Coasts of Cape York

by Christopher Cummings

  Sleeping in the open with no protective walls he found freaky but both Peter and Roger said it was the best way. “You can see what is coming and you can get out quickly if you need to,” Peter said.

  “See!” Willy retorted sarcastically.

  Peter’s response was to laugh. “Use your torch,” he replied. “Now go to sleep.”

  All in all Willy did not enjoy his night in the jungle. Nor did most of the others, judging by the number of times they sat up or shone torches around or grumbled. It was with genuine relief that Willy checked his watch (For the fiftieth time) and saw it was 0500. From then on he lay awake, willing the daylight to hurry up and arrive.

  Feeling distinctly washed out Willy got up and stretched as soon as it was light enough to see. He was not the only one awake. Andrew and Stick both sat up. Stick rubbed his eyes and said, “What a horrible night! I didn’t enjoy that.”

  Andrew nodded. “Give me a ship anytime,” he added.

  Peter stuck his head out of his sleeping bag and looked at his watch. “Go to sleep you mob!” he growled.

  “Can’t. Anyway, it’s daylight,” Stick answered.

  “Bloody hell!” Peter said, sitting up and stretching. “What a crew! I won’t take you lot camping again. You are a mob of scaredy cats.”

  The girls woke up as well and joined in the discussion of all the things they had heard during the night. Marjorie crawled out of the tent in her pajamas and the sight made Willy shudder. Her hair had a ‘bird’s nest’ appearance and her face was all puffy, with dark rings under her eyes.

  ‘Dad said you need to see them first thing in the morning to help you decide if they are the one for you,’ Willy thought. Then he had a vivid image of Barbara and wished it was her, not Marjorie, who was his girlfriend. That was followed by almost instant guilt as Marjorie greeted him lovingly, much to the amusement of everyone else.

  Marjorie’s response was to poke her tongue at them. “You are all just jealous,” she commented, drawing a chorus of laughing denials.

  Peter next insisted they pack up their bedding. “And your tents,” he added.

  “What if it rains?” Carmen queried.

  Peter looked up. “It hasn’t rained for most of the night. There isn’t even any cloud. It will be alright.”

  So they packed up and then sat on their packs to have breakfast. That cheered Willy a bit but he still felt tired and stiff. For breakfast he had a muesli bar, followed by a can of spaghetti and meatballs which he heated in a mess tin. These were washed down by coffee sweetened with condensed milk from a tube.

  By 0630 they were ready to explore. Peter instructed them to leave their packs at the campsite. “No point in lugging them up and down the mountainside,” he said. “It will be hard enough as it is.”

  He wasn’t wrong. From almost the first minute of searching it was sweaty work. Peter led them north, using his compass. This put them on another ridgeline. When they were a hundred metres down the slope he turned them left and explained how they were to search in ‘extended line’, side by side and ten metres apart.

  “We will sweep right around the mountain at this level,” he explained. “Now make sure you can always see the person on either side of you. If the line breaks then call out and we will stop and reform.”

  It was fine in theory, but in practice it was extremely difficult. Not only was the jungle very thick it was full of wait-a-while. As only Peter and Roger had secateurs the others had to make big detours to get around the masses of thorny tendrils. Worse still, once they got off the spine of the spur into the re-entrant, the slope became very steep. In places it was too steep to stand and the only way to progress was by moving from tree to tree. In doing so there were numerous slips and falls and a lot of sweaty grumbling.

  Everyone got bruised and scratched by constant bumping into trees, vines and spiky bushes. Willy became hot and frustrated and several of the others began to complain and had obviously lost interest. Marjorie gamely kept going but was plainly unhappy. Stick was the most vociferous about how hard it was and within half an hour he was loudly grumbling that they were just wasting their time.

  As he struggled slowly along Willy tried to imagine what it must have been like for the people in the plane. One moment they would have been just flying along. The next they would have been dead. ‘I wonder if they had a second’s warning?’ he thought, picturing the front of the plane suddenly smashing in. The image made him shudder at the horror and tragedy of it.

  He had seen photos in the aircraft magazines of wrecks found in rainforest so he had some idea of what they were looking for. ‘There should be bits of mangled metal wrapped around trees and half buried in the leafmould,’ he told himself.

  Stick had asked about what to look for and had suggested broken trees but Roger had said no, pointing out that any broken vegetation would have long since rotted and new growth taken its place. Despite this Willy had several moments of hope when he came across recently fallen trees. Then his rational mind dismissed the notion that a crashing plane from sixty years before might have caused it.

  ‘Obviously blown down in a recent storm,’ he thought, noting that the tangle of vines festooning the fallen tree were still green. Worse still fallen trees presented a formidable obstacle that took a lot of effort to detour around, particularly on such a steep slope.

  It took over an hour to move just 300 metres. The searchers clawed their way up onto the next ridge, arriving in three straggling groups rather than in a line. As they came together Stick voiced his thoughts. “This is bloody hopeless. It will take weeks to search the whole top of this mountain,” he cried.

  Willy wiped sweat from his face and mentally agreed. It was obvious to him that most of the others were quickly losing interest. Andrew shook his head and said, “This was only a rumour anyway wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was,” Peter agreed.

  “I am nearly out of water again,” Tina added.

  That was the nub of the matter. Despite refilling their water bottles from the rain they had all used much of it during the night. Willy checked his own supply and noted he had only two bottles left and was feeling thirsty. Despite that he stubbornly wanted to continue the search around into the next re-entrant. To check he walk a few paces and looked down the slope.

  One glance made his hopes slump. The slope looked even steeper, almost vertical, and it appeared to be just one huge tangle of wait-a-while. Peter joined him. “I don’t like the look of that,” he commented.

  “Real ‘tiger country’,” added Roger.

  Peter shook his head. “I think we had better be safe rather than sorry. Most of us are short of water so we had better give this up and start down. I don’t want to have to call the rescue helicopter on the mobile phone when someone has heat exhaustion,” he said.

  Willy felt simultaneously relieved and disappointed. He was glad that Peter had taken the decision and agreed with him. None of the others disagreed and most even looked relieved. As there was no argument Peter turned and led the way up the spur. Even though they were only fifty metres below the top it still took ten sweaty minutes to make their way back to their camp site.

  Once there Peter did not allow them time to linger. He just hoisted on his pack, ordered the others to do likewise, then set off down the spur they had come up. His only comment, after checking the time on his watch, was to say, “We had to start back by ten o’clock at the latest anyway.”

  Willy glanced at his own watch and saw it was nearly 9:00. That made him feel better. ‘We are only losing about an hour of search time,’ he told himself. But as he trudged down the slope behind Roger he had the nagging suspicion that he would never be back and would spend the rest of his life wondering if there really was an aircraft wreck somewhere in the jungle up on the mountain.

  The climb back down took nearly four hours, one longer than they had planned on. It was almost as hard as going up as they frequently lost the track they had cut on the way up and had to battle thr
ough the wait-a-while and vines nearly all the way. They all ran out of water and got very hot, sweaty and thirsty. Willy began worrying that one of them might get heat exhaustion.

  Peter obviously had the same concern because he led them down off the spine of the spur and into the re-entrant to the north until they came to the headwaters of the creek. He made them all drink the creek water, over-ruling any objections about it not being safe. “There is no pollution upstream and it is clear and flowing,” he said, adding, “Besides, an upset stomach later is better than heat exhaustion now.”

  Carmen strongly supported him so they all drank. Willy actually found the crystal clear water both cold and refreshing. He drank his fill and then filled two water bottles. Peter then led them back around to the ridge and on down.

  Sweating heavily and feeling quite wrung out Willy stepped out of the jungle into the open track beside the cane field at 1:20pm. The group stood for a minute to get their breath and to drink before continuing to walk. Now they were out of the rainforest the sun struck down with vicious force, seeming to burn through clothing. Willy sweated even more.

  Peter urged them to keep walking. Half an hour of plodding in the heat had them back at the big creek near the sugar mill. They crossed the bridge and trudged on around past the railway sidings to the park inside the ring road. At the old steam locomotive they dropped their packs, all with sighs of relief.

  Roger pointed along the ‘main’ street. “I wonder if that shop there is open?” he said.

  “A cold soft drink would be nice,” Carmen agreed.

  It was at least 300 metres to the shop and both Stick and Marjorie grumbled it was “too far to walk on the off-chance that a shop might be open on a hot Sunday afternoon.”

  “I’ll bring you a drink,” Willy answered. “What would you like?”

  “A ‘pash’,” Marjorie answered.

  That caused everyone to laugh and Willy to blush. Marjorie poked her tongue at them and said, “A ‘Passion fruit’ soft drink I meant!”

  “Oh yeah?” Andrew teased.

  Leaving Stick and Marjorie to mind the gear the others strolled across the park and then along the footpath. The street was lined with a mixture of ‘low-set ‘Old Queenslander’ houses set in their own gardens, and shops. Several shops and the hotel half way along the street had awnings or rooms which overhung the footpath.

  From out of the front door of the shop near the hotel appeared two young girls. Willy immediately recognized them as Betty and her little sister. The two girls saw the group and at once turned and hurried towards them.

  “Here comes Betty the Flirt,” Carmen murmured.

  “She looks a bit upset,” Tina replied.

  She did. As she reached them Willy saw that she was crying and that her face was very red. Peter called to her, “Hi Betty, have you seen Graham and Stephen?”

  At that Betty’s face crumpled and more tears flooded out. “Yes.. Oh! Oh, boo hoo!” she sobbed. “It’s awful! They’ve both been taken away by the police.”

  “By the police! Why?” cried Peter.

  CHAPTER 14

  TROUBLE

  “Taken away by the police!” Peter cried. “Why?”

  Betty sobbed for a moment, then wiped her tears. “Be..be…b..b. because (sob). Because Graham and Stephen have been accused of bashing Declin Riley,” she explained.

  Peter shook his head in disbelief and dismay. “Declin Riley? Who the hell is he?” he asked.

  “H..h..he (sob) is a bloke who works at the (sob) mill,” Betty answered.

  “But.. but why would Graham and Stephen beat this Declin guy up?” Peter asked.

  Betty sniffled, then wiped her nose on her sleeve, causing Willy to inwardly cringe. Then she said, “Because Declin likes Carol Battersby.”

  Peter looked at Roger, disbelief written all over his face. Roger shook his head and said, “I don’t believe it. Graham is not like that. He’s been in a few fights at school but he has never started one.”

  Carmen backed him up. “I agree. The only time I have heard of Graham getting into a fight it has been with a bully or as a knight in shining armour to help someone else.”

  Peter nodded and turned back to Betty. “This Declin, tell us about him.”

  “He’s a tall, skinny joker, seventeen or eighteen. He works in the office. He’s a real boring pain, a computer geek.”

  “A real nerd,” Betty’s little sister added, wrinkling her nose to emphasize her dislike.

  “So what does this Declin say happened?” Peter demanded to know.

  “Don’t know. He was found bashed unconscious this morning and an ambulance took him off to hospital. They reckon he might die from head injuries,” Betty explained.

  Willy felt a wave of shock. The story seemed to go from bad to worse. “So why did the police pick on Graham and Stephen?” he asked.

  “Because they had some sort of a fight with Declin last night at the Christmas party,” Betty answered.

  “What over?” Peter demanded to know.

  Betty went silent for a moment, then said, “Over me and Carol. Declin said to Graham to make his mind up and not to do anything to hurt Carol.”

  “I still don’t believe that would be any reason for Graham to beat this bloke up,” Roger said.

  “Nor do I,” Peter agreed. Willy nodded and noted Tina giving Betty a hostile look. ‘She thinks that Betty has caused this,’ he thought.

  Peter asked, “So the police came and took Graham and Stephen away?”

  “Yes,” Betty replied.

  “At about nine o’clock,” her little sister added.

  “What about their gear?” Peter asked.

  “They took it with them,” Betty answered.

  At that moment a red-faced, middle-aged man in shorts and singlet stepped out of the shop doorway and then yelled loudly, “You girls get back inside, and stop talking to strangers.”

  “That’s our dad,” Betty explained. She and her sister turned and hurried home, obviously afraid of their father.

  They left the group shocked and upset. All thought of going to any shop had been driven from their mind and they walked back to the park discussing the bad news. As they arrived back Marjorie called, “What’s wrong? Where is Graham?”

  “In trouble,” Willy answered. “The police have arrested him for bashing some guy.”

  “Oh no!” Marjorie cried.

  Stick asked, “What about Stephen?”

  “Him too,” Willy added.

  “Good!” Marjorie snapped. That really hurt Willy. Earlier in the year Stephen had taken Marjorie out and he had always been jealous and suspected that Stephen had done something Marjorie hadn’t liked. The comment seemed to confirm that but also added to his jealousy.

  He could also see that Tina was really upset and that this was bothering Andrew. Then he remembered that Tina had gone on several dates with Graham a few months before. ‘She must still like him,’ he thought, again noting Andrew’s anxiety.

  The news set the whole group in a depressed mood. Willy found he just did not believe that Graham could have done it. The others all agreed. Tina said, “Well, the truth will come out when this Declin fellow gives his side of the story.”

  “If he doesn’t die,” Peter said, his voice bitter and laden with anxiety.

  That was a shocking prospect. Willy shook his head in dismay, ‘Graham could go to jail, or to one of those juvenile detention places,’ he thought sadly. ‘I might never see him again!’ From that followed the thought that neither Graham nor Stephen might be available for any of the expeditions to recover plane wrecks. It was a depressing and very sobering thought.

  The friends sat in the shade and discussed the situation, the failure of their own little expedition quite forgotten. It was a very subdued group who were collected by parents at 3:00pm for transport back to Cairns.

  During the trip home Willy described the events of the weekend to his mother and father. His father then asked if he planned to have
another go at finding the crashed plane.

  Willy shook his head and looked at Marjorie and Stick. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure that the story is true anyway.”

  “And this terrible business about Graham and Stephen,” Willy’s mother said. “I thought they were spending the weekend with you, searching for the plane crash.”

  “So did I,” Willy agreed.

  “I hope they haven’t been deceiving their parents,” Willy’s mother added.

  That was an unpleasant thought. It gnawed at Willy until he was home. Once he had unpacked and had a shower he went to the phone and dialed Graham’s number. Graham’s mother answered the phone and from the tone of her voice Willy could tell that she was not happy. “This is Willy Williams Mrs Kirk. Is Graham there?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry Willy, Graham can’t talk to you right now,” Mrs Kirk replied.

  Willy had half expected that but it also worried him. ‘I hope Graham isn’t really in trouble,’ he thought. For something to say he said, “Thank you Mrs Kirk. Please tell him we didn’t find the plane.”

  After hanging up he considered phoning Stephen but in the end did not. He did not like Stephen that much and still hadn’t forgiven him for whatever it was he had done to Marjorie.

  Worn out by the exertion of searching the jungle, the poor sleep the previous night, and worry about his friends, Willy went to bed early and slept soundly. On Monday he hurried to school, hoping to get the details on what had happened to Graham and Stephen. In this he was disappointed. Neither came to school.

  Nor was Marjorie there. “She says she is sick,” Stick explained. “She’s just fat and unfit really.”

  “She’s not fat!” Willy snapped, feeling his own ego to be under attack by his choice of girlfriend.

  Then it was time for classes. There were still three weeks of school to go for the Year 9s and Willy was not looking forward to them at all. ‘Complete waste of time!’ he thought. ‘We have done our exams and all the teachers will do is go over all our mistakes in the tests and carry on about how we need to do better next year.’