Salvation Creek

by Susan Duncan

  When the sun drops behind the hill that rises from the cleavage of Lovett and Elvina bays and a sudden chill unfurls, sinking the temperature three or four degrees, the bay slides from copper into a still, silver slate. The boys leap into their tinnies and, with a roar, head off to wherever home is.

  For Veit, the tall young man with the shy smile and ceramic blue eyes who stopped me from falling the very first day I came to look at Gordon's house, home is his sixty foot, steel-hulled, half-finished boat moored in the middle of the bay. Summer or winter, he lives on her. She has no name yet.Veit is waiting until he meets a woman who will share his itinerant life. He will name it for her.

  One day when he's giving the boat a clean at Ken's wharf, he calls me on board for a tour. The space is huge. But it is mostly empty. A carcase. There is not even a loo. In winter, the stove, where he cooks stir fry and mountainous quantities of rice, provides the heating. In summer, he sleeps on the deck. He dreams of turning her into a glorious new beauty with sofas and bathrooms and curtains framing the portholes.

  'Can you see it?' he enthuses.

  'It will be wonderful.'

  'I've got the space, that's a big start. Could be a beauty. Lotta work, but that's boats. Pretty comfy now.'

  He flits from space to space. Incredibly graceful for someone well over six feet tall. No shoes. Never any shoes. His intricately patterned sweater, knitted long ago by a doting German mother, is worn through at the elbows. The faint smell of diesel clings to him.

  'The main cabin,' he announces as though he's revealing a box on a television quiz show. But there's no drum roll. Only a king size mattress on the floor, doonas, pillows, rumpled bedding. It looks incredibly decadent but I can't think why. Perhaps it's the size, which gives an unspoken signal that he is looking for someone to share it.

  'A bench here. Table here. This is where I'll put a shower.' He ends the grand tour with a wave of his arm.

  'Veit, it's fabulous.'

  He goes flat suddenly. 'It's a dump, isn't it?'

  'No. It has huge potential.'

  'It's a dump now, though. A mess.'

  'You're a shipwright.You bring boats to life.That's what you'll do with this one.'

  'Yeah.' But he doesn't sound as though he believes it.

  Everyone has a dream on Pittwater.To catch the biggest fish. Sail the fastest race. Return a wrecked old boat to former glory. Maybe just to kayak under a moon so big and bright it turns night into day. Dreams that cost almost nothing except effort and are therefore possible.

  There is a classlessness amongst the permanent population here, one that the weekenders do not entirely understand. Weekenders roar in to eat and drink and barely wet a toe even in the heat of a summer day. They are not persuaded, most of them, to join in the abandoned joy of skinny-limbed kids leaping from docks and begging, as a tinny passes, for the driver to rev the engine so they can get an extra thrill from diving through the fizzing wake. For them, and I do not mean to sound smug, the only social infrastructure of note is trade. Plumbers, electricians, floor sanders, path builders, retaining wall specialists. The human core that revives houses left empty for too long. Or marine specialists that keep boat engines humming, yacht bottoms scraped clean, moorings serviced. The essentials of boat-access-only living.

  The rushing weekenders who successfully manage to straddle both Pittwater and urban life tend to be the people who love boats. Not in a way that makes sense to most of us – that is, to climb on board, go for a gentle row, paddle, sail or chug, have a picnic and return to the mooring – but deeply and passionately. Anything that floats will do. A little putt-putt, a launch, a sailing dinghy. And if it is a wooden boat, ah well, that is truly the stuff of dreams. Prized and cherished, handled gently as a newborn babe, these boats are scraped and polished, painted and shined, and glisten on their moorings or sailing on the water. They are treated like priceless works of art.

  Ken has a wooden sailing boat called Sylphine with a voluptuous, spreading hull. He's begun a two year project to fibreglass over the wood. 'Lower maintenance, mate,' he explains when he raises her out of the water and nestles her in the cradle where she'll be worked on. He builds a temporary roof to protect her from the weather and treats her like a Fabergé egg.

  'Aren't all boats high maintenance?'

  'Yeah. But this will be less high,' Ken says, grinning.

  Perce, a gorgeous, beautifully mannered shipwright who once owned and skippered a restored and glamorised old navy (wooden) boat around the coastline of Australia, has the perfect Pittwater wooden launch. Called Perceverance, it is the most coveted boat hereabouts for its practical beauty.To sit at a dinner table with Perce is like taking an ocean voyage with an ancient mariner. He knows the history and specifications of nearly every boat on Pittwater and far beyond. He can tell you the name of the man who designed it, who did the woodwork and whether it will travel easily in choppy seas, or toss you mercilessly.

  All boats are known by their names or their class, unless for some reason they are nameless and then they are known either as no-name or by the letters and numbers on the mainsail (KA2, for example). When you wait for the ferry, you wait for the Curlew or the Amelia K. Or when a working barge goes past, it is the Trump or the Laurel Mae. Rarely 'Bomber's' or 'Toby's and Dave's barge'.

  I knew Toby years before coming to Pittwater, when he sold advertising for magazines and newspapers and dined in five star restaurants at his employer's expense. His shirts were always eye piercingly white, his trouser creases sharp enough to cut cakes, his hair regularly trimmed. He still worked in the media when I found him, one day, at Church Point, having a Friday evening beer before catching the ferry home. It was a winter's night, I recall, and he wore a heavy, navy overcoat, shiny black brogues. He had not yet loosened his striped silk tie. His girth reflected a life spent in exotic restaurants.

  'Toby?' I asked, hesitant and unsure. He was out of context.

  'Gidday.'

  He hugged me, engulfing me in the smell of beer and tobacco. The same Toby.He reached for a roll-your-own. Lit it. Offered me a beer.

  'What on earth are you doing here?' I could not believe for one moment that Mr Urbane might have an offshore bolthole.

  'Bought a little place on Scotland Island. Live here.'

  'Really?' I thought, how little we really know about what goes on in people's minds.

  After that, we met from time to time, passing through The Point. We exchanged industry gossip, caught up on news of old colleagues. Soon, I noticed more cynicism than humour edged into his accounts of life in the advertising world.

  One day I heard he'd bought a partnership in a boat. A barge, the Laurel Mae. And he intended to run it as a business.

  'Do you know what you're doing,Toby?' I ask him one evening when I'm passing through The Point and he's amongst the crowd having a beer before climbing on the last ferry for the day.

  'Oh yeah. As much as you ever know what you're doing.'

  It is a fine day, about a month later, when I find Toby in his grand wheelhouse on the Laurel Mae at Cargo Wharf, at lunchtime.

  He looks up and waves and I wander over. He emerges on deck in a faded grey singlet. Faded navy shorts accordioned at the crotch and socks the same colour as the clay at Cargo Wharf. His boots are a kaleidoscope of Pittwater soils.

  He has a sandwich in his hand, a high pile remaining inside a brown paper bag, waiting to be eaten.

  'What's for lunch?'

  'Devon sandwiches. With tomato sauce.'

  'That's a big call after dining five star for most of your career.'

  'Wanna know something?'

  'Yeah.'

  'I've never tasted anything better in my life.'

  He beams. Stomach newly flat. Arms muscled and tanned. A new man. His own man.

  The Laurel Mae is a great big, broad beamed barge with a hull made from spotted gum. Thirty people could waltz on her pitted deck and not come close to the edges. They'd have to dodge the crane in the centre of
the deck, though, with its giant rusted hook and ropes as thick as wrists.

  'Wanna see inside?'

  I follow him on board to the cabin, which is clean and braced in the corners with quite beautiful, pale blonde huon pine wood.

  'Grown knees,' says Toby, patting the bracing knowledgeably. 'That's what they're called.'

  'What's a groan knee?' I ask.

  'Grow-en,' he replies. 'It's wood taken from the natural knee bend in a tree, which makes the brace stronger than using two pieces of wood.'

  The cabin is big and meticulous. Tools are neatly in boxes, phone books lined up on a ledge alongside business envelopes and receipt books. The floor is painted green in here, but where the captain stands at the helm, it is worn to bare wood.

  'Don't miss your office desk, then?'

  Toby grins. 'Not a lot, mate.'

  'How's business?'

  'Yeah. Not bad. Not bad.'

  'Toby?'

  'Yeah?'

  'Do you actually know anything about the barge business?'

  'Not much, mate, not much. But I'm learning quick.'

  Cargo Wharf, where the Laurel Mae is tied up, is the industrial estate of Pittwater. Huge bags of sand, with giant handles like a woman's shoulder bag, are lined up to be lifted by crane from land to water, along with bundles of wood, pipe, tin, and other landscaping and building supplies.

  Twice a week the reeking garbage truck is driven onto a long flat barge from Cargo Wharf and ferried around the bays and Scotland Island. Garbage, which is piled in bins at public ferry wharves, is tossed into the truck's gawping black hole, where it is crunched and munched and swallowed whole. Bagged garbage is picked up from private docks by a couple of lean young blokes who splash around, mobile phones to their ears, on a long, flat barge. They pick up bags and chuck them like pillows into bins on the barge, missing only occasionally. When that happens, the bag sinks slowly to the watery bottom and in Lovett Bay, and probably everywhere else, locals wait for low tide and try to tidy up.

  One Sunday when I'm on the way to Church Point in the water taxi, I see the two boys who are usually on the garbage barge quietly sailing around in an exquisite little wooden boat. It looks antique and quite delicate and it's been sanded and painted to perfection. When I catch the boys clearing the garbage at Lovett Bay a few weeks later, I ask them about the boat.

  'Bit of a passion, mate,' they say. 'Old wooden boats. Yeah. Bit of a passion. Found her rotting and did her up. Saved her. She's pretty bloody beautiful, isn't she?'

  I do not fully understand the grip of boat passion until Steve, who lives aboard his boat in McCarrs Creek, his dreadlocks newly shorn, his little black and white mutt, Minnie, prancing busily alongside, explains that for him, the only romance in life comes from boats. 'They are,' he says, uncharacteristically serious,'the love of my life. I live . . . for boats.'

  And then as we walk along the roadside at Church Point, Minnie following at a trot, we plunge into a heated debate about whether browning meat is a good idea or not, as a prelude to creating a thick winter stew. The kind that transforms into a heavenly soup when the meat is gone.

  'It's essential,' Steve says.

  'Yeah, but most people chuck all the meat in a pan at once and the pan loses heat so the meat goes grey instead of brown.'

  'Mate, that's the cook's problem. If you're any good, you do it handful by handful and sear it quickly so the juice stays in the meat.'

  'Yeah. Which means it shouldn't dry out when you stew it.'

  'You've got it! That's the whole point. But do you reckon you need both parsley and celery for flavour?'

  'Individual taste, mate,' I say. 'Personally? I'd use both. With carrots, onions and a bay leaf or two.'

  'Yeah. Me too.'

  One day I ask Steve to explain why he is so passionate about boats.

  He squirms for a minute or two, uncomfortable with the thought that he might reveal something essential about himself. 'Dunno, mate.'

  'But you must know. You're obsessed with them.'

  'Yeah. Well maybe it's because they're there.'

  I lean in the groove Gordon so cleverly fashioned to comfortably cup an elbow with a glass of wine in hand. It is cold on the deck, and the damp is heavier than a spring dew. The chill seeps through my sweater and my jeans feel frigid enough to ice a martini. It is that time of day when the sky is pale grey and the trees silhouetted on the ridge tops look like pins on a cushion.

  To pass the time, I think about ideas to transform the fortress mentality of my house. Maybe wide, sliding doors from the bedroom onto a new, vast deck, so in summer I can push my bed outside. Live in the physical world, if by then that is the only way. If I am bedridden.

  It's a dreadful word, and I rear back from it. My Uncle Frank is right. You've got to watch your noodle all the time. Turns on you in a flash, fills your mind with crabby, unhelpful little ideas if you're not constantly vigilant. I will not be spending days in bed, inside or out. I am strong and my body is strong.

  I stride inside and grab a pencil and a piece of paper. Draw, erase, draw again. But then the fear of illness trickles in once more. I throw the pencil down. Stop it, I shout silently. You cannot afford the luxury of ambivalence.To let your guard down is reckless!

  And life is like that now. An emotional seesaw. Live? Die? Which force is winning today? Which will win tomorrow?

  I put aside the pen and paper, too tired to continue. I peel off my clothes, put my fake tit in the underwear drawer, pull the quilt around me and reach for cookbooks piled high on the bedside table. I flick through pages searching for ways to make the baby leg of lamb for Bob and Barbara's lunch irresistible to a woman whose tastebuds must be fickle and dulled.

  Hazy ideas float through my mind as I skim recipes. Where would a fireplace go? What about the kitchen? The walls between bedrooms and living room do not reach the ceiling. Should I raise them to be a proper noise barrier, or leave them as they are because it makes the house feel wonderfully casual and shacky?

  I settle on a recipe for the lamb at the same time as I vow to call the builder. Bugger it. If I'm going to die in the foreseeable future, I am going to die in comfort!

  On a glorious Pittwater night my friend Michael, who took over the lease on the Scotland Island house, paddles over by the light of a fabulous moon. He knocks on my door and walks in, leaving wet footprints in his wake. I am in bed but not asleep when he sticks his head around the curtain, which passes for a door in my shack, and tells me to get up.

  'Come on, come on.This is too good to miss,' he says.

  He is new to Pittwater, I think a little crankily, as I get up and follow him outside in my pyjamas. But he is right. The night is spectacular. The escarpments shimmering with silver, the night sky undercoated with the softest pink. The whole bay shining and, right through the middle like a silver stairway, light accordions out to sea.

  We manoeuvre the kayak past the mangroves to the point where Salvation Creek, which runs down from the national park, joins Lovett Bay. It is a beautiful creek in a damp gully where life and growth is rampant. In the first days of moving to Lovett Bay, I wandered at low tide to find out for myself what lurked at the end of the shoreline. As I stepped from the open bay into the gloom of a rainforest, thousands of insects hurtled in the light and shadow. Palms as tiny as cocktail umbrellas sprouted wildly, delicate maiden hair cascaded and forests of fungi filled the air with a stewy smell. Moss, thicker than carpet, softened sharp-edged rocks, and after scrambling over huge, slippery boulders for a while, I found a waterfall. Later I was told that this is the creek that never dries up, even in the most severe drought. The name, Salvation, is fitting.

  At low tide, the creek trickles onto the sandflats, at high tide, it is still too shallow for any boat bigger than a tinny. So there is never any boat traffic here. As we paddle along, the silence is lyrical and we do not speak as we turn and glide smoothly back to the house.

  'Thanks,' I say.

  My friend nods and k
eeps paddling his way home.

  Friday morning is quite beautiful. Sunny, crisp, vibrant. I stroll to the fringe of the night's high tide. A big one, spilling a foot or so over the sea wall. It is not long past the time when the sun swathes the bay in an orange glow, when the tree tops look like they are burning. About four or five early morning kayakers glide past as usual, their paddles dipping into the dark satin water. First one side – whoosh – then the other. Occasionally they nod in my direction and I wave in a small gesture to create only a small disturbance.

  The boats on their moorings hover over their reflections like conjoined twins, bright white most of them, with blue sail covers, blue as the sky. Sea eagles who nest on the Elvina side of Lovett Bay, high in the rocky escarpment where no human can disturb them, swoop and soar. Is it a mating ritual? Or is the day, for them also, too exquisite not to feel a surge of joyful energy? Perhaps they are simply letting off steam.

  Mid-morning, I call the builder on his mobile. 'Think I'll go ahead after all,' I tell him.

  'Right,' he replies.

  'When can you come over for a chat?'

  'I'll call you Monday with a time. Does that suit you?'

  'Yeah, great.'

  There's a long pause.

  'How are you doing?' he asks tentatively.

  'Who knows?'

  'Right,' he says quickly.

  After I put down the phone, I wander into the kitchen to get lunch going.

  The lamb goes into a chipped, heavy, cast iron pot with a broken knob on the lid. Dropped it once on a tile floor. Chipped the tile, too. I squeeze a bulb of garlic until it breaks up and chuck all the pieces in with the lamb. Unpeeled. Peeling garlic can sap your creative spirit and anyway, it burns too quickly. I drizzle balsamic vinegar over the top so it collects in a glossy brown pond in the base, chuck around plenty of salt and pepper. The lid goes on and the whole lot is shoved into the oven to cook on a low heat for about three hours. At the end of that time, the lamb will emerge with a caramelised skin and flaking, moist meat infused with the nutty flavor of roasted garlic and the sharp sweetness of vinegar.