Another pod stranded on the mulloway beach east of the river mouth in 88, when I was in my last year of school. 84 whales this time round, many had already died before they were discovered.
I was in an early ute load of volunteers. They were visible from a long way down the beach, as if somehow columns of Black Point basalt had been strewn there by a disgruntled Brobdingnagian child. As we slowly lurched and drifted closer the scene turned surreal. These creatures, so full of grace in the open sea, were hopelessly doomed in the shallows. Those first stranded were now completely exposed and baking on their sides, sandpapered by the wind, hide cracking, weeping oily tears congealed with sand; which also slowly filled their blowholes when they sighed a breath. Those in the shallows still struggled, but the prolonged pounding of the shore break and the increased weight of their own bodies was slowly crushing the life out of them.
A small bearded man moved rapidly between the living animals examining each one before instructing each distressed carer how to make it as comfortable as possible. I later discovered he was Dr Nick Gales, now head of the Australian Antarctic Division's whale research program. The 86 rescue had resulted in a rapid response plan being drawn up to cope with the eventuality of a future mass stranding and he was quietly implementing this, inspiring and guiding the ragtag bunch of mainly novice whale paramedics through the triage care needed. I carried buckets of water, helped right those animals on their side, four or five of us to a whale, heaving in unison until each one was upright. I dug holes for pectoral fins in the same wet sand I had once squirmed my feet in for cockles, while dad lent on a big fibreglass rod under a gas light.
At some point in the day a Japanese news crew arrived by helicopter . The female reporter did a 30 second piece to camera next to the largest dead bull, tottered back to the chopper, shook the sand out of her heels, daintily climbed back onboard and thundered off into the ether again. They left completely unaware that had they stayed a minute longer, they might as well have been in an R.S.L on Anzac Day, such was the animosity which built with their arrival.
I rode back and forth along the beach all day on the back of the 4wd C.A.L.M truck which had come in round the back of Scott river, wetting the hessian sacks covering the whales till daylight ran out and only the dead were left. Once at the river mouth the whales were slung alongside the local doctor's game boat and I came back across the channel with the last whale.
The whales were loaded back onto a truck and taken to Flinder's Bay. I had never seen so many people there, tourists, news crews, punters, gawkers and a few locals bemused they had road blocked the settlement. Old Athol had driven straight through it, bluntly telling the SES on guard not to be "so fucking stupid" when he was told he would be unable to return home . He sat on his veranda with his binoculars sulking , screened behind the peppermints, while the belittled SES reported him to the police. I am not sure if his later clandestine removal of several neat square blocks of blubber off two whales awaiting burial in the dunes was simply his blunt pragmatism or him making a point. The blubber was boiled down to pungent oil in the copper out the back, his secret weapon for when the herring were fussy.
They backed the truck down the boat ramp and eased the last whale into the now waist deep swimming hole where I had learnt to swim. I don't really know how many volunteers were there by now, I guess there was a couple of hundred in the water at any one point. 3 shifts rotated through the night, after a last minute attempt to herd them out to sea failed. People continued to arrive late into the evening after it was reported widely on the Perth radio and TV stations.
It drew out just about everyone, the hippies who had disappeared into communes and bush blocks in the 60's and 70's appeared en-mass. I recognised ropey men, who I had only ever seen sitting way, way out the back at Marg's on big days, picking off the biggest wave in each set, blasting past all beard and Mark Richards style, while we shat ourselves and paddled for the horizon. The hard, stoner barmaids from the Settlers stood chest deep alongside women from Claremont and Dalkeith, who later during the Tampa debacle, got tagged disparagingly as "doctors wife's" by the far-right . It turned into a party between shifts. Fires were lit, food was delivered, harmonicas and guitars appeared and we sat with the earthy Witchcliffe crew who shared our $5 flagon port and handed their strong bush weed joint round the circle, which I toked on when it passed my way with as much nonchalance as a 17 year old can muster. A deferential meeting of eyes across the fire with the joint's owner, an balding warlock with a huge beard, established that I knew his gear was good and was grateful. Imperceptible to the casual observer, his acknowledging nod told me I was doing all right.
3am, the tide was in and I was up to my neck, floating a calf in the ink black sea, high on the seething mass of life surrounding me. Warm from port, wet suit piss and the heat which sporadically erupted from the calf's blowhole in a miasma of phlegm, water and the fishiest of breath. The wind dropped out and the calf and I fell into an easy company, lulled by the squeaks and lullabies, snorts and songs, sighs and quiet entreaties that rippled across the water. I staggered back to the shack at around 4 to shower and snatch an hour or two before dawn when they planned to herd them out to sea.
I watched them go at sunrise, standing away from the crowd, next to the burnt stumps on the little point. These stumps and their carpet of black volcanic ballast, prescribe the direction the deep water jetty once ran before it burnt to the waterline. I turned that ballast every other low tide as a child, hunting out crabs, starfish and fat periwinkles which I dropped onto waving red anemones and launched at brazen pacific gulls. It was some years before I connected the ballast and stumps with the bleached rib bones and vertebrae displayed amongst the geraniums and roses of the settlement shacks.
This small pod of 34 survivors milled uncertainly in the boat channel, before turning for the open sea to the relieved roar of the exhausted crowd. As they slowly heading out towards the island, I couldn't help thinking that perhaps things had almost come full circle.
A few years later a pod of perhaps 200 false killers appeared in the wake of the miserable crab boat I had gone to sea in and cheerily accompanied us for hours as we pounded back to Flinder's in a festering storm, green swells crashing over the bridge and 50 knots howling through the rigging. I was scared that day more than most.
I like to think they were guiding me home safely.
