Chelonia Green, Champion of Turtles

by Christobel Mattingley

  But of Caretta there was no sign.

  Chellie scrambled down and ran along the bank of sea wrack. Had the high tide dumped her here among the very refuse which had brought about her death? She searched from one end of the beach to the other and back again, in case she had missed the brown shell somewhere among the mounds of seaweed. But there was no sign of her.

  Caretta was gone.

  Chellie ran home. The generator was humming. Dad was helping Mum prop up the sweet corn and re-stake the tomatoes.

  ‘Caretta’s gone!’

  Mum and Dad straightened up.

  ‘The sea has claimed its own,’ Dad said. ‘She’s where she belongs, Chellie.’

  Chellie nodded. Her mouth felt too dry to speak, but her eyes felt wet.

  ‘Let’s all go down and search together,’ Dad suggested. ‘Three pairs of eyes are better than one.’

  Chellie nodded again. It was true. Her eyes had been blurry while she searched.

  Together they combed all that the sea had cast up overnight. But Caretta was nowhere to be found.

  ‘She’s gone back to where she belongs,’ Dad repeated, trying to comfort Chellie.

  But Chellie could only think of all those hungry mouths in the sea. She did not want to think of them swallowing Caretta’s eggs, their teeth tearing at Caretta’s flippers, her tail, her head. Tears rolled down her sun-warmed cheeks.

  Dad seemed to know what she was imagining. ‘It’s the chain of life, Chellie. We’re all part of it.’

  Chellie nodded. She knew. But if only Caretta had laid her eggs. If only her babies would be hatching soon . . .

  CHAPTER 10

  The Campaign Begins

  THAT VERY DAY CHELLIE BEGAN to attack the rubbish.

  There was just so much of it.

  But first of all she gathered a posy of seaweeds – brown, golden, pink, white, crimson, green – and took it down to the water’s edge, letting it float away back to the depths where it had come from.

  ‘Goodbye, Caretta,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll never forget you.’

  The tide which had taken Caretta always brought in all sorts of natural objects. Usually Chellie loved to discover seaweed in all its varieties, coconuts, mangrove pencils, hoop pine fronds, driftwood, shells, sponges, coral, feathers, even the occasional dead seabird or fish among the flotsam.

  But now she was determined to deal with the jetsam, the human rubbish which also came in with the tide.

  That afternoon Chellie filled five big garbage bags.

  There were take-away food boxes, spoons, forks and plastic cups, cigarette lighters – and soggy cigarette butts. Yuk! Poisonous for turtles as well as people. Drink cans, ring pulls, corks and bottle stoppers with nasty sharp metal catches. Drinking straws galore. Sweets wrappers of shiny cellophane and foil, tempting to turtles. Toothbrushes too. At least some people on boats cleaned their teeth, Chellie thought.

  They must have had parties on their pleasure craft, because Chellie found limp balloons, which looked deceptively like colourful reef fish, but were lethal to sea creatures. Ribbons from presents too, pretty on a parcel but terrible for turtles. There were broken sunglasses and goggles; an occasional cap or hat; and thongs, dozens and dozens of them. Different sizes and colours, some broken, some quite new. Sandals too. And shoes. Even fishermen’s rubber boots. Enough footwear for a centipede.

  Chellie decided to separate the trash into different sorts. A bag for footwear, another for take-away containers, and one for stufflike cans, wrappers, ribbon, rubber gloves and toothbrushes. The most dangerous things – rope, twine, netting, fishing line, rubber straps and those plastic binding strips – would need stronger bags. The ropes were so heavy they simply burst the garbage bags. The plastic bags and sheeting, all sand-caked, also needed a sturdier bag. So did the eels of black rubber hose and sections of polythene pipe.

  Bottles were a major item. There were scores and scores of them. Lids too – a confetti of lids of all colours. And glass bottles. Chellie examined each glass bottle she found in case it contained a message. But none did. The message was the bottles themselves.

  She lugged the bags up onto the sandbank. No use leaving them where the sea could reach them and release their deadly contents again. But this was just one afternoon’s work. What was she going to do with all this stuff?

  She’d have to discuss it with Dad. And this was only the beginning. Heaps of rubbish had accumulated over years, not only on Turtle Beach, but on all the other seven beaches too. Chellie remembered what Dad had said: one for each day of the week, and one over. She would have to organise a calendar. A beach a day. Every week. Because the sea was not going to stop spewing up the garbage. And people were not going to stop throwing rubbish off their boats.

  Or were they?

  Could she start a campaign to encourage boaties to be more careful, more caring, more aware of the harm they were causing, more aware of the turtles they were killing by dumping their junk overboard?

  As she trudged home, Chellie wondered what she could do. Write some letters maybe to the fishermen’s cooperatives, to the cruising yacht clubs?

  Dad was sympathetic. ‘You’re right, Chellie. First we have to deal with the rubbish already on the island. We’ve got to corral it so it doesn’t escape again. Let’s build some pens – we can use that wire netting from the old chook yard. And the chook feed bags will be just the thing for collecting the heavy stuff. Garbage bags weren’t designed for that.’

  ‘I thought I could write some letters, too,’ Chellie said.

  Dad nodded. ‘Good idea. We can find some addresses on the web. These organisations have newsletters. They might publish your emails.’

  Chellie and Dad built a row of rubbish pens, each a metre high and a metre square, on a flat stretch of sandbank above Turtle Beach. Chellie pulled out some chicken pellet bags from the shed. She took down the calendar and wrote the name of a beach on each day of the week. Then she and Dad had a session on the computer, finding addresses to which Chellie could write.

  ‘Go to it,’ Dad urged. Chellie needed no urging. Her fingers began to fly over the keyboard.

  Dear Fishing Boat Crews,

  I live with my Mum and Dad on an island off the Queensland coast. Our island has eight beaches where turtles nest. This week, one of the mother turtles died because she was choked by fishing line. She was a loggerhead and loggerheads are an ENDANGERED species. The problem is that they feed on jellyfish, and often mistake fishing line and plastic bags and bottles for food. But of course these things KILL them.

  So PLEASE PLEASE be careful not to throw such things off your boats into the sea. I’ve read that even whales die from swallowing plastic, and we don’t want to lose any more whales, do we?

  The sea doesn’t want to be a garbage dump either, so it washes as much junk as it can onto the beaches. You ought to see the rubbish on our island. Since the beautiful loggerhead died, I have started to pick it up so that it doesn’t get back into the water. Today I filled up five big garbage bags with rope and twine and netting and fishing line, and those horrible lures with barbs, and plastic, and plastic bags and bottles. Even POISON bottles!

  But even after I’ve cleaned up the beach we still have a problem: what do we do with all the junk on our island? Our island isn’t a garbage tip. We use all our kitchen scraps for compost in the garden, and buy our stores in recyclable containers. SO PLEASE PLEASE DON’T THROW YOUR STUFF INTO THE SEA.

  PLEASE THINK OF THE TURTLES. The loggerheads are ENDANGERED and the green turtles are VULNERABLE. Turtles have been living in the sea for over 1 MILLION YEARS! But only seven species have survived. PLEASE don’t let plastic and fishing gear be the death of them too.

  (Signed) Chelonia Green (which means Green turtle)

  PS. My real name is Michelle Braddon. Mum and Dad call me Chellie. I do school with Distance Education.

  Dad and Mum read the letter.

  ‘That’s great!’ Dad exclaimed.

  Mum was
pleased too. ‘Shows you’re a good student in the School of Distance Education.’

  ‘You’re such a good teacher, Mum.’ Chellie hugged her. ‘I can use the same letter for the boaties, can’t I? I’ll put in about the balloons and the ribbon to them too.’

  ‘Go for it,’ Dad said. ‘And I hope they publish them in their newsletters.’

  CHAPTER 11

  So Much to Do

  NEXT DAY CHELLIE WENT BACK to see the turtles. She wanted to, and yet she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to see Caretta’s little pool empty. But she didn’t want to see it occupied by another turtle either.

  It wasn’t.

  It was empty empty empty. Chellie turned away and went to sit near her green family. There weren’t so many turtles today. Perhaps some of the females had finished their egg-laying and had set off back to their feeding grounds. Chellie sat dreaming of them on their long journey, dreaming of the tropical coasts they would reach. Occasionally one of the somnolent chelonia would raise its head and look at her. Even though she was careful never to let her shadow fall on the pool, the turtles always knew she was there. Just one of the family come to visit. Chellie was comforted by their quiet acceptance.

  When she went back to continue the clean-up, Dad and Mum were already at work – Dad at one end of the beach, Mum at the other.

  ‘Many hands make light work,’ Mum smiled. ‘We won’t be able to help you every day, but we will when we can.’

  Chellie set to. So much to do. Turtle Beach was the biggest and the worst for flotsam and jetsam. But then there were Oystercatcher Cove, Snowy Beach, Curlew Beach, Orchid Beach, South Beach and Pine Cove. A long way to lug rubbish back from them. Home Beach still had to be done too. Today, Chellie decided, she would concentrate on rope and twine, fishing net and lines. She wondered how far they would stretch if she laid all the pieces end on end. A hundred metres she was sure. Two hundred metres more likely.

  Angrily she tugged at heavy, thick ropes half buried in the sand. A big storm could uncover them and set them free. She yanked at piece after piece after piece of twine – orange, blue, green, yellow – entangled in swirls of seaweed. She pulled at netting snagged on driftwood and pounced on every tangle of fishing line that gleamed like onion skin oh so innocently among coconuts and knobby, pineapple-like pandanus fruits.

  At last Mum called, ‘That’s enough for today. You can come back tomorrow and every day until school starts. I’m going home now. Why don’t you go and tell Dad to knock off ? I’ll have scones made by the time you get home.’

  Normally Chellie would have skipped or run or taken flying leaps along to the far end where Dad was. But today she just walked. Slowly, soberly.

  At the end of the beach, before the rocks began and the cliff s reared up, waves and wind had created an extra big sandbank. And lots of junk somehow got swept into this corner.

  Dad beckoned. ‘Come and look at this.’

  What had he found? Chellie’s footsteps quickened. Could it be Caretta? She ran the last fifty metres.

  But it wasn’t Caretta. Dad was pointing to the sandbank. Jetsam was embedded at intervals all the way up – a broken piece of propeller; the yellow plastic lid of an ice-cream container; a red thong; the sleeve of a checked shirt; the staring, blue-eyed head of one of those horrible lures; and a score of other things.

  ‘It’ll be an archaeologist’s dig in a hundred years’ time,’ Dad exclaimed. ‘Some researcher will be thrilled to find all these traces of the way we lived. Like Pompeii or some of those sites in the Middle East.’

  Chellie loved Dad’s enthusiasm for seeing possibilities. But she didn’t know whether to be pleased or sorry that it was not Caretta. Caretta, mangled, decomposing, only recognisable by her shell. Perhaps one day the sea would bring back her beautiful shell.

  CHAPTER 12

  Hope by Helicopter

  DAY AFTER DAY THROUGH THREE hot January weeks Chellie toiled, filling bag after bag so that Dad had to build more bins. She managed to clean up Oystercatcher Cove, and Mum and Dad helped with Home Beach. But she was feeling discouraged. So much rubbish. Just so much. Nothing but rubbish every day. Battens, planks, a hatch cover, a ripped sail, even flower pots. And the never-ending bottles and plastic. Chellie began to think that all the world’s garbage was being tipped into the sea every day, and that an awful lot was ending up on their island.

  Eagerly, anxiously she checked the email, hoping that someone would write back. A note arrived from the turtle research people thanking her for the information about Caretta. But the fishermen and cruising yacht clubs did not acknowledge her plea, let alone say they would publish it. Nothing came from them at all.

  Before it was time to turn the page on the new calendar, the school term started.

  ‘Tell me about what you did in the holidays,’ Chellie’s teacher asked. She always wanted to know that. So Chellie emailed her story about Caretta and her letter to the fishermen and boaties. She also wrote an update about all the garbage she had collected and how much remained to be cleared. Then she settled down to tackle her first worksheets. But before she had finished, the phone rang. Her mother answered it.

  ‘It’s for you, Michelle.’

  It was her teacher.

  ‘That’s a sad story, Michelle,’ Miss Howe said, ‘but you’ve written it beautifully. And you showed a lot of initiative in sending those letters and starting the clean-up. I’m really proud of you. I have a friend who is the environmental writer for a national newspaper. Do you mind if I show it to him?’

  Chellie gasped. ‘Wow! You mean my story might be in the paper?’

  ‘Well . . . I can’t promise that. But he might be able to write something about it.’

  ‘Hooray! That would reach lots more fishermen and boaties and people who litter. More than I could ever do,’ Chellie babbled. ‘Oh, yes! Please show it to him. Maybe he could come and see for himself.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Miss Howe. ‘Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not easy to get an article in the paper. But I’m sure he’ll be interested in what you’ve written and what you’re doing.’

  Chellie hugged Mum. ‘She likes my story. She’s going to show it to a journalist!’

  She rushed off to tell Dad too.

  ‘Why don’t you do what you talked about earlier?’ Dad suggested. ‘Measure all the rope and stuff from Turtle Beach. Collect some statistics. You can do it for a maths assignment. I’ll help.’

  So Chellie and Dad set off for Turtle Beach with his reel of measuring tape.

  ‘We should have done this when we started,’ Chellie panted as they emptied two bins of rope and netting and heaved it back down onto the beach. ‘Maybe after we’ve measured this lot I could do it day by day. Keep a tally.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Dad grunted. ‘This is hard work.’

  Dragging and pulling, they gradually laid it out end to end above the high tide mark. At last it was finished, a great long stretch of rope, twine, netting and fishing line snaking along the beach like a huge boa constrictor.

  ‘How long is it, Dad?’

  ‘I reckon nearly two hundred metres.’

  ‘We’ll just have to estimate the length of the knotted bits and tangles,’ Chellie puffed.

  Carefully they measured it with the tape. Chellie whooped when they passed the one-hundred-metre mark, and whooped even louder when the tape reached its full length a second time.

  ‘Two hundred plus,’ Dad announced, pacing it out to the end. ‘Two hundred and thirty-one metres, and then some for the tangles.’

  ‘Let’s leave it here to show Mum tomorrow,’ Chellie suggested.

  Dad nodded. ‘Okay. The sea won’t be up this high overnight as it’s a neap tide and there’s no sign of wind. Should be all right.’

  In the morning Mum insisted that Chellie do her lessons before they went to Turtle Beach. Chellie was longing to be off, but she had settled down to complete her worksheets when she heard the throbbing of an aircraft.

  ‘I
t’s a helicopter,’ she shouted, throwing down her pen and rushing outside. Light planes often went over, but a helicopter was rare. Perhaps it was Customs officers, or a search and rescue.

  The whirring grew louder and louder as the helicopter came into view. Chellie waved excitedly as it hovered over the house but sighed as it moved away. Then she shouted, ‘It’s going to land on Turtle Beach!’

  Lessons were forgotten as all the family followed the chopper, watching it drop below the hill, then hearing the silence after its motor stopped.

  Who could it be?

  Chellie was speechless with excitement and exertion. She was running at record speed.

  Could it really be Miss Howe’s friend, the journalist? Would he really write about Caretta and the rubbish?

  As they topped the sandhills they could see the helicopter squatting in the middle of the beach like a giant dragonfly. Three men were climbing out. Three.

  Who were they? A pilot. And who were the others?

  Chellie took a running jump down the bank and sprinted across to the strangers. They were smiling.

  ‘You must be Chelonia Green,’ the tallest said. ‘Your teacher, Miss Howe, showed me your story and told me what you are doing to try to protect the turtles. I’d like to write an article for my paper about it.’

  Chellie nodded, too excited to speak.

  ‘I’m Mark and this is Peter who will take some photos, if that’s OK with your parents. And this is Bill, our pilot.’

  Dad and Mum were just approaching. Mark introduced his companions and asked again about permission to take photos and do a story about Chellie and the turtles and her campaign against litter. Dad and Mum beamed.

  ‘If it makes people think and helps cut down pollution of the sea even a little,’ Dad said, ‘it will be well worthwhile.’

  ‘And saves some turtles,’ Chellie added, recovering her voice. ‘Maybe some whales. And dugongs too. They’re all affected. Come and see what we’ve collected in just over three weeks.’