The Dragon Raft

by Rory Barnes

Billy spoke quietly into my ear, “I don’t reckon these guys know where the good fishing spots are. You’ve got to have inside knowledge.”

  “And you know the good spots?” I said.

  “Not yet,” Billy said. “But we’ll find them. Wait till we get the raft built, we’ll work out exactly where to fish.”

  “We’ve got to get her built first,” I said. “We need more drums.”

  “I’ve got Tony working on the drum question,” Billy said.

  Sally must have overheard the last bit of conversation. “What drum question?” she said.

  “Wal and I are starting a rock band,” Billy said. “We need a drum kit.”

  “Ha, ha,” Sally said.

  “Want to be our female vocalist?”

  “Oh sure,” Sally said. “A singer with barbed-wire teeth.”

  “You won’t have the bands on forever,” Billy said.

  “Can’t sing,” Sally said. “Anyway, what sort of drums are you really on about?”

  “Oil drums,” I said. “We’re building a raft.”

  “That’s more like it,” Sally said. “My uncle might have a couple of old drums. He runs a feed store. He gets bulk molasses in drums. Hey, Johnno, do you reckon Uncle Eric would have some spare drums? These guys need them.”

  “He might,” Johnno said.

  The fishing guys climbed into their four wheel drive and drove away. A last couple of squirts of bilge water came splashing out of the bung holes as the trailer picked up speed.

  “We should be getting back,” Carl said.

  “Come and have some lemonade first,” Billy said.

  We all set off slowly in the direction of Billy’s place, where Carl and the twins had left their bikes. They always left their bikes at Billy’s place, never at my place.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  So we built her in Billy’s backyard during the holidays. It turned out that Tony already had a few spare oil drums in amongst the junk. And he knew a guy who knew a guy who had a couple he didn’t need. The twins’ uncle let us have a molasses drum; it was just as good and smelled of treacle. We arranged the drums as I’d planned: two rows of four and across the top we built a deck out of old floor boards, washed up lengths of wood and bits of marine ply. We fixed up a mast out of an old flag pole. There was a horizontal bar that could be pulled up the mast by a rope that ran through a pulley at the top. So the raft was square rigged, like one of those old Viking ships.

  “What about the sail?” Billy asked. “What can we use?”

  “An old bed sheet,” I said.

  “Not strong enough,” Billy said. “The first storm will rip it to shreds. The first breeze will rip it to shreds.”

  He was right. We both thought long and hard.

  “What about an old tarpaulin?” I said. “My dad’s got an old tarp, it’s in the boot of the car.”

  “Will he give it to you?” Billy said.

  “I won’t ask him,” I said. “He never uses it for anything.”

  “Wicked,” Billy said. “Let’s stick a logo or something on it. What about a dragon? You know, with flames coming out of its mouth. That’s the sort of thing the Vikings had.”

  Pinching the tarp was easy. Mum keeps her car keys on a shelf in the kitchen, so I borrowed them for a couple of minutes and opened the boot and lifted the tarp. I took it straight round to Billy’s. Tessa sketched a dragon on it with chalk. It was just the head, fierce and wild with jets of flame coming out of its nose. Tony found some old paint. We soon had a sail that a Viking would have been proud of.

  “You’ve heard of dragon boats,” Billy said. “Well this is a dragon raft.”

  “Yeah, that can be her name,” I said. “The Dragon Raft.”

  We found an old packing crate and turned it into a cabin. We even put windows in it. We got them from one of Tony’s old cars. We didn’t give her a keel, of course. She wouldn’t have floated in the shallows if we had. Instead we built a centreboard that could be lowered and raised by pulling on another rope. It was pretty heavy. It was made from a sheet of steel that Tony said had once been part of a steamroller.

  “It will give you a bit of stability when it’s down,” he said.

  * * * * * * *

  And then, one Sunday morning, she was ready for launching. We could have launched her from the boat ramp, straight into the boat channel. But there was a gap in the seawall that was a lot nearer and we had the problem of moving the raft over land. She was too big and too heavy to fit on Tony’s trailer. So we decided to move her out of the yard and down the road to the seawall by putting rollers under her. You know, like the Egyptians did when they were building the pyramids: all those blocks of stone and guys hauling them. So we got a selection of old pipes and logs and Tony hitched the raft up to the ute and slowly inched her out of the yard and down the road while me and Billy grabbed the rollers as they came loose at the back and dragged them round to the front so they could go trundling under the raft again. Tessa walked along beside us, taking pictures with a digital camera and making like she was watching a Christmas Pageant with floats.

  That morning at breakfast I’d told my parents we were going to launch the raft.

  “Well, do be careful, Wal,” my mum had said.

  “Don’t wear your good clothes,” my dad had said. What did he think I was going to wear? A suit and tie?

  For some reason I said, “Do you want to come and watch?” I knew they wouldn’t, and I didn’t really want them to. I suppose I just wanted to hear them say they wouldn’t.

  “I’ve got to go to the hardware store,” Dad said. “I need some weedkiller.”

  “Just be careful,” Mum said again.

  * * * * * * *

  But I wasn’t thinking about my parents when we finally got the raft to the gap in the seawall. The tide was in, of course. We’d checked the exact time of high tide in the paper the day before. There was a short sandy ramp down to the mud flat, which was now covered in about half a metre of water. The water sparkled, there was a slight breeze blowing. Tony unhitched the ute. We positioned a few rollers on the sandy ramp. We took off our shoes and all four of us pushed her down into the water. The raft just floated above the mud. I stood on one side and Billy stood on the other. I felt the mud between my toes and the raft under my hands. She floated. She was alive.

  “I reckon you guys should be all right from here,” Tony said. “There’s no way I’m going to wade through all that muck.”

  It was nice of him. He could have come with us if he’d wanted to, he had done half the work on the raft. More than half the work, to tell the truth. But he’s like that, Tony. He’s cool. He knows that sometimes there are things that boys should do on their own.

  “Yeah, see you Tone,” Billy said. “And thanks.”

  Tessa snapped a few more pics.

  We had to wade for miles, pushing the raft, squelching the mud and sea grass through our toes. There were little fish swimming around our legs. Slowly the water got deeper. We clambered on board. We were afloat.

  “Get the sail up,” Billy said.

  “We can’t put the centreboard down yet,” I said.

  “Wind’s going in the right direction,” Billy said. “We’ll just get blown along until it’s deep enough.”

  We pulled on the ropes and the sail rose up the mast. The breeze caught it immediately. The old tarp with the dragon’s head filled with wind. We were away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Over the next few months we went on dozens of different cruises. But that first cruise... it was magic, just magic. The raft burbled along, that’s the word: burbled. The water running along the sides of the drums made a quiet burbling noise. It was as if the raft was talking to itself. The rudder felt alive in my hands. The sail filled with wind and pulled at the ropes that held the bottom corners. The sun sparkled on the water.

  “We’d better practice a few manoeuvres,” Billy said. “See if we can sail against the wind.”

  “Soon,” I said. “L
et’s just go with the flow for a minute.”

  So, for a few more magical moments the world was completely golden, completely perfect. Then we tried turning round. The sail flapped wildly. Billy let go of one of the ropes and nearly fell in the water when he tried to get hold of it again. The raft turned round all right, it did a three sixty. We ended up going in exactly the same direction.

  “Try again,” Billy said. “Take it easy.”

  So we tried again and this time we were more successful. We ended up going side on to the wind. We set off for the bottom of Barker Inlet. The water was crystal clear, we could look down to the sea grass beds, waving slowly like fields of wheat in a breeze. There were a thousand black swans down at the bottom of the Inlet—maybe two thousand. They drifted like old ships, moving slowly through the shallows.

  “They come every year,” Billy said. “When the wetlands dry up, they all come here. I’ve never been this close though.”

  We watched as half a dozen swans took off from the water with a mad splashing and flapping that turned into graceful, silent flight, each bird flying just behind and a little to the side of the bird in front. Each bird flapped its huge black wings a split second after the one it was following, so that it looked as if a continuous ripple was passing down the line. Over the next few months we saw this sight a hundred times, and it was always magic.

  “Let’s anchor,” Billy said. “Let’s just sit still for a bit.”

  So we threw out the anchor and lowered the sail. We were alone among the birds on our own floating island. As well as the black swans there were Pelicans floating above the sea grass, looking at us side on. They never ceased to amaze me. You only ever saw one eye. It was a wise old man’s eye. Half of the pelicans must have been female, some must have been young, but I always thought of them as old men.

  After a while we hauled in the anchor and set sail again. Late in the afternoon we reckoned we had learned how to handle the raft well enough to be able to sail down the boat channel without hitting the sides. We were right: we lined her up and went straight down the channel to the bait and tackle shop. Mind you, we copped a few comments from the guys fishing off the causeway, but they were good natured comments, stuff about pirates and castaways. And cheery stuff in Chinese that we couldn’t understand. We tied the raft up to the rocks near the bait and tackle shop and went back to Billy’s place for lemonade and biscuits.

  * * * * * * *

  Then I went home and Dad wanted to know where the old tarp from the boot of the car was.

  “We’re using it,” I said.

  “What for?”

  “The raft.”

  “You didn’t ask me.”

  “I forgot,” I said.

  “I need that tarp, Wal. I need it now.”

  “I’ll get you a new one tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll pay for it out of my pocket money.”

  “Why can’t you go and get the old one now?”

  “It’s got a dragon painted on it. It’s the sail.”

  “I’m disappointed in you, Wal. Very disappointed.”

  I didn’t say anything. I had had a perfect day. I wasn’t going to let anything spoil it. Nothing, not even Dad, was going to spoil it.

  * * * * * * *

  As I’ve said, we went for dozens of cruises during the next few months. Sometimes Billy and I landed on Torrens Island. We beached the raft and went exploring. We trudged across the mud flats, wading through pools full of empty scallop shells which crunched under our bare feet. We watched little crabs scuttling into holes. We squelched into the mangroves, disturbing the black mud that smelt of rotten eggs. We got mud all over our clothes.

  One Saturday we rounded Point Grey and sailed past Outer Harbour. We cruised between the breakwater and the container wharf. It was a quiet day and there was no ship in port, only the huge crane standing idle, waiting for a vessel to unload.

  When we were in deep water, we were sometimes joined by bottle-nosed dolphins. We didn’t go looking for them, they found us and swam around and below us. You’d see them down there in the depths: graceful grey green shapes that surged along effortlessly and then broke the surface in a spray of water like broken glass. Usually there would be a group of four or five dolphins. They swam around in a pack. But there was one dolphin that we saw quite often. He was always by himself. We knew the lone dolphin was always the same guy because there were a couple of nicks on his fin. So we called him Double Nick. It was a bit hard to tell, but I think we saw him so often because he was lonely and liked our company. When he came up to the surface he looked happy enough, there was a grin on his face. But as Billy said, all dolphins have grins on their faces all the time. It’s just the way they are. Maybe the guy was miserable about being a loner, or maybe he chose to be a loner and was quite happy. You couldn’t tell.

  It wasn’t only the guys fishing off the causeway who yelled cheery comments at us. People out fishing in proper fibreglass boats couldn’t help themselves . “Jeeze, who are you blokes? Robinson Crusoe and the Ancient Mariner?” Most people were friendly, they yelled “Good on yer, boys”, or something similar. But there was one occasion when we copped a real bit of agro. We were in the Port River on the other side of Torrens Island, just moseying along, trying to keep to the right-hand side of the channel like you are supposed to. (The rules of the sea are different to the rules of the road). A big, ocean-going yacht was coming towards us in the opposite direction. It wasn’t sailing, it was motoring along. It had plenty of room to manoeuvre.

  Suddenly the wind changed and the raft’s sail began to flap uselessly. Billy was steering. I was hauling on the ropes, trying to set the sail at a new angle, but the tide or a current or something started to push us across the channel. We were drifting into the path of the yacht.

  “Yell at them,” Billy said. “One, two, three….”

  “Ahoy there! Look out!” I yelled.

  “Danger. Mayday! Mayday!” Billy yelled.

  I reckon the guy steering the yacht was asleep. He didn’t change course. We were heading for a bingle. Billy and I yelled some more. Then suddenly someone on the yacht saw us and started yelling too. A woman with huge sunglasses and a silly hat grabbed a boat hook and started leaning over the side ready to spear us. The yacht veered sharply and swept past. It was all gleaming fibreglass and stainless steel fittings and looked like it cost a million dollars. The guy at the wheel stood up and shouted, brandishing his fist. His fist was wrapped round a beer can.

  “You morons! Get that heap of junk off the river! If I ever see you again I’ll call the police! Idiots! Should be shot….”

  He made quite a few extra comments as well, but the distance between us rapidly increased and we couldn’t hear him over the sound of his motor. He was a big, red faced individual with a small towel draped around his thick neck.

  “Drunk,” Billy said. “No seamanship.”

  “I think we need a pair of paddles,” I said. “Just for a bit of extra speed in an emergency.”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “Put them on the list.”

  * * * * * * *

  Every time we went out we thought of ways to improve the raft. We’d go home, up the channel between the two causeways to the bait and tackle shop, and tie the raft up safely to the rocks. Then we’d go and pester Tony about the improvements. Sometimes he would come down to where we’d moored the raft, bringing everything he needed in the back of his ute, even his portable welding machine. Sometimes he would come out sailing with us, but only when we invited him. You could tell he was almost as much in love with the raft as Billy and I were, but he never tried to take control, he didn’t muscle in.

  I reckon those couple of months that we spent mucking around with the raft were the happiest in my life. Or they would have been if my olds had chilled out a bit. But they got crankier and crankier. I don’t think they liked me having fun. They never had fun themselves, so why should I? They whinged about all the time I was “wasting” at Billy’s. They whinged about the mud
I got on my clothes. (I only wore old clothes and I always hosed them down when I got home—but they whinged about the water I was wasting with the hose). But I didn’t care. I lived for the raft. Sometimes lying in my bed I would daydream of the pack ice, the surf crashing on the outer reefs of coral islands, the palm trees clattering in the afternoon winds, but mostly I just thought of practical stuff to do with sailing the raft around Barker Inlet and the Port River. It was nice to escape to fantasy land occasionally, but I didn’t need to, not the way I’d needed to before. I was having too much fun near home to want to escape.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sometimes we took our friends out on the raft. If Carl, Nick, Johnno and Sally all turned up together the raft got a bit crowded, but that didn’t matter very much. It was just fun having them with us. Sometimes we anchored the raft and tried a bit of fishing. We only had hand lines and we never did discover the really good fishing spots that Billy talked about, and we never caught very much.

  One weekend we invited all four of them, but the guys were playing cricket so just Sally showed up. She didn’t ride her bike, her mum drove her. When they arrived Billy and I were in the shed helping Tony destroy some old electric motors. The motors were full of copper wire and Tony reckoned he’d get a good price at the scrap metal yard if we separated the copper from the rest of the metal. Sally and her mum appeared in the shed doorway, Sally said, “Yo, you guys,” and the two of them came into the shed. Sally’s mum said, “Hello, I’m Judith,” and shook hands with Tony who introduced himself and then Billy and me. Sally’s mum said how pleased she was to meet us, she’d heard lots about us. She sounded warm, she wasn’t just being polite. Tony offered her a cup of tea. Sally’s mum laughed and said, “I’d kill for one. Then I want to see the raft. No going sailing until I’ve had sticky beak.” And the two of them went into the house.

  I liked Sally’s mum. For someone I’d only just met, I liked her a lot. But all I felt was angry. I was angry with my own parents. They only lived a couple of hundred metres away, and they’d hardly bothered to say g’day to Tessa and Tony the whole time we’d been their neighbours. They couldn’t help bumping into each other every now and then—St Kilda just isn’t big enough to get lost in—but my parents never stopped for a chat. I know most kids like to keep their own parents and their friends’ parents in separate boxes (can’t have the oldies exchanging notes on what their kids have been up to etc.) But if parents do meet up, you’d expect them to be friendly.