by Des Hunt
One person from that eventful week in Port Waikato who hasn’t featured in our newspaper is Dean Steele. However, that is likely to change after his recent visit to this part of the world.
Over the years Dean and I have swapped occasional emails and texts, so I have some idea of what’s happening in his life. Aimee also sends me information about what he’s doing. She’s now in the first year of her master’s degree at the University of Wollongong. Her link to Dean is via Cleo, whose brother Mark is now Dean’s best friend.
David and Sarah Steele broke up for good two years ago. Dean and his father live together and seem to get on pretty well. So far as I know, Dean has not touched an explosive since that day when he almost died. I guess the scar on his thigh is a regular reminder of what can go wrong when you mess with fire and explosions. Instead, he did what he said he would, and found something else to do. He started competitive surfing and has become very good at it, winning his age group more often than not. It was this that led to his recent visit.
During term one this year, he sent a text to say that he’d been selected for the under-eighteen Australian surfing team. They would be competing against the New Zealand under-eighteens at Raglan over Easter weekend. As that’s just down the coast from Port Waikato, I sent a reply saying that Afi and I would travel down and watch him compete.
Unfortunately, The FC Advocate got in the way. It was close to the end of term and the copy was due at the printers on the Tuesday. I’d had a bout of the flu and was running behind schedule, so Afi and I had to spend most of the weekend finalizing the content and layout. We didn’t make it down to Raglan.
However, I was still interested in how Dean got on. So when I got a chance at school during the next week I went to the library to check the results in the New Zealand Herald. He’d won! My friend was now an international surfing champion. I was so proud.
Then, when I read further down the results, I saw that, despite Dean’s efforts, the New Zealand team had won the Australasian Cup. That also gave me a good feeling. You see I’m a Kiwi now — I like it when New Zealand beats Australia. I can even say ‘six, six, six,’ without causing embarrassment. But I don’t think I can be called a true-blue Kiwi yet, because I still support Australia when they’re playing any other country — the others at school would never do that.
After checking the sports results, I went back to the news section, which I have to read as part of my journalism studies. It was on page three that I got the shock of my life. There, filling a quarter of the page, was a photo of Frosty sitting on top of the Norfolk pine.
All sorts of thoughts ran through my head. How did they get that photo? Do they know that Frosty’s stolen? Why are they printing it now?
Then I read the article and discovered that this was not the Norfolk pine in Wollongong: this one was at Port Waikato. Sometime over Easter weekend an unknown person had climbed up the tree and placed a plastic snowman on top. The reporter noted that the snow man had been carefully arranged so that he was gazing over the Tasman Sea, looking towards Australia.
I knew that unknown person. Four years before, at Auckland airport, he had promised me a gift when he next came over. This was it.
For some time I studied the image, wondering if there might be some other message. In the end I decided to take it at face value. Dean Steele had finally delivered on his promise. He always did like to have the last word.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After more than forty years working in education, Des Hunt is now a full-time writer living on New Zealand’s beautiful Coromandel Peninsula. Since the 1970s he has shared his fascination with science and technology through textbooks, electronic devices, and computer programs. More recently he has turned to fiction as a way of interesting youngsters in the world that surrounds them. His first novel, A Friend in Paradise, was published in 2002. For more visit www.deshunt.com
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in 2012
This edition published in 2013
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1, Auckland 1140
Copyright © Des Hunt 2012
Des Hunt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Print data:
Hunt, Des, 1941–
Steel pelicans / Des Hunt.
ISBN 978-1-86950-953-8
[1. Best friends—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Drug traffic—Fiction. 4. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Title.
NZ823.3—dc 22
ISBN: 978 1 86950 953 8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978 1 77549 042 5 (epub)
Cover design by Matt Stanton, Harper Collins Design Studio
Cover: main image — ‘Bio-mechanical Pelicans’ by Christopher Trotter (1995), photograph of sculpture courtesy Des Hunt; background image by shutterstock.com
