One of these Things First

Singing Fisherman of Ghana

2011-03-06T15:19:00.000+08:00

Extracts from Collett Barker's King George Sound Journal

2010-10-16T12:51:00.000+08:00

29th April 1830

Mills reported this evening he had been attacked by a shark at the harbours mouth. It was larger than the jolly boat , came up astern with 2 others & on his trying to strike it with the gaff, it had made a rush at the boat, striking it first with his head & then with the tail. It afterwards came alongside, the fin was higher than the gunnel. They threw fish to it to amuse it until they got into shallow water.

Extracts from Collett Barker's King George Sound Journal

2010-10-16T12:46:00.000+08:00

22 April 1830

...... In a pretty good haul of the seine some mullet were taken. Mokare said that was it not for the present state of affairs, which made it unsafe, he should spear plenty of them by night by making a fire on the beach. Cannot spear them by day.
Told me this evening that Moken had commenced, which he knew by the situation of the black Magellanic cloud near the cross (Whitepepoy). They have some story which i could not clearly make out, of it being an Emu & laying eggs.........

The night being very fine got 3 good stars for the Lat[itude]. The mean of which, two of the cross & Arcturus) made it 35˚ 2' 35"[south].....

the sound of a horse passing

2010-09-28T02:42:00.002+08:00

the sound of a horse passing

an elsewhere sound of night long past

childhood night too bright and still to sleep

itching, datura scented, open window awake

with stiff bedsheets drawn tight over restless legs

a brace of angel's trumpets calling them hither

hot green breath snorts over distant footfall

the arabian prince and his queen approach

bolt upright in bed, peering owl eyed

curtain fingered lightly open, i wait

they pass unaware, me quieter than a bat click

the mare leads, maiden tressed, head held low

he follows, all quivering rump, fat belly and black eyed moon

mare tail swish, straw broom on leather chair

a low whiny at swinging hip, footfall breaking

Atropos calls, ears prick and then they are gone

thundering summer stubble clod, away, away, away

towards the white moon skeletons on the salt pan

the sound of a horse passing

an elsewhere sound of night long past

now in brick tin black tar, sheet tossed, inner city night

hot green breath snorts over metallic footfall

bolt upright in bed, peering owl eyed i wait

they pass unaware, me quieter than a bat click

the mare leads, all quivering rump, fat belly and black eyed moon

the dogs follow, one three legged, jinkering tree to tree

mare tail swish, greatcoat on leather saddle

a voice, head held low by maiden tressed neck, footfall breaking

Zeus calls, ears prick and then they are gone

sparking the summer bluemetal tar, away, away, away

towards the white moon skeletons on the river pan

a brace of angel's trumpets calling them yonder

an ode to bob in a manner as messy as i

2010-09-02T23:50:00.000+08:00

for the editor

2010-05-19T19:24:00.000+08:00

'I Give You This Story'

I give you this story,
this proper, true story,
People can listen.
I'm telling this while you've got time,
time for you to make something,
you know,
history
book.

I was thinking.
No history written for us.
when white European start here,
only few words written.
Should be more than that.

Should be written way Aborigine was live.
That floodplain.
My father, my mother, my grandfather
all used to hunt there, use ironwood spear.
No clothes then.

When I was growing up
good mob of people all around then.
Now people bit wicked.
My time never do little bit wrong,
otherwise get spear straight away.
Now, little bit cheeky mob.
Old time they would all be dead now.
Old people were hard.
I was frightened when young.
Only few people now,
But it easy for this mob.

Anyway, got to be made that book.
There's still time.
No man can growl at me for telling this story,
because it will be too late.
I'll be dead.

Bill Neidjie c. 1920 – 23 May 2002

the place that dreamed the emu into being

2010-05-14T17:32:00.000+08:00

they say there are no emus there now

but he is still there

if you know where to look

sketching the outline

2010-04-16T20:30:00.005+08:00

"where? which way captain ? "

arm outstretched. holding steady bearing against both pitch and yaw, hand palm down, tips weighted, as if balls of mercury, he sights the far hillside, westerly over the low isthmus and replies over the wind.....

"right over to the far west ..... that's where the smoke the past day was coming from... you see ? the large sand patch... what maybe, one, two hundred acres burnt right through. "

"there was a good deal of rain in it sir, when it swung round last night, good inch, inch and a half. enough to put it well out. But twas nothing in it beforehand to put a strike down though, was there?"

" lit in our honour no doubt, lieutenant. "

" seeing the lie of the land, i would imagine we are well known all the way to that chain of rugged mountains by now, sir "

outstretched arm now drifting south. fingers spidering over the near horizon, a blind man reaching into a bird nest.

"there is a big grove of timber on the south side of the bay. good water as well, given the size of the oaks. hand me up my telescope lad. "

"shall I send the boat round with the barrels come sun up, sir ? "

"well, as no amount of lime can cover the taste of rat in our water and as we both are finding of late, that a man can not live on rum alone lieutenant, it would seem a prudent idea. bring the carpenter along to eye the timber..... it looks to hold some promise, this sound. "

Mirrabooka

2010-01-26T12:36:00.000+08:00

Biami was kept very busy, guarding the tribes as they roamed throughout the earth, and he was very much troubled for them. He found that he could not watch over all of them at once; he knew he must have help to keep them from harm. Among the tribes there was a man called Mirrabooka, who was much loved for his wisdom, and the way in which he looked after the welfare of this people. Biami was well pleased with Mirrabooka, and when he grew old, promised him eternal life. Biami gave Mirrabooka lights for his hands and feet and stretched him across the sky, so that he could watch forever over the tribes he loved. And the tribes could look up to him from the earth and see the stars which were Mirrabooka’s eyes gazing down on them.

When in later times white invaders came from across the sea and stole the tribal lands, they did not know that this group of stars across the sky was Mirrabooka, and they renamed them. They named Mirrabooka the Southern Cross. And the eyes of Mirrabooka they called the Pointers. But it is really Mirrabooka there, stretched across the sky; he will be there forever, for Biami has made it so.

2 tanked

2010-01-14T20:28:00.001+08:00

the seed of something

2010-01-08T19:20:00.003+08:00

"The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve." bhudda

take a seed and plant it in a place of your choosing. as to what type of seed it is, the decision is entirely yours. only make it something that will grow. something you can remember with hue, tone and form. with a beginning after end and betwixt former with later. something from a place you belong will do. perhaps it is even the seed of something nameless. unspoken of to others and only ever observed and considered in solitude.... mute.

yes nameless is probably best, as then it is yours and yours only.

the mind is everything what you think you become bhudda

2010-01-07T21:59:00.000+08:00

a little beauty for the darker days...

2009-12-20T13:20:00.000+08:00

along the road i caught the bus

2009-12-05T22:16:00.000+08:00

and each night we slept over their bones.....

2009-12-05T18:04:00.001+08:00

Jan Hendrycks confesses that one day he had been called by Jeronimus into his tent and that he gave him to know that at night time he must help him with the murder of the Predikant's family. At night, Zeevonk has called outside Wiebrecht Clausen, a young girl, whom Jan Hendrycks stabbed with a dagger, and inside, all people - the mother with her six children - had their heads battered in with axes . . .

He said, certainly, I have a knife. So without any objection, Andreas has gone to Myken Soers who was heavily pregnant and threw her underfoot and cut her throat . . .

and each night we slept over their bones..... all three of us tight together in a creaky iron framed bed.

Extract from Pelsaert's
The Disastrous Voyage of the Ship Batavia,
first published in 1647

a place to rest ones head

2009-12-05T18:00:00.001+08:00

He carried Ulysses to the other side of the world and back again, unread.

He starts twice, turning a few pages only before standstill; a mirror, a bowl, a razor, no more. Each eve thereafter he places the book carefully under his head like a japanese sleeping block, to lull in the forest waiting for sleep, embalmed in the elsewhere night. Night belonging in a book, somewhere in a book he once read, in the many nights of books. With hands clasped to chest, tighter than imagined, he hunts frayed words with which to render the darkness familiar.

Something to splice the creaking ship's mast to the poplar's hawsering bowed note once more. Something to tether the screeching thunderbird when it came, talons raking a brimstone sea for whale and sailor alike, as to bind it tightly in the wind spinning off the mountain top. Wind he imagines only from deep under the kelp through halibut eyes, as current line whirlpools, churning the sea far above. Later he hears siberian vagabonds pass bye the bye, whorling iced expletives at painted shutters and doors as they go. Swaying left, right, drunk and belligerent, they stop suddenly. Nearby ? As if puzzled for a moment by a lilting song. A woman's? A woman who trails a sighing finger through the canopy and with a gossiping whisper sends them carousing away down the valley, to the old people Tseax buried with fire... those who wait for news of the sea each night....

quieter, then quieter still...

The ship returns to transcribing the tide. He hears a rat? or bigger? and it's gleeful companion bickering once more over gruel or seed... and when sleep finally comes it comes as a wordless tempest.

boats of alert bay

2009-11-30T23:11:00.000+08:00

a picture for sontag

2009-10-15T09:48:00.002+08:00

(Click for full size)

when it leaves...

2009-10-13T20:33:00.009+08:00

Later

much later, he imagines it somewhat like the ebbing of a high tide.

The exact point of it's turn indiscernible under a fecund moon. When the fish suddenly stop biting the fisherman, so intent on the next bite, only realises it is already departing when he next pulls his hook to the surface and finds it not missing bait as he thought, but ignored and untouched. More so, that first clear sign is disbelieved as an aberration and the line is swiftly run out once more and fingered optimistically, patiently

waiting until

finally it is only the tardy arrival of the grotesque....

eyeless pilchards festooned with sea lice, guts distending and the unbecoming writhe of a Port Jackson shark slapping against the gunnel, fantastical and disturbing in the moonlight, which irrefutably signals the now vast emptiness of the sea. Removing the hook from deep in the fish's impossibly white throat, recognition of some shared futile and primordial febrility gnaws deeply at the fisherman's gut... and he sits unblinking, barrenly attempting to reconstruct the point where time and tide stopped and

waited

before slipping away unseen.

Klondike River

2009-10-04T14:50:00.003+08:00

All Yukon belong to my papas. All Klondike belong my people. Country now all mine. Long time all mine. Hills all mine; caribou all mine; moose all mine; rabbits all mine; gold all mine.

White man come and take all my gold. Take millions, take more hundreds fifty millions, and blow ‘em in Seattle. Now Moosehide Injun want Christmas. Game is gone. White man kills all moose and caribou near Dawson, which is owned by Moosehide. Injun everywhere have own hunting grounds. Moosehides hunt up Klondike, up Sixtymile, up Twentymile, but game is all gone. White man kill all.

Chief Isaac quoted in Dawson Daily News, 15 Dec. 1911.

today i thought of you

2009-10-02T14:29:00.003+08:00

click for full size

daybreak is early enough

2009-06-28T16:40:00.012+08:00

"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

2009-06-28T14:58:00.010+08:00

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"

2009-06-04T16:05:00.010+08:00

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.

Djeran

2009-05-30T17:32:00.004+08:00

a pause
a lull
a breath
a sigh

and i

sleep behind
a dune
by a river
under a tree

wake to a kingfisher

it is

time
to
sing
walk
and fish

and even i
a blind djanga
watch the fires
from the hilltops
on a surrendering sun

breathless

2009-03-23T23:00:00.005+09:00

to get to this point today

i needed

cannabis
good cannabis
rolled into a long thin joint
made with a king size Rizla +
upsold to me by a 16 year old girl
in the Ellecker General Store
when buying.....

"a packet of drum and some papers please....... the blue one..... just above your hand..... no the dark blue one, yes that's it....the 30g please"

"ummm ok why not I'll take some..... hang on, best give me some tally ho's as well... just in case"

but she will soon learn that

people who buy tobacco do not often buy king size papers
and people who buy king size papers do not often buy tobacco

and maybe one day understand that

the last line of text on the inside cover of the Rizla+ papers
is written especially for an certain type of english speaker
who will stumble through a seven line paragraph written in German
before deciding Frankfurt sounds like a place to visit some day...

RIZLA - DAS ERSTE UND IMMER NOCH BESTE ZIGARETTENPAPIER
AND AS WE SAY IN FRANKFURT, "ROLL WITH IT"

and roll with i did

but today i also needed

a cold can of coke

and

3 small white 5mg dexamphetimine tablets

once, twice, three times
i am saving the bottles to make
a lifesize sculpture of myself one day
driving a tank or flying a plane
like a WW2 serviceman addict

stand sentinel men

and coffee
always coffee
three as before

and cigarettes

too many cigarettes
rolled loosely without filters
so as to squint smoke
and sweep tobacco from my lips
like Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless

and now that I am at this point in the day

I will lie down on the floor

and pretend i am pulling faces at you while I lay dying

when the bluebird of happiness telephone company comes calling

2009-03-23T18:37:00.010+09:00

phone ringing again, half an hour after closing

buzzzzzzz ..........clunk

"Hello?" buzzzzzz clunk " hell, hello? HELLO! Excuse me, I believe I am talking to the business owner of this business"

" Yes................? "

Normally I am not, the business owner that is, when they call, but I was struck with a sudden epiphany that maybe my tactic of " Sorry he has just left for the day " was only keeping me on the call back list. Normally it's a surefire way of cutting the call short without resorting to the Colonial rudeness of swearing at or hanging up on a Indian call centre worker. Most of the time they will hang up on, "left for the"clunk buzzzzzz. The other tactic involves putting the phone down after saying yes and letting them go until they realise that you're not there any more " hello?..... hello? ......hello sir?....... sir?........" clunk buzzzzzzzzz, or " I'll just get him for you.", put down phone and make a tea. The downside to this is your phone is tied up and just what if someone interesting calls and can't get through. The absent descision maker excuse had become the most time effective solution to the relentless optimism of India calling. The legitimate reason, that all my communications are bundled and contracted with our own headless hydra, just took too long to explain and involved at least two or three more qualifying questions from the caller, especially when they were new or their english dictated reading from a script. So today I was available.

"Yes, Yes it is"

" How are you today, Sir in...(check screen, hesitate) Aulbeny"

" Good and yourself?"

" Yes, very good Sir, very good Sir, thankyou for asking. Sir the purpose of my call is to tell you that you have been pre..."

" Hey look before you start, I get at least 20 calls a week selling telephone services and I am not interested in them"..... " I am not going to buy anything from you today , do you understand?"

" You are not going to buy anything?" (slightly disappointed tone)

" No I am not going to buy anything, you understand that, yes?"

I am guessing that the person on the other end was around my age and most likely university educated.

"Yes Sir."

" Listen can you do me a favour? Can you please tell me how I can be taken off your call list, because I don't want to have to be rude to the people that call me, but 20 calls a week is just too much and it is wasting everyone's time."

" Yes Sir, I can do that for you, Sir I will put you on the Do Not Call list, Sir. "

"Sorry?"

" I can put you on the do not call list, Sir "

"Really, you have a Do Not Call list and You can do that?"

" Yes Sir."

"Hey, thankyou very much, I appreciate that."

" You are welcome Sir. From today you will not receive any more calls from us."

"Hey, can you tell me something, just out of interest, where are you? "

A hesitating shy laugh echoed down the line which said I am not supposed to but...

"Calcutta Sir"

"Calcutta! Oh well you have a good day in Calcutta, Thanks for your help. "

Ok, so that's one of an estimated 1.3 million Indian call center workers done.........

"

the pale blue dot

2009-02-02T16:28:00.004+09:00

This excerpt from A Pale Blue Dot was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

sourced from http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/voyager/pale_blue_dot.html

it's a cunt of a place....

2009-01-19T15:52:00.006+09:00

" its a cunt of a place if you're a blackfella"

He had slurred this at me over the thumping crap they were playing in the nighty. Minutes previously he had been ready to take me on . I had turned when he lurched into my back at the bar and quickly caught the pent up anger burning in his eyes.

" Hey man, how are you going ?"

" You got a fucken problem with me? "

I smiled and laughed, trying to defuse the tension.

"No man, I don't have a problem with you."

" What are you looking at then?"

"Hey man, you bumped into me, I was just seeing who it was. Why would I have a problem with you?"

"Why do you fucken reckon?"

"Hey I don't have a problem.....never seen you before in my life....... how could I possibly have a problem with you?"

" Fucken Bullshit! YOU and every other WHITE CUNT in this fucking town."

He sprayed this with weary bile, an inch or so from my ear, and it cut through the din, so close I could smell the sweetness of the alcohol on his skin over the smoke and stale piss odour of the bar. I got pissed off at this point, I didn't belong here either and wasn't ready to be a white cunt any more than he was a black one.

" Hey listen mate, I'm not from here and I couldn't give a fuck what colour you are, so don't lump me in with the rest of the pricks. But you want to know something........ this is the most racist, fucking redneck, cunt of a place I have ever been and I can't even imagine what it must be like for you man. Just don't assume we are all like that and I won't make assumptions about you."

He thought about it for a moment.

"yeah it's a cunt of a place if you're a blackfella."

"what are you drinking man..... yeah I'm serious hey, what would you like ?"

A couple of drinks later he was the second bloke to tell me I was the first decent whitefella he had met in this town. He was from Carnarvon and had come down looking for work on the boats but never got a look in. I told him he was welcome to come out with us anytime, fuck what the skipper would say, but I reckon he may have forgotten the next day or maybe just thought better of it and left town as fast as he could.

The first bloke was from out bush, Mullewa way somewhere, and had turned up on our front porch on one of those summer nights when the bogong moths fluttered thick out of the desert on the back of a ceaseless, overnight easterly. The days unbroken by a sea breeze sat in the mid 40's, the nights bought little saviour and the townsfolk got murderous.

Drunk, broke and heartbroken, looking for his cousin and not knowing what to do next, he wandered, wide eyed and lost, in through the front gate as we sat drinking, listening in silence to the sounds of the city disembowelling. I plied him with water and offered to call him a taxi, then in lieu of a destination, gave him some cash and half a pack of cigarettes for his journey. Suddenly he was overwhelmed, sobbing in my arms, wanting to be home and out of this hard bitter place, that rips the hearts out of men and suffocates their dreams with red sand and wind...

the wind... the wind.... the wind...... it whistles evil songs in their ears......

And wiping tears and snot away, he cupped the back of my head and held me close and told me quietly.....

" hey brudda, you the first decent whitefella i met ere eh, the first decent white fella eh"

a less than auspicious start... (warning: contains image of unknown deceased aboriginal man)

2009-01-05T17:07:00.010+09:00

from Vancouver's Log 1791....

"At the borders of this clump was found[the] most miserable human habitation my eyes ever beheld, which had not long been deserted by its proprietor, as on its top was lying a fresh skin of a fish, commonly called a leather jacket, and by its side was the excrement of some carnivorous animal, apparently a dog. The shape of the dwelling was that of a half a beehive......"

"The reflections which naturally arose on seeing so miserable a contrivance for shelter against the inclemency of seasons, were humiliating in the highest degree; as they suggested, in the strongest manner, the lowly condition of some of our fellow creatures, rendered yet more pitiable by the apparent solitude and the melancholy aspect of the surrounding country, which presented little less than famine and distress."

I found image 1976 trawling through the online catalogue of the Albany History Collection (sans date, location, subject and photographer). When I go to the Library I hope the original has some information attached. This collection has no information attached to any of the images and is arranged in a bizarre seemingly random fashion. It must be one of the first photographic images taken of an aboriginal man locally and although obviously taken some 100 years after Vancouver's visit, his words were the first thing which came to mind when I saw the photograph.

Vancouver's quote came from Douglas Sellick's First Impressions of Albany. It makes me wonder what the Nyoongar, whose lunch was rudely interrupted, and probably ran for his life from the white devils, thought!

Bald Head today....

2009-01-04T22:50:00.009+09:00

ideas on a manifesto for urban literary guerilla warfare

2008-12-31T20:00:00.011+09:00

First of all, if we put Che Guervara on the cover we will sell a shitload, even if few of the people who buy his merchandise feel the irony in his pop-star status, he is so hip!

Ok, i was thinking about newspapers a bit and a comment that the v/clever Ms Toa (see the body of crime listings) made on my first post which spurred me on a bit,

"don't you wish we could write like this all the time? Instead of essays and thesis and newspaper articles? Wouldn't everyone want to read again instead of zoning out to the box, if we wrote like this all the time?"

yes god please, please help me if i could( write, like that, anytime, at all really), but if i am honest, most of the time i don't need assistance from the box to zone out

if i could only write like below

Pastoral

WHEN I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best of all colors.
No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.

William Carlos Williams

and this man delivered 2000 babies, over about 40 years, covering both world wars and the great depression

I wish this stuff was in the papers somewhere....... sometime...... instead of real estate and cars that no one wants or can afford.

Guerilla idea #1 :Pay for poetry space in paper, hold chook raffle to cover costs and print "i am a lit chick" t shirt to go with said chicken! ( phew..and this is only one beer and a little puff!)

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams

Guerilla idea #2 :When i die i shall take a full page for my self in a paper where someone knows me still and print the following. And you are right Sarah, it is the transition which is problematic, not after, on more considered thought. i will however leave my name off the page.( Shall not be a problem as I am paying. See #3)

Tract

I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists—
unless one should scour the world—
you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black—
nor white either — and not polished!
Let it be whethered—like a farm wagon—
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!
My God—glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
the flowers or the lack of them—
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass—
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom—
my townspeople, what are you thinking of?
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.

No wreathes please—
especially no hot house flowers.
Some common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes—a few books perhaps—
God knows what! You realize
how we are about these things
my townspeople—
something will be found—anything
even flowers if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.

For heaven's sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk hat! In fact
that's no place at all for him—
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dignity!
Bring him down—bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous! I'd not have him ride
on the wagon at all—damn him!—
the undertaker's understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!

Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk behind—as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience; sit openly—
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What—from us? We who have perhaps
nothing to lose? Share with us
share with us—it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.

Williams Carlos Williams

Guerilla idea #3: Tone a topic down a little and send letter to paper.

(click below for big image)

Guerilla idea #4 : reply and politely ask editoral staff of paper to publish their names and positions or direct me to the page where it is written and i shall do similar.

Guerilla idea #5 : bribe paper's potentially subversive staff with beer to place haiku's amongst the births and deaths.....

Anyhow

Happy New Year

to all

and most of all

especially

the sharks amongst us

my new murakami 2009 diary

is good for one good idea a day

its 2nd inside cover

the one before the days start

and the page past the one with

a black cat with green eyes i seem to recognise

has a big crimson dot in the right lower

this dot has a another inside

front and centre

a little pinker

like oxygenated blood

in a blood shot eye

above this

in small

clean type

Again and again I called out for Midori from the

dead centre of this place that was no place.

Norwegian Wood

now there's an idea.....

a midori that is

the great shark hunt

2008-12-30T12:50:00.013+09:00

Where's Hunter S when you need him. Fuck the New Years fireworks, lets catch a big fucking white pointer and shoot it out of a huge cannon in the shape of a cock(or cunt) on the top of Mt Clarence. Ka Fucking Boom, take that! you fucking, fucker of a fish! If little johnny had let us keep our guns we could have necked Limeburner's whiskey, fired our 44's into the air in celebration and swum, cavorting nude and carefree in the black of night!

After wanderlusting the day away out at Torndirrup Sunday, I ran into my denmark aunty at the West Cape Howe winery gig. More big sister than aunt,

"whatcha been doing?"

"been out at the gap"

"didn't get inspired to jump then didya?"

"nah.... weathers too nice"

A Hunter quote "Too weird to live, too rare to die " kinda fits my take on life/death. I am shit scared of death and the nothingness it entails. Haven given up on a biblical after life at 7 or 8 along with the commercial deities( tooth fairy and cronies), I have honed a taste for self preservation and longevity. I'd be pissed to die tomorrow, there's many seeds in the pomegranate yet to taste.

Luckily, in our privileged little corner of the universe (and I am talking very local here), apart from having all the basics needed for life, breathable atmosphere, water, food, shelter, etc. we have lucked on a place where there is fuck all to kill us. No cyclones, floods, fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, eruptions, plagues, pestilence or wars (religious or otherwise) of note. Stable if uninspiring political and civil infrastructures, work places with safety standards, the stuff we buy is usually tested and our legal systems lock up the otherwise mad and dangerous. Who could possibly harm us but ourselves? Even our dangerous land creatures are small, poisonous and avoidable(only scaring those from across the ditch) as opposed to being large, carnivorous and hungry. Nothing to worry about really ........ except big fucking sharks.

It's a primal fear, deep rooted, hard wired.... I don't want to be eaten.

My 12th birthday sleep over, 5 mates, 2 movies, vhs not beta, Mad Max and Jaws. Still don't know how I got them past Mum, she obviously wasn't paying attention. Fucked us all up! Bug eyed, none of us slept much that night; and cars and the beach have never been the same since.

I got my first surfboard not long after that, it cost me $20 for a yellowing, dinged up 7'2 pintail. I surfed everyday that summer, waves or not, but never alone. If I was by myself I got the yips; rays, dolphins, shadows would set my sphincter clenching, skin crawling, heart pounding and blood rushing in my ears. It still happened when there were others in the water, but it was a communal fear then, we spooked together and shoaled like whitebait. I have still never seen a shark while surfing but I know, deep down, that they are always there, somewhere, waiting, cruising.

The shark of my fears is always a White. The others, with perhaps the exception of a Tiger or the taxi driversque Mako, will poke around for a bit and have a taste before deciding if you are lunch. The White that took the guy Saturday just fucking ate him, all of him, whole..... no questions, no trace. Same as the guy who got hit out at the Southern Group in the Abrohlos. Day 3 of his dream job skippering True North, bound for Broome, the Rowley Shoals and the Admiralty Gulf. A quick free dive for some crayfish; cackers are best, their heads twisted off live, a feeler poked up their arse to remove the shit shute, cracked in two with a chef's knife, and onto the hot plate in a bit of garlic, butter & NZ sem sauv, on the sunny deck, in a light easterly,with a beer, any beer, even EB works. I hope that's what he was thinking about when he hit the water and I hope he never saw the 6m fish that got him. I hope it hit him so hard he was out cold..... imagine any lingering consciousness in a sharks rancid gut...... what jonah, what did you say?

We were drifting for King George in about 20ft of water, half a k off the beach at Hamelin Bay when I first saw a White. Hamelin is just around the Cape from Augusta. During the late 1800's it was a timber port with one terminus of an 100-km rail network running out onto a deep water jetty. The other ended in Flinders Bay and between the two ports the M.C Davies logging company at one stage exported a third of all timber out of the state. That early logging is the reason the Boranup Karri's appeal to the human eye so; uniformly sized trees, evenly spread, no under-story, a giant Zen garden where the hand of the gardener is generations lost. These days, like in Flinders, only the bones of the jetty remain. Hamelin was always a lousy port. Right at the southern end of a long wide j shaped beach it faces N'NW and the scant lee of the near shore island of the same name could not save a ship in a winter storm. The maritime museum has at least a dozen wrecks recorded from this era. The odd cray boat still uses it when a big high in the bight cranks up the SE summer patterns, but a camping ground, kiosk and boat ramp are about it now. Those constant summer winds were what drove us around the corner from Augusta to fish and swim in the early to mid mornings before the wind really howled.

Dad had borrowed Athol's 12 foot tinny because it was easier to launch there than our bigger Clark and we were drifting mid-morning, across the middle of the bay; all emerald green and turquoise, fading near shore to arayan blues. Polarised glasses for picking the seagrass banks, terry towelling hats, white zinc for cracked lips, a little leftover steak on a no.6 for the first fish and shiny cubes of whiting thereafter for the rest, a white bucket, driftwood cutting board, boning knife ground past slaughtering a lamb, and a red fuel tank sloshing to the peculiar drumming rhythm of a drifting tinny.

"Is that weed moving?"

"Where?"

"Over there"

"Na......."

Pause.

"Must be a raa......."

"Oh Fuck me!"

With this a White cruised up alongside and we both lost the power of speech. At least 4 foot longer than the tinny, maybe more, the shark was huge. It circled around us casually at a slight distance before sweeping in close and rolling side on, to eyeball us impassively; in doing so revealing that smirk with it's row, on row, on row of teeth and vivid mottled graduations of hue, concrete grey fading to the unbearable whiteness of it's enormous belly. I had the urge to reach out and stroke it like a dog, to feel the cold sandpaper rasp of it's hide. It was so close I could have. The old man finally snapped to and whispered,

"Don't make any sudden movements."

"I wasn't planning any, actually."

A whiting tukk tukk tukked my line.

At this point the shark spooked. We don't know why, but later speculated it had brushed one of the whiting lines. Like a V8 auto when planted, the shark lurched, almost squatting under power, pectorals spread, the thrust emanated from the tip of its nose and shuddered through the body before erupting in it's scything tail and it was gone.

My old man nearly ripped the cord off the outboard a split second later and we were up and planing instantly in a funk of fear and 2-stroke fumes, skipping whiting rigs along the surface, hand line reels merrily un-spooling before I could get them wound in and sorted, feet dancing to avoid the bait board and knife as it flipped off the seat. Dad forgot about the landing and pointed straight for the beach and we shot full throttle through the surf and halfway up the beach before we came to a stop.

We sat there in the sun for a long time and debated if we should tell the swimmers and families near the jetty. We decided not to, the shark had gone the other way after all and was probably several k's away by now.

It would just fuck everyone's summer if we told them.

"Shall we go back out?"

"Nah, lets go have a look at the island, hey."

Postscript: I went surfing Boxing Day, my first since the Mid's attack and the day before the Port Kennedy one. I have a shark shield I bought before either attack; for surfing, swimming and diving. It got a few laughs the first time I wore it but no one laughs at the fucked up stingray tail anymore and I am kind of popular in the water. But you know I always knew they were there.

BTW the only thing of note Howard did is enact those gun laws; otherwise he should have been shot out of a huge..........

Torndirrup yesterday....

2008-12-29T10:54:00.004+09:00

the goddess

2008-12-19T15:30:00.008+09:00

i can still sculpt a semblance of you now

nape of your neck
dart of your tongue
run of your fingers
shortness of your breath
arch of your back
lilt of your breast
heat of your sex

i drank you in till i was sure i would drown
saw the depths of the sea in your eyes
smelt the damp soil in your scent
heard the build of a storm in your cry

you washed over me in waves
buried me in the earth
and moaned a funereal hymn

and like so i died in your arms

now words are gone
seemingly unthinkable
unnecessary
for there is nothing to explain
no one to explain to

who else but you could understand

that there is only the now of watching you die a little

over and over

pelagia #one

2008-12-17T18:07:00.003+09:00

With feet dangling through the rails and swinging to the diesel's strum, you could see flying fish, four or five together, basking in the sun. Caught in their slumber by the blunt bow they would franticly dart left, then right and on realisation there was no escape, they would break clear and glide 30 or 40 metres before plonking into the oily face of the next swell. Each takeoff left a sand dune snake track and on this peerless day, they were skipping, firing up their tails like old 2 strokes just before they hit the surface..... Brrraaaappp..... once, twice, three times, until they outran the boat.

"matar as saudades"

2008-12-05T11:29:00.006+09:00

"The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness"

A.F.G Bell: In Portugal 1912

“Na verdade
Um homem só se encontra no que perde,
Porque ele abrange o espaço e a eternidade”

“In reality
A man only finds himself in what he looses,
Because he embraces the space and the eternity”

Teixeira de Pascoaes 1920

on a rising tide below the flotsam line
i shall write your name over and over in the sand
as fragile and beautiful as a nautilus shell
i shall stand alone
and wait for the waves to return my love to green seas

barefoot again

2008-12-02T12:21:00.017+09:00

I finally threw out my deck boots the other day. They had been collecting spiders and dust for the last decade and somewhat piqued at shifting them to another shed for the 5th time, out they went. Expensive Ronstans, they were light, grippy and waterproof with a drawstring closure at the top. Aimed at the yachting crowd, they had caught my eye amongst the heavy, open topped boots the trawler trash wore. Three times the price, they had been on the chandlery shelf for a while, judging by their fine layer of red dust and wheat chaff. In a town where the value of an item was quickly calculated into how much booze, weed or speed you could consume if you went without the said item, it seemed these were not a good deal.

Early on in the season I developed a couple of nasty cracks in my heels that would not heal due to my feet being continually wet. At the start of the day they always hurt like hell, the dry wounds, which had healed a little overnight, would open up fresh and raw again as soon as I got on deck. It had finally reached a point where I could hardly walk. The southerlies had harangued us for weeks on end, throwing up short, steep slop, which would lift off the bow in great plumes and wrap around the wheelhouse in a torrential drift. Our old fiberglass boat was a pig; blunt and narrow, it moaned, bucked and bitched in an unpredictable manner and worst of all, it was wet. I spent all day soaked head to toe, on waterlogged, slippery, carpets, dancing pots around deck in a convoluted, staggering waltz. In contrast the modern, alloy boats were broad and stable, with sharp, flared bows, which neatly turned down the sea, like they were ploughing a loamy paddock. Their shirtless, deckies wandered casually around dry, checker plate, decks in those useless, open topped, boots, which would fill in ten minutes if I wore them. The Ronstans went on the skippers account; it was his shitty, wet boat after all.

I have always preferred to go bare foot. Shoes have fundamentally changed our relationship with the landscape and the way we move through it. No longer concerned with the tactile nature of the earth we walk on, our gaze has elevated and we glide over it, for the most part, disinterested and disconnected. Barefoot, you avert your gaze at your peril. Most of what I know on the nature of pain I have learnt with my feet. Hay stubble, pea gravel, coastal limestone, barnacles, hot coals, glass, bull ants, double gees, thistles, red ants, fish bones, cigarette butts, blackberries, bull ants, bees stings, melting asphalt and coral. Each inflicts their own peculiar quality and duration of suffering. Most vividly, as an 8 year old I drove a garden fork clean through my right foot and was left pinned to the back lawn, like an entomological specimen. My younger sisters ran screaming in circles around me, pausing briefly each lap to revisit the horror, re-inflate their lungs and high step on the spot; until after what seemed an eternity, my mother came and bravely removed it.

Barefoot as a child, I meandered sheep and cattle trails, paused on the faint woodland traces of kangaroos; while bucks, scented with elemental sulphur pursued coy does, fed ferrets into rabbit warrens, dragged dogs out of fox holes, stomped to raise the heads of thick, black tiger snakes sunning on fishing tracks, fell though mutton bird burrows, and wandered the flotsam lines on solitary beaches. The wider panorama was punctuated by my deliberate footsteps, viewed at a reduced frame rate, as if shot with film. Constantly reframed and refocused, the finer detail in the vista became apparent, the changes noted frame by frame, before returning focus, always to the ground and the next step.

And it was here the real discoveries could be made. Furious trapdoor spiders that would chase when annoyed with a twig, tiny, delicate orchids and smelly flytraps, neon green aphids, meat ants battling locusts, ponderous stag beetles, tracks of dugites, racehorse goannas, brushtails and emus, fox scats; emerald and turquoise with the shells of nameless bugs, caravans of spiny caterpillars and anxious quail which jinkered hurriedly through the stubble before bursting into flight. My best find was a spider, which disguised itself as an ant. Walking on its three rearward pairs of legs, the front two were red and half moon shaped. The spider tightly held these together in front to create the ant's head. I spent hours spell bound by this tiny charlatan as it moved about, almost indistinguishable amongst its prey.

My preference for working barefoot on deck was re enforced early on in my fishing career. The skipper had dropped the pick just off the Windy Harbour cliffs in a light South Easter. Tucked out of the relentless wind for the first time in days, we ate a relaxed meal, shared a joint and I slept soundly, free from the nagging fear that a wheat ship would run us down in the night. Unable to hold onto his crew, our downbeat skipper often dropped anchor in the shipping lane with no one on watch. My tiny bunk was barely long and wide enough for my frame and its similarity to a coffin was enhanced by the bunk above being so close my shoulders wedged if I turned in my sleep. I became obsessed by the radar, getting up to check it whenever claustrophobia got the better of me and I rarely slept for more than an hour at a time.

I woke sometime around 3 am with the boat rocking wildly from side to side; to the sickening realisation we were dragging the pick back towards the surf at the base of the cliffs. At some stage in the night a deep low had swept up out of the Antarctic and on the passage of the front the wind had swung back around the compass to the SW and the building swell had wrenched the anchor free. Now just off the back of the breakers, the skipper had fired the boat into life, we cut the pick and roared out to sea, thudding into the darkness off the back of ugly swells, crew madly securing the deck while the skipper fired abuse over the radio at the BOM for fucking up the forecast. As we bottomed out in a valley, the pot tipper catch released and started banging against the hull. The new bloke on board, half asleep and quietly cursing ever going to sea, made a dash to lock it back in place and slipped as one of his thong straps gave way. He flipped, silently, backwards over the rail into the darkness. I thought he was gone until I realised seconds later that there was a pair of thonged feet grimly clamping the gunwale. When we hauled him upright he was deathly pale, owl eyed and speechless and remained that way until he told the skipper to "go fuck your cunt of a job" when we finally hit port. I followed him a few trips later.

After that I avoided foot wear of any type on deck, experience telling me that nothing could match the purchase and dexterity of bare feet or allow you to know instantly if the surface was slippery or not.

So pulling on those Ronstans was a big deal. They turned out to be very good, my feet dried out and healed, they gripped pretty well and I only came unstuck in the boots once. Every now and again a pot would come up with a Wobbegong in it. These bottom dwelling sharks would somehow manage to curl themselves into the pot and eat the crays. The one that had come up on this day was big, 4 or 5 foot long and heavy. The best way to get rid of them was to open the pot door and drop them on deck before throwing them back overboard. Now Wobbies can bite their tails and therefore, it also follows, the hand of whoever has hold of it. The best technique involved grabbing the tail and quickly hammer throwing the shark up and over the rail while the gravitational force of the spin prevented the shark getting at your hand. With the big ones this often required a full rotation to clear the gunwales. This particular day I had grabbed hold of the shark with both hands and completed almost a full turn when my feet slid out from under me on some weed on the deck. The shark went straight up and I went down hard on the deck, winding myself in the process. The shark came down next to me and started wildly thrashing against the gunwale. The Skipper turned to ask what fuck I was up to, before dryly noting it was no time lie down on the job.

I wore the boots for the best part of a month before they got wet inside one day and by the time they dried out again I was happily barefoot once more. I can remember the last day I wore them pretty well. The crays had just disappeared, entire lines of pots had been coming up empty for days and the skipper was getting despondent. Prone to bouts of self-pity, he hated days like this and would blow off the gear in long lines, over weedy bottom. We would steam at 8 or 9 knots and drop a pot every 50m or so. This kept me moving from pot to pot pretty quickly. The sequence would involve standing with the pot on the rail with the short leader rope in one hand. On the skippers call, I would throw the pot and leader, scoop the 20-fathom coil off the deck, throw that, before finally collecting the floats and throwing them over last of all. Halfway down the second line of the day it all went pear shaped. I threw the pot and the coil but the floats had fallen down into the neck of another pot on the stack. I reached in to free the floats, as I had done hundreds of times before, but this time as I did, the pressure came on the rope as we started dragging the pot I had just thrown. My gloved hand was jammed hard up into the neck and as the weight really started to come on I thought, oh fuck there go my fingers. I shouted wildly at the skipper, "OHY OHY OHY" which usually signalled a serious problem but the boat just kept steaming. I was leaning over the pot trying to take some of the pressure off my trapped hand, pulling frantically on the rope with my other arm, when finally the motor cut and at that instant we took up the full weight of the pot. Suddenly I was airborne, 8 foot up and heading straight over the bait box at the back of the boat. The pot on deck catapulting me overboard as the floats, thankfully, were ripped free from the neck. Had I remained tangled in the neck, the pot and I would have been heading for the bottom, every deckies worst nightmare. There I was floundering in the foaming wake, fully dressed in apron, overalls and those boots. I floated on my back for a bit and took in the clouds and blueness of the sky while waiting for the boat to turn and come back alongside and tried to recall if I had seen any of the big bronze whalers, who always shadowed the boats, today.

We gave it away after that, the rest of that day and the next. We went to the pub and the boots went in the shed to dry out, never to return.

Stranded

2008-11-26T22:22:00.013+09:00

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.