by Bull, Rod;
“We have met many times before; these forms are projections of your own nature,” the presence says. As soon as he tries to record all this, the presence vanishes.
This is as much of the story as I can remember. I needed to find Stella again to find out the name of the book, or if she remembered the story. What had she been trying to tell me? After the whole thing with Chris, I had lost touch with her, partly because I did not want to get hurt again, but I knew the relationship was unfinished.
Carl Atkinson
Darwin in the ‘60s was very small and lawless. You could not go into some of the bars, particularly if you were white. A lot of people living in Darwin at that time were escaping from the law.
The Germans and I arrived at the beginning of the monsoon season, very hot and humid. We found a place to stay and then went to find a pub that would let us in. The first place we found was called the Hot and Cold. It was not far from where we were staying which was a very good thing, as I would find out later. Entering the pub was like a breath of fresh air. And who should be in there but the Scotsman who had saved my bacon. I wanted to thank him for saving my ass so I bought him beer. Schooners, which were bigger than pints, started flying. By closing time we must have had around ten schooners each. Leaving the bar was like entering an oven.
Immediately the alcohol took over, sending me staggering back to my digs, which luckily was not too far away. I fell on the bed, falling asleep immediately. However I forgot to pull the mosquito net over me, and woke in the morning with not just a pounding headache but looking like I had chicken pox. I looked up at the mosquito net, and it was full of blood red, bloated mosquitoes. Rage took over me and grabbing the net, twisting it around into a knot, my blood squirt all over me, like having a shower in my own blood. The mosquitoes somehow got the last word! Lying on the bed, soaked in my own blood, I suddenly realized why the pub was called “The Hot and Cold.” Air-conditioning was totally new to me. Also devastating was going from 50 degrees to 100 degrees, sending the alcohol straight to my head.
After a few days of lounging around and recovering, I decided to start looking for work. I went to the Darwin Labor Exchange. They had one job available for a diver, and I had my diver’s certificate from the Navy Aqua-Lung diving course.
The job was for a man named Carl Atkinson. He lived right on the harbor at a place called Doctor’s Gully. I found him in his yard amidst old boats, trucks, and engines. He was a very large man, and he looked down at me with a kind of contempt. I showed him my diver’s certificate, and he just laughed, saying something about the Boy Scouts.
“This is worth nothing!” he scoffed.
This did not sound at all good. But because I was the only body around, I was hired.
The first job I was given was to clean up the place. This was a daunting task; there were sheds and sheds of stuff. Bits of boats, engines, you name it. Clearing out one of these sheds, I came across a bunch of signs, square pieces of cork, wire, and cat’s eyes. The signs had “Beware Tourists—Crocodile” written on them. As I started to sort these out, wondering what they meant, a huge spider, six to nine inches across, jumped two to three feet in the air right in front of me. My heart leapt into my mouth. Jumping backwards, my mind froze. Then another and another of these huge spiders appeared. Jesus, I’m out of here!
Running out of the shed as fast as I could, I bumped straight into the massive frame of Mr. Atkinson.
“Where the hell are you going?” he growled.
“Huge spiders!” I gasped.
He went straight into the shed, caught one of the spiders and putting it on his hand said, “Harmless, totally harmless, you whinging pom. Get back to work.”
Not too happy about this, I tried to buy time, asking him what the signs meant. He calmed down a little and started to laugh as he told me how a few years earlier the Duke of Edinburgh had come to Darwin and expressed an interest in crocodile hunting. Carl was asked to organize the hunt.
Crocodile hunting is done at night using lights, and aiming behind their eyes. Carl had a man upriver with the cork squares with the signs “Beware Tourists—Crocodiles” stuck on them. The cat’s eyes were wired on either side of the sign so that they looked like the eyes of crocodiles in the light. These were then floated down river towards the Duke’s boat. He would fire away and all that they were netting were the cork crocs. He might have gotten some real ones, but I don’t know. This was one of Carl’s ways of showing up the poms.
Talking about crocodiles, Carl said, “I have a job for you.” He took me over to a part of the yard I had not been to. There in the bamboo was a kind of cage and lurking inside was a ten-foot croc. Seeing us, it immediately opened its mouth, showing its huge array of teeth. Its eyes just looked straight through you as if you were not there or as if it had just eaten you in its mind.
“Your job will be to feed this growing lad. He needs a lot of food. I will be away for a few days, so look after him well.”
“So it’s not fully grown,” I ventured. “Man, how much bigger will it get?”
“It’s only a baby. It will get up to around twenty feet long.”
I did not like the sound of this. The cage looked very flimsy. If it got out it would surely eat me. Crocs don’t make good pets. They just see you as something to eat.
“What do you feed it?” I asked. “Buffalo meat,” Carl replied.
He would go out into the bush and shoot water buffalo. The buffalo were hard to kill. They have very tough skin so Carl would shoot them in the ass. Then they would sit down and he would shoot them in the head. He cut them up and fed them to his crocodile. The whole idea of this made my flesh creep. Somehow Carl and the croc had similar natures: totally fearless. I don’t know which one I feared most. Driven by this fear, and also fascination, I fed the croc.
When I approached the cage it immediately opened its mouth, and I threw the meat, which was on the bone, into its mouth. Down came his jaws, shearing off any bone that was outside its mouth. I thought about my leg getting caught in that mouth. Not a nice thought. Somehow I managed to keep feeding it, making sure it would not get hungry and try to break out to eat me.
One night while working late, Carl came back drunk. He got into the cage with the croc and started wrestling with it. He was kicking it, swearing at it, and poking it with sticks. The croc kept lunging at him. Carl would leap out of the way. The croc started to get mad, lunging quicker and quicker. Carl just managed to jump out of the cage in time. “This bloke is crazy,” I thought. “What am I doing here?”
Some days he would let the croc out on a long wire leash. You just did not know where it was hiding. Carl said that it was a very good guard dog and kept people from stealing stuff. Once they knew the croc was out, they wouldn’t come anywhere near the place.
One day the power company sent someone to cut off Carl’s electricity. The man was up the pole, and Carl just took out his rifle and started shooting at him. That was the last time they tried that. All in all, working for Carl was very unnerving and definitely kept me on my toes.
So far I had done no diving, but I had heard some of the stories about Carl’s exploits.
One day, he was out in the harbor diving for parts from ships that had been sunk in the war. The person operating the compressor on the diver boat had fallen asleep. The compressor cut out, and Carl, who managed somehow to get back to the surface, found this bloke asleep. He immediately threw him in the water shouting, “Swim, you bugger, swim!” From then on he only went out alone, dragging stuff along the bottom of the harbor with the boat on autopilot set towards the shore. The tide went out a long way in Darwin, and at low tide he would go out in his four-wheel drive truck and pick it up. This man was truly remarkable. There was nothing he could not do. Fires in the harbor, people getting stuck in machines, divers with the bends, sinking ships—just call Carl Atkinson, he would fix it.
Carl would nearly always get paid on the barter system. At one time he had offered to clear Darwin’s ha
rbor of all the boats sunk by the Japanese in the war. The deal was that he could have anything on the bottom as payment. He hauled the stuff up using compressed air, cranes, anything he could use, and he was pulling up old American jeeps and trucks that had been well-greased and were still in good condition. He would then fix them up and sell them.
One day there was a man checking stuff as he was bringing it in. “Who are you?” Carl roared.
“IRS,” the man stammered. “What the hell do you want?” “What you owe,” the man said.
“That was not the deal!” Carl roared.
Soon after this, Carl contacted the Fuji Salvage Company in Tokyo to salvage what was left. This really pissed off the government, as the Japanese had sunk these ships in the war. Also, Carl made a good sum of money selling this scrap to the Japanese. Somehow Carl got away with this. I think the authorities were worried he would call in his credit. Looking back, I wonder how he put up with me. Maybe there was just no one else around stupid enough.
My worst fears came true one morning. Carl was already up, sorting air hoses and other diving stuff. “Get the Land Rover with the compressor. We’re going diving.”
My heart missed a few beats. My mind just seemed to freeze.
We loaded up and set off for the main shipping wharfs, and drove out on one of them, going very slowly. Carl was looking for something. Suddenly he shouted, “Stop!” and pointed to a mark on the wharf.
I think I was in a kind of dream state. Was this really happening? If it was, how could I get out of it?
Coming to a little, I asked, “What are we diving for?”
“Transistor radios.”
He then told me the whole story. Ships coming in from Hong Kong would bring very cheap goods into Australia. The government would tax these goods very heavily, so the seamen would try to smuggle some of the stuff off, particularly transistor radios, which were all the rage those days. Customs, being aware of this, would do a quick search when the ships were anchored in the harbor. When they came into the wharf, the customs officers would do a more thorough search, hoping to surprise the seamen with the smuggled goods. But the Chinese were a jump ahead and had everything sealed in plastic bags and ready to throw overboard. As it happened, Japanese divers were working in the harbor, and they would then collect the contraband.
Carl knew all this, so he would hide out and watch where the stuff was being thrown overboard, then make a mark on the wharf. He would then return after the ship had left. I was watching him search with a kind of detachment, hoping that he would not find the marks because if the truth be known, I lied about my diving abilities to get the job, which in fact I did not need to do, because nobody else had applied. It was true that I had taken a Navy diving course, but only using Aqua-Lung equipment, not compressed air and diving suits.
Suddenly, I heard Carl shouting at me to get my suit on. It was actually called a “hooker suit,” a canvas suit with heavy boots and lead weights around the waist. The air was then pumped into a rubber facemask. I faked my way through putting the stuff on, nervously asking about the big and hungry tiger sharks in the harbor.
“Don’t worry about them, just do what the Japs do. If they get close just whack them on the nose. They’re like cats, very curious. They’ll just circle you to see what you’re up to.”
I did not like the sound of this at all. If they get close enough to whack, they’re probably going to be eating you. I kept thinking that this must be a dream. Carl’s other words of advice filtered through: “Don’t worry about the sharks, worry about the gropers.”
Shit, what was that? Gropers?
Gropers in Australia grow large, 11 to 12 feet with very big mouths, which can swallow you up. They lurk around the pylons of the wharf and grab you as you go by.
Jesus. What am I doing? I must be mad. “Is there anything else?” I stammered.
“If anything goes wrong up here,” Carl said, “I will squeeze the air hose three times. That will stop your air, so then just start coming up.”
Great, I thought, I might be dead by then. My mind went blank, and I jumped in.
Hitting the water, the suit filled with air. Feeling like the Michelin tire man and pretty stupid lying there in the water, every attempt I made at going down was futile. I just kept floating back to the surface. Carl was shouting “Lay on your back, exhale and roll backwards into the water!” After many tries I got it and down I went.
It got darker and darker. Suddenly I hit the bottom, unable to see more than an arm’s length. Why didn’t Carl tell me I wouldn’t be able to see? Groping around, having no idea where I was going, slowly, slowly, it got a little lighter. My eyes were getting accustomed to the low light. Remembering what I was meant to be doing down there, I started to feel around. It felt like an eternity down there, wandering about and not knowing what direction I was moving in.
Suddenly it started to get hard to breathe. Thinking something must be wrong and trying not to panic, and also realizing that I had found nothing and fearing the wrath of Carl and also suffocation, instinct took over. Pushing off from the bottom it was a great feeling, but short lived. The air hose started tugging on my helmet. “Shit! What’s this!” Again, trying not to panic, I followed the hose and to my horror I discovered that it had wound around one of the pylons. Suddenly I realized what had happened. Instead of going out from the wharf, I had been moving in through the pylons. This was not good.
It was getting harder and harder to breathe. Again I followed the hose back. It was hooked on an old nail, which stopped it from sliding up the pylon. All the time I was looking up to see if it was getting lighter. Panic was setting in. With hardly any air getting through, I just took off the mask and started swimming as hard as I could for the surface, forgetting all about the bends. You’re meant to go up as slow as the smallest air bubbles, so that nitrogen does not form in your blood, paralyzing you. It was getting lighter; I felt like I was going to burst. At that very moment, I broke the surface.
My head seemed to be filled with white light. Was I in heaven? My head, lungs and ears were bursting. Slowly I heard weird noises.
“Fuck, fuck, you stupid bugger!”
Weird, this is not the sort of language you would hear in heaven. God must be mad. God was in fact Carl, red-faced, shouting, pointing and waving his arms.
“Where are the transistors? Bugger me!”
I had nearly died. All he could think about were the radios. What kind of man was he? He certainly had no fear. With-out another word he jumped in, diving down to find the helmet. He did not come up. 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes and then up he comes. Somehow he had put the helmet on under water, but had no radios, thank God. He came out of the water muttering “bloody Japs.” They had gotten there before us. Carl was not pleased. He had been working on this for a while and hated to be outdone.
“What happened to you down there?” he said.
“I just got totally disoriented. You didn’t tell me that I wouldn’t be able to see.”
“Oh yes,” he said, “It was a neap tide. It stirs up the mud at the bottom. Sorry, I thought you knew about that.”
I was still in some kind of sleep state, through fright or lack of oxygen, so I was very glad when he said to wrap it up. As we drove back, he said, “You haven’t done much diving, have you?”
“No, certainly not using the hooker suit.” “Well, I just wanted to see what you could do.”
We did a few more dives. He did most of the diving, which didn’t bother me at all. Saved by an unseen hand!
Peg Leg
One of Carl’s many talents was mechanics. One day, an old World War II landing craft came in for repairs. The propeller shaft bearings needed replacing. The problem was that the bearings were too far apart on the shaft, and because they were made of white metal, they were soft. So, with the whipping of the shaft, the bearings would get hot, wearing out quickly. Carl had already repaired these bearings several times before. After he fixed them this time, he asked
the Captain if I could go along on the next trip to check the bearings. It was okay with him, so Carl told me to check the bearings every hour or so. If they got hot, he said, just throw a bucket of cold water over them to cool them down.
My status on the ship was second engineer, which seemed a little over the top. I had to make sure that the Captain didn’t see my highly technical cooling method. After many buckets of cold water, we got back to Darwin okay. Carl was no-where to be found. Then I found out he was in the hospital. Fearing the worst, I went to see him.
To my amazement, I found him sitting in his bathing trunks with a Portuguese men-of-war—jellyfish with a very deadly sting—draped all over him. People have been killed from their stings. He was just sitting there reading a magazine and didn’t seem to be in any kind of pain.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“Okay,” I said. “What’s up with you, what are you doing here?”
“Oh, they’re just testing to see how jellyfish stings affect people. I have been stung so many times, I’m immune to the sting.”
There were sensors all over him, checking heart rate, pulse and nerves. This man always amazed me. Nothing seemed to bother him. He seemed to always adapt to situations. He was a role model for me, even though a life like his would have been an impossible task for me. The more I tried, the more things went wrong.
Work was running out at Carl’s. He was not too impressed with my talents, and I wasn’t sure my nerves could take much more. As it happened, the boat I had been working on needed a second engineer. Carl suggested me, partly so that I could check the bearings he had repaired and partly to get rid of me. This position made me very nervous as I could hardly fix my push bike, let alone boat engines. In fact, any time I tried fixing cars, they always got worse. Carl convinced me it would be okay. All I would have to do is check the bearings and fuel levels.