So they did. It took over an hour and left Tina feeling utterly exhausted but at least she felt safe. To begin with there were more ferns and leeches. After a few hundred metres of that they came out into open forest and waist high blady grass. A rough foot pad wound its way along an undulating ridge. There were frequent detours to avoid fallen trees and large rocks but because there were three people in front of her flattening the grass and because they were following a trail that had been recently used it was not too bad.
“Did you come this way?” she asked Graham during a short halt to have a drink.
Graham shook his head. “No. We came across the mountains from the highway. We had to cross the gorge of the Wild River and boy, wasn’t it rough going!”
“Were you some of the group that crossed the wall of the Old Dam?” Tina queried.
The boys all laughed. “No,” Graham replied. “That was1 Platoon.”
Tina frowned. “But they said that the gorge was too steep to cross. That was why they walked across the top of the dam wall.”
“It is,” Graham agreed. “So we made the effort and detoured down around it and then crossed near the gate at the bottom of the hill.”
“Were you the group the guards at the gate chased?” Tina asked.
Again Graham shook his head. “Not us. We just photographed the guards and then followed the water pipe up the side of the gorge to near the Old Dam. Then we came cross country to where you and Andrew were at your signal station.”
At the mention of Andrew Tina experienced a vivid feeling of hurt and guilt. She nodded and then looked at Graham. ‘Do I love him? Or do I still love Andrew?’ she wondered. Heated images of Graham touching her breast came to disturb and confuse. She hadn’t really minded and had to admit she was aroused by it but somehow she felt he had been taking liberties. ‘It was a bit fast,’ she told herself.
They continued on, climbing up a few hundred metres of steep rocky slope which brought Tina to a panting standstill with cramps a dozen times. It began to look as though they had made the wrong decision about which way to go but then another radio call came in to report a second civilian 4WD with two men in it passing HQ on the way down the mountain.
“Oh! Why didn’t they stop them and arrest them?” Tina cried.
“Fair go!” Graham answered. “The cadet officers aren’t the police and if these men are armed it would have placed them in danger. Don’t worry. I’m sure they have taken their registration numbers. Let the cops catch them.”
Tina had to admit that was sensible but it still rankled that the crooks had apparently escaped. ‘Maybe the police have caught them further down the road,’ she hoped.
They continued on and reached the rocky summit of Stewarts Head ten minutes later. There they found quite a large group of cadets waiting, including Graham’s friend Peter and also Sub Lt Sheldon. Tina flopped down and broke into fits of shivering for a while. Then she was given a hot drink and a meal. Graham cooked this for her on his hexamine stove and she was grateful for it. She had not realized how hungry she was until she was asked.
It was after 0900 by then so the whole group moved on down the other side of the knoll along quite a well trampled walking track. The first few hundred metres were steep and rocky but as they came out of a stand of dense timber onto a small knoll Tina saw a parked vehicle. The sight caused her to begin sobbing with relief and it took all her efforts to hobble the last hundred paces.
The driver was Lt Hamilton from the Army Cadets. He had two female cadets with him and they took Tina’s gear and then helped her into the passenger’s seat. They then climbed in the back. As she settled herself more comfortably Tina saw Graham standing nearby and grinning. She had expected him to come with her but now she saw it had not even occurred to him. When she asked him he shook his head.
“No room. Anyway, we have to finish our patrol,” he said.
Tina felt quite disappointed even though she knew his reply was perfectly reasonable. ‘It is me being unreasonable,’ she told herself. But it did give her niggling doubts. Then a spasm of cramp seized her left calf in an agonizing grip and she could only cry out and pummel it while the vehicle was started up.
She did not enjoy the drove down. The track was very steep and bumpy and wound through the trees along the crest of a steep ridge. But it only took ten minutes to reach a track junction where more cadets from all three services waited. Another vehicle joined them and both vehicles continued on down a steep slope and across a steep little saddle and then up onto another ridge. The vehicle track ran along the crest of this and Tina had to hold on tight against the bumps. It was all a bit much and she felt even more exhausted when they went down off it and up along another ridge line and onto the side of what she learned was Saint Patricks Hill. There were more cadets there but after that the road was easy and good and they were soon down among the houses of Herberton.
As they reached the bitumen Tina sighed with relief and just wanted to collapse. But she kept herself awake and alert until they reached the main HQ at Woodleigh College. She had never been there but liked the place. It was not large, only half a dozen buildings and had a very relaxed air about it. The vehicle was driven in the back way onto a lawn and she was then helped out amid a crowd that included police and paramedics. Lt Cdr Hazard and Sub Lt Mullion were both there and they helped shield her from the curious eyes and questions while she was whisked into a room at the end of one of the dormitories.
There was a lot of fuss including tactful questions about whether she had suffered any sexual assault. Her kit bag was produced and she was allowed a chance to have a shower and change of uniform. Feeling much better but still limping and shivering she was then led to an office where she was questioned by police and other government officials. Lt Cdr Hazard and Sub Lt Mullion sat in with her and that made her feel less stressed.
When the questioning reached the stage of discussing the bird poacher’s vehicles Tina turned to Lt Cdr Hazard. “Did you get a good description of them sir?” she asked.
“We did. We not only noted their make and registration numbers but also took photos. They were both a dirty brown colour and had covered trays on the back,” Lt Cdr Hazard explained.
“Did you see the men?” Tina queried.
Lt Cdr Hazard nodded. “Yes. One in the first vehicle and two in the second. We got photos of both and they did not look happy but kept on driving.”
“One of them is my back neighbour, Neville,” Tina said. It was only then that the awful realization came to her that now she might really be in danger. ‘Neville recognized me and he knows where I live and he will have a real grudge. He might come back for revenge,’ she thought. It was a chilling idea and set her shivering again.
When they had calmed her there were more questions until Tina just wanted it to end. To her own dismay she found that it was not Graham’s face she was picturing to comfort her but Andrew’s. ‘Do I love Graham at all?’ she wondered.
To test this she badly wanted to see him but she got no chance. By the time the questioning was done the army cadets had departed the area in their coaches. Nor did Tina get to see Andrew as the other navy cadets had also departed.
Nagging at the back of her mind was worry about what consequences she might face over her ‘fraternization with the enemy’ incident. When Lt Cdr Hazard made no mention of it she was left in a state of some anxiety. As the issue still had not been raised by the time she was led out to a car she plucked up the courage to ask. “Sir, what .. what about my misbehaviour?”
Lt Cdr Hazard glanced at Sub Lt Mullion and then looked her in the eyes. “I think perhaps you have been punished enough. It was sufficient for you to promise not to misbehave again and for you to try to catch the army cadets,” he answered.
“I am not going to be chucked out of cadets?”
Lt Cdr Hazard shook his head vigorously. “No. Definitely not. You are good cadet with great potential. Discharging you might be a warning to others but it won’t ma
ke you a better person. If you stay you will be. I think you have learned your lesson,” he said.
“Are you going to tell my parents?” Tina asked, voicing a deep worry.
Lt Cdr Hazard shook his head. “No. It wasn’t a serious incident. I think it can be kept within the unit as a disciplinary incident, so I will leave that to you. Besides, all the others know and are sure to gossip,” he said.
At the thought of having lost the good opinion of her peers (and Andrew) Tina bit her lip. Knowing there would be malicious gossip both at cadets and at school made her burn with shame. She nodded and said, “Thank you sir.”
“But we will ask you to promise to behave in future,” Lt Cdr Hazard added.
Tina swallowed and had to struggle to hold back tears of relief. “Yes sir. I promise,” she said. She wanted to ask if she would still be eligible to attend the promotion course but the tears were now so close she could not bring herself to do so. So she took her seat in the back of the car and driven back to her home in Cairns by Lt Cdr Hazard and Sub Lt Mullion. With her in the car was Sarah, who was full of sympathy and questions.
As they drove down the Gillies Highway Tina was a bit annoyed with Sarah and the others and she peevishly asked, “Didn’t you hear me call for help?”
Sarah shook her head. “No. Sorry. We heard lots of cockatoos but the first unusual sound was that plane starting its engine,” she explained.
“Did you see it?” Tina asked.
“Yes. It took off right past us. We thought it was going to crash. At first it couldn’t take off because the lake was so calm- or so Petty Officer O’Leary said. So it roared backwards and forwards across the lake a couple of times to make waves and then did a take off run. We didn’t think it would get off in time but it just cleared the wall of the dam and then sank down into the valley until it nearly hit the tree tops and then it flew off around the bend,” Sarah explained.
Tina pictured this and shuddered. A whole series of flashbacks set her trembling and gripping the seat and hand grips. Then the terrifying thought of Neville and the other bird poachers coming to get her flooded in to fill her with dread.
‘I wonder if Neville went home? Or have the police arrested him?’ she worried. Anxiety about what she might find at home got her biting her nails.
CHAPTER 38
WORRY
Neville and the fear of revenge attacks were on the top of Tina’s mind when she arrived home. Her parents had been informed of the situation and both the police and Lt Cdr Hazard also explained the situation. As soon as Tina was released from her parent’s sobbing hugs her mother cried, “Oh Ti-bub! Every time you go away you seem to get into some scrape. We will have to ban you going on camps.”
“Mum! Fair go! It was just a coincidence. Anyway, nothing happened on my trip to the Mitchell River lakes or to Lake Tinaroo,” she said.
“Yes, well, but we have been wondering if you shouldn’t take up some other interest rather than Navy Cadets.”
‘Other interest!’ Tina thought, shocked and instantly worried that she might not be allowed to stay in the Navy Cadets. “Mum! That’s not fair! I love being in the cadets. It is the main interest in my life.” As she said this she had a vivid mental image of Andrew and knew that it was the social aspect of cadets that appealed the most.
As though she could read her mind her mother said, “I thought it was now the Army Cadets you were interested in?”
Graham’s image flashed onto the screen of Tina’s mind and she experienced a surge of very mixed emotions. A surge of shame about allowing Graham to sneak in and kiss her made her burn and she wondered if she should now confess to her parents. But she was too scared of making things worse and could not bring herself to tell. Instead she shook her head vigorously and denied it but in her heart she knew she had strong doubts. ‘Graham is certainly very nice; and very… brave. But I don’t think he is right for me,’ she told herself. To change the subject she said, “Never mind that. What about the back neighbours, Neville and his family? Did the police catch him?”
Her mother shook her head. “We don’t think so. We did see the police there a while ago and the police who called on us asked about them. But I did notice that Mrs Tallboy went into the cage and took all those black cockatoos away earlier this morning.
“Clearing out the evidence,” Tina suggested. Then the awful thoughts crept back in. “Mum, did the police say anything about us being safe?”
“From Neville because you identified him? They didn’t but we will ask,” her mother replied.
Tina’s father patted her and said, “We will keep you safe Ti-bub.”
“You can’t dad. You can’t be with me twenty four hours a day,” Tina replied.
Her father looked uncomfortable but continued to reassure her. He then made a point of asking the police, when they returned a few hours later, more questions. They did not seem to think that Tina was in any real danger but she was not really reassured.
‘They didn’t hear Danny or Neville making threats,’ she thought unhappily.
She was so afraid of the back neighbours that she did not want to go out to see her birds. That caused her to feel ashamed of her cowardice and she forced herself to make the move. But it was a bit of an ordeal. Her birds were glad to see her but she could not relax and kept glancing at the empty cages and the blank back windows of Neville’s house.
‘They know where I live. They can easily come and get me,’ she thought. Then a sharp pain in her forefinger made her cry out. “Ow! Beaky!” Beaky had bitten her as she rested her hand on the wire mesh. She rubbed the finger and then felt guilty. “I haven’t fed you, have I, poor bird?” she said.
But as she fed the cockatoo she had sharp flashbacks to the screeching cockatoos up at the New Dam. Images of the cockatoo feathers lying beside the track caused such a wave of fear that she found herself looking anxiously around and breathing rapidly.
As she went back inside the house the niggling thought that perhaps it was cruel to keep birds in cages came to bother her. ‘Would Beaky be happier if he was free?’ she wondered.
That night she had trouble sleeping. She kept imagining the poachers sneaking up to her window and breaking in to get at her. The fears became so real she found she was shivering and sobbing. It took her an effort to calm down. But then she had several bad nightmares. One was a variation of the grasping hand coming up out of the lake. In this dream she then fell out of her canoe and was unable to right it or drain it. It was dark and a strong current pulled her away from the shore. Then ghostly shapes were chasing her and she knew she was being dragged towards a high waterfall but could not swim fast enough to break the grip of the current!
In the morning she felt exhausted and frightened. Despite this she did not want to stay home. ‘I will be here on my own unless mum or dad stay home with me,’ she thought. Not wanting to be the cause of any concern to her parents, or the reason why they lost a day’s income, she said nothing.
At breakfast her mother noticed and asked if she wanted to stay at home.
Tina shook her head. “No mum. I will be alright. Anyway, exams start today,” she replied, glad of an excuse that avoided the truth.
But that truth nagged at her with a gut-gripping tension. She made a point of listening to the morning news on the radio but there was no mention of either her adventures or the bird poachers. ‘The police haven’t caught them,’ she thought.
But there were other reasons than exams and fear of being home alone to make her want to go to school. Was it Graham or Andrew that she loved? She had a deep concern that she had made an awful mistake going out with Graham but wasn’t sure if she could make it up with Andrew.
Her initial reaction at school was that she couldn’t. She made a point of walking around to find him, without making it obvious. When she saw him her heart did a little flip and began to beat much harder and that got her worried. ‘Do I still love him?’ she asked herself. But she knew that she did. So she deliberately did not
approach him, wanting to see what he would do when he saw her.
To her relief Andrew came over at once. “How are you Tina? Are you alright?” he asked.
Tina was so overcome with emotion that it took all her will power not to throw her arms around him. Instead she just nodded and said, “Yes.”
For the next few minutes they discussed the incident. Tina described what had happened to her and Andrew told her about what had happened back at the camp. “There was a rare old flap when the others came back and said they did not know where you were. We were all organized into search parties by Mr Conkey and went up to where you were last seen.”
“What did you find?” Tina asked.
“We found a place where all the reeds had been flattened by someone and for a while we wondered if you had drowned in the dam,” Andrew explained. At that point his voice trembled and Tina thought he looked as though his eyes were moist. ‘Maybe he still likes me?’ she wondered.
Andrew then described how they had searched around the dam and decided that she hadn’t drowned as the crushed reeds did not extend out into the lake. “Then it was suggested that you might have been in that floatplane that took off,” he said.
“Did you see the floatplane?” Tina asked.
Andrew shook his head. “No. But Blake and Sarah did, and Cadet Midshipman George and Petty Officer O’Leary.”
“What about the smuggler’s camp? Did you find that?”
“Yes, but there was just rubbish and muddy boot tracks and wheel tracks. Their vehicles drove past while we were there but would not stop,” Andrew said. He shook his head, “Anyway, by then the army cadets had radioed that you were with them and safe so we weren’t worried.”
They talked a bit longer but Tina had the impression that Andrew appeared so cold and distant that she feared that he now resented her. Then she had another test of her emotions a few minutes after Andrew had left when Graham appeared.
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