Love on Forrest Downs

by Sheryl McCorry

  Bruce was still clutching on to his hessian bag with the mud crabs; Michael, exhausted now, just wanted his mum, and I was glad that we were safe at last. Only then did I allow myself to take a deep breath and glance towards the island, and I saw a sight that would give me nightmares for weeks afterwards: there was no longer an island. Only the shiny, leafy tops of the ancient mangrove trees stood above the swirling sea. Deep down inside of me I knew that they had always been the only survivors.

  We never returned to Racecourse Creek. Some years later I heard that it was known as a treacherous tidal creek, a haven for jellyfish, sea snakes and stingrays. Dad said that the incoming tide rose a foot per minute in that particular area. But Bruce and I already knew that.

  I’ve only told Mum and Dad about what happened at Racecourse Creek in the last twenty years – I wouldn’t have been game enough before that! Mum can’t swim to save herself so it just would have upset her if we’d told her at the time. And if Dad had known he would have been absolutely terrified to leave us and go bush again. That was the sort of life we had, though. With Dad we were so often out crocodile shooting and fishing and things like that. If we were out in a boat in Arnhem Land and saw a shell in the water ten feet down, we’d just dive off the boat and go down to get it. We didn’t think twice, which is probably why Bruce and I never stopped to think we’d get in trouble at Racecourse Creek. I have to admit, though, that what happened that day frightened me. It might not have made me less adventurous, but it certainly made me more cautious.

  *

  I remember the night I volunteered to be my father’s offsider while he hunted crocodiles on the Alligator River south of Darwin, in the Top End. I was just thirteen years old and built like a rake, more tomboy than princess. Dad said crocodile hides paid good money, three pounds an inch across the belly, and of course those extra pounds helped supplement the family’s income.

  The night we went out was pitch black and dead still. The humidity was extreme – everything was damp and sticky to touch. In places the eroded breakaway riverbanks were well shaded by gnarled mahogany and massive clumps of pandanus palms, and at night these areas were so dark and spooky. The stillness was broken by the odd splash of water as we frightened something further down the river. The high-pitched bark of a baby crocodile could be heard and the night air carried the musky smell of flying foxes. Dad was always at the bow of our aluminium dinghy with spotlight and rifle in hand. He was strong and confident and fearless, so I just knew I was safe with him.

  My job was to stay in the stern of the boat and work the outboard motor. ‘Keep the outboard running at a steady pitch,’ said Dad. ‘Don’t take fright or panic, and don’t rev up the motor unless I tell you to.’

  I sat in the eerie darkness without complaint, my eyes glued to the beam of light that shone brightly from Dad’s torch as he scanned it ever so slowly across the black river water, searching for the ruby-red eyes of a crocodile. Eventually the beam of light picked up a croc’s eyes; blinded momentarily, they sank gradually into the dark water only to quickly return to the surface. A nervous chill engulfed my body but I willed myself to remain calm and not change the pitch of the outboard motor.

  ‘Stay calm and steady,’ whispered my father as he steadied the .303 rifle. The distance between the crocodile’s eyes gave us an estimate of its length. Hell, I thought when I worked out it was about one and a half metres long, it’s a nice size. At that moment I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to be there. Suddenly the deafening blast of Dad’s gun broke the silence of the night. Then we heard the thrashing of water. My confidence returned in a split second as I sent the dinghy forwards, towards the croc.

  ‘Dad, are you sure it’s dead?’ I asked. It was difficult for me to see in the dark and the black water was churning as the crocodile went into a death roll, hitting the boat.

  ‘Grab hold of its bloody tail!’ my father bellowed. ‘Of course it’s dead.’

  I shuddered as I wrestled for a grip on the beast’s tail, very nearly losing my balance and going arse-up into the water several times. Dad had the jaws secured, and together we dragged the crocodile into the dinghy. In no time Dad was again sweeping the spotlight’s powerful beam across the river, looking to nail another beast.

  We were motoring steadily upstream when I suddenly felt movement in the bottom of the boat.

  ‘Dad, Dad,’ I called in a rather croaky whisper. I was so terrified that I had difficulty making my voice work at all. I had a horrible feeling that the croc was loose in the bottom of the boat, but I couldn’t see it in the darkness.

  ‘Shhhh, quiet, steady the motor,’ he murmured softly, never taking his eyes off the sights of his gun. Dad’s focus was on another set of ruby eyes close by. I can tell you it was bloody hard to pay attention to the job because I was nervous as all hell. I became an instant contortionist as I tried to get my legs up around my neck while also keeping my bum firmly stuck to the narrow seat next to the outboard motor. I was keeping it running with a ‘Shhhh, steady the pitch!’ from Dad for guidance, and all this while trying to stop myself from going head first into the river.

  The sudden blast of the .303 rang out; this time I thanked God because Dad had missed. To miss a shot was a rare occurrence for my father, but it meant that he immediately swung the powerful beam of light into the boat, and sure enough the croc we’d caught earlier was standing up on all four legs with its jaws wide open – I’m not sure but I think it was smiling. It must have only been stunned by the earlier shot. Now my father threw a hessian bag over its head, and after much wrestling and rocking of the boat the croc was secured again.

  I often went out on these sorts of expeditions with my father. These adventurous and sometimes frightening trips never affected me in a bad way; if anything, they made me a stronger person.

  CHAPTER 4

  Gove to Broome

  As the years rolled on, my father moved his family from Fannie Bay, west of Darwin, to Gove, which is in the north-east corner of Arnhem Land, the furthest point east of Darwin on the mainland before you actually fall into the sea that is the Gulf of Carpentaria. Dad worked in the Gominco bauxite camp, which, we were told, was then the fifth-largest undeveloped bauxite deposit in the world. The Swiss engineers were looking for a skilled bushman as well as someone who could record swell and sand movement, and with my father they got it all.

  We lived in a camp about five kilometres inland from the Yirrkala Methodist Mission. I remember life in Gove as a wonderful time, filled with freedom and adventure. It was a wild, natural and untouched wilderness full of buffalo herds, huge crocodiles, plenty of fish, dugongs and turtles, and our fair share of dingoes. Us kids would walk, laugh and explore through the bush for miles on a Sunday morning. With my Aboriginal girlfriends, Junie and Betty, I thought nothing of walking thirty-five kilometres cross country to Melville Bay. We were all around sixteen years old, and we had lots of fun. My friends could barely speak a word of English so we communicated through pidgin English and sign language. Although our communication system was rather rough, we always seemed to understand each other. And we were always laughing.

  As my friends and I explored through the glorious sunshine-filled days, our only fear was of running into a lone, grumpy buffalo bull we’d encountered on several occasions. My little dog, a terrier called Scruffy, would often follow us.

  Sometimes we veered off the foot pad towards the red cliffs where we knew there was a freshwater spring we could drink from. There was no set time, and no need to hurry; we just wandered along through the bush from shade tree to shade tree. I often carried Scruffy to give his little paws a rest, and the girls teased him, making fun of his rough looks.

  This land was our kingdom. Creeks gashed their way through the terrain, their courses distinctly marked by pandanus palms, and the air was filled with the noise of the ocean pounding against the red cliffs. Scruffy always took fright at the first crashing sounds of the sea. He would run back towards the camp with his tail between
his legs. I would then have to chase him – and myself – around in circles until I caught him. Then I would carry him until he was no longer frightened.

  The pounding of the seas against the cliffs became heavier as we walked south, that was the sign that we were growing closer to finding the gap where the red cliffs met the sand. At this point we would find the spring, and there was no way we would walk past it.

  About 200 metres west of the red cliffs, the clear spring bubbled up from the ground. Over the years it had developed a beautiful waterhole that trickled its way down the white sandy beaches into the ocean by the cliffs. Paperbark trees shaded the head of the spring and tall salt-tolerant grasses protected the narrow waterway leading to the ocean. It was a beautiful place – but it could be dangerous, too, as a giant saltwater crocodile often lay still in the shallows of the spring, hidden by the tall grasses. The crocodile could lie there for weeks on end, until the spring water irritated the saltwater barnacles enough that they would drop off its tough old skin.

  ‘Stop and wait,’ I called to Junie and Betty as they moved slowly towards the head of the spring. From there they could see if a crocodile was inhabiting our drinking hole or hiding in the shallows where he could sun himself, still camouflaged by the grasses. Then – ‘Come, miss’ – they beckoned me towards the spring as they got down on bended knee to take handfuls of cool, refreshing water to drink. That water always tasted so delicious.

  At other times we would walk to Melville Bay, following the red, gravelly bauxite track that my father had graded. Usually by the time my friends and I arrived at the bay we were hungry and thirsty. We would drink from a little spring snuggled behind the sand dunes, the same spring the Koepang fishermen would have drawn water from many years earlier when they camped and dried out their catch of bêche-de-mer sea slugs in the sand, after travelling over from Timor.

  Once our thirst was quenched, Betty, the oldest among us, would quickly fashion a simple spear from a cottonwood sapling and use it to spear fish. Meanwhile, Junie collected enormous oysters from around the roots of the mangrove trees, and sometimes there would be turtle eggs as well. I once tried to swallow a raw turtle egg like my Aboriginal friends, only to turn green immediately and gag at the unpleasant taste. It would not go down, no matter how hard I tried. This brought forth bursts of laughter from the girls, who simply threw their heads back and enjoyed the raw food. Betty would rub two dry cottonwood sticks together and in no time the breeze carried the aroma of a seafood buffet grilling on the coals. Fish were plentiful and we had the whole beautiful, isolated coast to ourselves.

  *

  One day I landed myself in trouble for snaring my father in a dingo trap that I’d set on the pathway to the rubbish dump behind our camp. Honestly, I had never heard my father roar until that afternoon, and I knew straightaway that it would be to my advantage to disappear to the billabong that lay at the foot of the bauxite escarpment. That would at least give dear old Dad time to cool off and disentangle himself . . .

  While sitting quietly by the billabong, with plenty of time to reflect on my attempted dingo-trapping experience, it occurred to me that the incident could have turned out a lot worse. Heck, I thought, what have I done? I’ve very nearly hung my own father from a boxwood tree! That’s what the trap was designed to do, after all. Luckily for Dad, he was a lot heavier than a dingo!

  Later that evening I overheard my father saying quietly to my mother, ‘Whoever set that dingo trap did a good job.’ He sounded pleased that he had taught us well. I perked up immediately, thinking, That’s a real compliment.

  *

  Quite often Dad would be asked by Old Mullwellen, or Gunnumulli, one of the tribal elders from the Yirrkala mission, to shoot them a crocodile or a buffalo for meat. At other times he was hired by film crews to protect the Aboriginal people, as different filming expeditions were carried out with them in their own environment. Hence Dad soon gained a reputation as a big game hunter.

  *

  One day, in December 1964, Dad was home alone at our Gove camp as Mum, my four brothers and I were in Darwin attacking the Christmas shopping together. Dad had been unable to come with us due to the daily readings of the sand and swell movement he was monitoring in the Melville Bay and Rocky Bay areas of Gove. He was doing the readings for the mining company Nabalco – this was just after Nabalco had taken over from Gominco, and before the mining of the bauxite began at Gove.

  Frederik, a European journalist, was staying at the tracking station at Gove, and he asked Dad to take him out on a crocodile hunt one night. Frederik spoke ‘no good English’, and he and Dad had difficulties understanding each other at times, but they got along okay. Dad thought the crocodile hunt was a good idea, as he knew there was a good-sized croc in Dalywoi Bay; plus, since he was without his family, it would fill in a lonely evening, and he thought that Frederik should be able to handle the boat’s outboard motor and follow basic instructions.

  So that evening, with the aluminium dinghy tied to the canopy of the Land Rover and the outboard motor securely in the back, Dad drove to the tracking station to collect Frederik. When he arrived, he saw that the journalist was dressed in bright-red Speedos and a flimsy T-shirt – his

  croc-hunting gear! Dad said, ‘If a croc doesn’t eat you, Frederik, the sandflies and mosquitoes will!’ Still, Dad told him to jump in and he drove the Land Rover to Dalywoi Bay, following a barely noticeable two-wheel track through the thick scrub and trees that he had marked with an axe some years earlier. Dalywoi Bay had become a favourite haunt of our family, even though it was too dangerous to swim there due to the huge crocodiles that frequently inhabited the creek that ran off the bay.

  With Frederik’s help, Dad launched the dinghy into the bay then set up the spotlight, harpoon and outboard motor. With all the gear in place, the two climbed into the dinghy. Dad set the idle pitch on the outboard motor just right, then explained to Frederik that under no circumstances was he to alter the pitch of the motor, as a crocodile would immediately pick up the change in pitch and dive under the water.

  My father said later that Frederik seemed confident and said in his broken English that he understood the instructions. It was a good night for spotlighting: no moon or stars, not even a whisker of breeze; just a hot, sultry and very dark night – although Dad said they could have done without the biting and constant high-pitched whine of the millions of blood-sucking mosquitoes that homed in on them both, obviously drawn to Frederik’s lily-white legs glowing in the dark.

  As they started to cruise steadily out of Dalywoi Bay, and quietly up the creek, Dad moved silently along to the front of the dinghy with the spotlight and .303 rifle in hand, leaving Frederik to man the outboard motor.

  For about twenty minutes the dinghy cruised unhurriedly up the creek, with only the gentle sounds of a small bow wave brushing past the boat. Dad held the spotlight high, slowly sweeping its powerful beam of light from side to side across the creek. Then he turned and signalled to Frederik to head towards the mangrove trees that grew along the muddy banks and gullies of the creek. Suddenly Dad picked up a ruby-red eye in the spotlight beam – it was looking straight at him.

  ‘There’s a croc there,’ Dad explained softly to Frederik. ‘Cruise in steadily.’

  At first glance Dad thought it was only a small croc, but when the animal turned towards the boat he saw two glaringly red eyes about twenty-five centimetres apart – which meant that this crocodile was far bigger than Dad had expected.

  With Frederik on the outboard motor they moved in towards the croc; the night was quiet bar the odd splash and pop of water which echoed from further down the creek. Dad stood steadfastly in the bow of the boat with a firm grip on the spotlight, keeping its powerful beam at his eye level in order to mesmerise the croc, his .303 rifle ready at his shoulder. Then, not twenty metres out from the crocodile, Frederik suddenly shut down the outboard motor.

  All bloody hell broke loose. As the huge crocodile turned around in the creek, hea
ding for open water, the creek became a massive swirl of waves that rocked the dinghy violently from side to side. Dad – abusing the hell out of Frederik for not following instructions – put down the rifle and grabbed hold of the detachable harpoon nearby, then yelled at Frederik to ‘chase that croc’. Dad raised the harpoon, ready to put his strength behind it, as he knew that once he nailed the crocodile it would immediately go into a death roll and become entangled in the harpoon’s rope.

  Frederik picked up speed with the outboard motor and they chased the huge croc into what turned out to be shallow water. As the small dinghy rocked and rolled severely in the wake of thrashing water, the fearful and agitated crocodile suddenly turned on them. It reared up and out of the water as if standing on its tail; Dad’s beam of light exposed massive jowls, its gigantic jaws wide open showing huge teeth, as it came in for the attack. Dad battled to keep his balance in the little boat and tried to take aim with the harpoon, knowing that if he fell overboard he’d be gone for sure.

  All the while Frederik, in his ‘not so good English’, was apologising profusely and saying he was frightened.

  ‘You won’t be f—ing frightened if this croc gets us!’ Dad yelled back.

  Closer to the boat now, the gigantic croc once more reared up out of the black water, exposing its true size in the spotlight. It was far bigger than anything Dad had ever seen before. And although he had abused Frederik for not keeping up with the monster in the creek, Dad said he was also very relieved that he never sank the harpoon into it, because the crocodile was at least six metres in length – much bigger than their 3.5-metre dinghy.

  With the crocodile disappearing into the dark depths of the Dalywoi Bay creek, and a frightened European journalist in his dinghy, Dad decided to give away the crocodile hunt for that night. The two men returned to the bay, loaded the dinghy back onto the Land Rover and drove at a good pace down the two-wheel track to camp, with Frederik in his ‘no good English’ reliving the night’s entertainment over and over again. Frederik never got his much-wanted crocodile, but he did get a story for the European magazines.