NEXT DAY CHELLIE WENT BACK to see the turtles. She wanted to, and yet she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to see Caretta’s little pool empty. But she didn’t want to see it occupied by another turtle either.
It wasn’t.
It was empty empty empty. Chellie turned away and went to sit near her green family. There weren’t so many turtles today. Perhaps some of the females had finished their egg-laying and had set off back to their feeding grounds. Chellie sat dreaming of them on their long journey, dreaming of the tropical coasts they would reach. Occasionally one of the somnolent chelonia would raise its head and look at her. Even though she was careful never to let her shadow fall on the pool, the turtles always knew she was there. Just one of the family come to visit. Chellie was comforted by their quiet acceptance.
When she went back to continue the clean-up, Dad and Mum were already at work – Dad at one end of the beach, Mum at the other.
‘Many hands make light work,’ Mum smiled. ‘We won’t be able to help you every day, but we will when we can.’
Chellie set to. So much to do. Turtle Beach was the biggest and the worst for flotsam and jetsam. But then there were Oystercatcher Cove, Snowy Beach, Curlew Beach, Orchid Beach, South Beach and Pine Cove. A long way to lug rubbish back from them. Home Beach still had to be done too. Today, Chellie decided, she would concentrate on rope and twine, fishing net and lines. She wondered how far they would stretch if she laid all the pieces end on end. A hundred metres she was sure. Two hundred metres more likely.
Angrily she tugged at heavy, thick ropes half buried in the sand. A big storm could uncover them and set them free. She yanked at piece after piece after piece of twine – orange, blue, green, yellow – entangled in swirls of seaweed. She pulled at netting snagged on driftwood and pounced on every tangle of fishing line that gleamed like onion skin oh so innocently among coconuts and knobby, pineapple-like pandanus fruits.
At last Mum called, ‘That’s enough for today. You can come back tomorrow and every day until school starts. I’m going home now. Why don’t you go and tell Dad to knock off ? I’ll have scones made by the time you get home.’
Normally Chellie would have skipped or run or taken flying leaps along to the far end where Dad was. But today she just walked. Slowly, soberly.
At the end of the beach, before the rocks began and the cliff s reared up, waves and wind had created an extra big sandbank. And lots of junk somehow got swept into this corner.
Dad beckoned. ‘Come and look at this.’
What had he found? Chellie’s footsteps quickened. Could it be Caretta? She ran the last fifty metres.
But it wasn’t Caretta. Dad was pointing to the sandbank. Jetsam was embedded at intervals all the way up – a broken piece of propeller; the yellow plastic lid of an ice-cream container; a red thong; the sleeve of a checked shirt; the staring, blue-eyed head of one of those horrible lures; and a score of other things.
‘It’ll be an archaeologist’s dig in a hundred years’ time,’ Dad exclaimed. ‘Some researcher will be thrilled to find all these traces of the way we lived. Like Pompeii or some of those sites in the Middle East.’
Chellie loved Dad’s enthusiasm for seeing possibilities. But she didn’t know whether to be pleased or sorry that it was not Caretta. Caretta, mangled, decomposing, only recognisable by her shell. Perhaps one day the sea would bring back her beautiful shell.