CHAPTER 15
‘Best Two Days of My Life’

WHEN CHELLIE WOKE – JACINTA ON one side and Alice on the other – everyone was stirring, crawling out of sleeping bags, stretching. So it wasn’t a dream, she thought as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.

‘Swim before breakfast?’ Dad shouted, and everyone raced down the beach, laughing and joking. The kids were having so much fun that it was only the smell of bacon that finally lured them out of the water. After the bacon and eggs were eaten and the billy boiled, they made toast on the coals and spread it thick with Mum’s chunky lime marmalade.

‘That’s the best breakfast I’ve ever had,’ Tim declared. And everyone agreed.

They shook the sand out of their sleeping bags, rolled them up and tidied the campsite.

‘Now, what are the orders for the day, Captain Chellie?’ Ted enquired.

‘More of the same,’ Chellie announced. ‘We’ve still got the rest of this beach to do.’

So off they went with bags and crates to make Snowy Beach as clean as its name.

At lunchtime John and Ted conferred.

‘We thought we’d bring the boats round here and to Turtle Beach to load. Anyone want a trip on a smelly fishing boat?’ Ted enquired.

‘Yes please!’ Tim’s, Jacinta’s and Will’s hands shot up.

‘Could we come with you, John?’ Jack and Alice asked. ‘We’ve never been on a yacht.’

Chellie was torn. She had never been on a yacht or a fishing boat. Dad had a catamaran and a barge. His workhorses, he called them. ‘Could I come round on one and back on the other?’ she asked.

‘Why not?’ said Ted cheerfully. ‘I can take all the camping gear from here too. Save humping it overland.’

They went back around the rocks, where Tim and Jack prised out some big lengths of rope that Chellie had never been able to budge, and sharp-eyed Will found fishing line in rock pools which had been underwater yesterday. Turtle Beach stretched smooth and hard and empty.

‘Perfect for cricket,’ Tim commented.

‘Good idea,’ Dad replied. ‘But we don’t have a ball.’

‘I found a ball yesterday,’ Will piped up. He pulled it out of his pocket. ‘Look, it still bounces!’

‘And I can make a bat.’ Jack seized a small piece of plank and yanked a discarded fishing glove over one end for a grip.

‘Game on,’ Tim declared. ‘Your first bowl, Chellie. And you bat first, Jack.’

It was a hilarious game. Chellie bowled, chased the ball, swung the bat, and laughed and laughed. Playing with just Mum and Dad was never so much fun.

All too soon it was time to stop and move on. At Home Beach they clambered into the dinghy and duckie and headed for the boats. Chellie climbed aboard Sweet Alice.

‘I wish I had a boat named after me,’ she exclaimed.

‘It’s a bit of a tradition among fishermen to name your boat after your mother or wife or daughter,’ Ted explained. ‘My mother was Alice, too.’

Chellie loved seeing the island from the water. It looked so dramatic with its cliffs and coves and rocky headlands. She pointed out some of her favourite places. They chugged past Turtle Beach, Turtle Point, Oystercatcher Cove and the long rocky stretch where the ospreys were circling on updrafts.

‘Wouldn’t it be great to be able to fly like that!’ Tim marvelled.

Chellie wondered if he wanted to be a pilot.

Dad had come too, to guide the fishing boat safely in to Snowy Beach.

‘There’s a patch of rocks that’s sometimes uncovered,’ he warned Ted. They anchored as close as possible to shore to make the loading easier. All the Snowy Beach rubbish had been left in bags and crates.

‘We can stow the crates in the well.’ Ted knew all about getting as much as possible aboard Sweet Alice.

At last the work was finished and they headed back to Turtle Beach to lend a hand.

Emptying the bins onto tarps and dragging them down the beach, into the dinghy and aboard the lovely yacht was quite a challenge. Chellie felt sad to see all the ugly debris piled on the decks. But John was not worried. He saw it as a photo opportunity. Whipping out a camera he took several shots.

‘I’ll publish these on the club website. Should make crews a bit more careful.’ He hopped into the duckie and paddled across to take some snaps aboard Sweet Alice too.

Ted was pleased. ‘A picture’s worth a thousand words, they say.’ Looking at Chellie he hastened to add, ‘But if it hadn’t been for your words in the first place, there’d be no pictures. We would never have come to the island.’

The yacht had puttered round using her engine, but John had hoisted the sails for Chellie’s benefit.

‘Wind Chime is a perfect name for her,’ Chellie sighed to Jacinta, who with Tim and Will had swapped back to their own boat. ‘She’s so beautiful.’

She seemed to glide like a gull over the glassy green waters. As they rounded the southern end of the island, the westering sun turned the sea to gold, and the sound of the wind in the rigging and sails changed from a whisper to a song.

They had a barbecue on Home Beach, watching the sun slide into the sea and the clouds turn into full-blown roses: pink and gold and apricot. Mum brought out the visitors’ book. There weren’t many names in it, but the visitors from Sweet Alice and Wind Chime filled two pages with their enthusiastic comments. Chellie especially liked Jack’s: ‘Best two days of my life.’

‘Watch our websites, Chellie. I’m sorry we didn’t get round to all the beaches. But if we may,’ John said to Chellie and her parents, ‘we’d like to come again at Easter to help.’

‘So would we,’ Ted said, and all the kids shouted ‘Yay!’

Chellie grinned.

‘I’m hoping we’ll be able to persuade other yachties to adopt an island, one of the uninhabited ones, and clean up the beaches once a year. I think the idea could catch on,’ John added.

‘A great idea,’ Mum and Dad agreed.

‘I could try the same with my lot,’ Ted offered. ‘Fishermen know the coast as well as anyone. It’ll be a wake-up call for them to see the rubbish.’

So the Adopt an Island scheme was hatched, and Chellie knew she wouldn’t be alone in her task any more. ‘Could you publish a photo of Caretta too?’ she asked. ‘If people could see what one piece of fishing line did . . .’

‘Sure will,’ John and Ted promised. ‘Just email it to us.’

Chellie hated saying goodbye to all her new friends. She and Dad and Mum stood at the water’s edge watching the dinghy and the duckie head off to Sweet Alice and Wind Chime, and the lights twinkle after the families had gone aboard. They were leaving early next morning for their trips home. Chellie felt empty and full at the same time. Sad and happy.

Mum guessed how she felt. ‘Not long till Easter,’ she said. ‘It’s early this year.’

Chellie woke several times in the night and looked out to see two lights in Home Bay, and imagined Tim, Jacinta, Will, Jack and Alice snug in their bunks. But in the morning when she woke, Home Bay was empty again.