It was late Friday afternoon. The past week had blown all the records for heat across Australia. In Tasmania, bushfires had been burning in the World Heritage area down south and the Tarkine up north. The wind had picked up and now smoke had obliterated the far hills, giving the world an eerie amber glow. All day I’d had meetings with people who had been ill at ease, worried for the week ahead when the temperatures were predicted to rise, and no rain in sight. A hot northerly had been blowing all day and the air smelled of smoke.
I’d taken a swim and, as I walked home, I found Dan cleaning flathead under a gum tree. When we were children, it would take half an hour in the morning to pull up enough to feed us all for breakfast. I’d heard again and again from people that those days were long gone. Now you were lucky to get a feed in three or four hours. Recreational fishing had taken its toll on the channel.
‘They look good,’ I said, sitting down on a log beside him. He was working at an old communal table, weathered and whitened by sun and salt.
I watched his hands as he ran a knife up the body of the fish, shedding scales and washing the board down when that bit was done.
‘How was your day?’ he asked.
‘Actually, I spent the afternoon with the Recreational Fishing Club.’
‘Ah, what do they have to say about things?’
‘They mostly talked about the fish farms,’ I said.
‘It’s the biggest employer in the state,’ he said. ‘After tourism and the Catholic education system.’ He was now slicing up the fish and pulling out the innards under the gills. ‘They’ll be the biggest primary industry in the state soon. The broken nets and rope, and all the stuff that washes up on the shore, that’s nothing compared to the havoc they wreak underneath the water.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ I said.
‘When we were kids,’ he said, ‘I learned to dive in the Huon Estuary, and the bottom was amazing. We used to see crayfish and abalone and sharks—all sorts of stuff. I remember watching documentaries about the Great Barrier Reef and the Mediterranean, but the Huon Estuary was way more vibrant because of the mix of warm and cold temperatures. A lot of algal life, a lot of vegetation, and a lot of fish life as well.’
‘But it’s not anymore …’ I said.
‘Everyone used to have nets. We’d net heavily. It was just part of the culture. It’s what we did.’
‘So it’s not the fish farms?’
‘It’s industry too. I mean, we like to think it’s somebody else, but it’s all of us. There was a crazy scheme in the sixties that dredged the scallop beds. People want to think everything recovers eventually, but it doesn’t. You can get a few if you dive for them now, but this channel, it was scallop heaven.’
I watched him wash down the weathered table with another bucket of salt water, scrub away the last of the fish remnants, leave it shipshape for the next person.
‘I’ve got to get these home,’ he said. ‘Mind if we walk and talk?’
We headed back across the road and up the flight of stairs. At the top of the narrow path, we came to our road and walked side by side.
‘Since I was a teenager,’ he said, ‘most of the Huon Estuary has, at some stage, had fish pens hovering over it. The bottom is suffocated with waste. They’ve killed the harbour over at Strahan. That won’t come back for years now, if ever. Now they’ve moved into the channel, it’s suffering the same fate. The east coast estuaries will be next. Because of pressure from conservationists, they’re pushing out into the open ocean, which is where I’d prefer them to be. But it’s more dangerous. Know a bloke who lost a thumb out there a few weeks ago.
‘Now that you’ve got me started,’ he said with his trademark grin, ‘did you know they feed mackerel to the salmon? They use a lower-value fish to make a higher-value fish, which seems nuts to me. I mean it’s questionable, when you’re eating your bit of salmon, whether you’re eating anything healthy at all. They’re putting that colour in the feed, too—anthocyline, or something like that—to make it look pink. So there’s people lining up in the Sydney markets to eat this Tasmanian salmon, and it’s a filthy industry. But that’s not a fight for us to worry about. I’m not going to give a rat’s arse about anything anymore.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘Is that going to be your new year’s resolution?’
‘You just become such a grumpy bastard as you get older, if you’re not careful.’
‘Is your dad a grumpy bastard?’
‘Probably. He died a few years back. Reckon he’s still complaining somewhere.’
We had arrived at his gate.
‘I think you’ll just get happier as you get older,’ I said.
‘Do you now?’ he said.
Sometimes it feels like my job is to help my clients find the parts where they don’t know themselves, and the parts where they do, and get them to talk to one another. Sometimes it’s like the divide between justice and mercy. Usually, people are harder on themselves than anyone. My gift is that people talk to me. Maybe it’s because I’ve learned to ask questions. But mostly it’s because I’ve learned to shut up. It’s amazing what people will say if you give them the space to say it. But when a person is attractive, that can be deceiving. Some of the most ruthless men I’ve known have been handsome. It’s almost a sociopathic marker. Dan was good-looking but not typically handsome. He was big and rough around the edges, and he wasn’t needy. He didn’t seem to be making up for any great hole inside him.
We both turned then and looked out at the smoky evening sky.
‘Not looking good for the next few days,’ he said. ‘Badly need rain.’
The northerly was dropping and the channel was a milky pale blue.
‘Another day in a life,’ I said. ‘When you add them up, there aren’t that many of them.’
‘Maybe there’s enough,’ he said.
‘Do you think?’
‘If you make the most of them,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’
We could hear the bridgeworks going on, muted at this distance. Generators, drills, the rumble of the barges that traversed the channel from the manufacturing plant at North-West Bay. Voices on the air.
He said, ‘I’ve gotta get these into the fridge. They’re for my mum. Seeing her in the morning.’
‘I could make dinner one night,’ I said. ‘If you want.’ I suddenly felt nervous.
He looked at me and his eyes twinkled. ‘I’m not turning you down,’ he said. ‘But I’ll cook for us. Not tonight. Another night. Soon.’
‘You don’t trust my cooking?’ I said.
‘Not sure I want to see you all domesticated. Wouldn’t be right, somehow.’
‘So have you got a hot date?’ I asked.
‘You really love to ask the questions, don’t you?’
‘That’s why they pay me the big bucks.’
He laughed and walked through his gate and was gone into the dusk.
It was the lovely thing about the island while ever there was only access by water. If it was past 7.30 pm, you knew no-one was leaving. Short of your own runabout, or a kayak, you were all here for the night because the ferries had stopped running.
I walked across my paddock and up onto the deck. I went inside, made a salad and opened a beer. I saw Dan drive away in his ute. Then I sat down with my laptop and began another report on the day’s activities. When it was done, a software program encrypted it and it winged its way to America, where it would be opened by an analyst who worked in a remote corner of a famous building. Hidden from presidential faithfuls, some of us were watching the axis move from democracy to tyranny in the United States and, oh, so many other countries. That’s why I had come. JC had asked, but so had they. I had been sent back to my home town to see just what it was that had the Chinese government so very interested in Tasmania. Since I’d arrived, I’d amassed a few theories, but that was all they were. I needed to get closer to May Chen. I suspected she knew exactly what was going on. I also needed to work on my brother.