by Heather Rose
At last, I said, ‘Okay, I need more coffee. You?’
‘Absolutely,’ he said.
I got up and ordered. As I was returning to the table, despite the warmth of the morning, rain started splattering on the floor-to-ceiling windows. The cafe was built high above the beach with a view up the Derwent and across the channel. White walls, raw wood, polished timber floors, a wide covered deck filled with patrons, and a kitchen garden below with stairs leading down to the beach. Maggie Lennox was nowhere in sight this morning.
Dan looked out as the weather closed in. ‘The boys will be loving this,’ he said. Meaning the crew on the bridge.
‘Do you think anyone will catch the ferry once the bridge is open?’ I asked.
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ he said. ‘Maybe there are ferry nuts like there are train nuts. Might get a few of those. But no. It’s a shame, but I guess that’s progress.’
‘Why does the ferry matter to you?’ I asked him.
‘It was always something to look forward to,’ he said. ‘I mean, I still look forward to it, and I must have done it thousands of times by now. It’s a new experience for a lot of people too—it’s an adventure. With a bridge, there’s no real feeling of arrival. I mean, what’s happening here now, with the bridge and the sealed roads, fifty years ago a bloke would have given anything to have a highway past his front door. Suddenly he’s sitting on a goldmine. These days, someone’s gone to the arse end of the world to set up a place for people to stay, and some government sees fit to build a bridge and it devalues her place. I know there’ll be people who will be going, “We’re sealing the road right by her house. We’re giving her a slip road and a sign. What’s her fucking problem?”’
‘She’s very popular, Maggie Lennox.’
‘She’s a great woman. It’s shitty what they’ve done to her. She’s given a lot to the state. And now they’re throwing her under a bus. Have you seen her place?’
‘I have. It’s incredible.’ Maggie had given me the promised tour. It was exquisite. ‘And you built it,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you did projects like that.’
‘It’s Tassie. We pitch for lots of things, big and small. Got a lot of blokes on the books. Have to keep them busy. In the past, I did the smaller stuff and Jimmy did the big commercial.’
I nodded. ‘Maggie said. It must be rewarding, seeing something you’ve made in the landscape.’
He stretched out his legs to the side of the table and partly turned towards the window. In quixotic Tasmanian style, the shower had passed and sunshine was breaking through the cloud cover. The sea looked like crushed linen. ‘It’s dominated my thought process, building,’ said Dan. ‘And it’s dominated my philosophy. Design is one thing but execution is everything. The central driver is how a structure will perform over a long period of time. How is it going to weather? You want it to stand the test of time. You want it doing exactly what it’s doing today in fifty years, in one hundred years. It can look good, but the test is three hundred years’ time. Maggie understands that. She’s tight—but she’s got her eye on the right result.’
‘Did you build this too?’ I asked, meaning the cafe.
‘No, not this. This was the first thing she built on Bruny. Didn’t know her then.’
Our coffees arrived.
‘Not long ago,’ Dan said, ‘I was on my way home on the ferry and this bloke appeared out of nowhere on the lower deck. He had this white jacket on, like a lab coat. Tall and skinny, wild white hair—looks like the doc from Back to the Future. And I asked one of the crew that I was talking to, “Who’s that old bloke? How long’s he been here?” And the bloke says, “He’s been here twenty-six years. He’s our mechanic.” Apparently he stays downstairs. Gets on at seven, gets off at four. I’ve been on that ferry all my life, and I’d never once seen him. Sits down there in his lab coat all day, every day, when he’s on, monitoring the pressure gauges and increasing the water flow, turn that up here and that down there. And he watches DVDs all day. Got a whole set-up down there. TV, headphones. That’s his life. What are they going to do with him when the ferry stops?’
‘What do you reckon he does at the end of the day now?’
‘Chops people up, I reckon. Got people dissected in his freezer.’
I laughed.
‘And what about the women who sell curry in Kettering?’ he asked. ‘They’ll be out of a job for sure.’
‘Do tell,’ I said.
‘There’s two of them in a caravan just near the terminal. They’re like Marg Simpson’s sisters. They’ve got these lines on their faces like a couple of Shar Peis, as though they’ve smoked a billion cigarettes. Their curries are fantastic. They make it all onsite, sitting on crates peeling onions. It’s another bit of the channel that we’ll lose when the bridge opens.’
‘Dan,’ I said, ‘why do you think Tasmanians protest so well? Why are they so averse to change?’
‘Well, we already gave up a lot just to be here.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Most of us could have done something else. Gone interstate or overseas. Could have lived bigger lives. Had fancy homes and a fat bank account. And the sea changers, well, they did live bigger lives. But they came here for something else. Quiet. Simplicity. When you settle for Tassie, you’ve settled for less in some ways; less of what matters out there, more of what matters here. If someone wants to change that, take what you love about it away, you get pretty shirty. Because it’s what we have. It’s all we have. You’d have seen a bit of that elsewhere in your line of work, I’m guessing.’
‘I have,’ I said.
‘Pretty messy job at times, yeah?’
I nodded. I didn’t want to think about all that. ‘So, Dan,’ I asked, ‘what matters most to you on this project?’
‘That I don’t lose any of my guys,’ he said. ‘It’s a bloody big structure.’
‘How do you think the foreign workforce is going to go?’
‘Hard to tell. Guess we’ll make it work.’
‘You seem pretty relaxed,’ I said.
‘That’s why they pay me the big bucks.’ As in not. He grinned that infectious grin that had such mischief about it. He had the most intensely blue eyes. Paul Newman blue. They were distracting.
‘So, you were a paratrooper,’ I said.
‘Been checking up on me?’ He grinned again.
‘It’s my job to know who I’m dealing with.’
He gave me a long level gaze. ‘You think I’m the bomber?’
‘Probably not,’ I said.
Yet he must have known a fair bit about explosives. He’d have had friends, too, who might have been able to put a team together. But the cost? Someone must have funded the bombing to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars. If Dan had done it, he would have been employed by someone. But would he build the thing and also blow it up? It seemed unlikely. Unless they offered him big money. I thought of his car, the house. He didn’t seem like a man who would be motivated by money, but it was hard to tell. More likely it been an order from higher up. Maybe a commanding officer from the old days. That might make sense. He was the only person I’d found who had the right background. And he was trained to obey.
‘Way beyond me, a job like that,’ he said, as if he knew he hadn’t convinced me. ‘But the Feds did ask me a fair few questions. I didn’t blow up the bridge, Astrid. Jesus. But look at the place. It’s paradise. I don’t want it to change.’
‘Someone really knew how to do enough,’ I said. ‘Not too little, not too much.’
‘Yep,’ he agreed. ‘Skill.’
‘Was it hard adjusting to civilian life after all that?’
‘It’s why I like working with a crew, I guess.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘Our unit was reassigned to mechanised infantry in 2011,’ he said. ‘The ultimate insult. Hyper fit, top of the food-chain, airborne soldiers got to be carried around in armoured personnel carriers like backpackers.’ He stretch
ed out his arms and yawned. ‘Still, small-minded decisions are not special to the army. Lots of us moved on. Jimmy offered me a job, made me a partner. Taught me everything I know, really, about business and such. It’s been okay, coming back.
‘I gotta get down to the site,’ he said, looking at his watch as he finished his latte.
‘Nice to see you, Dan,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the chat.’
‘You need a lift over tomorrow, Sherlock Holmes?’
I laughed. ‘Sunday lunch cannot be missed. Is that okay with you?’
‘See you at the pier. Eleven,’ he said.
He looked good as he walked away. Tall, strong, a bit solitary. I’d never seen anyone else come or go from his house, but I supposed he had a partner. Despite my job involving endless conversations, I’m an introvert. I like solitary. I need it. I understood exactly what Maggie Lennox’s clients were looking for. The difference was, they paid twenty thousand a week for the privilege while I could just close the door. Dan too.
I went to pay but Trixie behind the counter told me it was all good; Dan had taken care of it.
When I got back to the house, I looked down on the rooftop of Dan’s house. From the street, it was private and surrounded on three sides by an old macrocarpa pine hedge. A kind of fairy-tale seclusion with an amazing view.
I had once had a beer with an American submariner after an operation. He’d been underwater for fifty-six days on a sensitive mission. I asked him what he’d missed while he was down there.
‘Stars,’ he’d said. ‘I missed the stars.’
I’ve had prisoners tell me the same thing.
I learned a lot of tough things early. It’s taken me all my life to get to the simple ones.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
That next week, the Chinese workers came. Two hundred and eighty-nine of them. The number had been carefully considered like a discount price at a bargain store. The first of them were met at Hobart airport by both JC and Maxine and various government ministers. I attended too.
The workers were bussed to their refurbished quarters at Brighton’s old refugee camp to settle in. That evening they were bussed to the festivities. The Chinese dragon dance was colourful, the free community yum cha was attended by thousands. Dumplings were drained from steaming saucepans and scooped from hot woks by an influx of Chinese student volunteers from across Australia, all impeccable in kitchen whites and chef’s hats. At the Derwent Entertainment Centre, a concert was staged for all the bridge workers and their families, Tasmanians, mainlanders and Chinese. The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra played with a famous Chinese conductor and soloists from both China and Tasmania sang. Afterwards there were fireworks from barges on the Derwent. And the Chinese Buddhists filmed everything.
Our whole family attended, save for Dad. Mother came in a red wig and cheongsam, flanked by the devoted Phillip.
‘A cheongsam?’ I whispered to Phillip. ‘Really?’
‘I couldn’t talk her out of it,’ he sighed. ‘You know how she is.’
‘I do,’ I said.
That night I dreamed that I was trying to pitch a tent. My daughter Tavvy was with me. All the tents were somehow incorrect. I had only a fly, but I pitched it against a wall and was happy with it, even though it was ridiculous, as things are in dreams. But when the rain started, Tavvy disappeared and I was alone. I watched the rain begin to flood the paddock, making wide shallow puddles and pooling between hillocks of grass. Now it was impossible for camping. I saw a wooden structure. It was overgrown with bushes but it had once been a children’s playhouse. Above the foliage was a tower stained by the rain. A tower would be fine to sleep in, I thought. But the only way up was via a narrow beam. On the other side of the narrow beam, Dan Macmillan appeared. He didn’t offer me a hand. He simply persuaded me I could do it myself. He pointed out places where I could put my foot to negotiate the vines. He reassured me that I wouldn’t fall. I walked. He smiled. Then I woke up.
I didn’t like dreaming about Dan Macmillan. It felt unprofessional. As I showered, the dream kept coming back to me. The silly fly I had pitched. The puddles in the ground and the whole field awash with water. The dark tower overgrown by bushes. Dan assuring me I could balance and walk.
I thought of the dream again as I sat across from Dan in the morning briefing at Tinderbox. He was wearing a crisp, white shirt and I thought of him ironing, and that led to me thinking of him showering, and that led to me wondering if he still made the bed military style. His house was literally down the paddock from mine at Bruny. When I took walks I sometimes heard music playing, and I’d thought about whether I should invite him up for a beer one evening. But I didn’t. He was younger than me. I had no idea what he’d make of such an offer.
This morning’s briefing wasn’t like other morning briefings. Normally Dan briefed his team leaders on exactly what needed be achieved. They got an hour-by-hour weather forecast and the schedules for barges and deliveries. I made sure Dan also got press updates so his team were forewarned of the coming evening’s likely media. This meant that when they got home to eat dinner or muck about with the kids and the telly blurted out something about the bridge, they were already informed.
But tonight was the first night of the Chinese workers. Frank Pringle had come south with me for the morning meeting, behaving as if he was the acting Premier.
‘So, the moment has come,’ Frank said. ‘In the next twenty-four hours, labour in Australia will change forever. We’ll no longer have to wait for years to build things or to acquire technical knowhow. We’ll have the use of workers from across the world. Experts in their field will be able to work anywhere they can be valuable. This means a significant shift for the world’s workforce. Geography has been conquered. We’ve seen this happen in the UK with Eastern European labour and in the US, where for years they’ve enjoyed the benefits of a cheaper workforce thanks to the Mexican border.’
Ah, Frank, I thought. You’re a little behind the times with this speech given Brexit and the wall between the US and Mexico.
‘Here are just some of the projects these workers have been employed on to date,’ he said. He flicked images onto the large screen behind him of bridges across canyons, across water, flyovers across cities, rail bridges and car bridges. It had been my idea to give everyone some sense of the skill of these workers. I’d got the images from May Chen. Whether any of it was true, and these workers really had been behind these projects, we were about to find out.
The Tiananmen Square moment happened in 1989. I was finishing my postgrad studies in New York. It shook us all. Since then, the human rights abuses had continued. People go missing every day in China. Particularly human rights lawyers and activists. Anyone who is deemed to have insufficient social credit can disappear. Artists, actors, academics and poets. The control of the Chinese media has been effective. It’s very rare for dissent to escape the national borders.
In my game, human rights are not theoretical. It’s not whiteboards, round tables and talking points. Prison in China is interrogation cells and cages, crowded quarters and a crushing, calculated system of torture designed to make any prisoner, no matter how innocent, confess to whatever the Chinese government wants them to. No lawyers, no phone calls, no contact with the outside world until it suits the government. If you won’t comply, there are always family members to incarcerate and torture as well. I was sure these workers newly arrived in Tasmania would all put the Chinese Communist Party above their own interests. There would be no deviation.
At the bridge, the afternoon workers were still onsite. Enormous cranes were working on either side of the bridge. They were rebuilding the tower from the seabed up, repairing and re-tensioning cables, doing the prep work for the road segments. Barges carrying huge floodlights were in place, powered by generators, making the place as bright as midday. I spotted Dan Macmillan ahead. He nodded when he saw me.
‘You have something to do with that?’ he asked, indicating the Tinderbox camp behind them and t
he BFG camp ahead on Dennes Point. Both were eerily quiet. Up on Tinderbox hill, there was a modest bonfire. It was a warm, still evening and the sound of an acoustic guitar and singing drifted in from time to time over the construction noise.
‘Are they really singing “Kum Bah Ya”?’ Dan asked.
‘I think so. International song of peace.’
Dan shook his head.
‘It’s only temporary,’ I said. ‘But let’s enjoy it for now.’
I had worked overtime getting the two BFG camps to agree to let the new workers begin in peace. Australians were good at racism. I was still asked regularly, when people gauged my nationality, how Australia could treat refugees the way it did. But these bridge protesters were not racists. They were activists protecting their patch, their way of life, their economic wellbeing. They were trying to preserve, not destroy. If they protested the first few nights, while the workers were getting underway, and there was an incident or, worse, a death, they would be blamed. The government would forcibly remove them. Show over. The Tasmanian protest laws made that very clear. It was only while they maintained their distance and didn’t interrupt the work that they were tolerated.
A siren went off. Buses were arriving. Buses with Tasmanian tigers and Chinese dragons entwined and grand vistas of the finished bridge painted along their sides. Here was the night shift. A sea of Chinese men in orange high-vis vests and white helmets disembarked. Within the group was a small cohort of men and women in suits, also in high-vis vests and hard hats.
Interpreters, I thought.
Behind us the workers from the afternoon shift were gathering. Dan stepped forward. He picked up a microphone. It was wireless, connected to a PA to one side. Now he had workers all around him. He offered the other microphone to a Chinese woman who had stepped forward.
‘I’m Dan Macmillan,’ he said. ‘Bridge foreman.’
The interpreter began translating. Everyone remained standing.