The Diamond Dakota Mystery

by Juliet Wills

  budge or Jim Mulgrue but he had to take his word for it. The major had asked him to report back in a week, so he rounded up a group from Beagle Bay and set out to Carnot Bay on foot.

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 17/5/06 10:54 AM Page 138 Bookhouse 138

  THE DIAMOND DAKOTA MYSTERY

  While he knew the way, the trip was still long, hot and

  unpleasant. This time, Clinch found a piece of string with two wax seals, a piece of white wrapping paper containing half an imprint of the seal of N.V. de Concurrent, and another piece of white paper with the word ‘Comm’. It was the first evidence of the package’s existence retrieved from the site, but there was still no sign of the contents of that package.

  Jim Mulgrue and Frank Robinson stayed in Beagle Bay for

  about ten days, fishing and mixing with the Aborigines and generally whiling away the time. Mulgrue’s eyes improved, but water supplies at Beagle Bay were low and the pair thought it best to move on.

  When the next spring tide rolled in, Robinson and Mulgrue hauled anchor and, using the tides to carry them northwards, headed for the bountiful fresh water supplies and good camping grounds of Pender Bay. Along the coast, red pindan cliffs jutted into the Indian Ocean, interspersed with barriers of mangroves, white sandy beaches and grey gums. The land was neither jungle nor rainforest nor desert. It is a place that looks like no other, ancient and worn.

  A small crescent bay known as Middle Lagoon lay just south of Pender Bay, and the men decided to moor the lugger here.

  It was one of the prettiest bays on the peninsula, with crystal clear water and a broad white sandy beach. A red and black rocky headland at the north side of the bay curved around,

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 17/5/06 10:54 AM Page 139 Bookhouse THE OLD PEARLER

  139

  giving protection from the westerly wind. The pristine sand was smooth and untouched except by the multitude of beautiful coloured shells, corals and sponges at the tide line.

  They anchored the lugger and rowed to shore. Robinson

  and Mulgrue set up camp in an old wooden pearler’s shack

  that lay in the protection of the dunes surrounding the beach.

  It was badly damaged and offered little protection from the weather, but at least there was a freshwater well and native blackberry trees provided both food and shade. After setting up camp, they walked over to the headland which harboured food for the picking. Climbing through large rock walls whose natural arches provided windows to the sea, they picked up rocks covered in oysters and took them back to their camp.

  They chipped the oysters from the rock, prised them open, and ate the succulent meat inside.

  Shells washed up on the beach, including huge trumpet and trochus shells, and they too were full of food. Robinson and Mulgrue had been there about four or five days when the lugger Eurus sailed into the bay, mooring right alongside their boat.

  On board was larrikin beachcomber Jack Palmer.

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 17/5/06 10:54 AM Page 140 Bookhouse C h a p t e r N i n e

  THE BEACHCOMBER

  The beachcomber

  While elsewhere in the world man tamed and stripped the land to use for his own purpose, it was apparent to even the earliest explorers that on the north-west coast of Australia nature’s forces would mock any efforts to tame them. Cyclones sank pearling fleets and razed whole towns, and birds and plagues of insects devoured crops. Tides surged forward like floods, causing rivers to rip through island passages, curling down around headlands and cascading off reefs. Small boats had been known to disappear completely in the convulsing waters. On the low tide, an inviting sandy shore could be transformed into a derelict mudflat only a crab could enjoy. Months of dry weather, cracked mud and salt plains would be followed by torrential wet season downpours, blackening the sky and filling rivers and lakes that spilt across the plains and crashed down over ridges. Along the coastline, 140

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 17/5/06 10:54 AM Page 141 Bookhouse THE BEACHCOMBER

  141

  the rivers’ prodigious wet season floodwaters collided with the sway of the tides.

  Bold dreams to build cities and populate the land would

  never eventuate. Settlers often found the steamy hot days, powerful weather and nights filled with the drumming of insects too oppressive, and departed for gentler climates. The northern coastline is littered with stone remnants of would-be towns, a few crumbling headstones the only reminder of the people who came with dreams of a new life only to have them shattered.

  Some managed to etch out a living on the remote coast,

  more often than not lured by pearls or gold, while others came to escape their past and hide in a place that was seemingly a world away from it all, drifters who found the pace of the modern world did not suit them. These hermits and beachcombers sought to find a lonely shore where one could carve out a niche and enjoy the fruits of nature in splendid isolation.

  Jack Palmer was such a man—his tanned leathery skin told

  of years in the sun, and hidden beneath his bushy moustache was the laconic smile of someone who enjoyed life. He was a drifter, an uneducated man, who liked the company of people too much to be a hermit. If Jack had a colourful past he didn’t share it. He was thirty-six when he arrived on the north-west coast from New South Wales. No one knew what he was escaping from or what led him to eke out a life on the lonely bays, for the Kimberley was one of those places where people didn’t ask too many questions about your past.

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 17/5/06 10:54 AM Page 142 Bookhouse 142

  THE DIAMOND DAKOTA MYSTERY

  For ten years Jack had lived the life of a beachcomber,

  shunning the demands and obligations that were part of normal urban living. He preferred to live in the open, exploring the absolute freedom of uninhabited islands and untrodden shores, discovering the moods and inclinations of bays and coves, jungle-covered hilltops, reefs, bluffs and precipices. The war only served to further convince him that living away from it all was the only way to go.

  One of Jack’s favourite pastimes was hunting for dugong—

  the large slow-moving sea cow resembling a seal with a large head and a huge, pendulous, rubber-like underlip studded with sharp bristles. The flesh of the young dugong was highly prized by the Aborigines, and Jack enjoyed the sweet and tender meat which was not unlike beef, and the dry-cured blubber that tasted like bacon. He also knew how much the fare impressed his Aboriginal women friends, of whom he had many.

  Relationships with Aborigines were frowned upon by Broome’s segregated European community but, as a beachcomber, Jack was far away from their watchful eyes.

  There were two types of beachcombers who lived in the

  tropics of Australia. There were naturalists like Edmund Banfield, who wrote of the free and easy life of a beachcomber on Dunk Island in northern Queensland in 1908, recording in minute detail the wildlife, flora, people, geography and moods of his isolated world. His ramblings about a deserted tropical island, where he swam, fished and hunted at leisure, inspired many dreamers to follow his course.

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 17/5/06 10:54 AM Page 143 Bookhouse THE BEACHCOMBER

  143

  And then there was the type of beachcomber that Banfield

  abhorred. This type of beachcomber chose to live alone to carry out his selfish deeds away from any scrutiny. It was not unknown for such a beachcomber to hasten the demise of a ship to secure its bounty. These men were known to bully Aborigines out of their copra, coconut oil and pearl shell. Living from what they could get from the sea or from the Aborigines—turtles, turtle eggs and fish—they sometimes overpowered the local Aborigines and took their women.

  Jack Palmer had not been known to hasten the demise of

  any ships, but many considered him lucky not to have been on the receiving end of a spear or club. But then again, luck was something Jack possessed in full measure.

  Jack had twice run foul of the law for
taking Aboriginal

  women of mixed descent on board his boat. Pearlers, sailors and farmers were banned from taking Aboriginal women and

  children of mixed descent without permission from the Protector of Aborigines, but there were few authorities patrolling the coast. Where there was law enforcement, it nearly always went in favour of the white man.

  Jack Palmer had heard of the air raid on Broome from the

  lighthouse keeper at Cape Leveque and was heading back to Broome to stock up on supplies. The lighthouse keeper had been told to keep his light off in case of another attack and been given a radio so he could maintain contact with the military

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 17/5/06 10:54 AM Page 144 Bookhouse 144

  THE DIAMOND DAKOTA MYSTERY

  authorities in Broome. As he no longer needed to tend the light, he was given the role of looking out for Japanese aircraft and reporting any unusual activity on the remote coast via coded radio messages. More than a week had passed since the air raid when Jack passed through on his gaff-rigged lugger, the Eurus.

  During the Depression, men who’d sought their fortunes in pearling in better times gambled away their luggers just to get out of Broome. Jack had never said how he came by the Eurus, but it was never registered in his name. The old lugger was a shadow of her former self. In the heyday of pearling, before the First World War, the Eurus played an integral part in Broome history. At sea, the tall-masted pearling lugger cut a romantic figure along the barren and isolated shores of the north-west coast. It was on board the Eurus that a bold experiment to replace indentured Asian labour with white divers first went horribly wrong in 1912. The Federal Government didn’t like the large number of Asians making a fruitful living from pearling on the remote western coastline and took action to replace them with white divers. But most of the pearling masters were opposed to this new policy—while Asian labour was paid at

  £2 per month plus a commission for shell raised starting at

  £15 a tonne, the British divers were to be paid £13 per week with £40 a tonne commission. So when English deep-sea divers donned the heavy metal diving helmet and cumbersome canvas suit and descended to the depths, most of the European masters and the local Asian population hoped they would fail.

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 17/5/06 10:54 AM Page 145 Bookhouse THE BEACHCOMBER

  145

  In this environment, English diver William Webber set sail on board the Eurus for Ninety Mile Beach, as Broome was then known. For two weeks he descended daily from the decks of the lugger into the clear waters, scouring the sea floor in a heavy diving suit for hours, searching for the prized shell. He was disappointed by the amount of shell he found and feared the repercussions of failure. At a later Royal Commission into the pearling industry, other divers claimed they were taken to fields that were known to be poor.

  In June 1912 Webber’s body was taken from the Eurus.

  He was the first of the white divers to die from the bends—

  a crippling paralysis that claimed the lives of many divers in the harsh north-west. Subsequently, two more of the twelve English divers died and all contracted the bends, some several times. Before the season was out, all had withdrawn from the pearling fleet. The local Asian divers and their employers were jubilant.

  By the time the Second World War arrived the Eurus, built for hardiness rather than grace, had seen better days. With peeling paint, the ingrained odour of shellfish, worn timber decks, a patched-up hull and infested with cockroaches and rats, the old lugger was picked up by Jack Palmer.

  Palmer reached the shores of Roebuck Bay some time around the second week of March. March was the lay-up season, a

  time of year when storms and the threat of cyclones meant the

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 17/5/06 10:54 AM Page 146 Bookhouse 146

  THE DIAMOND DAKOTA MYSTERY

  luggers were pulled up on the beach and the crews either

  travelled home or stayed in town, visiting the pubs, the gaming houses and brothels of Chinatown.

  Normally dozens of pearling luggers lined the beach, generally in trenches, so they could be reconditioned ready for next season. But when Jack sailed in, the luggers had all moved elsewhere. Broome seemed like a ghost town. Jack walked down Sheba Lane, a place normally brimming with life. It was here that a Japanese man had tattooed the rising sun on Jack’s left arm. Today it was completely deserted, the bordellos, gambling dens, shops and bars all shuttered.

  On the way down to Broome from Cape Leveque, Palmer

  had seen the wrecked plane on the beach at Carnot Bay and decided to report the sighting to Broome police. Sergeant Jim Cowie told Palmer that the passengers from the DC-3 had been rescued. He asked Jack if he had boarded the plane, and Palmer assured the police officer he had not.

  After reporting the wreck, Palmer headed down to Dysons

  to stock up on supplies, fearing the store might be closed or that his credit had again run out. He was relieved to find it open, although stocks were low. He took what he could—flour, tea, sugar and tinned food, the main staples—and loaded them on his boat.

  He hung around town for a few days, but talk of imminent

  invasion was rife, so he decided it was best to move on. Calling in at the native camp he asked an Aboriginal couple, Bonnie Bundigora and Tinker, if they would like to get out of Broome

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 17/5/06 10:54 AM Page 147 Bookhouse THE BEACHCOMBER

  147

  and sail north as crew on the Eurus. Tobacco and food were all they could expect for their labour. They agreed—the police had already advised them to leave as no Aborigines were allowed in town. They rigged the Eurus and waited for the turn of the tide.

  Jack Palmer, like all seasoned Kimberley sailors, timed his journey to work with the tide, which could outrun a boat

  travelling at ten knots. Sailing out of Roebuck Bay with the tide, the Eurus headed north, passing an arena of reefs, russet-toned outcrops with an ancient, time-worn presence and white sandy beaches, waters that Jack knew like the back of his hand.

  Late in the afternoon, Jack ordered his crew to prepare to tack towards Carnot Bay. They looked at each other nervously; the bay was about ten kilometres across and dry most of the year except when the king tides filled it. As one of the least attractive and treacherous bays on the coast, it was a place that most chose to avoid. They sailed past Cape Baskerville at the mouth of Carnot Bay, dodging the reef, towards Red Bluff.

  They spotted the Dakota on an exposed part of the shore, but dangerous reefs, rocks and the tides prevented them from

  mooring too close. Jack generally preferred to stay away from anything to do with the war—or so he later claimed—but the chance of finding good salvage was too good to resist.

  He had made extraordinarily good time from Broome to

  Carnot Bay and arrived just before the sunset. The tides and winds were in his favour. Anchoring the lugger, he ordered Tinker to ready the tender and then he climbed on board. The

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 17/5/06 10:54 AM Page 148 Bookhouse 148

  THE DIAMOND DAKOTA MYSTERY

  oars dipped into the black and silver water as the sun sank below the horizon; above, an orange sliver of light melted into green and then a vast purple sky. The black outline of the plane sat abandoned on the beach. The crash survivors had been

  rescued only days before. Tinker hauled the tender up onto the soft sand. Jack had to walk some distance to reach the bullet-ridden Dakota. He pushed open the door and hoisted himself up into the blackened cabin, where he began to pore over every crack and crevice of the aircraft, on the lookout for anything worth taking.

  It was relatively dry inside the burnt-out interior. A blackened suitcase had managed to survive the fire and Jack was able to retrieve some clothing which he tossed out to Bonnie and

  Tinker. They were delighted with the find; the war had caused a desperate shortage of clothes. Jack found a beautifully decorated Javanese basket and
took that for himself.

  The wind roared in through the broken glass of the cockpit and the orange light was fading fast. As he moved towards the cabin, where the light was best, he saw the bullet holes in the seat where Maria van Tuyn had sat with her baby, and where the bullets had pierced the seat of Captain Smirnoff. The sea had washed the blood away. Palmer was amazed that anyone

  could have survived such an onslaught. Looking inside the captain’s safe, he found it empty.

  Jack’s hands gently felt from side to side, sifting through the sand that had filled the bottom of the craft. He dug down into a crevice between the supporting ribs of the petrol tank near

  Bh1129M-PressProofs.QX5 23/5/06 1:35 PM Page 149

  THE BEACHCOMBER

  149

  the pilot’s seat and felt a damp paper package wedged in there.

  Lifting it out, he looked at the address: ‘Commonwealth Bank, Sydney’. The package was tied with string and had two red wax seals across the seams; one was a crown, the other a bank seal.

  He considered taking it back to Broome and forwarding it

  to its planned destination. But then again, it had been left out in the middle of nowhere, so maybe it wasn’t anything particularly special. Opening the parcel was like opening an oyster shell. He had pulled open many, hoping to find one magnificent pearl that would change his fortune. He’d found a few decent ones, even one lying loose on the beach, but not enough to make a difference. The wax seals came away with the string as he pulled on it. He ripped off the soggy white wrapping paper. Inside was a straw box about the size of a cigar box, which he tore apart to reveal a bloated leather wallet. He was relying on touch now. There was no light left in the aircraft, just the dull grey of night, which could be seen beyond the broken windows. He opened the wallet. There were a number of compartments inside bursting with tiny tissued packages. He pulled one out and unwrapped the tissue paper, feeling the tiny hard stones inside. His hands were calloused from pulling ropes, and it was too hard to separate one out to hold up to the dying light. He wished he’d brought the lantern from the boat. In his heart, he felt they were gems, but he tried to refrain from getting excited until he could examine them more closely.