In my snug cabin I had left a pile of books—On the Road, The Catcher in the Rye, The Glass Bead Game, Steppenwolf, all the boys’ own adventures—tottering on the side of the bunk, waiting to be thrown out or passed on, to be read by someone bored or lonely or desperate or drowning. It didn’t matter. I didn’t want them anymore.
I’d seen the beautiful horizon, and I’d seen bilge and blood dripping into the sea. I’d slept with crocodiles and I’d swum with sharks. This girl’s story, my own story, was all I had, all I needed. The truth: imperfect, reeking of failure and of the need to begin again. But it was my own. I made it.
When I think back on it, time flutters like the image of the sea on a heat-filled day, the haze floating over it, the shapes shimmering in the light, coming only slowly into focus. Salt in the air, the tangle of ropes, the jangle of boat stays. There I am, hanging by one arm from the trawling boom, ready to drop to the deep and desperate blue. Below me, the deep aqua field, the swirling of fins.
There was only one photo from that time: I was round-faced, with a scarf tied about my head, and squinted at the camera, sun blaring into my eyes. In the corner of the frame, a coil of rope. I found it years later, in the drawer of my mother’s pine dresser. I’d flown out from Oxford, my skin prickling with rage, bubbling into red rashes the way it always did on those return visits to that town whose name I do not care to remember. We’d raked through her cupboards, excavating photos, old school reports, and then we threw the dresser out too. It was battered by then, marked with years of grime, the top of it scratched so deeply you couldn’t see the original pine. We left it on the verge along with a load of my mother’s possessions, the culmination of a life, piled on to a pyre that reached beyond her low bungalow windows.
The council truck came to collect it all and the man driving was so skinny his skin bagged around his shoulders. He wore a marked white singlet and the skin slapped in folds around the fabric. I couldn’t look away though it made me want to gag, the sight of it flapping like a sail on a slow day. ‘Take it all,’ I said. ‘Burn it if you want. Nothing here has value.’ I threw the photo on the pile too. I didn’t want it, didn’t understand yet what it meant.
I’d brought a friend, Simon. For moral support or something. He waited in the car, his eyes straight ahead, though I know he was horrified. Naturally I’d talked about this, what I came from, how I formed myself, what it took. But no one thought I meant this—not this squat bungalow, the peeling paint, the wilting pile of broken furniture and lost plastic items.
When I got in the car, he didn’t say a word. We sat in silence for a while, then I said, ‘Okay. Let’s go.’
When we turned on to the main road, he said, ‘Did you grow up there?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t. Not really. I grew up on the Ocean Thief.’ For effect, I added: ‘I grew up in the middle of the Timor Sea.’
He turned his head, then, and I had to tap him on the shoulder, just playfully. ‘Eyes on the road, Simon, hands on the wheel.’
The Timor Sea. Carpentaria. Bloody Bonaparte. I thought they’d be the end of me. But they were my beginning.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The line ‘I felt the wet push its black thumb-balls in, the night you died’ on page 239 is from Kenneth Slessor’s masterpiece, ‘Five Bells’ (Selected Poems, 2014). Extracted with permission of HarperCollins Australia.
The Philip Larkin poem I refer to on page 184 is ‘The Importance of Elsewhere’. It can be found in The Complete Poems, published by Faber & Faber in 2012.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In the years since I stepped off the Ocean Thief, fishing in the gulf has become more regulated and controlled. The beleaguered fleet I worked on was split up and sold on; the remodelled Ocean Thief eventually finding its home as part of Austral Fisheries. I am immensely grateful to David Carter and all at Austral Fisheries for allowing me the opportunity to spend time on the boat as it is now. Thanks also go to the hard-working and hilarious crew of the present-day Ocean Thief, who took time out of their season to detour and collect me, made space for me on the boat and were incredibly generous and patient. Thanks are due, too, to ArtsNSW for providing the support for that trip.
I am always grateful to the Copyright Agency for the work they do in support of authors and their intellectual property. I am particularly thankful for the generous award of the Author Fellowship, which allowed me to give proper attention to this book. Additional thanks to Terri Janke and Company, in particular to Ruby Langton-Batty.
I am thankful, as ever, to my steadfast agent Catherine Drayton, publisher Jane Palfreyman and editor Ali Lavau, as well as Christa Munns and the whole brilliant bunch at Allen & Unwin.
Extra thanks to Christine Madill for her enthusiasm and generosity via #AuthorsForFireys.
My thanks also to each of the magnificent writers who make the Australian Writers Mentoring Program such a joy: Carrie Tiffany, Toni Jordan, Margo Lanagan, James Bradley, Mark Tredinnick, Jacqueline Kent, Alison Croggon, Ross Grayson Bell, Malcolm Knox, Nick Earls, Ashley Hay, Stephanie Dowrick and Jaclyn Moriarty. And also to Jill Dawson, my dear ally.
I will forever owe a debt of gratitude to Victoria, the first person to demonstrate to me that it might be possible to live a creative life.
Most importantly, my endless thanks to Richard Griffiths—first and finest reader, sharpest eye, keenest ear, most trusted human. I will always be grateful.
Finally, thanks go to my children—Seren, whose wisdom and courage inspire me daily, and Tali, whose curiosity, calm and kindness give me hope.
Fury Page 21
