of many siblings, barely registering as a blip in the lives of his tweaker parents. When he was first sentenced to the youth detention centre for stealing cars, he was too young to be part of the Rum Island program. Once a kid turned fourteen, they had the choice of the detention centre or Rum Island. Black kids, that is. They usually picked the island because they took it as the easier option. They we
ren’t locked up. They had the run of the place. It wasn’t security fences that kept them in, it was the sea. ‘Aboriginal Alcatraz’, they called it. Jamie had upgraded from stealing cars to burgin’ houses, and he eventually got done. He was fifteen and a half when he went to court. This time, he chose the island. I was working on Chappell Island at the time, building a tractor shed for the workers. I’d had visits from the Alcatraz boys a few times. They came up with the program worker in the boat. One time, they knocked off all my squid jigs. Another time, it was a full packet of smokes. After that, I learned not to trust them.
Their program coordinator, Bernice, wasn’t suited to the islands. She was a burned-out office worker, trying her hand at a lifestyle job. The boys broke into her cabin once and found the keys to the fuel store. Bernice caught them in there, sucking on a forty-four. The way she described the kids that day made the whiskers on my neck itch: all of them standing there, swaying, with a ring of rust around their mouths, eyes focused on something unseen. Petrol sniffing was serious business, and the policy in this situation was to call in a plane and send them off. But Bernice was scared of losing her job, so she didn’t report it. Instead she sent them to their rooms that night with a warning. The next day they all did a shit in the small water tank feeding Bernice’s shower. She knew there was something wrong from the smell, and her suspicions were confirmed by the bits of corn she found floating in the tank.
When Jamie came to the end of his second stint on Rum Island, the mob that ran the detention program sent him to work with me. Of course I didn’t want it – but I had no choice. To my surprise, he was suited to working. He helped me finish the shed and then we started on the weed work together. We’d been here ever since – the two of us. He stayed here now, by himself, when I went to town for my days off. He’d come a long way, but still didn’t trust himself in the city. Other workers came and went. It’s a hard job and a tough environment to live in, but Jamie had found a place here. I’d taught him everything I knew about the islands – about boats; about our history – and he took it all in. The juvenile offender was gone. The islands had claimed him. He was a stand-up young man, hungry for his culture and a legitimate dollar in his pocket. Here, he had become a somebody. But a dead somebody becomes a nobody again pretty quick.
~
I put the radio handpiece back in its cradle. Calling it in meant explaining why Jamie was out in the boat. Once it was called in, my employer would be notified, which meant I would lose my job. Of course, if Jamie died or was hurt, it would mean more than losing my job. He was my responsibility, so I’d probably go to jail. Worse still, I’d have to face his family – and the rest of the Aboriginal community.
Fuck that. I’d rather die myself.
I looked out the kitchen window at the mountain the whitefellas call ‘Mount Chappell’. Our fellas call it ‘Hummocky’. It seemed to have magic properties that made it attract rain. There was no rain falling on the tin roof of the hut, yet it swept across the mountain like a ghostly veil. I pictured the newborn water carving out tiny rivulets in the granite sand, as it followed the path of least resistance down the mountain and into the lowlands. All that water then made its way out into the sea, to where Jamie was.
One last look, and then I’ll make the damned call.
Realising I was still naked under the blanket, I threw on my storm gear. I white-knuckled the doorknob this time, as I left the hut, and managed to push the door closed behind me. I leaned into the wind as I climbed the hill. A twister broke loose from the ocean and ripped its way across the plains, dispersing loose vegetation and dust in spiralling fountains. The long grass and coastal shrubs along the sides of the track had succumbed to the wind and lay crippled and straining against the ground.
I fought my way to the base of the mountain and headed west, to get a view of where Jamie should pass around the island in the boat. On a good day, he would be home by now. But this squalling westerly would be cutting across his bow, the waves smacking him on the diagonal. He would be forced, constantly, to steer the boat into the waves – hitting them head on. Then, to maintain his course, he would have to manoeuvre back towards the island in between the waves in a constant zigzagging pattern. Outside the lee of the islands, the waves would tower over the boat, their crests churning and ragged. And white. The colour white. In all manner of cultures, beliefs and spiritual systems, white is a healing colour. It is pure; it is wholesome. It is life. But not for ocean-goers, and not for us blackfellas.
Oh, no.
White makes you wary. White equals death.
And when you are navigating the breakers, white is what you avoid.
I skirted the mountain, sheltering my face from the rain and debris of the storm. I kept moving until I could see across to Whitemark, the township of Flinders Island. Jamie would be travelling from there. Things were much worse on this side. My visibility – looking into the wind, rain and dust – was limited enough, but to spot a small tinnie out in the raging ocean … that would be almost impossible. A few times, I thought I glimpsed the boat. My heart and my hope rose and fell in my chest like the waves. I kneeled down beside a rock and stared and stared until I could barely see the water. After nearly an hour out there, and in the very last light of the dying day, I prayed. For the first time since I was a child, I prayed to God: God, who I didn’t even believe in. And I wept.
~
I didn’t even stamp the mud from my boots. I didn’t even turn on the light. The marine radio was sounding out from its corner by the window, illuminated by the evil red glow of those numbers that taunted me.
‘Sécurité, sécurité, sécurité …’ The repetition of this word meant that a marine safety warning was about to be given. Stumbling back from the other side of the island in the dark, I had come to the final and awful conclusion that there was no hope for Jamie, or for me. Jamie was dead – smashed up against a reef somewhere, or flung from the boat and drowned. This meant that my life was over too. No job. Disgraced. Shunned by my community. They would all know it was my fault, see it as my fault. The people who were proud of me for looking after our islands. The Elders I had always looked up to. My shame would be reflected in their eyes.
As the announcer read the weather warnings, in his perfectly timed and measured voice, a realisation gripped me with such panic that I fell to my knees. What if Jamie wasn’t dead? What if he was clinging to a rock somewhere or grasping the edge of the capsized tinnie – pleading eyes searching, desperate for the lights of a helicopter that his best mate and mentor on Chappell Island must have called? He would have called it, right? Any good man would have called it in, as soon as the storm first hit.
And the worst thing was that I still couldn’t bring myself to do it. Hope was so far away now. Lost. The whole world was lost. The radio announcer’s voice trailed out and then he was gone too.
I banged my head against the wall. Hard. The pain felt good, so I did it again with more force. The dizziness it brought was sublime, welcome. A hard gust hit the wall and something toppled from the windowsill and landed next to me. My phone. The screen was illuminated and a message icon flashed in the corner. In a daze, I swiped at a hot gush of blood coming from my forehead. I opened the message. It was from Jamie. I smeared blood across the phone’s screen and squinted through the red streaks at the words:
Hey man. Missed your call. Was just getting the boat out of the water. Weather came in so I’m staying on Flinders. Beer is going down well. See you tomorrow.
~
I woke on the floor, sometime in the night.
After reheating the water, I crouched like a robber in the old tin bath and scrubbed the dust and dried blood from my face and hair. The hut was no longer shaking; the storm had died out. With the radio now turned off, there was an incredible silence – and the peace it brought was an old friend I hadn’t seen in years.
I thought again about the kunikung growing down by the
salty shore and about the strange duality of the island. And, suddenly, came an irresistible desire to walk down there in the dark and rip off a ripe bud, just to taste its sweetness.
BLACK EYE
I lay awake last night, thinking about the worst thing I’ve ever done. The memory came on a tide of negative thoughts. This happens to alcoholics. Regularly. Some call it ‘alcohol anxiety’ or the ‘grog demons’. To me and to other blackfellas I know, it’s the ‘black eye’. I can’t decide if it’s a blessing or a curse that our brain tries to make life bearable, for a time, by suppressing all the bad stuff. All I know is that when we’re back in the gutter – when things go to shit – it all comes flooding back. Yeah, that black eye is a real bitch.
Now, the worst thing I have ever done.
A big statement, I know, for a fifty-year-old man who has lived a full life. And there’s plenty who’d give you a different opinion about what my ‘worst thing’ was. But what’s it matter what they think, right? I’m the one who has to live with it.
I blame Hardo, partly. It was his gun, after all.
‘Check this baby out,’ he said, with a roguish grin, as he unrolled the oily rag from where he’d hidden it in his swag. There’s no way they’d have let him on the boat knowing he had a gun. It was an air rifle – .177 calibre – with a barrel so bent it was like it had an elbow. The steel of the gun was orange with rust and the wooden stock was gouged and splintery. It was the most busted-arse gun I had ever seen, and I strongly doubted it could even fire.
It was Hardo’s first stint on Woody Island. He arrived a day earlier with three other blackfellas rounded up in Launceston by a Landcare group who had money to employ Aboriginal people. They were promised a few weeks’ work on the islands, cutting and spraying weeds. Truth be told, I was glad for the company. I’d been on the job for over a month. Just me and a lazy bastard, Mansell. We were always at it – me and Mansell – because he was such a bludger. By the time the others came, we hadn’t spoken for days. In my eyes, Hardo seemed the least promising worker of the bunch. He was the youngest of the new guys, straight black hair, combed back with product. A real city slicker. Built like he hadn’t done a stitch of physical work in his life. Completely out of place on the islands. I put fifty mental dollars on him being the first to get shitcanned.
Born Into This Page 8