While there they were to take close up photos of various points along the river, making descriptions of bank structure and type and depth measurements at various points. This needed to be done before dark, when the tide was not high. Today the low tide was about 4 pm—a good time for photographs. Tomorrow’s low tide was after 5 pm, closer to sunset, when longer shadows made photography more difficult.
A whisper was around that the company was in discussion with the government about construction of a tidal power plant, perhaps a joint project with the Department of Defence, who owned a huge block of land on the north side of the river, land that old timers called the Bradshaw Run. It was very hush-hush, 50% speculation and rumour—the way of most commercial big businesses.
Mark had been told the absolute bare minimum, just where to go and what to do. The work had come to him via a contact in the Middle East, someone who he had done pipeline work for in the past. They, whoever they were, needed someone they trusted to handle the organisation, logistics, collect the data, and not tell others who might leak it.
Mark had chartered a flat bottom boat, with three great big outboards on the back. It was stable in the running tide and could be pushed to 40 knots if required, though 10-15 knots was more comfortable. It also had a pile of high tech GIS gear on board, to log their track and record photos and measurements digitally. They also needed to take manual measurements to validate the digital ones, and as protection for equipment failure.
Last night, after he had agreed to help at VRD, he had arranged to fly to a nearby local airstrip instead of their original plan, which was to meet mid-morning at Timber Creek, going by boat down the river. Now he would meet the other men and the boat out there.
His men were on their way with the boat, setting things up, waiting for him to arrive. The airstrip was next to the river and an hour’s boat trip from their measurement site.
Tomorrow morning Mark would meet a company representative at Timber Creek. He would give the representative a verbal report and the records; measurement sheets, boat logs, and an external hard drive holding digital photos and instrument records. Everything was to be handed over, nothing kept.
So for tonight he needed a technical assistant, someone to write measurements on sheets and keep watch over his high tech instruments. He had a friendly barmaid in Timber Creek on standby, but he hoped Susan might help instead.
“Of course I will,” she said.
With their conversation she had barely noticed the trip, but now they were driving into a little town. The sign said Timber Creek. It had a hotel, a few houses and a shop. No much here, she thought.
Mark pulled up outside the pub. “We won’t stop. I’ll just run in, tell Tanya, my stand by assistant, that I don’t need her now.” He left the engine running and was back in a minute.
“Tanya is pleased; boats and crocodiles at night are not really her thing.”
Then the town was left behind them and in five minutes they were pulling into the airport, not much more than a shed and landing strip.
There was a single small plane out on the tarmac waiting for them, the pilot standing alongside checking a map.
In less than five minutes they were taxiing and then soaring into the air, flying alongside a huge river which Susan realised was the Victoria River. Susan sat in front, next to the pilot which gave a superb view. The river swung away and they crossed range after range of broken hills. After twenty minutes they descended again, coming back down above the river. It was a vast muddy torrent, heading to a sea seen on the distant horizon.
As they flew along the river Susan spotted a crocodile so large that it dwarfed all she had seen before. It was slowly heading downriver, going with the flow, pushing a bow wave before it, its tail slowly waving behind. She pointed it out to Mark who nodded and said, “That is the mother of all crocodiles, I hope it does not want to play with our boat.”
Soon they reached their destination. As they circled for landing, Susan saw a boat with two men, along a tributary a few hundred yards from the river mouth. That was their pickup, waiting in place to collect them. The made a low sweep over the airstrip checking for obstacles. A mere minute later they were bouncing along it, braking to a fast stop.
A man driving was towards them in a utility. Mark said he was the Bulloo Head Stockman, Bluey, caretaking for a month. “At a pinch we could have walked to where the boat can collect us but it’s a good mile; very nice of him to give us a ride.”
They exchanged brief greetings. Then the pilot said. “Must be away; tourists for scenic flights in Kununurra, this evening.” He taxied out and flew off. They watched him for a minute but soon were driving past the station homestead and following the edge of the Bulloo River towards their boat. In another minute they were there.
As they climbed out Mark shook Bluey’s hand, “Many thanks, I owe you one, next time in town the shout is on me; just tell Tanya I said so.”
“No worries mate, pleased to help, you’d do the same in return. How’re you getting back from here?”
“Boat will bring us back up the river to Timber Creek when we are done, should be in town for breakfast or thereabouts.”
Their boat moved alongside the bank, just a few feet of shallow brown water between it and them. Mark tossed his gun case to one of the men on board who caught it.
A plank, about a foot wide, was dropped from the bank to the boat, then a metal bracket was dropped over its boat end to lock it in place. “Instant boarding ramp, Mark said.
Susan looked, took a deep breath and walked across, looking straight ahead, with only a slight wobble. Mark took two quick steps and was on board. The boat backed up slowly. It was easier than turning around in the shallow river with the tide ebbing out. Near the mouth they had room to turn.
They nosed out into the main river channel and felt the current catch. There was a roar as three big motors poured on the power and the boat was skipped across the surface. One man stood up front, keeping a lookout, while the other steered.
Mark came over to Susan and put a hand on her shoulder. “How are you travelling? Sorry to rush you so much, I always try to fit too much in. But you seem to take in stride. I like that!”
Susan smiled back. “Actually I love it; you never cease to amaze me. Is there nothing you can’t do and do well?”
He laughed, self-effacing, “Not so good at the personal stuff; perhaps you’ve noticed.” Then he said,” We’ve still got another hour’s run down the river till we get to where we need to be. We’re heading for a place called Entrance Island, where the river narrows and splits into two channels either side. The tide is low now and will be at its lowest in just over an hour, so for now the river is placid. Later on it will be a different, particularly around midnight after full tide. It will get dangerous and be hard to keep control in the dark with a raging water flow. We will run through our courseand take photos before we start our main measurements. I need to have a good look in the daylight, and map out the hazards. It will be much trickier in the night so we need to know where not to go.
“So now, apart from getting our recording stuff ready, we should have a spell. It’s going to be a long night. There is an Esky with sandwiches and drinks over there; you should eat. Then there is a bunk in the cabin. It wouldn’t hurt to have a lie-down; you won’t get much sleep tonight.”
Susan sat on the deck, eating a sandwich. Mark was busy unpacking and testing things. He suddenly pointed forward and called, “See out there, a hundred metres at one o’clock”
It was a huge crocodile, almost certainly the one they had seen from the plane, swimming slowly downstream. Mark directed the boat driver to slow; they dropped their speed, the engines barely above an idle.
They took the boat close to the west bank, “We need to stay downwind,” Mark whispered. Slowly they eased alongside and then ahead of the crocodile.
It was probably two hundred yards away, maintaining a mid-stream position. In the binoculars it looked huge but, with nothing
close by, it was impossible to get any good measure.
When they were about two hundred metres past it Mark directed the boat back to the centre of the channel, directly in front of the crocodile’s path.
He signalled to cut the engines completely. The boat’s motion died away, now it just drifted along with the flowing tide. Mark took the wheel. With deft touches he managed to get just enough steerage to maintain their line.
On and on came the crocodile, seeming oblivious to their presence. All remained totally silent as slowly the crocodile approached, never breaking its steady pace, its tail continuing its leisurely wave. Fifty metres, then twenty, then it came past a bare five metres from their boat. As the head drew level with the bow the tip of the tail was still almost a metre behind the stern.
It drifted on by, its swimming continued unchanged. Suddenly, when it had passed by a boat length, something must have given an alert, perhaps a tiny air eddy or a slight noise, nothing they could sense. An increased tail wave was the only sign as it sunk and faded from view. They waited a minute but no further sign was seen.
Mark signalled to power on again, and in a minute they had skipped past any place where it might have been.
Susan raised and inquiring eyebrow, “Well?”
“Well,” he replied, “our boat is 24 feet, I put the croc at 26, maybe 27 feet; I have never seen another one quite that big.”
Mark told her about another crocodile he knew. “There’s another secretive crocodile on the Mary River, in a place where only I know and go. It is nearly as long and about as wide. I have only seen it twice. We may go there tomorrow. You must have a gift to talk to the God of Crocodiles to bring this one out today. Perhaps if you call to the Mary River crocodile it too will come out to see you and be seen.”
It was an eerie thing to say and Susan shivered.
Chapter 16 – Running the Night Tides – Night 27
Now they saw their destination, an island at the end of the next river stretch.
Mark finished checking the instruments before opening his gun case and taking out a big stainless steel revolver. He opened the chamber and placed in four heavy bullets. Susan looked inquiringly. He said, “Just in case a large crocodile should try and come into the boat with us tonight. This is easier than a rifle at close quarters. I leave two chambers empty to ensure no shots by accident.” He placed the gun in a holster that he strapped to his waist.
Mark brought Susan into the cabin to familiarise her with the instruments. Even though Mark would mostly operate them, and call out measurements for her to log, Susan needed to understand how they worked, just in case she also had to take readings.
There was a GPS, to log their position, plot their track and keep record of their real over-ground speed. There was a flow meter, to tell the speed of the water as it passed the boat. There was a depth finder that ran a continuous record of the depth below them. Finally, there was a side-scan sonar, which gave a reading of the shape of the riverbed.
The method would be to take up position just before the last big bend south of the island at five o’clock, and hold it steady for five minutes while they got a reference position fix and zeroed all their instruments, Then they would go down the river, passing through the left hand channel and returning up the right side. As they reached their starting point they would rerun their course to the sea in the reverse direction, going down the right-channel, and returning up the left.
After Mark showed her the instruments it was time to start their work.
First they would do a first pass through, and take and log photos of the banks, and river structures; the islands, shoals, rapids, the places where rocky hillsides ran hard along the river, the places of back eddies and hidden obstacles.
Mark took the photos and Susan logged the locations. She also practised quickly and neatly capturing the written record they would later require. It was systematic and demanding work, like keeping track in a laboratory. Susan felt well at home with her task and proud of what Mark said was an important contribution.
She was learning how to use the barrage of equipment and how to work with the men who were driving the boat, the hand signals to manoeuvre slightly, to anticipate the drift and Mark’s needs as they did their work, the subtlety of boat, tides and hidden currents.
They came back to their starting point, meandering with the currents, waiting to begin their real work in the running tides. They cruised next to the north-eastern bank, in a place where big hills ran up against the river.
The afternoon sun sank slowly towards the horizon of a near cloudless sky. Below it was the thin crescent of a near new moon, a faint shadow in the sky. A little soak ran from the hill, the water glistening as it flowed over a narrow strip of sand to the river.
A big boar pig had come to drink here. It stood, head down in the soak, back slightly from the river’s edge. Susan looked away; watching as a flock of low flying geese wended their way upriver, flying in a tight vee formation, with strong wing flaps.
Violent squealing rent the air. They all looked around. The boar and a mighty crocodile were locked in a death struggle. Somehow the crocodile had caught hold of a leg and dragging it towards the water. The pig’s screams of terror were pitiful.
Mark watched with a rapt expression on his face. He seemed to be communing with the crocodile, oblivious to the suffering. Susan felt revolted and turned away. The awful screams went on and on. At last the noise ceased, pig and crocodile vanished into the murky river.
Mark’s fascination scared her to her core, she could not say why. It was, as the Top Springs bartender had said, as if some part of Mark held a kindred crocodile spirit, a sort of crocodile brotherhood.
When the noise ceased the ordinary Mark returned. But in her memory the chilling vision remained, as if some part of his human soul was missing, replaced by that of a crocodile. She remembered the carved crocodile he kept. He called it a totem, but it felt more like the crocodile spirit lived inside him.
They got to work and the hours flew by in a dizzy blur. As the light disappeared they turned on a barrage of spotlights. Now starlight was their only companion.
At first they were running with a rising river; the flow surged ever higher, the shoals hidden, the mud banks were gone, fish flapped on the incoming tide, waters flooded into side creeks, low banks overflowed. It slowed and it slowed; little by little this power of water went slack. Several crocodiles were swimming along the edges, mouths opening and feasting on the in-rushing fish.
Now it was ten o’clock; the tide and time stood still. They straightened and walked around the boat for ten minutes in the slack tide. Sandwiches and drinks were passed from hand to hand; they refreshed their bodies and cleared their minds.
Then they began again. Their first run was relatively gentle, the water in a full but steady flow. It started to surge as they came back up river. The second run became fast and dangerous. The flow through the narrows sounded a muted roar as it rushed through the constricted passage. Soon it was midnight.
The third run down-river was really scary, the water thundered through, all sound now blurred and buried below the endless noise assault of cascading white water. The boat felt like it was flying, their course wherever they could steer safely, keeping the boat clear of shallow edges, with danger of grounding and flipping in the falling tide.
Then came the return leg; three motors screaming in their effort to maintain speed against the thundering water. The helmsman’s job was hardest now, trying to hold a steady course against the buffeting water. At times water surges came bursting through and the boat was flung sideways like a cork. It seemed that they must surely be overwhelmed by the raging river. The fourth run was easier; control returned as the power of the river subsided.
Now they were all exhausted, buffeted by the endless movement, eyes gritted with strain. Finally they came back where they started. They all patted each other on the shoulders and back; none could have believed it would be that hard. But they had done
it and were proud of their success.
Mark took the helm. He told his two men, who for long hours had alternated between helmsman and spotter, to stand down and each take an hour for sleep. He would drive and Susan would watch out.
Susan sat in the bow, watching the river as it flowed past. But her work was not needed now, the river was wider, passage was easy. She came to the back and sat alongside Mark. They drove this way until four-thirty, the darkest and most silent time of night, enjoying the peace as the steady thrum of the motors drove them on.
The early morning on the river, with the steady pulse of the large engines, and the muted rush of the river, seemed to provide a space for them to talk in a meaningful way.
Susan chose not question Mark’s past; rather she gave him space to volunteer his own small pieces. He told a little story about an uncle, whom he barely knew, taking him to fish on the Brisbane River; he recounted the thrill of the first fish he caught and how proud he was when he was allowed to drive the boat.
He told of a time when a friend from school invited him to their farm in the country, his pleasure riding horses and going rabbit shooting; two things which remained great loves’ ever since.
Susan spoke of how her mother and father bought her and her brother a horse each, which they rode at the weekends; she remembered her joy in walking out in the Scottish Highlands alongside her father as he hunted and taught her about the land.
She told Mark about the first time she had killed a deer; the nervous anticipation as she held her aim, the instant ecstasy of success, and the poignancy of the moment when she realised what she had done as the magnificent creature lay dead before her. But then the pride as, with her father, they brought it home and it provided a feast for the whole family and her cousins.
Crocodile Spirit Dreaming - Possession - Books 1 - 3 Page 17
