daybreak is early enough

"FuckFuckFuck..... FUCK....... FARRRRRRKKKK!!!!!!! FUCKING FUCKING FUCK WHAT A FUCKING CUNT OF A FUCKING IDEA"

It was the desperation and disbelief, more than the frustration in his voice which made me think that our current predicament was unexpected.

I had first stepped on deck not more than 15 minutes prior and met the bloke at the wheel less than 10 minutes before that. Up until then I had been sitting on the wharf in my car at 4am every day for the best part of a month, waiting for this chance. A sign on the front bumper read "qualified deckie ready to go". We had moved to town after the season started and now all I could do was wait for someone to sleep in, fuck up, crack the shits or turn up pissed straight from the nighty. The word was there were no second chances in this game, no written warnings, you were there when the boat sailed or it left without you and I was the first waiting in line. By the time a ute finally pulled up and a voice out of the darkness  drawled " you right to go?" there were another four blokes sitting behind me.

In less than half an hour my relief at finally getting on deck was being tempered by the skipper's raging diatribe against the sea. We sat in a narrow channel with reef all around flaring an effervescent white in the darkness. Faintly illuminated by the spotlight, great foaming walls roared lumpenly past, port and starboard, before reforming bruised and swollen over our immediate past path. The channel ahead was indistinct and looking like it would close out any moment. The only gauge I had of our immediate danger was the brief time I'd spent on a jet boat, which worked the reef hard up in big surf. I'd rationalized then that your fear does not always correlate with the real danger at hand, so the the best policy is to stay cool and take your cues from those around you and then at least you won't look stupid if nothing happens. So here I was, peering out into the night thru a small humming clearview with a complete stranger, salt and spray obscuring the full gravitas of the situation. The only thing I knew for sure was that the surf was much bigger than he had anticipated and that he had been here before and was not very happy about it. Sometimes ignorance is a blessing.

" OHH FUCK! JESUS, FUCKEN FUCK HANG ON"

Suddenly we were racing at full throttle, headlong at a feathering breaker. We crashed wildly through the lip, and were momentarily weightless, engine shuddering and roaring as the prop cavitated before we pitched into the blackness off the back of the wave with a bone jarring thud. It felt like we would fall for ever. The third in the set was the biggest by far but we were almost clear by then and it closed the channel behind us completely.

Once we hit the deep water he backed off the throttle and told me how last season, his first as skipper, he had tried to take the same passage. Straight off the Point Moore lighthouse and just outside the marina, the south passage cuts out 20 minutes of steaming time if you are heading Greenough way. It's a complicated and dangerous zigzag through the reef, even in daylight and is often more of an idea than a reality; really little more than a way to get out to the back of the break on a surfboard, or windsurfer, once the southerly kicked in. But if you want to get to your pots at first light it's passage earned you a little more time in bed.

Last time he only made it over the first wave before the second broke square on the wheelhouse. It blew out all the glass and tore the bulkhead clean off the cabin, taking the sounder, radio and safety gear with it. The engine stalled and the water which had filled the boat to the gunnels poured back down into the forward hold making it sit nose down in a breaking sea. To complicate things my predecessor on deck had leapt up off the bench seat when told to hang on and braced himself on the handrail, facing the oncoming waves. When the window shattered the glass shards cut him badly, severing arteries in one of his hands. Somehow the boat started again and they scraped over two more waves before limping, bleeding and battered around to the shipping channel and back into the marina.

We didn't take the channel again after that and after a couple of days he got sick of steaming into southerly chop each morning and we took the pots north to the seagrass country.

the flip side of a ten cent piece

like the flip side of a ten cent piece

it seems you're underfoot

almost everywhere i wander

duplicitously evassive

ambigiously introspective

the list of places

of almost sitings

of song melodious

gets longer

everyday

the stage is waiting..... and was empty when last i looked

John Gould (1804-81) The birds of Australia 1840-48. 7 vols. 600 plates Artists: J. Gould and E. Gould; Lithographer: E. Gould.

abrolhos "keep your eyes open"

If you are having trouble working out the picture, it's a screen grab off google earth. The white area is a southerly swell breaking on shallow coral reef. The pale blue area slightly off centre is a sand hole in the reef in about 5m of water.

The sand hole first started to form 380 years ago today, when on her maiden voyage the VOC ship, the Batavia,  ran aground on a moonlit night with little swell. The watchman mistook the surf for the moons shimmer and the ship rammed into the reef under full sail. Half a mile either way and they would have sailed clean through the Houtman Abrolhos without ever realising. As it was, the pride of the Dutch fleet was doomed to break up on Morning Reef over the next week or so. The already mutinous crew and terrified passengers were either, ferried on the ship's longboat to nearly islands, which were sandy cays at best, or drowned trying to swim there. Some non swimmers stayed on the broken ship drinking the liquor, parading the deck drunkenly in the captain's finery before belatedly drifting ashore some days later, with the rats, on the spars and rigging of the 600t ship.

Pelsart the captain, after quick investigation of the islands and finding no water and little food struck out for the mainland with a small crew in the 30ft longboat. On hitting the inhospitable midwest coastal cliffs, later to claim amongst others, the Zuytdorp 83 years later in 1712, they found little to inspire hope and struck out for Batavia( now modern day Jakarta) which they reached some 33 days later. They arranged to return in the Sardam to rescue the others and I suspect mainly to retrieve the 12 chests of bullion on board when the ship went down.

In the meantime one of the bloodiest incidents in Australian history took place on the small island I called home for a couple of cray seasons. Well documented elsewhere, the massacre and subsequent trial which took place on Beacon and Long Island respectively, meant that by the time the survivors reached Batavia, only 68 of the 341 listed on board remained alive. Two of the mutineers, Walter Loos and cabin boy Jan Pelgrom, whose crimes were deemed minor, were marooned on the mainland, possibly at Kalbarri with a dingy and supplies. They were also given beads, toys, knives, bells and mirrors along with instructions on communicating with the natives and when the best time of year to watch for passing ships would be. They were never heard from again.

As far as I know they were Australia's first European settlers.

That blue hole is where the Batavia lay for centuries until discovered in the 60's, the hull furrowing a channel into the reef under the weight of it's cannons and the pounding rhythm of the surf.

Several people took credit for the find, but those that would know reckon Black Knackers... who liked to go bush in the off season, set his pots on it for years, but never bothered to tell anyone about the cannon he saw on the millpond days or gave it much thought past the value of the metal as scrap. Rumour has it he had a skull in his hut somewhere too.