by David Vernon
Other than short stories, I write bush poetry, children’s poetry and have a novel that I hope to see published. Most of my writing takes place in the small hours, usually around 3:00 am when the world is quiet and the phone never rings.
I have two married daughters and eight grandchildren who I think are perfect.
Badu Boys Rule!
— Dianne Bates
That was the best day — sun, sea, in our boat headed for a party on Thursday Island — Noritta, Ellis, Clarence, Mum, Dad and me — all of us excited about the party, laughing, thinking of the feast to come, the great music, seeing our friends.
Now it’s the worst day. We’re all in the ocean, my whole family. I'm up to my neck, with salt-water in my mouth and up my nose. Ellis is screaming, Nori’s crying and so is Clarrie, bawling so loudly they must surely hear him back home on Badu Island. Their brown faces worried, Mum and Dad are holding him up but he keeps wriggling and splashing, swallowing water. Our dinghy has slipped under the choppy waves and sunk. First one wave swept over the bow, then came another and another. Soon bigger waves swamped us, and down it went, tossing us all overboard. Is it true we’re now in a watery grave?
The strongest swimmer of us all, I breast-stroke over to Mum and Dad. “What are we going to do?” I yell.
A giant wave slops up and over me. I swallow another mouthful: it fills my lungs with water and I almost choke.
“See the rocks over there?” Dad's head turns towards a small island a long way off. “Swim there, son. Take Nori and Ellis with you.”
I don't want to leave half of my family behind but I always do what my Dad says. He’s a good man, a pastor.
“God will take care of us.” Mum calls. “And He will take care of you children.”
Another wave swamps us all. Clarrie’s head goes missing as water covers it. Soon he bobs up, choking and crying. Poor kid. He's only three and he can’t swim. Not like us older kids.
“I love you, Mum, Dad, Clarrie,” I call. I'm glad I’m in the water now because nobody can see my tears. I'm a Badu boy. Badu boys never cry.
“We can't stay here forever.” Ellis is fifteen and boss of the world. She wants us to swim to Matu. It took us about an hour of struggling to get to this rocky island, the one dad pointed out. But it will take much, much longer to get to Matu.
We’ve been on the island for a day now. There’s nothing here to eat, nothing to drink. Worst, we cannot see our Mum, Dad and little brother.
Noritta has not stopped sobbing. “They’ve drowned!” she keeps repeating. “They’re all dead.”
“They’re okay,” I try to reassure her. I'm not sure if they’re alive or not but I don’t want to believe the worst.
“Matu is three kilometres away. Or more.” It’s to the south. We’ve boated past it before today. We know that there are palm trees on Matu. Palm trees mean coconuts: you can live on coconuts.
“We have to swim there,” Ellis repeats.
“I can't do it!” Noritta says. She’s ten, two years younger than me. She’s not as strong as me and Ellis, but she can swim okay.
“You can do it!” Ellis and I say this at the same time. We smile at one another, the first time we’ve smiled for two days.
“I want to stay here. To look out for Mum and Dad.” Noritta is stubborn. But Ellis and I are more stubborn.
“Ellis is the oldest. She’s the boss,” I say. “And I’m older than you. You have to listen to your elders.” Badu Island children always listen to their elders. It’s our tribe’s way.
“Come on, Nori.” I take her hand. “We'll dive off the rocks together. Ellis and I will be with you all way. I know you can do it.”
The three of us say a prayer. We ask for help for ourselves and we ask God to save our parents, and Clarrie.
Then, holding hands, we take a run, and jump. Jump off our rocky island into the sea.
Soon we are bobbing in the water. We turn our heads towards Matu and begin our long, long swim.
Tired. We’re all so tired. More tired than you will ever know. This is how we three Nona kids are when we get to Matu. Each of us has cut our feet. We walked on coral those last few metres. Coral cuts sting like crazy. Ellis has the worse cuts. I’ve wrapped her feet in seaweed.
At first we walked until we found a small beach. There we fell down, exhausted, and slept in the blazing sun. It was awful swimming to Matu. We swam all day. Then we had to swim at night. Sure, there was a moon. But we were in cold waters, with sea animals around us. We couldn’t see if they were sting-rays. Or worse, sharks! At times we felt fish flap against us. Or maybe it was weed.
We swam and swam. Sometimes we stopped. We wanted to stay together. And Nori was slow. Often she cried, said she couldn't make it. But we sang songs, mostly hymns that Dad taught us. Then we swam some more. All through the night we swam, our arms and legs threshing through the chill water, our bodies beaten by the waves. It was dawn before we landed.
“I'm so hungry!” Nori says what Ellis and I think.
“We'll find food.” Ellis sends me off while she and Nori explore the rocks on the beach for oysters and sea urchins.
Since I was little I could climb palms. Up the trunk of a tree I whiz. At the top of the tree, I shake and shake. At last a fat coconut shakes free. THUMP! It lands on the sand. Down I climb, take the coconut and smash it on some rocks. Smash and smash until the shell is cracked. Coconut milk splashes out. I drink. It’s so good!
“Here's something to drink!” I run to Ellis. She’s so happy. She drinks and the juice runs down her face. Soon Nori is back with a small crab she’s caught. I crack the shell and pass around the meat. It tastes better cooked, but we are so ravenous we think the raw crab tastes great.
Soon we’re not so hungry. The sun is high in the sky now, so the three of us lie on the beach and sleep.
“We're going to die on this island!” Nori is depressed. She cries all the time about our missing parents and about little Clarence who she loves so much. She keeps saying that we’ll never be found.
Six days have now passed since we came here. Six long, hot days. I never thought we’d be here so long.
“Uncle will have a search party out for us,” I tell Nori for the hundredth time.
“He'll find us soon,” Ellis adds. Her foot is looking bad, the cuts full of pus and the skin on her forehead feels hot. The cuts on my feet still sting. But I pretend to be tough. I'm a Badu boy. Badu boys are tough as. Badu boys rule!
“My feet hurt,” says Nori, who complains the most. “And I’m hungry and thirsty.”
“Let's get some more tucker!” I try to take her mind off her whingeing.
We hobble overland in search of food. A few days ago, Nori found a patch of wongai bushes. On the bushes are nuts we like to eat back home on Thursday Island. We’ve eaten them here on Badu for days. Also, we found oysters, full of goodness, on the rocks. We’ve eaten dozens of them, drunk coconut milk and eaten coconut flesh. We could probably live here forever. But I know I would get sick of this diet. What I wouldn't give for grilled fish, a hamburger from the local store, or one of Mum’s home-cooked meals. Baked sweet potato is my favourite. And bananas! I love bananas!
“Let's climb up to the top of that hill!” I suggest to Nori.
“No!” says my stubborn sister. “I'm sick of climbing. I want to wait on the beach for a rescue boat.”
We argue for a while. I call her a ‘lazy cow.’ She pokes out her tongue at me. Then she storms off, back to the beach with a handful of berries for Ellis.
On the hill I keep watch for hours and hours. The sun is blazing and my skin is burnt. I want to go for a swim to cool down. But I have to keep a look-out. Up here I can see a long way. I see dolphins playing in the water and a million waves breaking on rocks. Then… Is it a boat? Or is it my imagination? Far away on the horizon. Something. It seems to be getting closer. Are my eyes playing tricks? I blink, look again. Stare longer. Close my eyes for a rest. Stare harder.
Ye
s! It’s a boat. It's coming towards Matu! Towards us! “Yeeha!” I whoop with joy. And then I am racing down the hill, leaping fallen tree trunks and grasses, heading towards my sisters with the best possible news.
“We’re rescued!” I shout. “It’s Uncle come to take us home!”
Historical note: This story is based on a real-life heroic story of Aboriginal survivors Bala, 12, Noritta, 10, and Ellis Nona, 15, who became castaways. In 2004, their family, including their parents and three-year-old brother, Clarence, left their home on Badu Island, Australia, in a five-metre dinghy headed for a party on Thursday Island. However, the boat capsized. Unable to do so themselves, Pastor and Mrs Nona told the three older children to swim to some rocky outcrops. A day later, the children decided to swim to Matu, a tiny island about three kilometres away. They survived six days on the tiny Torres Strait islands living on coconuts, oysters and native fruit before a search party, headed by their uncle, found them. They were dehydrated and sunburnt and had coral cuts on their feet, but they were otherwise okay. Sadly, there was no rescue of their parents and little brother who remain missing.
Dianne (Di) Bates is a well-known, award-winning children's author with over 100 titles published. She has worked at many jobs, including schools’ performer, teacher, and editor of state and national children's magazines. Di lives with her Young Adult author husband, Bill Condon, near Wollongong NSW. Their website is: www.enterprisingwords.com
The Cat
— Frank Stubbs
“G’day, Dad.”
The old man smiled and looked over to me as I started to re-arrange the various tubes, bottles, pumps etc. that kept him alive and comfortable.
“Son, good to see you.” He organized himself for our usual chat. Dad was dying. He knew it, and we knew that he knew it, so the conversation was fairly easy; no one had to be too careful of what they said. We were not a rich family but my brother and I could afford to keep the most influential person in our lives out of a nursing home. My two boys agreed to share a bedroom and my brother and I shared the cost of Dad’s care. Either my brother came over or I went in to chat each night.
There was the usual gossip about the news of the day. A few laughs about Derryn Hinch’s ‘gripe of the week’, and the sports results.
After a while I said, “I have been making arrangements, as you asked me to, Dad, and I have a question,”
“Oh what would that be?” A somewhat pained look came over his face. We both knew that I was referring to his funeral, and much as Dad had come to terms with reality and had asked me to arrange certain things; mainly as he knew Mum would have wanted them, he wasn’t all that fussed about it.
“Well, I was going through the safe and I got out your Royal Navy medals, the deed to the house, the marriage certificate and all the other stuff. There was no nationalization certificate or even permanent residency papers. As far as I can see, you are still an Englishman, and possibly an illegal immigrant. What’s the story?”
Dad lay there for a while and looked at the ceiling then he said, “While you were over at the old place you didn’t liberate a bottle of that 40 year old port did you?” I nodded. He continued, “Get a comfortable chair, son, and bring the bottle. This could take a while.”
The old man began, “In the 1950s William O’Meally was sentenced to death for the murder of a Police constable, but as was the custom in Victoria in those days the State Cabinet reviewed the sentence and commuted it to life, never to be released.”
“I’ve heard of the case, Dad.’ I said, ‘But what could this possibly have to do with you?”
“Fill your glass, son and settle in. This story’s never been told before.”
The old man went on, “After he had served some years and caused a great deal of trouble in Pentridge, O’Meally and another prisoner escaped. During the escape one warder was almost beaten to death. Another was shot but not killed. Well, he went back to Pentridge, and they created a special section for him, where he went on to become the longest serving prisoner in solitary confinement in the history of Australia. But I am getting ahead of myself. O’Meally had to go back to Court and be dealt with for the escape.” He paused for a moment, reflecting. “Just a half glass this time son, or that bottle I am attached to won’t last till the nurse gets here.”
“Don’t worry about it, Dad. I’ll change the bottle before I go. I just don’t want you to throw up and suffocate, so drink slowly.”
Still the old man went on, “Well the Court was in a quandary. The evidence was so strong that a conviction was without doubt, and a heavy sentence was called for. What do you do to punish a man who is serving the term of his natural life, never to be released?”
My father went on relaying to me all the relevant law of the times and how it applied, and by this time he was rather tired and probably couldn’t see the horror in my eyes, as he explained to me his part in the whole disgusting political mess. The last thing he said before falling asleep was, “The evidence is in the attic, son. Just over the road in the old house, No one has ever seen it.”
I crawled across the rafters of the old house severely damaging my trousers and injuring my knees. Eventually I discovered an old leather case with a strap around it. I dragged the case out onto the bedroom floor and with a heavy heart I looked searchingly at what could be irrefutable evidence of the blackest mark on our family name.
I carried the case down stairs into the kitchen and started to unbuckle the strap. It came apart in my hands. After all, it had been in that roof for fifty years. I cautiously opened the case and there it was; serpentine, with its evil coils surrounding the rough wooden handle. I picked it up hesitantly and spread the length and width of it across the kitchen floor. God; it had a being of its own, it was pure evil!
There it was; the undisputed evidence. My father, the man who had been Father Christmas at fifteen Boy Scout barbeques. The man who was famous for having charged around our back yard with my eight year old son on his back, brandishing a barbeque fork with a well-done bratwurst sausage impaled on it, calling out, “En-guarde,” and leaping fully clothed into the pool. The man had delivered a flogging in true British naval tradition with this very cat-o-nine-tails to each of two men in Her Majesty’s Prison, Pentridge fifty years ago.
I poured myself a glass of water and sat and contemplated the thing. It was not at all what I expected, not at all similar to the beautifully crafted leather whips that I had seen being used on sailors in any number of British naval films. This was positively primitive. A rough hardwood handle about sixty centimetres long widening at one end to allow for the fixing of nine strands of sail cord, each about two metres long and knotted every ten centimetres. The cord was dark and stained toward the end. I could imagine with what. With this my father, the strength and the love of my life, had flayed the naked backs of men lashed to wooden beams in the exercise yard at Pentridge.
The story he told was that there was no one qualified in Australia to carry out this unusual punishment and the union would not allow a warder to do it. So the Ambassador to Great Britain had been asked to enquire, as the British navy had carried out corporal punishment until quite recently. My father was a bosun’s mate on a destroyer. His only experience had been caning a couple of midshipmen for stealing liquor, but he was offered the job. As an uneducated seaman, Dad saw this as a chance to improve himself. It was worth a month’s holiday in Australia on full pay and one hundred pounds in his hand. As well as that, he got to fly out here in the new Lockheed Constellation air clipper owned by Reg Ansett. It only had to make four stops over two days between England and Australia. He was picked up by Jack Williams, a Sergeant in the Homicide Squad, at Essendon Airport and looked after royally. There wasn’t much paper work regarding his arrival because he was under the wing of the Ambassador and the Victoria Police Force. Having come into the country without official papers, he just stayed and didn’t worry about it. Had he chosen to register after marrying Mum he would have received full citizenship, but
he never bothered.
When I looked up, daylight was just breaking and I heard the front door open. I walked down the passage and saw my wife walking towards me. She looked at my face and said, “You know, don’t you? He died during the night. It’s almost as if he was waiting for something to happen. Nothing is different from yesterday. He just died.”
I choked on a lump of grief and hugged my wife tightly.
After a while I said, “You go back Em. I’ll be along presently.” I returned to the kitchen and started to pack the whip back in the case when I noticed a roll of cardboard; I picked up the document tube and opened it. There were three pieces of paper. An unused ticket to England on Ansett Airlines; an official document stating that Herbert George McNally had been employed by the Victorian Government for a period in 1954 and he had carried out his work, for which the Government and the people were duly grateful; and the third was an unpresented cheque against the Department of the Chief Secretary for One Hundred Pounds signed by Arthur Rylah.
Dad’s funeral was dealt with as these things are, but it meant little to me. I had the memories of a man who did what he had to do, but always wanted better for his family. I worried and plotted about what I should do with the evidence of what had brought my father to Australia. Eventually I sold it all to a very well known private collector of Australiana. I signed a certificate of provenance and he signed a guarantee of confidentiality concerning the name of our family.
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