AFTER THE LATEST HATCHING, the sun was well up when Chellie woke. She jumped out of bed and hastily pulled on shorts and top, determined not to waste another moment of the beautiful blue day. Dad and Mum had already had breakfast. Chellie could hear the sound of the tractor over near the dam and could see Mum’s big sun hat bobbing among the tomato bushes. She chomped through her muesli, downed her milk and ran out into the hot January morning.
Waving to her mother, she called over her shoulder, ‘Tide’s right for Turtle Point. See ya!’
She raced towards the track, singing a song to encourage the hatchlings as she ran. ‘Sharks stay away, today and every day, from the baby turtles out in the bay. Noddies and boobies stay away, today and every day, from the baby turtles out in the bay. Hungry fish stay away, today and every day, from the baby turtles out in the bay.’
Over the hummocks she panted, pausing at last for breath on the sandhill. She never grew tired of that special moment when she looked down on the shining expanse of sand and sea that was Turtle Beach. So strong, so wild, so free. Chellie felt a thrill every time.
But today the thrill turned to chill. She shivered. Her heart seemed to drop into her guts like a big black lump. Like the big black lump dumped by the receding tide, a blot on the mirror-bright sand.
A great knot of seaweed? A hunk of wood?
Not a turtle, Chellie told herself. A turtle wouldn’t come ashore on a falling tide in bright sunlight. They rarely nested here anyway, because the sand was so hard. And there were no tracks leading down from the narrow strip of soft sand above high-tide mark.
A couple of circling gulls swooped in and began to peck at the still, dark form.
‘No! No!’ Chellie shouted, waving her arms frantically.
She flung herself down the slope, heedless of hidden hollows, scratching bushes and sly, long runners of marram grass waiting to trip her and send her tumbling. She pushed through the rattling pandanus and jumped off the bank down to the beach.
More gulls had joined the first two. Chellie felt the muesli and milk rising in her throat as she ran towards the water’s edge. It can’t be a turtle. It mustn’t be a turtle.
But it was.
A big brown turtle. A loggerhead.
‘Caretta!’ Chellie sobbed.
The gulls took wing, protesting raucously that she had disturbed them before they could begin to feed.
Chellie knelt down beside the big creature. She had never touched Caretta before. Not even when she lay dreaming in her own peaceful rock pool. Now Chellie stroked the red-brown shell and lifted the lifeless flippers gently. She stared in horror at Caretta’s sturdy head, enmeshed in a cruel snarl of silvery fishing line. Fishing line which the turtle must have mistaken for a jellyfish. Fishing line which had choked her. Choked her to death.
The dark eyes that had watched Chellie so many times without fear were dulled. They would never again see the cool green sea light, the shining flash of fish, the wonders of the coral reefs. Those powerful flippers would never again make the long swim to distant Pacific cays. They would never excavate another nesting chamber.
Although the sun was burning the back of her neck and knees, Chellie was cold inside. Cold cold cold. Caretta might have lived another fifty years. Or more. But now she was dead. Dead dead dead.
Tense and stiff, Chellie got to her feet. And began to run. Stumbling at first, then loping more easily up to the bank, pulling herself up, pushing past the pandanus trees, puffing up the hill, then running running running towards the sound of the tractor.
‘Dad!’ she screamed, long before he could hear her. ‘Dad!’
But he saw her and switched off the engine. He jumped down and ran towards her.
‘Caretta’s dead!’ she wailed, flinging herself into his arms.