by Gregory Day
Any fool could see it, the fox had told Ron. All you had to do was look. The glitter out on the water was proof. The sea was full of diamonds. It was bursting with them. Of course the fox was casual about it, as diamonds were of no use to him, but looking out there it made sense to Ron, it was right in front of his eyes, and he was off. So much so that with the new information he quickly left his conversations with the fox behind. For he was a boy, after all. A fox might like meat best but a boy preferred diamonds. Just look at them!
Now, from the sea of diamonds all the magic came. Seabirds would dive deep, gather them up in their talons and build their nests from them on the Two Pointer rocks. Diamond boats would float by, all a-glitter, the booty strapped to the decks with ropes made from his father’s jute and from Min’s furry pelargonium stems. Red-haired giants would pick at the sea with enormous mattocks to prise the diamonds out, and that was bad weather. What Ron felt he had to do, and time and time again he did this over the years, was to find a way to overcome the chickenwire and plunge into the glittering sea. In his gazing, his infant surmising, sometimes sitting on the bench with his corduroy-clad legs tucked under him, other times lying on the ground around the bench, sometimes standing with his fingers in the hexagons of the wire, he built flying foxes, from wire and coathangers, out to King Cormorant Rock to chat to the birds there about their gleaming nests and to try to convince them to take him with them as they dived under the water and away. He dug tunnels with his mother’s weeding shovel, down, down through the honeycomb of the cliffs beneath him, past the brown soily cities of worms and the golden tessellated cities of bees, under the shoreline rocks and out into the turquoise rock pools on the beach below. He would upmerge, look about and smile, and then continue on his quest. He saw many people as he went, all of them looking for the diamonds as well. He saw Rhyll and Sid Tra-herne, and Leo Morris, and Papa Mahoney, and Fred Ayling, but he could not talk to them, for he always had to wear a special diving mask, to protect his eyes so he could properly see the jewels.
Deep in the currents, in the blue-grainy holes around the base of King Cormorant Rock and under the jagged slate-grey lips of Gannet Rock a hundred yards across the water to the west, he feasted his eyes on the underwater diamond valhalla. It was like visiting the inside of a benign sun, all ablaze in yellow and powerful white with fun and beauty, amidst the fish and the waving weed, the shining anemones and the clambering shy crabs and crayfish. Even the seven-gill sharks were dazzled by the jewels and somehow neutralised, and the other creatures and characters he met as he sailed about in his mask were innumerable.
At night he would mutter ‘diamonds’ in his sleep and his mother and father would wonder what it was all about. But he could never tell them. In the morning, Min would ask but he could never say. It was in another part of him. Beyond the words and the house and the mother and the father. Beyond the smell of cherries in the kitchen or the cold metal of the painted green clamps in the open shed. But they were there, the diamonds. Ever since the fox pointed out what was obvious to him. And so the La Branca bench and the tough grass and dirt around it, within the chickenwire cage, became a type of adventure-seat, a cage of dreams. And the great thing was, as the decades rolled by, the glitter had never entirely gone. Well, not for any great length of time, anyway. It was always there, back behind events, deep within the sun and moon, the boy inside the man, first thing in the morning if the clouds allowed, sparkling on the reaches.
THREE
LOOKING AT THE KOALA
Liz Wilson was a spasmodic reader, despite always having a novel at least partly read on her bedside table. She could devour three or four books in a fortnight but then nothing at all for the next six weeks. Michael Ondaatje, Amitav Ghosh, Ian McEwan, these were the trusted authors she could visit time and again, but her all-time favourite books were Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The God of Small Things and To Kill a Mockingbird. What she treasured most about reading was not the lilt of the language or the nature of the information she was receiving but rather the state of deep time a book could put her in: curled up in a chair, transported away from her circumstances, in a parallel life and relaxed in a way that nothing else could touch. Years before in a fit of ambition after reading a newspaper article, she had once tried to read Proust, not getting much further than the overture, but as her new life in Mango wak began to deepen she had cause to be reminded of the intense delicacy with which the French writer had described his beloved two walks in the opening passages of his famous tome.
Liz had discovered a number of favourite walks since moving out of the city but the one she loved most was along the Old Breheny Road. Before the Ocean Road was built, the Old Breheny was the route by which a cart or Cobb & Co coach could head west along the coast from Mango wak. It began at the back of the river flat and wound around behind the Boat Creek hill, with green swards of the river paddocks on the inland side and subtle gradations of heath, banksia, tea-tree and golden wattle on the other. Liz would descend from her house on the town ridge and stride down the white clay road with her auburn hair bunched into a cap, tolling her dumbbells, her clear heart-shaped face smiling at the scene, marvelling at the clusters of ironbark flowers lying about, perfectly at ease. She was alone, luxuriantly so, in the healthy bush and crisp astringent air, and she was reassured by the occasional car that would pass that she was not far from help if she needed it.
Continuing along the Old Breheny she’d pass the big red-roofed farmstead and go as far as a gated track heading up onto the high ocean-facing ridge behind Boat Creek. Climbing up the steep and heavily rutted track was a challenge but on either side of her the grass-trees shimmered and at the top she could look south out to the epic horizon, the ocean glowing and flecked under fast-drifting porous clouds. She could turn and look southwest also, into the often rainloaded sky above the rainforested hills, or back inland across the scrubby undulant hills rolling away to the heights of the immediate north. Up on that dry ridge Liz felt quite wild with the vantage, alone and omniscient but with houses less than a mile from where she stood.
She would pause on this exhilarating height, taking it all in, before stepping off along the stony orange spine of the ridge, heading back parallel to the way she’d come on the Old Breheny way below. Before long she’d find herself deep in a scratchy fire track, swigging from her water bottle, her pale skin flushed, a raw health coursing through her. The bush as she walked would fold around her, each gully a secret holding a new variation on silence, closing out the ocean roar. This was a world crammed with shy bracken fronds, countless green and russet tinctures of rotting and growth, twisted coarse eucalypts leaning this way and that and granulated bull-ant mounds everywhere at her feet. The ant mounds always reminded Liz of couscous.
Eventually, striding up and over three more dips and inclines, she’d emerge beneath a towering mobile phone receiver on the western hill above the Mangowak riverflat, right opposite her own ridge on the other side. Beside the cyclone fence there she could see clear across the pastured valley to her home. She’d waste no time moving past the crackle and fizz of the receiver compound. Descending into the valley she’d skirt left around the riverbank market garden, carefully dodging mounds of spilt chicken and goat poo as she went, to rejoin the Old Breheny Road at the river and make her way via the Dray Road back to Riverview Drive.
Occasionally, of course, life would intervene, things would crop up, her freelance design work would come all in a rush, and she wouldn’t have the time to take her morning walk. One cloudy day in midspring she was due in Colac at 11 am for her son Reef’s swimming sports but thought she’d sneak in an abbreviated walk beforehand. Wearing only her tracksuit and Birkenstocks she headed briskly to do a short loop across the ridge a little way, down onto the Dray Road at the disused cattle yards, and then back up the slope to her house on Riverview.
The day was cool but quiet, with not a zephyr of wind. Coming down off the ridge, and anxious about the time, she chose to cut across a bush block on the bottom cor
ner. Stepping through the light undergrowth of fallen limbs and leaf litter, she heard a grunting sound in the gumtrees above. She looked up to see a koala sitting comfortably in the sturdy crook of a mature ironbark. Despite her hurry Liz stopped immediately and stared up in wonder at the koala. There it was, its round furry face, its pinpoint waterblack eyes staring down, chewing leaves right in front of her.
Suddenly she felt a sharp stinging pain in the toes of her left foot, and yelled loudly. She jumped in the air with the shock but looked down as she landed to see a bull-ant crawling across the black strap of her sandal. She shrieked and shook her foot urgently but the pain only seemed to increase. Violently she shook her foot again and again until the sandal came right off. As it fell she saw not one but a number of bull-ants scattering from her Birkenstock and off into the dirt.
The pain was ferocious, like red-hot needles boring into her skin. She quickly made sure the sandal was completely cleared and placed it back on her foot, looking wildly at the ground all around her for more ants. She hobbled across the remaining diagonal of the bush block, the koala in the tree now totally forgotten.
Her face contorting with pain, she made her way back along the Dray Road and up to her house. Inside she went straight to the bathroom, ran the shower and stuck her foot under the cold water. She couldn’t believe the ferocity, the blinding heat in her foot. The cold water didn’t seem to be making an impression at all. She glanced at her watch. How could she get to Reef’s sports day like this? She couldn’t, she could hardly walk, let alone drive, in this amount of pain.
Towelling her foot gingerly she inspected her inflamed toes for the bite marks but couldn’t see any. She went to the medicine cupboard next to the mirror and read the tube of Savlon. Yes, ‘ant bites’ it said on the side. She squeezed some cream from the tube, gently rubbing it in to her foot. She breathed through billowing cheeks and longed for the stinging to cease. Then she limped into the kitchen, picked up the phone and called her husband, Craig. She told him what had happened and asked him to ring the leisure centre where the swimming sports were being held and pass the message on. Craig asked her if she was sure it wasn’t a snake and she said she’d seen the ants all over her foot. He told her to lie down and rest.
She spent two days on the couch with her leg in the air. After the initial pain, and not having known to rub the juice of bracken stems on the bites, her foot swelled up to nearly double its size and she was told by the doctor to keep off it, to lie on the couch, put the leg up and wait for the swelling to reduce. She did as she was told but as the swelling started to go down she felt in its place a sapping of energy in the rest of her body. It was like the life was running out of her, she said to Craig. If she got up she was permanently dizzy. If the phone rang on the coffee table beside where she lay she could hear that her voice when she answered was reedy and weak. Could an ant do that? she wondered.
After two days on the couch she ended up in bed, entirely bereft of energy. It was like descending into the bottom of a well. Everything was dark, dead still, she could barely summon enough energy to open her eyes. After a further day and night like this, Craig began to worry. When Liz ceased to be able to speak at all it suddenly occurred to him that her life might well be in danger. He called an ambulance.
When the ambulance officers arrived they immediately injected Liz with adrenalin before placing her on a stretcher and rushing her to the Colac Hospital. She was observed closely and put through a series of tests. The doctors, like the ambulance officers, deduced from her symptoms that she’d been bitten by skipjack ants, which were notorious on the coast and could be fatal. After the test results, however, they decided Liz was not suffering from the anaphylactic allergic reaction common in skipjack victims and that, in fact, nothing at all was wrong with her. There was no trace of venom, no hint of an allergen, nothing at all irregular but for mildly low blood pressure. Craig was reassured that she would recover. He conveyed this to Liz but got no response.
She lay motionless and quite oblivious now, in a bed in a double ward of the southern wing of the hospital. She was by the window, the other bed was empty. Craig, of course, had to return home to look after the kids so she lay there alone, drifting in and out of heavy slumber and a disoriented wakefulness all night long.
When finally she opened her eyes at dawn the following day she had no idea where she was, or what had happened. A nurse appeared and with her the memory of the ants returned. Liz felt a shudder pass through her, a stickiness in the mouth, and vomited into a pan. The nurse cleaned her up and gave her Panadeine Forte. ‘You’re gonna be fine,’ the nurse said cheerily to Liz as she lay back exhausted. ‘Take advantage of the rest, love, you’re worn out, that’s all.’
The doctors were not worried now, maintaining that her symptoms had nothing to do with the ants. When a patient was admitted to the bed next to her they seemed concerned to free up her bed. By telephone they reiterated to Craig what the nurse had said: Liz was burnt out.
She lay sleeping when she could and in between times looked out the window over the low shanty blocks of Colac, thinking of the koala in the tree and how stupid she’d been to walk across a bush block in her Birkenstocks. Never again, she swore to herself. What had she been thinking? When a young female doctor came to do her ‘obs’ at midday, Liz told her she knew it wasn’t skipjacks that had bitten her, she had seen the culprits, and they were definitely bull-ants. The doctor agreed that was more than likely but assured her that bull-ants could not provoke such a reaction as she’d had. ‘You’re obviously run down,’ the doctor said. ‘You’ve had some kind of anxiety attack, I’d say. Rest is the key. I’ll put through your discharge now. It’ll take a while but you should be out of here by the end of the day. You’ll be better off back home recovering in familiar surrounds.’
By midafternoon Liz was able to sit up. She began to feel her energy slowly dripping back into her. She’d thought she was going to die, she realised. She smiled with love and relief when Craig arrived with the kids at four o’clock. Libby had been crying, she noticed, and was fiddling sulkily with her mobile phone. Little Reef was carrying a football.
Her discharge came through at four thirty and together they got into the lift and emerged from the hospital into a freezing wind. She was still very weak and Craig had to help her into the car.
They drove out of Colac, over the Barongarook Creek and along the highway beyond the old Marriners Nursery. As they eventually passed out of cleared farmland and into the forested slopes above the Ocean Road, the sight of the bush made Liz want to be sick. She felt the stickiness again in her mouth. Libby and Reef were quiet in the back and she said nothing to anyone about it. She was embarrassed. An anxiety attack, the doctor had said. That’s all. She found it hard to believe, given how physically weak she had felt, and was still feeling now. Behind the wheel of the Tribute, Craig assumed the sight of the bush would be making her feel a hell of a lot better.
For a week she lay on the couch at home, with marie claire and Almost French and Foxtel, and the burgundy blinds drawn. Outside, the cockatoos were raucous as usual, sometimes to the extent that she had to grab the remote to turn up the volume of the TV. She watched Antiques Roadshow and old Seinfeld episodes, read, and tried to sleep. Craig cooked and fixed the lunches for the kids, although Libby stayed home three days straight with period pain.
Liz had always been a nature lover, even as a girl. Growing up on a half-acre in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne she’d planted bulbs and herbs with her father and trained a pungent honeysuckle all the way down the side fence to overcome the smell of the next-door neighbours’ pigeons. She loved watching wildlife docos too, and All Creatures Great and Small. She’d quickly realised when they moved to Riverview Drive that the ground was rough, and that because they were high on the slope of the ridge all the topsoil had long disappeared down into the valley. The garden was going to take some work. But with a good mulching and plenty of pea straw she saw it come good. She’d grown mostly
natives in the front and vegetables out the back. That year was their third in Mangowak and it had been the best for vegies: lots of basil and lettuces and beans and squash and cherry tomatoes. She’d planted a passionfruit vine over the little pergola near the back door, and a lemon tree. The garden looked quite lovely, and only recently she’d watched the agapanthus flower for the first time along their front boundary. The violet fronds which mirrored the sky on a good day had given her quite a thrill.
Now, however, the very thought of the daylight outside her back door made her nauseous. She lay on the couch, with Libby coming and going between her room and the other couch, and let the movies and the books secrete her off from what all of a sudden seemed a parched and abrasive location.
When she couldn’t sleep or distract herself she pulled the blankets up to her chin and asked Libby to make her things: a plate of nachos, porridge, some popcorn. It was hard. She felt phobic now. The ground was sharp and would hurt you if you fell. If you brushed past a tree or a bush it would invariably scratch. Everything prickled. There were no bears or lions but everything was serrated, inhospitable. As if the land was rebuffing you. Telling you to nick off and be gone. The russet and sage of the forest leaves, the changing colours of the ocean, the flowering gums, the wheaten grass flickering in the breeze on the riverflat were all Liz had focused on but now, in one searing moment, it had changed. Like a light had gone out, she saw black shadows for the bush now, ashen awkward shapes, leering and irregular, and all with a potential to cut or scratch. There were a million different flying and hopping insects out there, carrying all types of unfathomable venom and pain, and she was so soft and exposed, with no hide, only bare and pale skin, and with no possible way of knowing what might be just around the corner.
After a week she would sit up but still with a blanket over her legs and still with drawn blinds and nausea and anxiety, her poisoned foot propped on the coffee table or pointing at the plasma screen, drinks at her side, books and magazines and the sickly daylight outside, on the other side of the blinds. The range of her dark thoughts continued to expand and soon she was doubting not only the landscape but even her marriage as well. She had first met Craig when travelling through Europe in her early twenties. They hadn’t clicked then but ten years later when they bumped into each other back in Melbourne, things were a lot different. He was running a cute little cafe in Hawthorn and she was looking after Libby on her own in a small flat in Kew. Now she wondered whether the whole relationship was just pure pragmatism on her behalf. She had had these thoughts before but this time the room would swirl with them and she would have to rush to the toilet. This episode would pass, she tried to tell herself, the doubt and nausea would go, the weirdness, and the black thoughts about the landscape.