Walking up to Essendon’s distinctly old-world-looking terminal, I thought of the hundreds of times that I’d hurtled past it on my way to catch a modern plane, glancing briefly from a taxi window at an old DC-3 or Bristol Freighter parked incongruously by the perimeter fence. Essendon is still, however, a working airport and I was curious to learn to what extent it had been brought up to the modern age. As I walked through the doors, I saw that this was not very much at all.
The first thing that struck me was the linoleum. It was green and shiny and caught the sunlight through the enormous window that overlooked the concrete apron. Decades of close attention from industrial polishing machines had worn it wafer thin, the gaps between the square tiles filled with a flaking grout of ancient wax.
The fittings inside the terminal were all brass and polished steel, the doors heavy ones you had to push open yourself. The ceiling, with its whitewashed perforated tiles, spoke, too, of some other era.
There was barely an indication that this was, or had ever been, an airport. No luggage carousel, no clacking arrivals boards, no announcements or taped lanes of queuing customers. Just a couple of desks representing obscure regional airlines, a small kiosk, and several banks of empty plastic chairs. Around the hall, disused offices spoke nostalgically of some long-gone heyday, but otherwise the cavernous arrivals hall, which had once seen passengers in their hundreds coming and going every day from Lockheed Constellations, DC-9s and 727s, which had witnessed the arrival of the Beatles, the Pope and Her Majesty the Queen, was now all but silent and empty.
Well, not quite. On the tarmac, my aircraft was in the final stages of refuelling, and it looked small.
‘Little bit of a delay. Shouldn’t be too long. I’m just going to grab some lunch … oh, g’day, Jeff, how’s it going? Have you got something for me …?’ He was a rather fit-looking man in his early fifties in a pressed white shirt and with a small ID tag. He obviously knew the fellow who was waiting among the eight or so passengers, taking from him a large brown paper-wrapped parcel and placing it on a trolley next to what passed for a departure gate. In fact, he seemed to know everybody, exchanging pleasantries with most of the others on his way to a door that read ‘staff only’. He even caught my eye and gave me a nod, as if to say, ‘No, I haven’t met you yet, but you’re welcome nonetheless.’
A younger man asked if there were any more bags for Flinders, loaded them onto the same trolley, assured us we’d be getting away in about ten minutes, and reminded us to hang on to those green laminated cards he’d given us on check-in, as they had to be used again. That okay with everyone?
Flinders Island is one that many people have at least heard about, probably because it’s big, by far and away the largest island in Bass Strait, covering more than 1300 square kilometres. If that means little, bear in mind the Isle of Wight, around which one can happily toddle in a small British rental car for days on end taking in villages and drinking in pubs, occupies a miserly 400 square kilometres on the map. Flinders, by contrast, is more than 60 kilometres long and nearly 40 wide, with rivers, forests, lovely bays and beaches and a truly spectacular mountain range. The only thing it is almost devoid of is people.
If Flinders had a cinema, its entire population could stretch out inside it for a weekday matinee. But there isn’t a matinee, or indeed a cinema, or much else besides. Again, compared with the Isle of Wight’s 140000 residents, Flinders Island, at more than three times the size, rings almost empty with barely 900 souls. And, by the end of my week there, I would feel like I had met every one of them, starting with those lining up, like me, for the plane to take us there.
‘Righto, let’s get going,’ said the man with a jolly wink to no one in particular, emerging from the little office behind the counter, and who I suddenly realised was our pilot. No one but me seemed in any way bemused, let alone alarmed by the homely nature of the enterprise, and I filed up, recyclable plastic card in hand to walk out across the cracking tarmac to our waiting plane. The same young fellow who had taken our bags also took our boarding cards and then climbed into the cockpit to play the role of co-pilot. Everyone seemed to greet each other again as we strapped in. The little cabin was hot and stifling, cooling off only once the propellers started. Then, it was off to Flinders.
The Furneaux Group, on Bass Strait’s far eastern side, is a big archipelago of fifty-two islands with romantic names like Rum, Big Dog and Vansittart. Many are simply rocks but others are imbued with legends of lighthouses and sealers, with Flinders itself being the setting for the final, ignominious extinguishing of the Tasmanian Aborigines who, broken-hearted and homesick, pined away into oblivion on a windswept promontory called Wybalenna.
Flinders was also the most logical place to attempt another journey to Deal Island, 80 kilometres or so to its north in the Kent Group.
The flight took me over parts of my own city I had never noticed, making it seem foreign. From my window, I was virtually able to retrace my recent yachting trip, and to see where, even earlier, as a boy I had stood on the beach at Tidal River and gazed out to sea. There it was below me, that same golden stretch of beach with the large rock on the right under which we children swam and played all those years ago, and there, appearing not several kilometres from the shore, but a mere stone’s throw, the islands of the Glennie Group. Was it possible? Could these little green pebbles possibly be that great, mystical archipelago that had so bewitched me? It was like revisiting one’s old schoolroom to find that it had shrunk to the dimensions of a doll’s house.
The plane continued to reprise my journey and there, more recently visited, was the perfect cone of Rodondo, still as bleak and mysterious as I had seen it on that grey and blowy day from the boat. Next to it – from the air it seemed like next to it – were once again the pale stones of Devil’s Tower and Skull Rock, and beside them, to my surprise, a smattering of other little islands that had escaped my attention completely on that ill-fated voyage.
It was hazy over Bass Strait as we approached Flinders Island, but then a colossal shoreline revealed itself through the wispy layers of cloud. I was amazed by its size, a green and undulating series of rocky beaches and paddocks sparsely dotted with the single roofs of lonely-looking houses. Above it on the southern end as we approached was a mighty tower of granite, the crowning glory of a mountain range that ran north along the island’s backbone and disappeared out of view. This was no insubstantial speck in the sea. The main street of a town with a large reddish hotel roof sped past the opposite window and in a moment we were down. Bass Strait’s largest island beckoned.
19
BACK IN THE AIR AGAIN
I stood, watching a quick flurry of cars and utes departing with disembarked passengers, not quite believing the young bloke from the plane who, when I’d asked him how easy it is to catch a bus or even a taxi into the main town, Whitemark, just shook his head. ‘No bus,’ he’d said casually. ‘How, then, is one expected to, er, get there?’ I enquired. ‘Oh, someone’ll take you in,’ he replied, and left it at that.
Standing there, bag in hand, I had the feeling some vital piece of information must have somehow passed me by. No bus, no taxi rank, and now, a nearly empty car park. Do people still hitch here? Am I supposed to walk? And as there didn’t seem to be a map or sign of any kind, which way was I supposed to go?
‘You right?’ said a voice in my direction, a man in his thirties in moleskin pants and boots making brisk strides towards a white utility.
‘Oh’, I answered. ‘Are you going anywhere near …?’
‘Hop in,’ he said, jerking his head towards the car, opening the passenger door and clearing the front seat. As soon as I sat down, he began a conversation that made me think I must have either started one with him earlier but forgotten all about it, or that he had mistaken me for someone else entirely.
‘… You see now they’ve gone to this weekly roster thing,’ he commenced as we drove, ‘I have to plan around a fortnight, which can be very difficult …’
he sounded very sensible and had I any idea of what he was talking about, I’m sure I would have agreed with all he said. By assembling the pieces, I gleaned he worked in some logging operation in the island’s north. ‘… If you ask me it makes more sense to start your contracting this time of year, because in about three months, you’re going to have seven blokes being paid to sit around doing nothing. But try telling them that …’
As he spoke, I took in as much as I could of the grassy paddocks and substantial hills with their high granite outcrops that seemed to ring us as we made the short trip into Whitemark, which, in reality, I could have walked myself. The island was lush with cleared land sloping gradually up towards the central range, where the domesticity of farmland suddenly gave way to more hilly, wild-looking territory.
Exactly four minutes after leaving the airport, we pulled up outside the pub, and he looked at his watch. ‘Look, I’d love to have a drink with you,’ he said shaking my hand firmly, ‘but Malcolm needs those keys. Staying at the pub, yeah? Couple of days? Great. I’ll definitely see you later. Maybe tonight. Might bring Col too. Great to meet you.’ He shook my hand vigorously. He was so sure we’d run into each other again, he didn’t think it worth exchanging details. As it turned out, he was just about the only person on the island I never saw twice.
Whitemark is the kind of place I imagine a once prosperous mining community to resemble ten years after the ore ran out, its handful of shops and buildings suggesting a place that either expanded or collapsed too quickly. Tidy, certainly, but without the sufficient cohesion to mark it as anything other than a group of structures placed side by side. The pub, an old two-storey wooden place whose large red roof I had seen from the plane, dominates the main street, adjacent to a post office and across the street from a neat little supermarket. A couple of places either side had showed handwritten signs in the windows indicating ‘art gallery’, but what they might display or even when they might be open remained a mystery.
I parked my bags in my inexpensive room that smelled slightly of fly spray and sat at the bar for a few minutes, watching the harness racing from Brisbane. A few locals gave me a sideways look then returned to their form guide. A woman behind the bar showed equal diffidence, carrying loads of plates here and there, but likewise ignored me. I decided I didn’t really want a drink, and chose instead to promenade the town.
Outside the supermarket, a man I guessed to be in his sixties was wiping the oil from a piece of engine he had extracted from under the bonnet of a small truck. He glanced at me and blinked as I passed him, on my way to investigate the beach where the tide was out, revealing a large expanse of what was either muddy sand or sandy mud. On my return half an hour later, he was still there with rag in hand. He looked up at me.
‘I read your book,’ he said suddenly, then squinted at something. It stopped me in my tracks. He was too young to be among the ranks of former Second World War airmen about which I have completed two modest volumes, but I was curious to know the source of his interest. ‘I’m a pilot myself,’ he said. ‘Going up in an hour. Come if you’d like.’
‘Come …?’ I asked. He jerked his head skywards.
‘Over to the north coast. Taking some people back. ‘Bout half an hour. Got room. Come along if you like.’
‘I’ve only just got here,’ I laughed awkwardly. He thought this to be of no relevance whatsoever.
‘’Bout half an hour, cobber. Pick you up outside the pub. Leedham’s the name.’
As we were standing directly in the shadow of the only pub I could see, I must have sounded a little confused. ‘You mean … here?’ I asked, pointing foolishly to the ground.
‘Yep. That’s it. Outside the pub. Half an hour. The name’s Leedham.’ And, wiping the grease off his hands, he let go the bonnet of the truck with a bang and disappeared into a nearby doorway.
There was no sign of him in half an hour, which seemed somewhat to irk his two other passengers. That at least is what I assumed them to be on account of their small packed bags and impatient expressions. ‘He said here, didn’t he?’ I heard one of them say. They were a couple in late middle age and by their blasé attitude I guessed them to have made the trip many times. ‘Where’s he gotten to?’ They sat on a concrete step that abutted the footpath, despite sets of tables and chairs being free immediately behind them.
‘I, er, think I’m coming with you for the ride,’ I offered, standing beside them.
‘Well I wish he’d get here,’ she said, unimpressed. Eventually a small car did a U-turn and pulled up in front of us. Our pilot, now washed and changed into a completely different man, beckoned us over. ‘Here he is,’ said the woman loudly, putting undue emphasis on each word.
‘Right then, cobber, in you get.’ I sat in the front and was driven the same short trip back to the same small airport I had arrived at barely an hour before. This time, though, we drove past the tiny terminal and along a perimeter track to a small green hangar. ‘You can give me a hand with the door if you like,’ he said to me, unlikely as he was to garner much eagerness from the others.
We rolled back the two large doors to reveal an extremely smart and new-looking single-engine Piper Cherokee, around which Leedham nimbly proceeded to perform his pre-flight checks. Now very much excited, I helped him push it out to the threshold of the concrete floor. ‘Thanks for that, cobber,' he said. He said ‘cobber’ a lot. Who on earth was this man?
Luggage and passengers stowed, I was offered the front seat and in a few minutes, we were taxiing along Flinders Island’s incongruously large airport runway, wishfully constructed years ago to enable jet airliners to fly in rivers of tourists that never eventuated. Throttle open, and in a second, we were airborne. I had dreamed of flying in to Flinders Island for years, and now I was to do so twice in an afternoon.
Far from the humble mechanic I had first thought him to be, Leedham Walker was, I discovered, the patriarch of one of the oldest, not to mention most successful, families on Flinders Island, with lineage going back to its first settlement. His family is the owner of many properties, including the supermarket outside which I had encountered him tinkering under the bonnet of one of his vehicles. As I was to find out, very little happens on Flinders without the venerated Mr Walker knowing about it, or more likely, having a part of his own to play. Not that this seemed to impress his two passengers in the back of his personal aeroplane, who looked vague and disinterested for the entire trip. Amazing, really, because the view outside was spectacular.
As we flew towards the Tasmanian coast, I suddenly had a much stronger sense of this archipelago. Dozens of islands of infinitely varying shapes and sizes revealed themselves – some just specks of rock on the ocean, others with significant hills and beaches of their own – all hugging close to Flinders Island’s shore, like children gathered around their mother’s skirts.
‘That’s Vansittart down there on the left,’ Leedham said through the headphones after I mentioned my interest in the islands. ‘Great Dog, and there’s Little Dog. They call it Great Dog because it looks like one on the map, truly. There’s Chappell – Matthew Flinders named it after his lady friend. Full of snakes … Badger Island, and the big one over there is Cape Barren.’ And so it went, my spontaneous guided tour of Flinders’ outlying territories.
‘Yes, fabulous, Leedham, fabulous,’ I remarked. ‘Um, where are we going?’
‘Just a little way up ahead here, cobber,’ he said casually. I looked out in front at the long blue-grey line of the Tasmanian coast vanishing away to the right. Looking ahead, I failed to see anything like an airport, or even a place where one might be located, such as a town, or even a house. Nothing but undulating lines of trees and paddocks of varying shades of green and brown. ‘Yes, islands all through there, dozens of them,’ he said. ‘There’s Swan, that one with the lighthouse. A lass who works for me grew up on it.’ Barely a stone’s throw, it seemed, from the Tasmanian coast, but in reality a couple of kilometres, a rectangular jewel of sandy be
aches and a rocky shoreline, with an exquisite white lighthouse at the northern end which passed directly underneath us.
Leedham had some brief conversation with his guests about exactly where they would like to be put down. I remember something about a farmhouse being discussed. ‘Oh yeah … if you can …’ the woman answered slowly.
‘Righto,’ he responded, and we swung around to the west, dropping height rapidly as the coast came up before us. Unlike my first flight over the Hunter Group to the east, I was not in the least bit anxious. In Leedham’s ageing hands, the aircraft felt as stable as an oak sideboard. Still, no airport or landing strip could be seen, only the looming tan ribbon of a country road towards which, I realised with a start, we were rapidly descending.
‘Yeah, ’bout here’ll do,’ piped up the lady in the back. ‘Oh good, he’s got the car …’ she mumbled, and in a flash, the treetops zoomed past my window, the aircraft gave its automatic stalling whistle, and we bounced gently along the fine gravel of a country lane, halting metres from a young man leaning casually on a parked utility. As if alighting from a bus, his passengers stepped out and unpacked their bags from the stowage. I got out and walked for a bit, just to let the novelty of it all to sink in.
This, I thought, is what flying must have been like before the days of rules and regulated airspace. Just ‘up you go, and put her down where you can’. It felt appropriate that in this slightly untamed part of the world, that spirit had not quite died out.
After a minimum of conversation, the three headed off home in the ute. Leedham and I swung the tail of the Piper around the other way, and off we went again. In twenty minutes we were back, once again taxiing along the runway at Flinders. Leedham enquired if there were any other ways he could be of assistance. ‘You must come up for afternoon tea,’ he offered, when, a little alarmed, he heard I was staying at the pub. Could he, I asked, perhaps recommend a car hire outlet?
The Forgotten Islands Page 13
