DAY AFTER DAY THROUGH THREE hot January weeks Chellie toiled, filling bag after bag so that Dad had to build more bins. She managed to clean up Oystercatcher Cove, and Mum and Dad helped with Home Beach. But she was feeling discouraged. So much rubbish. Just so much. Nothing but rubbish every day. Battens, planks, a hatch cover, a ripped sail, even flower pots. And the never-ending bottles and plastic. Chellie began to think that all the world’s garbage was being tipped into the sea every day, and that an awful lot was ending up on their island.
Eagerly, anxiously she checked the email, hoping that someone would write back. A note arrived from the turtle research people thanking her for the information about Caretta. But the fishermen and cruising yacht clubs did not acknowledge her plea, let alone say they would publish it. Nothing came from them at all.
Before it was time to turn the page on the new calendar, the school term started.
‘Tell me about what you did in the holidays,’ Chellie’s teacher asked. She always wanted to know that. So Chellie emailed her story about Caretta and her letter to the fishermen and boaties. She also wrote an update about all the garbage she had collected and how much remained to be cleared. Then she settled down to tackle her first worksheets. But before she had finished, the phone rang. Her mother answered it.
‘It’s for you, Michelle.’
It was her teacher.
‘That’s a sad story, Michelle,’ Miss Howe said, ‘but you’ve written it beautifully. And you showed a lot of initiative in sending those letters and starting the clean-up. I’m really proud of you. I have a friend who is the environmental writer for a national newspaper. Do you mind if I show it to him?’
Chellie gasped. ‘Wow! You mean my story might be in the paper?’
‘Well . . . I can’t promise that. But he might be able to write something about it.’
‘Hooray! That would reach lots more fishermen and boaties and people who litter. More than I could ever do,’ Chellie babbled. ‘Oh, yes! Please show it to him. Maybe he could come and see for himself.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Miss Howe. ‘Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not easy to get an article in the paper. But I’m sure he’ll be interested in what you’ve written and what you’re doing.’
Chellie hugged Mum. ‘She likes my story. She’s going to show it to a journalist!’
She rushed off to tell Dad too.
‘Why don’t you do what you talked about earlier?’ Dad suggested. ‘Measure all the rope and stuff from Turtle Beach. Collect some statistics. You can do it for a maths assignment. I’ll help.’
So Chellie and Dad set off for Turtle Beach with his reel of measuring tape.
‘We should have done this when we started,’ Chellie panted as they emptied two bins of rope and netting and heaved it back down onto the beach. ‘Maybe after we’ve measured this lot I could do it day by day. Keep a tally.’
‘Good idea,’ Dad grunted. ‘This is hard work.’
Dragging and pulling, they gradually laid it out end to end above the high tide mark. At last it was finished, a great long stretch of rope, twine, netting and fishing line snaking along the beach like a huge boa constrictor.
‘How long is it, Dad?’
‘I reckon nearly two hundred metres.’
‘We’ll just have to estimate the length of the knotted bits and tangles,’ Chellie puffed.
Carefully they measured it with the tape. Chellie whooped when they passed the one-hundred-metre mark, and whooped even louder when the tape reached its full length a second time.
‘Two hundred plus,’ Dad announced, pacing it out to the end. ‘Two hundred and thirty-one metres, and then some for the tangles.’
‘Let’s leave it here to show Mum tomorrow,’ Chellie suggested.
Dad nodded. ‘Okay. The sea won’t be up this high overnight as it’s a neap tide and there’s no sign of wind. Should be all right.’
In the morning Mum insisted that Chellie do her lessons before they went to Turtle Beach. Chellie was longing to be off, but she had settled down to complete her worksheets when she heard the throbbing of an aircraft.
‘It’s a helicopter,’ she shouted, throwing down her pen and rushing outside. Light planes often went over, but a helicopter was rare. Perhaps it was Customs officers, or a search and rescue.
The whirring grew louder and louder as the helicopter came into view. Chellie waved excitedly as it hovered over the house but sighed as it moved away. Then she shouted, ‘It’s going to land on Turtle Beach!’
Lessons were forgotten as all the family followed the chopper, watching it drop below the hill, then hearing the silence after its motor stopped.
Who could it be?
Chellie was speechless with excitement and exertion. She was running at record speed.
Could it really be Miss Howe’s friend, the journalist? Would he really write about Caretta and the rubbish?
As they topped the sandhills they could see the helicopter squatting in the middle of the beach like a giant dragonfly. Three men were climbing out. Three.
Who were they? A pilot. And who were the others?
Chellie took a running jump down the bank and sprinted across to the strangers. They were smiling.
‘You must be Chelonia Green,’ the tallest said. ‘Your teacher, Miss Howe, showed me your story and told me what you are doing to try to protect the turtles. I’d like to write an article for my paper about it.’
Chellie nodded, too excited to speak.
‘I’m Mark and this is Peter who will take some photos, if that’s OK with your parents. And this is Bill, our pilot.’
Dad and Mum were just approaching. Mark introduced his companions and asked again about permission to take photos and do a story about Chellie and the turtles and her campaign against litter. Dad and Mum beamed.
‘If it makes people think and helps cut down pollution of the sea even a little,’ Dad said, ‘it will be well worthwhile.’
‘And saves some turtles,’ Chellie added, recovering her voice. ‘Maybe some whales. And dugongs too. They’re all affected. Come and see what we’ve collected in just over three weeks.’
Mark smiled at her and followed. He made notes about the rope boa constrictor and all the bins of bottles and thongs and plastic and assorted refuse, while the photographer got to work.
‘It’s pretty impressive, what you’ve done, Chelonia Green,’ Mark said. ‘There should be more people like you.’
‘More people not throwing rubbish overboard would be better,’ Chellie replied. ‘I don’t want to pick up other people’s rubbish all my life. I want to go to university and become a marine biologist. Now, do you want to see the turtles? The tide’s right if we don’t dawdle.’ She led the way to the turtle pool and introduced her family one by one.
The three visitors were entranced. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this!’ Mark exclaimed softly. The others nodded in silent agreement.
Chellie smiled at her new friends. ‘I come here most days to watch them, when the tide’s right. But I haven’t been able to come so often since I started collecting the litter.’
‘Your chopper will be safe here on the beach,’ Dad said to Bill. ‘Why don’t you all come back to the house and have a cuppa before you leave. We keep records and photos you might like to see.’
The pilot looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got another job after this, but we can spare an hour.’
Chellie had never known an hour to go so quickly. She and Mum and Dad all went back to Turtle Beach to watch the helicopter take off. Bill checked his watch again, then looked at Chellie. ‘There’s just time to give you a buzz over the island. Hop in!’
Chellie didn’t need to be asked twice.
Peter strapped her in. ‘I need the door open so I can take photos.’
Chellie waved to Mum and Dad as the chopper lifted and steadied. ‘Don’t go over the turtle pool, the noise might disturb them’ she shouted to the pilot above the roar.
So they headed away overland. Chellie looked down on the house and the vegetable garden. The chooks, alarmed by the strange noise, scattered into the long grass. She looked down on the gullies where the fruit bats roosted, and down on the clifftops and the red earth gulches. Her island. Her home.
Within minutes they were back on the beach and she was scrambling out.
‘Thank you, thank you!’ she shouted as the helicopter lifted again.
As it chuttered away into the distance, Chellie blinked. Had it really happened?
‘Come on, Chellie,’ Dad said. ‘We’d better make sure the boa constrictor doesn’t escape on tonight’s tide.’
With Mum helping it did not take as long to gather the rope up again as it had to lay it out, so there was still time to do some more collecting. Chellie picked up the empty bags and went off with new heart. If only Mark’s article made it into the paper . . .