She could have drowned and it would have been my fault. I wouldn’t have been able to live with that.
Noni had so many pets around Rivendell it was starting to look like a zoo, and thus I was a little surprised when they suddenly took second place after she went horseriding one afternoon. She immediately wanted her own horse, which we couldn’t afford, but she went to a riding school and for a while riding even started to compete with music in her extraordinarily busy life. No mount seemed too much for her and she especially liked jumping. Kirsty, having been brought up with horses, thought this was a great idea, although Noni managed to terrify me when her horse, at full gallop, veered suddenly to jump a fence. She lost control and came off. Undaunted, she chased after the horse.
Fortunately, music won out over horses, but over the previous year or so Noni had developed another passion, which she would not put to rest; she desperately wanted a brother or sister. She kept on about it and eventually got her way. Katrina was born on 25 March 1978. Noni was beside herself, but our joy at finally having a second child was immediately mixed with worry. Katie had respiratory problems, a cleft soft palate, and, though we didn’t know it at the time, a hole in the heart.
At first, Katie’s problems didn’t seem so great. Her paediatrician convinced us that the cleft in her palate could soon be repaired, but she needed to remain in hospital for a while. Like Ruari, she was kept in a humidicrib and given oxygen. But Ruari’s troubles and hers were quite different and it was quickly clear that Katie’s main problem was a narrowing of the airways due to a developmental problem in the growth of her lower jaw. Her cleft palate meant that she was unable to take milk from the breast, and then it proved impossible to feed her from a bottle, as any milk in her mouth could have got into her lungs. So we had to resort to feeding her with a tube down her nose. This worked well enough but caused all sorts of other problems, not least the need to replace the tube every day, which required a daily trip to hospital until Kirsty learned to do it herself. The procedure was a painful and horrible thing to inflict on any baby, let alone your own, and it often left Kirsty drained and trembling with emotion. More long-term problems followed, one after another. Katie was in and out of hospital and making little progress. She had to battle dreadfully for breath, had repeated aspiration pneumonia, and her heart was failing.
When her paediatrician in Townsville had done all he could, Kirsty and a nurse took Katie to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital in a humidicrib. There, for month after month, doctors tried one treatment after another, sometimes with temporary effect, more often with none. Kirsty’s life was unremitting torture.
When Noni and I went to Melbourne for a visit I was horrified by what I saw. Although Katie had grown in length, she was by then less than her birth weight. Kept in an intensive care ward, along with another dying baby, she was nothing other than skin and bone covered with a mass of plastic tubes and gadgets. As a last resort, the committee of doctors whose care she was under decided to perform a tracheostomy so she could breathe through her trachea. The operation was declared a success and its effect was immediate. For the first time in her life Katie could breathe easily and her heart wasn’t under stress.
We brought her home. There she could be tube-fed, a drop at a time, every three hours; a little more would cause her to vomit, a little less and she would lose weight. But this was a small problem compared with the tracheostomy. Having no air going to her vocal cords she could not cry if something was wrong, nor could she clear her throat. This meant that if her trachea wasn’t cleared for her when needed she would drown, in silence, in her own mucus. When she was awake her trachea needed clearing about every half-hour, then her breathing would be silent until it needed clearing again. When she was asleep she normally lasted several hours. Katie breathed through her trachea for eight long months, during which time she had to be watched day and night. Kirsty and I only slept alternate nights, and I learned to sleep so lightly that I woke immediately if Katie’s breathing pattern changed. I paced the floor when not asleep, listening to music and helped by a little marijuana, which kept me alert. No alcohol, that was for sure.
Katie had a continuously high temperature that did not return to normal until she was nearly two years old, coincidentally when we all visited Inge on Orpheus Island at Easter in 1980. On that trip Katie began to smile and take an interest in her surroundings for the first time, and then finally she began to feed without a tube.
Noni, for her part, never showed the slightest sign of resentment of the hardship that had befallen us. And certainly it was hardship for her as well as for Kirsty and me. The three of us had neither holidays nor outings together; Kirsty and I were constantly tired, and with tiredness came intolerance. Gradually the early happy days of Rivendell faded, and this must have been all the more apparent to Noni. We knew this and tried to make it up to her when we could, but when life had become a matter of just surviving the next day, Noni’s problems seemed small indeed. She called Katie ‘Termite’, a nickname that stuck, and if she was disappointed at Katie not being the baby sister she could mother and play with, she didn’t show it.
But she did start keeping her worries to herself when once she would have talked about them, and she also started not doing her chores around the house, and skipping her homework. She grumbled about her teacher and sometimes about schoolfriends, a state of affairs that continued on and off for months, partly unappreciated by us until her teacher complained that her marks were nothing like they used to be, and that she had become a classroom ‘problem’. Her worst subject, apparently, was maths. I found this astonishing because when we were in Melbourne only six months earlier I’d helped Noni with her maths, and within a week she had not only caught up with her schoolwork, but gone right through the entire year’s curriculum. The speed at which she absorbed maths amazed me, and not for the first time I wondered what school did for her.
The three of us had a long talk, not about maths, but about her teacher and school and home. These were not small problems for Noni and they were seriously affecting her. It took some failures and a few painful weeks, but she won her teacher round and started being her normal happy self again.
At the age of nine, now at the top of her class in most subjects, Noni decided to take up the cello. She played in the Townsville Junior Orchestra, in her school orchestra, and occasionally in duets and trios with friends. But most of the time she played the piano at home. She gave a winning performance at a music teacher’s concert, and then floored us by announcing that she was going to take up the flute. At that time singing had also come to the fore, especially duets with Kirsty. Once again, Rivendell positively rang with music.
As they had in London, music soirées and the stage provided Kirsty with a much needed escape, and she was in one musical or drama production after another, sometimes to great acclaim as the lead singer or actress. Naturally Noni was very interested in all this, particularly after she was asked to play the second-youngest of the von Trapp children in a production of The Sound of Music at Townsville’s Civic Theatre.
Nineteen eighty was going to be Noni’s year. I had planned another four months’ study in England and Europe, and this time Kirsty, Noni and Katie were coming too. Noni could afford the time away from school, with Kirsty and I keeping up her lessons, something that would be increasingly difficult the older she got. We would find somewhere for her to practise piano and cello and she could, as she had long wanted, learn French in France. Kirsty, Noni and Katie had their tickets while I waited for a scholarship. I explained to Noni that without the scholarship I couldn’t afford to go, and we’d have to make other plans. Noni didn’t agree – she, Katie and her mother had their tickets and were going, no matter what. If I couldn’t come it was ‘too bad’.
I got my scholarship and we arranged with friends to rent half a house on the edge of Epping Forest, just down the road from a riding stable. The year ahead was looking fantastic.
Noni and Katie, 1980.
/> Just after we made these plans I went to Hong Kong for a week-long coral workshop. Towards the end of the trip I was having an evening meal and enjoying the conversation when the convenor interrupted. With his hand under my arm as if to support me, he ushered me into another room, followed by a couple of others. Hand still in place, he passed me a phone. I heard Kirsty trying to force herself to talk to me but I could make no sense of it. I froze with fear. Then I heard Alastair’s voice telling me something I just could not absorb – that Noni was dead, that she had drowned.
I dropped the phone. My companions started talking to me – at me. They had been forewarned. What was all this about Noni? Al’s words started sinking in. Then Noni started talking to me, but not on the phone.
It wasn’t until much later that the full story penetrated what was left of my paralysed mind. Noni’s tenth birthday party had been due later that week, but one of her friends was unable to come, so the two mothers and their daughters met for a pre-birthday picnic at nearby Alligator Creek. As usual the girls were playing close by, where the rocks formed an inviting slippery-slide into the creek. Noni was strong and at home in the water. She may have hit her head, we’ll never know. Her friend found her pinned under a rock, the water flowing over her. She tried to pull her free but wasn’t strong enough. It was Kirsty who did that unimaginably horrific task.
If time cures all, I am still waiting, at least for the closure that many people seek. Nearly forty years on, my memory of this time is fading, but only the memory of facts; my feelings remain as raw as ever.
After that fateful phone call someone managed to find me a flight to Australia. I arrived at the airport the following morning. I hugged Kirsty until my arms ached. How could life do this to her after all she had been through? I had never remotely felt such intensity of grief for another person in my life.
I saw Noni in her coffin. I kissed her face; it was frozen. This is the worst memory of my life.
Noni was cremated on 29 April 1980, her tenth birthday.
I lived courtesy of tranquillisers and sleeping pills, and so it remained for many years. I’d once loved the dawn at Rivendell, but not then. If I drugged myself enough to get a little sleep, dawn only brought reality, and I resented the kookaburras for trying to tell me that the world was as it used to be.
After a month, I was able to get up, go to work, and seemingly have a normal day – even crack a joke. My external world, being mostly work, was indeed as it had been. My inner self was very different but often strangely contented, for like an automaton I would be talking to Noni, even when I was talking to someone else. I don’t know how long that lasted, but I remember only too well the dread that started to descend when I became aware that our conversations were getting repetitive, with fewer and fewer new subjects or arguments or points of view. That was almost like Noni dying a second time for me. A third came when her voice itself started to fade. She doesn’t talk to me at all now. If that’s a cure, please God, I want the illness back.
We didn’t touch Gum Leaf or Noni’s bedroom for many years. We wanted to remember, not forget. The place where Noni kept all her ducks and her geese is now Noni’s Garden. Our friends gave us plants for the garden and they have grown into mature trees. It is a wild, spiritual place. Her ashes are there and it’s also where our dogs lie. At the edge of the garden is a tall umbrella tree, the last present Noni ever gave me, for the last Christmas we had together. It was decorated with coins stuck to the leaves with sticky tape, to show me that ‘money grows on trees’.
‘So now you can buy me a horse,’ she’d said.
As we had following the death of my mother, we went ahead with our trip to England, supported by our English friends at the university.
Sometimes, when with people we hadn’t previously known, it might have seemed that Noni had never existed, reinforced by my complete inability to talk about her. I worked by day at the Natural History Museum, going there on the underground in the dark and coming home to our house near Epping Forest in the dark. Kirsty spent most of her time helping Katie learn to walk and do the baby things she’d missed out on. We all travelled together a bit, seeing Scotland and other parts of England. I particularly remember hearing some chamber music in Cambridge, at a music workshop Kirsty was attending, and being fascinated by an elderly cleaner who knew more about the music than I could ever hope to. But what I remember most is walking down a London street with Kirsty. It was dark and cold and raining. Once again I was in tears and Kirsty, once again, was trying to prop me up. I remember a flood of self-disgust. After all we had been through, she was helping me. Again. Why wasn’t it the other way around? No doubt it often was, but not as often as it should have been, at least as far as I could recall. Sometimes I tried to stand in Kirsty’s shoes, and couldn’t.
The best part of our trip was coming home. Rivendell had been well looked after by Terry Done’s parents, and my father came up to see us as soon as he could. He had changed completely. He’d forgotten the battle for justice that had so preoccupied him since my mother’s death and turned himself into a loving father, helping, caring, doing all he could. He was close to me as never before, as was my sister. Noni had become a major part of Jan’s life and I feared she suffered in silence, without much help or understanding. She started becoming embittered with her life. I hope I became a better brother to her than I had been. Jan tried to be cheerful when we were together, but this only worked with the help of alcohol.
For several years I was Townsville’s so-called resource person for parents in extreme distress from the death of a child. Such parents are exceptionally sensitive to what they hear, and they even hear the unspoken thoughts of others. At that time it was easy for me to be a guide, and not make the mistakes that many blunder into. But I eventually gave it up because of the toll it took.
For a very long time, when on a field trip, I was gripped by fear if a radio call was for me. I even feared the sound of any incoming radio message, before the advent of satellite phones allowed casual contact. At least this ease of communication now gives me some peace of mind, but I’ve never been able to immerse myself as wholly in field work as I once did. Worry for my family is always with me. I fear it will be so to the end of my days.
Going west
With most of the Great Barrier Reef expeditions, as well as journeys to the remotest reefs, islands and atolls of the Coral Sea and beyond completed, I had started writing volume three of Scleractinia of Eastern Australia in 1978, and that helped me through the remainder of 1980. As many have noticed, the publishing quality is poor – the pages feel like they’re made of cardboard and the volume is even the wrong size. I just wanted it finished, and left the production to somebody else. Field work for the remaining two volumes, mostly done simultaneously on those trips, was also in good shape by this time. AIMS treated me well, something I will always be grateful for. The institute forgot that they’d given me four years to produce the monograph series and I rightly reckoned that they wouldn’t notice if it took a little longer. It took eight.
In 1982 the fourth volume was published. For a reason I’ve forgotten, this started another row with AIMS’s administration. Again the matter went to the council, and again I received a nice letter praising my work and telling me I had a promotion, and also, this time, tenure. In my experience it pays to have fights with bureaucrats, at least those that look winnable. The fifth volume was finished soon after. Carden Wallace, a specialist on Acropora and a friend, later to be curator of corals at the museum of Tropical Queensland, joined me for that.
In all, I was glad to see the end of the series. I loved the field work and seeing so much of the Great Barrier Reef, but the many months of museum work I had to do were deadening. There always had been a divide between the two, and as long as both museums and reefs exist I’m sure there always will be.
The monographs certainly earned their place in the history of coral taxonomy. The first volume was substantially superseded after further work, but the se
ries remains a foundation reference for most groups of corals, especially the big, complicated genera Acropora, Montipora and Porites, which dominate most coral reefs throughout the Indo-Pacific.
With the monographs finished and my job having survived against the odds, I needed a new direction. The Western Australian coast beckoned, but not just because it was there. The basic question was: did the corals of the west form a mirror image of those of the east? Were they the same species, with the same abundances? Did they occur in the same habitats? And, most interesting of all, did they have the same pattern of latitudinal attenuation? If not, why not? The taxonomy and the data on distribution and ecology we had assembled in the east made a foundation for the big goal I’d long had – to build a unified coral taxonomy for the whole Indo-Pacific. On the Great Barrier Reef we’d made a start for the Pacific; with the corals of Western Australia we would maybe do the same for the Indian Ocean.
I first went to the west in 1981, partly to catch up with Ric How, my old buddy from University of New England days, and his family. I also wanted to go to the Western Australian Museum in Perth, where Ric was a curator, to see the coral collection there and to meet with staff who knew the coastline. Barry Wilson, a former director, then offered to take me in his four-wheel drive to Ningaloo Reef, about 1000 kilometres to the north. We got bogged at most creek crossings but as there weren’t many creeks to cross we made it easily enough.
At that time it was generally believed that the big ocean currents that border the three continents of the Southern Hemisphere – Africa, Australia and South America – run north along their west coasts and south along their east coasts. A glance at an old atlas Barry had showed that this was indeed the case for Western Australia, so I wasn’t expecting to see a big range of corals at Ningaloo: there would not be many that could have travelled south from the tropics against a north-flowing current, and a cold one at that. However, on arrival I immediately saw that this was not the case.
A Life Underwater Page 17
