Airship Over Atherton

by Christopher Cummings

  “The thing underneath might be a boy named Roger,” she said. “Mr Williams has two army cadets named Peter and Graham with him in the Range Rover. He picked them up running along the forestry road in the dark. They say that Roger tried to pull the airship down up on Lambs Head but instead he was pulled over the cliff and was last seen hanging onto the mooring rope. Who are Peter and Graham and who is Roger?”

  Stephen answered: “Graham and Peter are mates of mine. They are in Year Ten. They are army cadets. They go hiking a lot and this weekend they set out to climb Kahlpahlim Rock.”

  “It seems they made it. Who is Roger?”

  Noddy answered: “He’s a fat kid in our class. He’s a real little pain; a ‘goody-goody’.”

  Stephen replied sharply: “Roger’s OK. He’s one of my mates too. He went with Graham and Peter.”

  “Is that Graham Kirk?” Shona asked, her voice warm with interest.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” Stephen replied, turning to study her face.

  They drove on, keeping the airship in sight with difficulty. The country was all open farmland dotted with houses. There was very little traffic on the roads. In the dips they began to encounter patches of mist.

  “We are starting to lose the airship,” Mrs Williams said. “Is there another road we can take?”

  “There’s a turnoff up ahead, but it goes across to Malanda,” Shona replied.

  “We will try it. We must keep as close as we can,” Mrs Williams replied. She was plainly anxious now and kept muttering, wondering why the airship didn’t come down. She accelerated and they sped on ahead for several kilometres before turning right along another secondary road. They raced along this at right angles to the airship’s course. Stephen kept his head out and called that it was still going south.

  “This is no good,” Mrs Williams said. “Is there another road going that way?”

  “Not for another couple of kilometres Mrs Williams. This tourist map doesn’t show all the roads and farm tracks,” Shona replied. She looked worried and began to get upset.

  “I’ve lost sight of the airship now,” Stephen warned.

  They drove on to the next road junction, turned south and accelerated. The road went down and across a timber bridge, then up past a farm and around a hillside before climbing back onto an open ridgeline. They all peered anxiously ahead. The road did a right angle turn to the left. It was so sharp that Mrs Williams nearly lost control and they skidded perilously close to a fence.

  “There! I see it!” Shona cried, pointing out to the right. “Turn right at the next. Here! Here it is!”

  They overshot the turnoff. Mrs Williams braked and they skidded to a standstill, then reversed and swung down the side road. This took them down a long, open slope, through a layer of mist, across another short timber bridge and up onto another wide, flat ridge, dotted with black and white dairy cattle.

  “We are catching up,” Stephen called.

  “We are running out of road too. There is a State Forest ahead, see all that jungle?” Shona warned.

  “It must have roads through it,” Noddy said.

  Stephen shook his head. “Not necessarily. And they could be pretty rough,” he replied.

  They reached a T-junction.

  “Which way?” Mrs Williams asked.

  “Right. But after that I can’t help you as the map doesn’t show any more roads,” Shona replied.

  “We will just have to take any road we can find,” Mrs Williams said. She had trouble keeping the distress out of her voice as a glance at the map showed that they were heading into a tangle of very rough country: deep gorges and jungle which went on for twenty or thirty kilometres.

  They turned right. The airship, still just visible on their left, continued on south.

  “Take the first turn we come to,” Shona suggested. Mrs Williams nodded.

  “He is heading down into the gorges of the North Johnston River,” Shona commented.

  “Here’s a road,” Stephen called.

  They slowed and turned from bitumen onto gravel. At least it went south and looked well graded. The airship vanished from view behind a hill on their left-front. Mrs Williams drove as fast as she dared on the gravel road. It became potholed and corrugated and wound around the side of a hill and through a patch of rainforest. In all their minds was the fear that it would suddenly end at a farm. Several side tracks led off but they passed only one farmhouse near the road.

  They went up over a long rise through open fields. As they came over the crest a wall of black rainforest loomed ahead. Several jungle-covered ridges showed beyond, black in the starlight.

  Stephen pointed up and to the left front. “There is the airship,” he said. “Low down, just above those trees.”

  “He’s coming down. I reckon he’s going to land,” Noddy added.

  “He will crash in the jungle!” Shona cried.

  “There might be a clearing,” Stephen said hopefully.

  They watched as the airship sank out of sight into the trees. Mrs Williams braked to a halt at the edge of the rainforest. A vehicle track, just two wheel ruts, went left along the edge of the field. The road they were on plunged into the jungle but it was blocked by a gate. The gate was high and padlocked. A sign on it said:

  BUNGABOO EGG CORPORATION

  KEEP OUT!

  TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

  CHAPTER 27

  THE AIRSHIP SIGHTED

  Stephen got out of the car driven by Willy’s mother and walked forward to the gate. He looked at the padlock and shook the chain holding it. The gate was at least three metres high, of tubular steel and chain-wire construction, and with strands of barbed wire on top of it. Running off on either side of it, along the edge of the jungle, was a chain-wire fence just as high and also with barbed wire on top.

  “Locked,” he reported. “But I could climb that fence I reckon.”

  Mrs Williams shook her head. “Better not. I will call the police and they can get in.” She parked the car on the side of the road and switched off both engine and lights. Stephen got back in and they wound the windows up for warmth.

  Mrs Williams first phoned the police, then her husband. He reported they were now down on the main Danbulla Forestry Road and should be with them in about half an hour.

  So they sat and waited. Mrs Williams kept looking at the dashboard clock. “I expected the police to be here by now,” she muttered angrily after twenty minutes had passed. She phoned them again and was told they were on their way. Next Mr Williams called, asking for directions.

  The Range Rover arrived first. Everyone hopped out and gathered to discuss the situation. Graham and Peter described how Roger came to be under the airship and how they had run down the mountain along an overgrown logging track. Then the story of the chase across the Tablelands was recounted.

  Willy’s father went to the gate and examined the lock. “And you say that the airship went down beyond these trees?”

  “Yes. That’s what it looked like,” Mrs Williams replied.

  Stephen once again volunteered to climb the fence. Mr Williams shook his head. “Better wait for the police. We don’t want to cause more trouble.”

  “Are there any other roads?” Graham asked.

  Stephen shook his head. “Don’t know. Our map didn’t show them,” he replied.

  Graham extracted his more detailed army topographic map and studied it with his torch. The others crowded round to look.

  “This side track here goes off around to the east of the valley in front of us. We might be able to see something from it,” he suggested. He shone his torch along the side track. Two wheel tracks in grass showed up beyond an ordinary wire machinery gate.

  At that moment headlights appeared from behind them. A police car came to a standstill. Two policemen got out and walked over.

  “Sorry we took so long. We took a wrong turn and ended up in a farm. Are you Doctor Williams?” asked a solidly built Senior Constable.

  �
��We are both Doctors.” Mrs Williams replied. “I am Mrs Williams. I am Willy’s mother. This is my husband.”

  The Senior Constable said hello, then shone his torch briefly over the group. “And who are all these kids? Oh! Hello.” The beam settled on Graham. “Kirk and Bronsky. I might have known! And where are your mates? Ah yes. Stephen Bell.” He greeted Stephen then shone his torch on Stick and Noddy. “Where’s your chubby mate? Isn’t he here?”

  Graham replied: “Hello Senior Constable Grey. No. Roger’s not with us. He is one of the boys on the airship.”

  The cadets all knew Senior Constable Grey from a previous adventure near Kuranda the year before.

  “Roger on an airship,” Snr Const Grey remarked “I wouldn’t have thought he would do anything as hair-brained as that. It is more the sort of the sort of thing you would do young Kirk.”

  Graham answered hotly: “It’s not like that! We didn’t plan this. We just got involved.”

  “So what has happened? Where is this airship with the kids on it? What’s the story?” Snr Const Grey asked as he took his notebook from the pocket of his jacket.

  Mr Williams did the talking, until he reached the part where the airship had been pursued across the Tablelands. Then Mrs Williams took over.

  Senior Constable Grey looked thoughtful. “And you say it came down on the other side of these trees? Check that gate Jack and get someone to open it while I get all these details down,” he instructed the constable with him. The constable shone his torch on the gate and read the sign. He examined the lock and shook it, then walked to the police car and radioed his base in Atherton. “Phone this Egg Company for me and tell them to get someone up to open the gate,” he requested.

  The two policemen then stood taking notes while the story was explained again. Snr Const Grey shook his head. “This beats everything. You kids certainly have a talent for getting into strife,” he commented.

  Time crept past. The details were discussed and they all began to feel very cold. Willy’s parents became more and more worried and agitated. Snr Const Grey looked at his watch impatiently: “Nine p.m.. What’s keeping these people?” he grumbled. He walked over to the police car and radioed again and was told that the Egg Corporation had answered the phone and said they were sending someone up.

  A few minutes later a torch appeared in the jungle. As it got closer dogs began to snarl and bark. A man’s voice ordered the dogs to be quiet. The man stopped inside the gate and made no attempt to open it. He held two savage Alsatians on leashes in one hand and a torch in the other. In the crook of his right arm was a shotgun. He shone the torch over the group.

  In the light from the police car’s parking lights Graham could just see that he was a middle-aged man, unshaven and dressed in grey overalls, sweater and gum boots.

  “Yeah? What do ya want?” the man asked in a surly voice.

  “We are looking for two missing children. They are on an airship and we have been told it landed here,” Snr Const Grey replied, pointing down the road the man had just walked up.

  The man looked astonished. Even in the dim light Graham saw his mouth sag open and his eyes widen, then narrow. “An airship! Is this some sort of joke?”

  “No joke at all, I assure you sir,” Snr Const Grey replied. “Have you seen an airship?”

  “No. You sure it wasn’t a flying saucer? Someone’s spinnin’ you a line,” the man replied.

  Mr Williams got angry. “It was definitely and airship,” he said.

  “An airship!” the man repeated, as though he could not believe his ears. “Never seen one in me life. Bloody hell! I thought they went out of date in World War One- and that’s a good bit before my time!”

  “An airship,” Willy’s father repeated. “We made it. It is only a small one.”

  “Oh yeah? So why come here? What’s going on?” the man growled.

  “Because we followed it and saw it go down on the other side of these trees,” Mrs Williams said angrily.

  The man shook his head. “An airship! Landed here! On the farm! You’ve got to be making this up.”

  “No, we aren’t,” Mr Williams replied, just a touch of impatience and anger evident in his tone. He gave a description of the airship, and of how it came to be adrift with the two boys on it.

  The man again shook his head. “Nope. Can’t help you. There’s certainly been nothing like that around here. There isn’t room anyway. The buildings take up most of the space and they are too close together. Sheds for poultry, you know.”

  “Did you see anything fly over, or hear anything unusual? It could have crashed in the jungle,” Mr Williams asked.

  “Nope. I was inside. I’d know if anything odd were around. The dogs would bark and all them chooks would cackle. You ever heard ten thousand chooks all cackle at once?”

  Stephen stepped forward. “But we saw it!” he cried. He moved over to the fence. The dogs growled warningly.

  The man shone his torch in Stephen’s face. “Well I’m sure that nothing has landed on the farm. You calling me a liar kid?”

  “No, but we saw it fly low over here and it looked like it was coming down,” Stephen persisted.

  “Maybe it went on down the gorge. You get mighty strong winds down that gorge sometimes,” the man said.

  “Can we come in and look?” Mrs Williams asked. She reached forward and gripped the chain-wire gate. Instantly the dogs lunged. One snapped at her hand with a vicious snarl while the other went into a frenzy of barking. Just in time she snatched her hand back.

  The man snarled at the dogs and hauled them back from the wire netting. When they were under control he said: “Sorry lady. They gotta be like that. We can’t afford to have wild animals get near the chooks. Look, nothin’s landed at the farm. If this airship has crashed in the jungle you wouldn’t see anything in the dark anyway. Why don’t you come back in the morning and we will see what we can do then?”

  Senior Constable Grey scratched his head and said: “I would like to come in now please.”

  The man hesitated then shrugged. “If you insist. But you are wasting your time. And these people can’t come in.”

  “You are quite sure you haven’t seen anything?” Senior Constable Grey asked.

  “Yes I am!” the man snapped angrily. “You can come in and look if you must but there’s no bloody airship here!”

  At that moment the other policeman went to answer his car radio. He listened for a minute then said: “An airship has just been seen over Malanda.”

  “Are you sure?” Mrs Williams asked.

  “Positive. Several people have reported it.”

  Senior Constable Grey said: “Come on. Let’s go. Thank you sir. Sorry to have troubled you.”

  The man behind the gate grunted and let his dogs loose so that they ranged up and down growling.

  The friends turned and climbed into their vehicles and set off, the police car leading.

  “What an awful man,” Mrs Williams said as they drove along.

  “He certainly looked shifty,” Stephen replied.

  “I thought he looked alarmed rather than astonished when airships were mentioned,” Shona said. “As though he had something to hide.”

  Noddy grunted. “Probably just grumpy at being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night,” he suggested.

  “Middle of the night! It’s only ten thirty,” Stephen said.

  “It seems later. I’m whacked,” Noddy answered.

  “What bothers me is how we could watch the airship go down there, and now it is somewhere else?” Shona said.

  “Yes,” Stephen agreed. “Malanda is a fair way from here. How far is it?”

  While they drove along they studied the map and puzzled over how the airship could have got to Malanda. Peter suggested strong air currents among the hills.

  Ten minutes drive along country roads brought them to the hilltop on the southern edge of Malanda. Another police car waited there, along with several people. A police sergeant int
roduced himself as they got out.

  “I’m Sergeant Carmody. This is Mr Huggins. He was outside shifting his sprinklers when he saw the airship.”

  Mr Huggins nodded. “That’s right. I live just there, on top of the hill. I heard this noise and looked up and near had a heart attack. I thought it was one of them UFO things. Then a voice called out to me: ‘Help! Help!’. It was this kid named Roger. He wanted me to get him down but I couldn’t reach that high. It was well above the roof you see. So I ran inside to get Ethel, and by the time I came out he had drifted off.”

  “Which way did he go?” Mrs Williams asked.

  “That way,” Mr Huggins replied, pointing west. “And he was real lucky. He just cleared them power lines there.”

  “Oh my God!” Mrs Williams gasped. “Powerlines!”

  “When was that?” Senior Constable Grey asked.

  “Be about twenty minutes to half an hour ago,” Mr Huggins replied. “I ran down the street to watch where he went and called out Fred here, but we couldn’t keep up. So then I walked home and phoned the sergeant here.”

  “Get me the map,” Senior Constable Grey ordered his constable. Before he could Graham produced his. They studied it by torch light.

  Sergeant Carmody ran his finger across the map. “If he went west then we need to send a vehicle along the road past Bromfield Swamp, and another along the Meeragallen Road,” he said. “I’ll go along the Meeragallen Road. Grey, you go the other way.”

  “What about us?” Mr Williams asked.

  “One of you go each way,” Sergeant Carmody replied.

  Mr William’s followed the sergeant’s car and Mrs Williams went behind Senior Constable Grey’s. They drove down through the town, left towards Atherton, across the bridge at Malanda Falls and along the main road for a kilometre before turning left along Belson Road. This led them past the large swamp-filled crater of an extinct volcano: Bromfield Swamp.