Whitsunday Dawn

by Annie Seaton

  Now, Fynn was thoughtful as he turned his bicycle onto the last finger wharf at the south end of the marina.

  Olivia Sheridan. The woman they’d encountered yesterday had been different to what he’d expected. Ms Sheridan certainly had the corporate look, but she’d been very kind to Aunty Tat, before she’d turned on him. With her tall, slim build, fine features and pretty coloured hair, she was certainly a stunning woman, even with the snarky attitude, but Fynn would bet anything on her knowing how to play the game. She’d switched from warm to ice cold in seconds.

  Forewarned is forearmed.

  Fynn was determined to fight dirty if he had to. There was no way that this proposed development would get approved. It would take more than a beautiful woman with a nice figure to get approval for a project that was so damaging to the environment.

  He had the academic knowledge and contacts, and Greg had the inside on the company activities and the media contacts, as well as an ear to the mood of the state government. From what Greg had said, the corruption that abounded in both the corporate and government worlds was unbelievable.

  Fynn allowed himself a smile as he jumped off the bicycle. Olivia Sheridan would need more than good looks and a snarky attitude to overcome community opposition to the Chinese-funded coal loader.

  * * *

  Liv had set the alarm to go off early, so she had time to look for the right file before she went down to the restaurant. If she didn’t have the file ready to work on for when she got back this afternoon, she’d worry about it all day instead of enjoying the tour to the islands. She found the updated file and put it in her working folder. A quick flick through had confirmed that it was almost the same as the previous file her father had taken her through yesterday morning, and she noted the updated slides towards the end. She’d focus on them tonight.

  She was being picked up at the hotel to be taken to the marina to board the Lady May, the yacht she was joining. Liv took the Lady May brochure to breakfast, and read it as she waited for the waiter to bring her coffee. Excitement curled in her stomach as the day ahead beckoned.

  The choice of boats available and the level of sophistication had been wide ranging—from small, private mono-hulled yachts to large motor cruisers that took a couple of hundred passengers. She’d taken the advice of the receptionist and chosen a tour on a smaller sailing boat that took only twenty passengers. It was more expensive, but the privacy had appealed.

  Dozens of options, from snorkelling trips to Blue Pearl Bay on Hayman Island, to underwater observatories and to the pontoon out on Hardy Reef, were available; the brochures outlined tours that catered for all needs and budgets.

  A day on board Lady May will fulfil your dreams of luxury. It is like no other sailing trip in the Whitsundays. A high-class service, Lady May promises luxury and comfort, with a highly attentive level of service. A gourmet lunch is included, along with champagne or beer served with antipasto through the afternoon until we return at sunset. Our attention to detail to make your day perfect is our highest priority and we aim to leave you with a joyously memorable experience of our beautiful Whitsunday Islands.

  It was certainly a more enticing option than staying in her room and reading over that blasted presentation.

  Liv hadn’t taken a holiday in the eight years she had worked for Sheridan Corp. When she’d talked about going overseas for a couple of weeks at the end of her first year, her father’s disapproval had quickly put paid to the idea.

  ‘You want to be a successful businesswoman?’ He’d almost sneered as she’d broached the subject the week before Christmas. ‘I suppose you intend to go swanning overseas with your mother. Do that and I’ll know you’re not serious about a career with Sheridan Corp. Your choice.’

  So Liv had made her choice. The idea of a holiday had been put on the backburner, and there it had stayed for way too long. Despite working longer hours than most of the other staff and completing her MBA part-time, Liv burned with frustration that newer employees were promoted over her, time and time again.

  Patience and one hugely successful project.

  That’s all it was going to take. She wanted this to be the one. Dad would recognise the quality of her work—not to mention her loyalty to the company—and this deal was her opportunity to prove she was highly capable. If she could do it before absolute exhaustion burned her out. She was beginning to realise that her working pace was unsustainable, although Gran’s comment about ‘having to slow down now that she’d turned thirty’ had made her laugh. Gran was about to have her ninety-third birthday and she still managed to work around the farm as though she was fifty years younger.

  The waiter placed a cup of coffee in front of her and Liv smiled her thanks as she turned back to the glossy brochure. She turned it over and looked at the back page. It was a map that she was very familiar with; one that she had stared at on her screen as she’d read the proposal for the new mine one hundred kilometres inland, and the associated coal loader north of Airlie Beach. She looked at the names of the bays, all too familiar. It was different seeing them on a tourist brochure rather than on an environmental impact study. The rail route, now apparently approved, would wind its way east from the mine north-west of Proserpine to the coal loader. It wouldn’t be far north of the town where she would be speaking on Monday. Liv frowned as she stared at the map.

  Instead of chatting to Mum last night, she should have opened the revised file and had a close look at it. A niggle of doubt tugged at her; reading the names of the bays and the islands on a map was very different to standing on her balcony and looking out over the sapphire-blue sea. She traced her finger over the coastline to the north on the tourist map on the table, recalling the name of the bay where the coal loader had been originally proposed.

  Liv put the brochure aside, wondering how far north it had been moved. Guilt flooded through her; she shouldn’t have taken today off. She’d look at the presentation as soon as she was back this afternoon, and work into the night. But then she remembered her mother’s words last night.

  Don’t let him suck you in, Livi. He’s a master at that. Be warned.

  No. Today was hers, a day to recharge her batteries, and she planned to enjoy every minute of it.

  She pushed her chair back and walked over to the buffet, collecting a newspaper on the way. A colourful array of tropical fruits filled the first table—mango slices fanned into the shape of a huge flower, pineapples hollowed out and filled with yoghurt, the slices of pineapple interspersed with different types of melon and strawberries on another tray. She loaded her plate with a variety of fruit and went back to the table. When she was almost done, she glanced at her watch and opened the newspaper. There was still half an hour before she would be picked up for the tour. Flicking through the newspaper, Liv narrowed her eyes and put the spoon back on her plate as the headline on page four caught her attention: Zenith Enterprises slammed by the Queensland Institute.

  Her appetite and complacency disappeared as she quickly read through the article.

  ‘In its latest statement on the Chinese-funded project, the Queensland Institute asks why up to half a billion in loan funding should be provided by the state government for a rail link to the proposed coal loader on the Whitsunday coast. A financial modelling undertaken by the institute’s economists concludes that government funding of the Zenith Enterprise rail line would have a negative impact on the coal industry state wide.’

  Liv skimmed through the rest of the article, where there was a discussion of the potential multi-use of the rail line, although the economic reporter’s tongue-in-cheek conclusion was that, as there were few tourists living near the proposed coal mine who would need transport to the coast, the multi-use justification could not really be considered seriously. It was already outdated information because the new rail line route hadn’t been made public yet. Articles like this had appeared in the newspapers since the project had first been proposed. A tagline at the bottom of the article directed readers t
o the editorial comment on page two.

  ‘Bloodsucking journalists out to make a name for themselves.’ Her father’s words had been heard many times at meetings over the past few months. He had no respect for the media, and somehow usually managed to keep some of the more damning reports out of the national papers. She’d often wondered about the honesty of his connections, but the one time she’d questioned him, disgust had curled his lip. ‘And you really think you can make it in the corporate world, Olivia?’

  Liv reached for her coffee, needing a caffeine hit before she read any more of the damaging conclusions. She flicked back a page and read the editorial.

  Greg Coutts. She’d heard of him before. He was a tenacious reporter and had recently exposed an illegal plan to put a coal seam gas waste dump in a small national park in the central west of Queensland. After the report, the overseas company had quickly pulled out.

  Green groups are not alone in their fear that our reef will suffer further.

  Liv scanned through the editorial. The main focus was the damage to the reef and, secondary to that, the certain damage the coal loader would cause to the tourist industry in the Whitsunday region, not only in the islands but along the Queensland coast from Townsville to Mackay. Professor Ted Darnell at James Cook University, who also represented scientists at the World Conservation Congress, had been asked to comment and was vitriolic in his opposition to both the mine and the coal loader.

  ‘It defies reason.’ Coutts quoted Professor Darnell throughout his article. ‘There is no single action that could be as harmful to the Great Barrier Reef as the Zenith proposal. Roughly a third of marine species have parts of their life cycle in coral reefs. So if you take out coral reefs, you have an ecological collapse of the oceans. It’s happened before, mass extinctions through ocean acidification. The consideration of this proposal coincides with our increased concern over threats to the reef from land-based pollution, including sediments, nutrients and pesticides.’

  Liv put the paper aside with a groan. Coutts had his eye on Zenith, which was a worry. Should she call Dad?

  No. His minions would have read the report by now and alerted him to it.

  Why this weekend? Why did the media have to get hold of all of these reports two days before she was presenting to the local Whitsunday community on the economic benefits to the local region when—if—the mine and the coal loader were approved? The current focus on tourism and the potential for damage to the reef, and the tourism industry, was going to make her presentation very difficult, and she suspected there would be strong opposition at the meeting. For the first time, she was pleased that her father was sending the other guys up from the company, and then she bit her lip.

  Maybe Dad had been right all along, and she wasn’t tough enough for the corporate world. Or maybe she’d been kidding herself that she wanted to be.

  If only he would let her get involved in economic analysis and projection; that’s where her strength lay. Instead, she got sent out as the public relations person with the figures and projections of other analysts in his company and the parent company. She would never forget a comment she’d overheard at the coffee machine in the office one night. ‘Sherro’s daughter’s got the looks. Why else would he send her out there to do his dirty work?’ She hadn’t recognised the voice, but the laughing response had come from Dad’s last PA. ‘Whatever works, and a bit of eye candy never goes astray when you’re trying to convince an audience.’

  The comment had rankled, and she hadn’t been able to let it go, then or now it seemed. Liv swallowed, focusing on the article in front of her. If it was accurate and supported by credible people, where the hell was her father getting his advice from? It was almost as though he thought the company was untouchable and could go ahead without any justification, apart from making millions of dollars. In one way, Liv was pleased she was up here in the islands. It certainly wouldn’t be pleasant in the office at Sheridan Corp today. And it didn’t matter that it was the weekend. Most of the Sheridan Corp employees worked seven days a week.

  She bit her lip as her stomach churned. The more she saw of the islands, the less convinced she was about the very proposal she was up here to endorse. Pushing her coffee away, she picked up her napkin and dabbed her lips. Her appetite had gone.

  She walked up to her room, quickly changed into her swimmers and slipped a white linen dress over them before packing her tote bag with sun cream, a sarong and her camera. She glanced across at her computer, and then her iPhone, tempted to log on and look at the new file. With renewed determination, she picked them both up, opened the safe next to the bed and slipped them inside, and reset the code to her date of birth. She had no doubt that her father would contact her again today, but she was taking the day off; she’d listen to anything he had to say tonight. There was sure to be a dozen or more emails from him, and she wasn’t going to let anything spoil her day.

  Today is mine.

  As she crossed the large marbled floor of the foyer to wait for the buggy, the day receptionist came from behind the desk and handed her a message slip.

  ‘There was a call for you, Ms Sheridan, while you were at breakfast.’

  Liv’s buoyant mood deflated quickly.

  Oh God, already? The day of relaxation ahead had been a dream. She unfolded the message and read it as the receptionist waited.

  Please call Byron Ellis. The name was followed by a mobile number. Relief surged through her.

  Not Dad. Not yet.

  ‘Would you please call Mr Ellis and let him know I’ll return his call tonight?’ She recognised the name, Byron, as that of the man who had been with the elderly woman yesterday afternoon. It would be rude to ignore his message; he’d been polite and considerate. It was the smelly fisherman with him who had been a total jerk and riled her temper. The guy who had tried to push her along the street, and held onto her jacket, had annoyed her at the time but Dad’s call had pushed the incident from her mind.

  ‘Certainly, Ms Sheridan. I’ll pop a copy of the message on the desk in your room for you.’ The girl in the brightly patterned tropical shirt smiled at her and pointed to the door. ‘There’s your buggy now. Have a great day.’

  CHAPTER

  4

  The Lady May rocked silently on the glassy water. It was still early and there were few people around apart from crew pushing loaded trolleys towards the charter boats. Liv glanced around at the small group of people waiting to board the classic timber yacht. As they stood on the narrow concrete wharf, a few hesitant smiles were exchanged, the sort that strangers welcome each other with when they know, by the end of the day after their shared adventure, they will be exchanging emails and photographs.

  Maybe not, Liv thought. Most of this small group was made up of young couples and she guessed some were probably on their honeymoons. There appeared to be only one other passenger taking the cruise alone and, as Liv glanced over, the girl caught her eye and wandered over to where Liv was standing at the edge of the wharf.

  ‘Hello, I’m Inga.’ Her voice was deep and her accent had a Scandinavian lilt. ‘I am very excited to be travelling today on this beautiful boat.’ She looked around curiously. ‘Are you travelling alone also?’

  Liv smiled and held out her hand. ‘Hi, I’m Liv. And yes, I am by myself. And I’m also looking forward to the day. It’s going to be a perfect day for sailing.’ She gestured to the brilliant blue sky where fragments of wispy clouds were being pushed along by a strong wind up high.

  ‘As long as it is not too rough. I do not wish to be … how do you say it? Ocean sick?’ Inga frowned.

  ‘Seasick,’ Liv replied. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. The best part of the charter is there won’t be smelly fumes from the motor, just smooth sailing. Hopefully, anyway, if there’s enough wind.’

  A young woman in a bright blue cotton shirt and white shorts stepped off the boat onto the wharf with a clipboard in hand. ‘Hi, everyone, please gather around. My name is Sonia. Welcome to your day on
our beautiful Lady May. Today we’re going to indulge you with luxury and elegance on a journey back to a past age of classic yachting.’ She moved through the group, and ticked off the passengers on the list, finishing with Liv and Inga. ‘Ms Sheridan? And Ms Nordstrom? Fabulous, we’re all here. Thank you, everyone, for being so punctual. We’ve got a great day ahead, and the wind is forecast to increase and promise a wonderful day of sailing.’

  Sonia turned and nodded to the deckhand who waited at the side of the boat. He slid a wooden walkway from the deck to the wharf.

  ‘Please take your shoes off. We’ll stow them below deck when you are on board,’ she said. ‘You’ll see Lady May has beautiful timber floors, so it’s barefoot for all of us until we go for our walk at Hill Inlet. Please take anything from your bags that you’ll need on deck before we stow them below for you too.’ She kept walking as she checked off guests, and continued speaking as the first of the group followed her up the walkway. ‘Actually, there’s really nothing you’ll need. We’ve got plenty of sun cream and water on deck, so maybe just a hat. Don’t worry about your mobile phone unless you want to use it as a camera because once we get out through the Solway Passage, there’s no service.’ She quickly ran through the safety procedures, the facilities below, pointed out the life raft and the water station, and told them to be careful on the steps if they went below deck to the restrooms.

  Liv removed her sandals, slipping them into her small back pack, before taking out her camera and slinging the strap around her neck. Small waves were beginning to ruffle the calm of the marina as the breeze picked up, and sunlight sparkled on the blue water. She held her straw hat by her side so it wouldn’t blow away.

  Liv and Inga were last to board. They passed their bags to the deckhand as they stepped off the walkway and made their way to the raised section that ran down the centre of the deck. Large burgundy cushions lined the seats on the top of the cabin, and they found themselves a position up front, close to the bow.