Airship Over Atherton

by Christopher Cummings

  Willy looked down and saw the man on the ground tie a yellow chain saw to the rope. A yellow chain saw! His blood froze and the branch seemed to sway alarmingly. “You! You are the man who murdered Uncle Ted!” Willy cried, only to instantly regret it.

  Hank stopped hauling on the rope. He looked at Willy and his eyes narrowed. “Say that again kid! What’s that about murder?”

  Willy licked his lips and shook his head. Fear flooded through him so strongly that all his muscles seemed to go weak. Hank ignored calls from the man on the ground. He pulled up the chainsaw, then edged around to straddle the end of the branch. He checked the chain saw and gripped it with both hands, ready to start it.

  “OK kid, tell me all that you know; or I’ll cut this damned branch off.”

  Willy couldn’t believe his ears. It was his nightmare come true! He clung to the branch in terror and looked down. ‘If I fall I will be killed for sure!’ he thought. And if he wasn’t killed in the fall then the men would.... Memories of Uncle Ted’s mangled body swamped Willy, paralysing him.

  “Talk kid! Or else!” Hank shouted. He suddenly jerked the chain saw into life then held the blade so that it chewed into the branch.

  Willy looked around him in panic. Could he jump to another tree? Perhaps swing to one on his rope? He saw at a glance it was hopeless. He was trapped. His eyes were drawn back to where the chain saw was cutting into the branch. Swallowing from fear he stared in horror as the chain saw motor revved and a spray of sawdust spewed out.

  The man on the ground yelled up: “Hey Hank! Stop that bloody chain saw. The forestry blokes will hear it. The sound will carry for miles from up there.”

  Timber thieves! The explanation suddenly struck Willy. Rainforest hardwoods. They were now so scarce they were worth a fortune. He remembered hearing his father and Uncle Ted discussing timber prices. He also remembered reading that in North America they used airships to lift trees out of otherwise inaccessible areas of forest. This man Hank was a North American- a Yank or Canadian- and he had an airship. It seemed fantastic. Willy shook his head and for a minute forgot his own peril.

  The sound of the chain saw motor spluttering to a stop drew his attention back to the men.

  Hank leaned over and looked down. “What will we do with this damn kid?” he called. “He knows too much. Will I arrange an accident?”

  The man on the ground shook his head. “Not here. I think we’d better take him back with us. The Doctor might want to question him, to find out just what he does know- and how he found out.”

  “Yeah. Good idea. OK kid, climb down this blasted branch,” Hank ordered.

  Willy shook his head. He was sure that he would slip and fall; or that Hank would push him. Hank snarled again: “Climb down kid or I’ll cut you down!” He raised the chain saw again.

  “No!” Willy replied.

  Hank moved to climb out along the branch but the man on the ground called up: “Leave him Hank. He can’t get down. Let him ride the tree back to the mill. If he falls off that will kill him for sure. If he survives the flight we can grab him on landing.”

  “Good idea,” Hank replied. He gave an evil grin then set to work. It was dark by this so Willy could only just make out what he was doing. First he lowered the chain saw. Then, with a clink of tools he climbed on up the tree to a fork near the very crown. There he did some hammering and Willy saw he was fixing some sort of radio to the trunk.

  Next a heavy chain with a steel shackle on it was looped around the tree near the top and was fixed in place with steel pins or staples. Then Hank settled himself in the fork with a hand held radio and waited, staring down at Willy from ten metres above.

  Willy shifted uneasily. He was cold and very scared and was getting cramps. The branch seemed to sway a lot and creaked. He looked around for a more secure perch but was not game to move from where he was. Then he remembered the rope. He wedged himself in the fork and resumed tying himself to the branch with it.

  ‘If they are going to lift the tree up with an airship it will swing about like crazy,’ he reasoned. He tied the rope securely to the branch, then lashed himself to it as tight as he could. Then he sat and tried to calm his nerves. ‘If I’m to escape I must keep a clear head,’ he told himself.

  Time passed. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves and chilled Willy. The last ruddy glow of sunset gave way to blackness. There was no moon and no clouds. Millions of stars twinkled overhead, matching distant clusters of lights.

  “That must be Atherton,” Willy decided as he stared at the largest group of lights in the far distance. “And those closer ones are Yungaburra.”

  After a while exhaustion took over. Willy’s spirits drooped and he felt utterly drained. He began to shiver and to suffer cramps. His stomach grumbled. The cold breeze made his eyes water. They felt scratchy and sore and he was very thirsty. He closed his eyes and leaned against the branch, tucking his chilled fingers under his armpits.

  ‘I wonder what Mum and Dad are doing? They must be frantic with worry. By now they must have contacted the police and they will mount a search using helicopters. They have powerful searchlights.’ For a time Willy clung to this straw although his mind told him that they had such a huge area to search the chances of locating him in time were virtually nil.

  ‘They won’t even know where to look, except the whole Lamb Range. The only people who saw me were Graham and Peter and they are back on that huge rock,’ he thought unhappily. For a while he speculated on how Graham and Peter might be able to help. Gloomily he concluded it would not be until sometime after daylight tomorrow that they would be able to do anything.

  ‘And what of Roger?’ Willy felt sick just thinking about Roger’s probable fate. He tried to work out where the airship might have ended up.

  Suddenly he sat up, wide awake. ‘What was that noise?’

  Willy looked up and his heart stopped in fright. A huge black shape was blotting out the stars overhead.

  He clutched at the branch as a chill wave of fear swept over him. Cold sweat prickled.

  It was the airship!

  A real airship!

  The sheer size of it, even in the starlight, took his breath away. As he recovered from the shock Willy gave a weak laugh. “So much for Noddy’s UFOs!”

  He heard talking and the crackle of a radio. Hank was communicating with the airship, which now hovered overhead. The engines, Willy noted, were very quiet, just a deep hum.

  ‘Must be electric motors,’ he surmised.

  There was a whirring noise, then metallic clinking and the sharp snap of steel on steel. Hank had connected a winch cable to the chain. Willy saw Hank come sliding down the trunk on ropes.

  “Have a nice ride kid!” Hank called as he passed. This was followed by a chuckle which made Willy’s stomach turn over. He had trouble controlling his bladder.

  A light came on at the base of the tree and Willy saw the two men working there. A motor snarled to life and Hank stepped up to the base of the tree with a chain saw. The other man held a torch and a hand radio.

  Brrrrr- Grrrr....und! The chain saw revved and began to bite into the trunk. The vibration reached Willy and seemed to reduce him to a jelly of fear. Then hot anger boiled up from somewhere inside. ‘Those mongrels murdered Uncle Ted! And they are going to murder me!’

  Willy wriggled on the branch and changed position. He was bursting for a pee and the fear had made him painfully aware of it. He unzipped his fly. ‘Well damn them!’ He emptied his bladder towards them.

  There was an angry shout. The torch swung up, illuminating the falling stream.

  “You filthy little toad! You’ll pay for that!” Hank shouted in fury.

  Willy started to laugh but he choked up. Hysteria was very close. When he was finished he clung to the branch and shook with fear. Hank resumed his cutting. The tree vibrated, then trembled and shook. The airship’s motors rose in pitch. There were splintering and cracking noise. Even though Willy was expecting it the motion when the
tree broke loose was so violent he was flung hard against the ropes. He knew instantly that, if he had not been tied on, he would have been flung to his death.

  The tree spun, swung and lurched all at once. Willy glimpsed the torch light below receding rapidly and saw the black silhouette of the mountain top suddenly drop away.

  He was airborne!

  CHAPTER 25

  NIGHT RIDE

  For the first few minutes of the flight Willy was almost paralysed by fear. The huge tree seemed to spin and swing across half the sky. For some time he was totally disoriented and could only cling on, thankful that he had tied himself securely to the branch. He realized that his puny grip would not have held him in place for even a minute.

  Tears formed in the corners of his eyes, caused by the rush of cold air. His fingers felt completely numb. The tree spun and swayed. There were groaning noises from the timber.

  Was the branch breaking off ? Had it been weakened by the chain saw? Willy tried to focus his eyes in the dark but was unable to see clearly. What he did notice were lights far below him. He shifted his attention to them and clearly saw the headlights of a car. This made him wonder where he was; and where he might be headed.

  Some of the terror receded. He was still alive! He might be dead soon but it hadn’t happened yet. With an effort of willpower he calmed himself and considered his position.

  “I am tied to a huge tree dangling at the end of a wire cable thousands of metres up in the air.” (Or perhaps hundreds of metres he revised, as the lights of a farm house passed below). “If the wire breaks I am done for.”

  Anxiously he peered up at where the chain and shackle connecting the winch cable could just be seen. His rational mind told him it was unlikely to break. ‘These people have been doing this for months. Their equipment will be designed for the job.’

  Curiosity then led him to study the airship. It appeared as a huge black football shape against the stars. There were no lights visible on it and only an indistinct humming indicated that it had motors. It looked to be a long way above him and he decided that it did its lifting and carrying with a long winch cable for safety and stability. The rate at which the stars passed indicated a fair turn of speed.

  Willy next turned his attention out and down. The tree still rotated slowly but he had become used to the motion. He observed the pattern of lights and blackness below him.

  “I wish I knew my geography better,” he muttered. “That water there must be Lake Tinaroo. So those lights off to the right might be Yungaburra. That means we are heading roughly south. I wonder where there base is? Is it a sawmill?” He decided it must be. ‘What else could they do with a whole tree? They have to cut it up,’ he told himself.

  These thoughts led him to others: ‘Where do they hide such a monster during the day? Airships need huge sheds. And what will they do to me when they arrived? Better not to think about that. Those lights to the right must be Malanda.’

  Willy tried to estimate time and speed. He watched another vehicle’s headlights crawling along a country road. Below him he could just distinguish patterns on the ground: open pasture, ploughed fields, inky black patches he guessed were rain forest.

  Out to his left he saw a black silhouette:- a line of trees. They were passing a jungle covered ridge. “We’ve come down- or the land is rising,” he told himself. “Not many lights ahead, just those deep valleys. And that dark mass over to the left might be Mt Bartle Frere. I wonder how much further?”

  Even as he said this the airship began to descend steeply. Willy saw a cluster of lights ahead down in a valley between two jungle-clad ridges.

  “Oh my God! This is it! How can I escape? Please God, help me!” Willy said, his voice cracking into a sob. Fear returned with numbing force so that his mind seemed to function more slowly. “I must escape. I’d better untie myself ready to run. Maybe I can slide down the rope and get away?”

  Willy began fumbling with the ropes and worked with feverish haste to unravel the knots. As he loosened the bonds he tried to roll the rope up. But that was awkward to do and he was still scared of slipping off so he left a couple of turns wrapped around his waist and legs.

  A row of long buildings slid into his vision and the airship came to a hover over a floodlit clearing. Willy could see people waiting and several vehicles with their headlights on. Lights showed through the windows of a dozen buildings.

  Willy hauled frantically to remove the last of the lashings binding him to the tree but he was numb and stiff and the rope kept catching. Much faster than he was prepared for the log slid downwards. A huge machine with massive steel claws growled forward and gripped the butt of the trunk. The machine then reversed and hauled the end of the trunk over some sort of railway track. The butt was positioned on a trolley. There was a sharp whirring noise and the top end of the tree came down, from vertical to horizontal.

  Willy still wasn’t untied and he had to cling on, scared the descending tree would roll on him and crush him. Branches began to splinter and break as they reached the ground. Willy was engulfed by leaves and thin branches. He could hear shouts and was blinded by spotlights directed on him.

  ‘Get free, get away!’ Willy’s mind cried. Terrified of being caught by the men he struggled to pull his legs out of the ensnaring ropes as the branch bent and splintered. The tree settled with a crackling of breaking timber leaving Willy almost upside down just off the ground. ‘Must get free!’ he thought. Desperately he struggled to loosen the last few bonds. Heavy boots thudded and a torch shone full in his face. A strong hand seized his shoulder.

  CHAPTER 26

  WHERE IS WILLY ?

  When Willy’s airship lifted off on the gust of wind there had been consternation among the others at the farm. His father and mother had just rounded the corner of the shed in time to watch it happen. In agonies of anxiety they watched as the airship was swept up over the trees at the end of the field.

  Willy’s mother held up her hands in dismay. “Oh quick! The car! We must follow,” she cried.

  “Keep watch! Tell us which way it goes while we get the vehicles,” Willy’s father shouted to the watching teenagers. With their hearts in their mouths from sick apprehension the parents ran back to the farm house.

  “Maps. We need maps,” Willy’s father called.

  After a few minutes of frantic preparation they had started both the car and the Range Rover. These were driven back to the field.

  “Where is he? Can you see him?” Willy’s father shouted, his eyes searching beyond the trees along the creek.

  Stick ran over and pointed. “There, right over near the base of the mountains.”

  Willy’s father could barely believe his eyes. The airship was no more than a speck in the distance. “Get in,” he ordered.

  Stick and Marjorie at once scrambled into the Range Rover. Stephen, Noddy and Shona rushed to the car driven by Willy’s mother. The two vehicles roared down the field. There was a pause at the gate, then they went down the rough track into the creek as fast as safety permitted. As they did the trees blotted out the view, sharply increasing their anxiety.

  As they bounced and rattled up the far bank out into another open field their eyes scanned anxiously in the direction of the mountains.

  “Up there!” Stick cried, pointing.

  Willy’s father braked the vehicle to a halt on top of the rise and stared in disbelief.

  Marjorie gasped. “Oh my God!” she cried. In the far distance the airship, just a tiny dot, could be seen rapidly ascending along a ridgeline.

  “The wind must have him,” Stick said.

  Even as they watched the airship vanished into the shadow of the massive rocks at the top of the ridge, then re-appeared right above the centre one. Suddenly it dropped from sight. Marjorie cried out in fear and Willy’s father prayed aloud. Then, to their relief the airship reappeared as a tiny speck which moved across a wide valley in the mountains before vanishing behind another ridge.

  “That is up
the Davies Creek valley,” Willy’s father said, opening his map. Willy’s mother ran over to join him, followed by the others.

  “He has been blown up into those mountains,” she cried. “Where is that?”

  “The Lamb Range,” Willy’s father replied.

  “Oh my God! It’s not possible!” Willy’s mother said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  Willy’s father stared with anxious eyes at the jumbled mass of rugged mountains then bent to study the maps. “He might be blown clear over that range. He was up near the top when we lost sight of him then. In that case he might come down over... over... let me see... Danbulla State Forest or Tinaroo Dam.” He turned to his wife. “I’ll tell you what. You drive around along the main road to Tinaroo or Yungaburra while I go up this forestry road which goes up the Davies Creek valley. There are several roads marked here which go right over the range. I don’t know what condition they are in but we should get close to where we last saw him.”

  “Are you sure? It will be dark soon,” Willy’s mother replied, looking anxiously at the map.

  “Yes. We must, and fast. Keep in touch by car phone; and while you drive you call the police and get them to activate the State Emergency Service. You will get better reception than me if I go into those valleys,” Willy’s father replied.

  “Alright. Quick children, back in the car,” Willy’s mother ordered.

  “Back the way we came will be quickest,” Willy’s father yelled. They started up, turned and headed back down across the creek and back to the farm. A grudging halt to close the gate and another pause of a minute to quickly tell Aunty Isabel what they intended and they raced on out along the farm road to the Kennedy Highway. Here they turned in different directions, Willy’s father right and Willy’s mother left towards Mareeba. By then darkness required headlights to be turned on.