The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act.
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Years and years from now, I’ll be working as an island ecologist undertaking research on Cabbage Tree Island and my dad will come along as a volunteer assistant. It’ll be part of my postdoc. He and Mum will have been so proud of me: taking me out for pizza at the end of high school; for a massive banquet lunch after the BSc graduation; a hatted restaurant to celebrate the conferral of the PhD. Just Dad at the last one. ‘We always knew it would be birds with you,’ Dad will have said, many times, over the years. ‘I mean, all those Charlottes …’
It’s a small island, only about thirty hectares, a k and a half from the entrance to Port Stephens. Its isolation will be perfect for my research: away from human population pressures and with a strong history of recovery programs. There are multiple species of birds on the island. Terrestrially, the standouts are the birds of prey (Peregrine falcons, white-bellied sea eagles) with occasional rainbow pitta and blue-faced honeyeaters and an abundance of grey shrike-thrushes. The most common seabirds on the island are the wedge-tailed shearwaters, the short-tailed shearwater, and, in two crevices in the rocks, a colony of little penguins. But I’ll be interested in the Gould’s petrel. They’re a small gadfly petrel—wingspan seventy centimetres; weight 180 to 200 grams. They’re trans-Pacific migrants; back in the ’teens, geolocative studies traced their pelagic distribution, a counter-clockwise sweep of the ocean, into the Tasman, round to Hawai‘i and back along the lower equatorial latitudes. They return to the breeding colony in October, about a month before laying. My supervisor will have been going there for years—when he’s there, winding his way up the gullies, it’ll be clear that the island is in his blood. This trip will be my third; I’ll have come as a volunteer, tagging on to my supervisor’s project, before unearthing my own research. I’ll be monitoring the incubation process of the GPs, noting any depletion of residual population or decrease in successful fledgings. When I use the words ‘depletion’ and ‘decrease’ in the car ride up to Port Stephens, I’ll ignore my dad’s scrunched-up face and the way he grips his seatbelt.
From the mainland, the island looks like a humpback whale with a mossy coat. It’s on a tilt, the tail submerged and the body rising, poised to leap into the air. A dense rainforest grows on its back, on the leeside. Around the island is a ring of frothy waves, like the valances that my grandma—my mum’s mum—used to have around her bed base. I’ll smile at this thought and tell my dad about it, but he’ll stand on the pontoon in the marina, staring at the swelling water in the bay. His mind will be somewhere between terror and panic. That’ll be fine—as long as his thoughts don’t go to that other place, wherever it is—that place where he always wants to go.
My supervisor will give a yank on the cord of the outboard motor.
‘Come on, Dad,’ I’ll say. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
On the trip over, my supervisor will be squatting in the stern of the Zodiac, one hand steering, the other sweeping back his scraggly, flailing hair. His gnarled face will be pink from the spray. I’ll be sitting against the prow, my back to the gusting air. My dad will be cowering below me. As we ride the crest of a wave, my supervisor will be chatting to us, but we won’t be able to hear him over the thunder. As the base of the boat thumps against the water, my supervisor will hit what seems like a punchline and laugh into the wind. The boat will scud and curve around the island. On the ocean side, we’ll see fractured cliffs dropping sharply into the sea. I’ll note that these crags haven’t yet been affected by the sea-level shifts. My dad will look, eyes-wrinkled, into the sun.
We’ll circumnavigate the island and come back to the western side. My supervisor will steer the dinghy into a small cove of serrated rocks.
‘… using the island as a cage,’ my supervisor will say into the stillness of the harbour.
I’ll have heard this story before, so I’ll laugh and then say, ‘He doesn’t mean us, Dad.’ It’s a yarn my supervisor loves to spin about the introduction of rabbits onto the island. ‘It was a controlled experiment,’ he’ll say, ‘part of the Intercolonial Rabbit Commission’s attempts at eradication. Henry Parkes offered a reward of twenty-five thousand pounds—we’re talking like twenty million bucks in our money—and this French bloke, Louis Pasteur’s nephew …’
My father will be glaring at the orange rocks. I’ll leap across first and my supervisor will chuck across the packs, still yabbering about the rabbit experiment. In 1906 Jean Danysz established an inoculation station on Broughton Island, north-east of Cabbage Tree. He wanted to see if rabbits infected with a pox virus would survive. They did, and ravaged the undergrowth. Somehow they made it to Cabbage Tree, too.
‘Your turn now, Dad,’ I’ll say.
He’ll look at me across the sliver of black water. The Zodiac will bump against the rocks.
He won’t move. Not for the first time, I’ll wonder why I invited him.
While we’re waiting for Dad to change out of his wet shoes, my supervisor and I will sit on the uneven rocks and look back to the mainland.
‘Listen to that,’ he’ll say, and we’ll hear the call of a white-bellied sea eagle. ‘I heard they were nesting.’ The lines round his eyes will expand and contract.
When Dad is ready, we’ll climb up into the forest. We’ll be following one of the steep, narrow basalt dykes that run west to east across the island: a fold in the hill marked out by a line of cabbage palms. We’ll clamber up an almost-track, trying to avoid being stabbed by the spurs of the palm stems. We’ll pass a metal sign, salt-bleached, that says:
NO UNAUTHORISED ENTRY. Access to the island is closely monitored. Maximum penalty $660,000 or two years imprisonment, or both.
My supervisor will be a few bounds above, still nattering about the rabbits and Danysz’s trials with microbes of chicken cholera. ‘He found that it wasn’t contagious to rabbits,’ he’ll call down to us, ‘but the rabbits certainly—here. This is what I’m talking about.’ He’ll crouch next to a tall round-trunked tree and reach into the mulched leaves. ‘Birdlime,’ he’ll say, looking up the length of sturdy trunk. ‘The rabbits ate the understorey so the birdlime fruit fell to the ground, so birds were exposed to the seeds which should have been entangled in shrubbery. Here.’ He’ll offer a birdlime calyx—a thin, grooved tube, like a withered frangipani—to my breathless father.
Dad won’t want to accept it, but he will take the calyx in his hand, and I’ll watch him stretch the viscous syrup between his thumb and forefinger.
‘Gums up the birds’ wings so they can’t fly,’ my supervisor will say. I’ve seen pictures of the affected birds: the calyx sticking out of their feathers like pierced arrows. ‘Eventually, the bird starves to death.’ My supervisor will tramp higher. ‘When ecologists came here in the eighties,’ he’ll call, as we follow, ‘the forest was jammed with birdlimes.’ He’ll chuckle at his pun. ‘So bad that the nesting pairs were down to less than 250. So it wasn’t just a matter of eradicating the rabbits. We didn’t need to make a drastic change. All we needed to remove was thirty-four plants and their seedlings in the breeding ground. By the mid-nineties the undergrowth was regenerating and the population upswinged to—here we are.’
On a ledge on the hill, camouflaged among the trees, there’ll be a fibreglass structure, like a mutant pumpkin. It’s called the igloo. Apple-green, it has round porthole windows and window shades like eyelids. My supervisor will unclamp the padlock from the door. Inside will be a cramped space, just enough for two storage shelves: one holding sunscreen, WD-40 and Aerogard; the other a ragtag library of bird books, collected shells, and bird skeletons and feathers. Around the edge will be three compact bunks for us to sleep on. ‘Home sweet home,’ my supervisor will say.
My father will waver next to the trunk of a cabbage palm.
My supervisor will have clambered into the igloo. I’ll finish his story for him. ‘That was one of the success stories. By the late nineties we had more than a thousand breeding pairs.’
In the hush of the rainforest my dad will ask, ‘And now?’
My supervisor will be clattering about inside. ‘That’s what we’re here to find out,’ I’ll say.
We’ll get to work immediately. My supervisor will be doing his own side project in the other gully. When I ask him about it, he’ll mutter some words I won’t catch—it’ll sound like a scientific name, a phrase in Latin. Before I get the chance to say ‘What?’, he’ll have moseyed away over the fig-tree roots. ‘Aves’ something. ‘Bird’ something. I’ll gather up the materials we need—head torches and the nest record sheets—and my father and I will head in the opposite direction.
Gould’s petrels are the only gadfly petrel that don’t burrow. They nest in natural cavities under the toscanite scree or among the buttresses of fig trees. Sometimes they nest beneath dried cabbage-tree fronds that have fallen to the ground. On Cabbage Tree we’ve got a good record of the nests. We’ve been demarcating them for years. Each nest has its own indicator tied to a metal stake—those pink, blue, green, yellow numbered pendants they use to tag cattle. The data sheet my dad will carry into the bush—laminated in plastic but a bit frayed—will be based on a list compiled by the team way back in the nineties, but it’s still accurate. GPs form long-term partnerships, and nest sites are used by the same birds in successive years. The birds fly off after fledging. They return to almost precisely the same spot they were hatched from. Dad and I will be tracking down a series of nests: looking to see if they’re still intact; if there’s anyone at home and, if so, one bird or two; is there an egg or, even, has it hatched? With the change in mean temperatures over the last ten years I’ll be wanting to gauge its effect on breeding times and cycles.
The nests are often clumped together, sometimes within a few metres of each other. Not all the nests will be marked: there was a decision in the noughties to focus on the breeding cycle of only the known-aged birds: the birds we have banded and followed for years. We don’t know exactly the lifespan of the GPs, but we have a bird—R025—that was banded way back in the 1980s, even before my supervisor’s time on the island. As we zigzag up the hill, hopping from rock to shaky rock, we’ll have passed several potential nest sites, but I won’t have told my dad about them. I’ll know that this knowledge would paralyse him: he’d stand there, among the mat rush, petrified that he’ll accidentally crunch an egg.
We’ll traipse higher, passing fronds of palms that spindle on the ground like large paper spiders. Tangled roots will hang down from the canopy. Even as we undertake our work my dad will pussyfoot anxiously over the rough ground, clasping the data sheet like it’s his protective coating. The record sheets allow us to locate the nests: next to each listing is a set of coordinates that places the site in relation to its nearest neighbours. We’ll have a system in place: my father will be acting as the ‘driver’, calling out the name of the next nest while I’ll scramble over the scree searching for it. They’re not always easy to find: the undergrowth will be taking hold and sometimes a nest will be well hidden among the bushes. ‘Green 265,’ Dad will cry thinly, ‘south of Yellow 027, three metres; west of Blue 568, five metres.’ He’ll reach out and grab a native plum tree to steady himself. I’ll spy the tag—it’ll indicate the hollow in a fallen palm trunk—and crouch down to reach into the dark space.
As we work I’ll tell Dad about another Gould’s petrel success story, what my supervisor calls the second recovery program. It’ll be why I want to include the species in my research. When I’m an undergrad my supervisor will give a lecture on the programs established by his team back in the early 2000s. ‘The creation of conservation reserves won’t in fact save species from extinction,’ he’ll claim, ‘We need highly focused and effective recovery actions.’
After the eradication of the rabbits and the reduction of the birdlime threat, my soon-to-be-supervisor developed a targeted translocation plan. Near-fledged birds were taken from Cabbage Tree to form a satellite colony on nearby Boondelbah Island, a small circular crag.
Under the sleepy lights of the lecture hall, my soon-to-be-supervisor will shape the island with his hands. The other students will be playing games on their smartpads, but I’ll be listening. My nearly-supervisor will tell me about Boondelbah Island: its cliffs to the north and a basalt dyke to the south which has eroded to create a deep ravine and ocean bay. He’ll explain how his team of ecologists are constructing artificial nests: boxes of Brunswick-green plastic, the entrance tunnel a section of polyethylene pipe. The project was not without its challenges. Birds selected for translocation needed to be taken after they had reached maximum mass, but before they emerged from their burrow. Birds chosen closer to fledging would have reduced the mortality rate, but the older the bird, the greater their philopatry—their ability to return to the nest. ‘They GPS themselves,’ my supervisor will say with a grin.
A friend will type something on her pad and the words ‘lame who uses gps anymore’ will pop up on my screen. Despite the risks, the majority of birds adapted to their new environment. The second iteration of the program met with a 100 percent success rate, with all nestlings successfully fledging after transfer. The removal of the young appeared to have no discernible effect on the breeding productivity of their parents: in fact, with the dispatching of their young, the pair could leave the island in more robust condition.
Sitting in the stuffy lecture hall, watching my nearly-supervisor flap enthusiastically, will change me forever. The undergrad years will have been a dark time for me: class after class on extinctions and yet more extinctions; encroachments on habitats; birds drowning in oil spills or choking on plastic. I’ll feel myself slipping into a world I don’t want to inhabit—a world I’ve seen on my father’s face and in my father’s stories. But this man will be telling me a different narrative, one where even plastic can transform into something productive, something protective. ‘The irony is,’ he’ll say, ‘GPs could not only breed successfully in plastic nest boxes, but breeding success in these artificial nests was greater than in natural ones. And the use of plastic greatly increases the lifespan of the nest.’
My father’s map will have directed us to one of these boxes. A stake in the ground will confirm that we’ve arrived at R346. The box will be half-submerged amongst the toscanite. I’ll lift the rock we use to secure the lid and open the box. I’ll hear a body shift underneath. I’ll open the internal lid and stick my hand in. Many GPs are placid; this one not so much. ‘Ah yes, Reddy 346,’ my supervisor will say, casually, later that night, ‘he’s the crankiest on the island.’ My arm will recoil from the bite and R346 will give a disgruntled squawk, but then we’ll both compose ourselves. The bird’s round black eye will look into mine.
‘Come and have a look, Dad,’ I’ll say. My father will keep his distance. As gently as I can, I’ll clutch him around the wings, my palm against the oily grey back, my fore- and middle-fingers around his neck. My other palm will steady the bird’s bat-wing feet. I’ll take note of the number on the metal band around his leg. The ashen face will tremble and the smooth black beak will twist. Inside the box, amongst a few shredded palm fronds, will be the egg, gleaming and smooth. Before I replace the struggling bird, I’ll say, ‘Come and have a look, Dad.’ But his white face will twitch like the bird, and his feet will remain rooted amongst the rocks.
It’ll be the same face he’ll make, the same stance he’ll hold, a month before our visit to the island. The sale of the house will have gone through and he’ll be standing in the backyard under the shade of the old spotted gum tree. I’ll have spent the morning doing the final wiping down of the surfaces and the sweeping of the veranda. He’ll have stood in the garden looking at the tree. I’ll have been patient, understanding, fulfilling the promise to my mother to humour him, to protect him. But everyone has their limits. ‘Dad, you have to do something.’ He’ll still not budge. So my decision to ask him here won’t really be an invitation, more of an enforced recovery plan. I’ll draw up the list of essential items for him and fill his backpack and shove him into the car for the journey north. I’ll cajole him into the boat. All the while, he’ll be like a branch of petrified wood. All the while, I’ll wonder why I’m doing this.
Towards the end of the afternoon we’ll need a break so I’ll lead him right up the hill, through the dense trees until we emerge into the sunshine at the top of the cliff. It’s a spectacular view: you don’t realise how claustrophobic it can be under the canopy until you face the expanse of the grey ocean and the flat blue sky. Dad won’t want to go too close to the edge so he’ll hold back, half-submerged in the bush. I’ll stand on the rock shelf so I can get a better view of Cathedral Rock. It’s actually a separate islet linked to the island by a boulder field: a tower of basalt adjacent to the island, like a craggy lighthouse. I’ll want to see if the Peregrine falcon is nesting there this season. I won’t be able to see the nest, but there’ll be enough guano splattered down the sides of the tower to indicate her residency. My father will crawl out a little further and he’ll wedge himself next to me. The wind will be light and the air fresh and clear. I won’t expect a conversation from him, and I won’t get one. Together, separately, we’ll look out at the ruffling water.
A boat will come round the southern tip of the island. A small trawler, maybe two or three figures hidden under the red roof of the deck. We’ll watch as the figures cast their nets. Bait fishing, most likely, before heading out to deeper waters hoping to find a school of larger fish. The figures on the boat probably won’t see us, or maybe won’t care that we’ve seen them. But they’ll definitely see the man who’ll step out onto a rock ledge further along the cliff, his long hair waving in the breeze like a halo. His chest will be puffed out; it’ll look like it could be possible for him to stride over to the pinnacle of Cathedral Rock. My supervisor will take his sunglasses off his forehead and use them to flash the setting sunlight into the eyes of the men below. He’ll call out, ‘It’s illegal to net so close to shore.’ They won’t be able to hear, but they’ll get the message. My supervisor will give the men a friendly wave and then jump off the rock back into the forest.
That night, over rice and vegies, I’ll be looking at my father and my supervisor sitting on canvas chairs leaning against the igloo. Mosquitos will fizz in the night air. We’ll be able to hear the bark of the penguins in the bay below and, once or twice, the whistle of the GPs. My supervisor will have his hair tied back so you can see the line of grey running through it like the bride of Frankenstein. My dad will have collected a few dog-eared books from the igloo library and will be searching for birds that he’s familiar with. They won’t exactly be talking to each other: Dad will locate a bird from a book and my supervisor will spin a yarn about it. ‘The interesting thing about magpies,’ he will say and then launch into an anecdote about how the female does all the work: selecting the nest site, building it, incubating the eggs and feeding the young. Birds of paradise? The male is a tease, flashing a dance to win over the female, fluffing his wings up and fluttering them like a Victorian lady’s fan. But in the end, the female is left to raise the chicks on her own. It’ll be clear that my supervisor is enjoying himself, embellishing the stories like a bird of paradise’s dance. Maybe my dad will be happy, too—well, as happy as he can possibly bring himself to be. I’ll remember the moments of near-happiness of my childhood, little ports in my father’s storm before he drifted off to the other place—wherever it is he drifted off to. My dad will fish out a kookaburra from the books. The page will be loose—the book’s seen better days—and Dad will hold the picture of the bird like an offering. ‘Now, their social group is interesting,’ my supervisor will say, scratching the back of his neck. ‘It normally comprises a dominant pair and a collection of helpers to feed the young: older siblings, usually, or maiden aunts. But unlike other cooperative breeders, when the dominant pair dies the helpers don’t inherit the territory.’
I’ll flick a buzzing bug away from my face.
‘As for the GP,’ my supervisor will say, without even needing a cue from my dad, ‘the incubation and natal periods are completely cooperative.’ Incubation for the Gould’s petrel takes six to seven weeks. The parents take turns to forage for food. The male takes the first shift, which is sometimes thirteen or fourteen days long. The female waits on the egg without leaving it—not even for food. ‘They can go without food for extended periods,’ my supervisor will say. ‘They can manage a loss of a third of their body weight. Like camels. The ships of the ocean,’ and he’ll laugh at his joke. ‘The search for food takes them as far away as South Australia. It’s the convergence of warm and cold oceanic fronts. More nutrients can be held in suspension in cold water; more food lives in the warmer currents: phytoplankton, zooplankton, shrimps, squid. One flies there and back and the other waits. Then it’s her turn: all the way to the bight and back again.’
I’ll see a question forming in my dad’s mind, the same question I asked when I first heard the story. I’ll ask the question for him. ‘Why do they travel so far? Couldn’t they choose somewhere nearby?’
‘They’ve been doing this for thousands of years,’ my supervisor will say. ‘Things were probably a lot closer when they started.’
In the morning, over muesli, my supervisor will still be spinning yarns. He will be recounting an event from 1995, what he calls the pilchard ‘hiccup’. During that season there was a major drop in breeding success: less than twenty percent, as opposed to the normal more than fifty percent success rate. It was the pilchards, he’ll explain. Fish farmers introduced frozen pilchards into their schools; these had a pathogen—a kind of herpes. The pathogen spread to oceanic pilchards. From the pilchards to the kingfish—‘and then it followed the food chain,’ he’ll say, carrying his wiped-clean bowl into the igloo.
My dad will be sitting on the edge of his foam-mattress bed, hunched by the curve of the igloo ceiling, listening.
‘Of course, that’s got nothing on the megastorms of the 2020s. There, the depletion was—’
I’ll take a swig of canvas-flavoured water and say, ‘Come on, Dad.’
We’ll be spending the day in the smaller basalt gully to the north of the igloo. My supervisor will tramp alongside us for a few minutes and then disappear into the scrub, off to his mystery project. The figtree roots and blocks of crumbling granite will create a mazy path. The northern dyke is narrower but lighter than the southern site—there are some gaps in the canopy and, at the opening of the gully below, you can see the orange rocks of the shoreline and the glistening ocean. We’ll be skidding downhill, stepping between wide-leafed ferns and dead palm fronds. I’ll be hoping we’ll find a hatchling in amongst these leaves: it’ll be too early in the breeding cycle, but it’s been documented that the seasons have been shifting, incrementally, over the last fifteen or so years.
On this particular morning my father will seem less gangly, less tentative with his calls. He’ll stumble over loose rocks but this won’t freak him out. When he nearly steps on a nest and the bird emits a peep of protest his face won’t blanch. When I reach into the nests and ease out the birds he’ll still keep his distance but he’ll be paying more attention. I’ll say, ‘See here—look at the nasal cavities’ and glide my finger along the curved black beak and he’ll nod and almost move towards me. With another bird, I’ll show the underside of the GP, the pure white of her chest, a sharp contrast to the sooty top of the wings. When they fly, the heat of the white feathers gives the bird a subtle lift. The bird will peek her head around, white face framed by a slate-grey cap, and she will clack her beak in Dad’s direction. He’ll barely flinch.
At one point during the mid-morning, I’ll look over at him. A greeny-yellow glob of sunlight will have made its way through the branches, warming his face. His eyes will be closed and his face will be smooth, pale, like it’s shifted into neutral gear. I’ll want to say something to him, make a sappy comment like, ‘It’s good to have you here.’ But I won’t. I’ll consider saying something my supervisor always says, which is, ‘It’s a place for the birds. Our presence here is a very minor one.’ Instead I’ll say, ‘Where next, Dad?’
When my mother dies I will, of course, be sad, devastated, but I’ll also have had time to prepare for it. It will have been a proper goodbye. When we’re together—at home, at the hospital, in the hospice—Mum and I will talk about her death as part of the larger scheme of things. She’ll give me her necklace with the moonstone pendant and ask me if I want to keep any of her clothes and scarves, or would it be all right if she donated them to the women’s refuge? We’ll piece together some memories from my childhood, and hers, and we’ll compile a list of invitees for the funeral. There’ll be an obvious gap in the conversation, something that Mum is circling round, and I won’t be eager to lead her towards it. She’ll dip into silence. Eventually, very close to the end, we’ll be in a rectangle of sunlight in the hospice courtyard. A lime-green hospital blanket will be tucked round her angular skeleton.
‘Look after your father,’ she’ll say. ‘You know he’s always been…’ She’ll be clutching at the air.
As I’m growing up, we’ll never talk about what my father has always been. I’ll love him—of course I’ll love him—I’ll love the stories he tells me and the family trips to the beach or that time Mum and I will visit him in the bush and we’ll explore the ruined schoolhouse together. But each time he drifts away to that place—wherever it is that he goes—I’ll lose something of him. He’ll come back and he’ll read me another story—or I’ll read him one—but it’ll feel smaller, more distant. He’ll feel eroded. It’ll just get so exhausting. Eventually, I’ll close off thinking about him. This is what always happens—we get caught up in new entanglements, the lure of other lives. I’ll move into share houses and fawn over girlfriends and become immersed in new ideas. But it’ll be a bit more than that. Sometimes when I call home Mum will say something like, ‘Your dad’s been a bit …’ and I’ll deflect the conversation. When we get together for family dinner or Christmas it will be friendly, polite, detached.
Getting everything arranged for the funeral will be a challenge. He’ll be like this pool of dark matter in the centre of the house; it’ll feel like I have to step over him to get to the kitchen or back to the bedrooms. I’ll have to manipulate him into his suit and drag him into the chapel at the crematorium. I won’t discuss if he wants to do a eulogy. After the minister speaks, there’ll be a cavernous pause. No one will look at him. Slowly, achingly, he’ll shadow his way to the lectern. It’ll start as a mumble, not directed to us. It’ll be a jumble of memories, cramped and convoluted. It’ll be too much about the details. The wrong details. He will say nothing about her as an English teacher, her volunteering at the refuge, the fundraising work she used to do for Planet Ark. Just a meandering anecdote about a bushwalk they took once in the Blue Mountains: her taking him into the depths of Leura valley and getting him to listen, really listen. ‘I always said she rescued me,’ he’ll say. He’ll falter, surprised that he said this out loud. After a few minutes his voice will warble and another sentence—something about a flock of birds he once saw down at Little Bay—will hang, unfinished, in the air.
‘Look after your father,’ my mother will say.
I won’t know what to say back.
He’ll be standing in front of a silent crowd, open-mouthed, palms pressed into the blond-pine lectern. I’ll get up and take him back to his seat.
The nest record sheets will take us further downhill, over piles of slippery basalt. There’ll be less of a canopy here and the sound of the ocean will echo in the hush of the forest. The last nest we’ll survey will be in the middle of what seems like a volcanic crater, an amphitheatre of jagged rocks. My supervisor will say that this depression was artificially created. During the Second World War, as they were preparing for the battle of the Coral Sea, troops used the island as a training ground, shooting up the branches—and probably the birds—for target practice. We’ll still find ordinance fragments in the undergrowth; there’ll be a collection on the shelf in the igloo. My supervisor will mention he thinks the indent might be a shell crater. ‘It’s too perfectly round,’ he’ll say, ‘the edges too perfectly level.’ It certainly does feel different from the knotted jumble of roots and branches surrounding it. As we step into the crater, we’ll be captured by the glare of the noon sun. The flat blue sky will seem solid, like Perspex.
We’ll find a stone ledge and sit in the sun for a few minutes. ‘Dad,’ I’ll say and find myself talking about the life of the Gould’s petrel just after fledging. I’ll be threading an obvious analogy, but you’ve got to start somewhere. After fledging, the young birds leave for three to five years, sometimes longer. During this time, they don’t return to the island. It’s believed they spend the entire time at sea on their own. Like many birds, they even sleep on the wing, shutting down one hemisphere of their brain during flight, keeping the other hemisphere connected to the alert eye. The half-awake half-asleep bird courses her path, on air currents, searching for fish in the middle of the ocean. We don’t know what makes them decide to return to the island. As a scientist it’s not my job to speculate on what they must think when they find themselves spiralling above the cabbage trees. But sometimes I like to imagine what it must be like to dive into the forest and pinpoint the exact location of their hatching, to find your way home.
My father will listen to my story. He won’t say anything, but I’ll sense a kind of subdiscussion taking place in his mind: his hand, I’ll see, will twitch, as if it might be lifted up and rested on my shoulder. I’ll almost place my palm over the back of his hand.
On our way back to the igloo we’ll decide not to clamber back up the hill. ‘It’ll be easier to slide down to the ocean and skirt our way round the rocks,’ I’ll tell my Dad. But in fact it’ll be slower-going than I’d imagined. The wind will have picked up and we’ll keep getting sprayed by the choppy water. My dad will seem even less sure of himself on the wet wobbly rocks. We’ll cling to the boulders and lurch our way round the perimeter of the island.
We’ll find ourselves in a recess in the rocks, momentarily protected by the wind. I’ll suggest that we have a bit of a breather and we’ll crouch on the pale-green and saffron lichen. There’ll be a sugary-sour smell ingrained into the rocks. My father will be peering at something that has been scrawled into the deepest corner of the alcove. It will be a black ovoid shape. Inside the oval will be a smaller oval and then a smaller one, and in the centre a fat black dot. A lopsided target. Spray-painted on, and probably recently. The official status of the island is that it’s a nature reserve and the only access is approved by Environment and Climate Services, but we’ll know others come here. My supervisor will tell me that sometimes he’ll find shards of fish scales on the rocks near the landing site, and he once came across a rusting yellow penknife lying in the sun. Another time he’ll find the lock on the igloo door jimmied and, inside, the floor scattered with the leaves of bird books. Once, even, he’ll discover three breeding boxes knocked over, palm fronds and feathers strewn over the hill. In the alcove my dad and I will notice a cairn of tarnished beer cans, and chinks in the rock face between the black lines of the target. Next to the cans there’ll be small collections of bones, a few desiccated carcasses. I’ll scrutinise the leathery cadavers and note that some of them are the size and shape of a petrel.
‘It follows the food chain,’ my father will say, his words reverberating against the rocks. He’ll be as surprised as I am that he said it out loud.
That night, in the dark, I’ll be lying in my narrow shelf bed. Dad and I will have turned in early—it’ll have been an exhausting day. My supervisor will have stayed up; he’ll be outside sitting on one of the canvas chairs listening to the noises of the evening.
The darkness will form a solid frame around my body.
I’ll hear the sound of the canopy creaking above the igloo. Or maybe it’ll be something else: the sound of someone quietly tapping the side of the bed. The tapping will form a sort-of melody in my mind. I’ll find myself slipping into a place I don’t want to go. I’ll be thinking:
Tap tap tap tap: the rabbits rip up the forest understorey.
Tap tap tap tap: pilchards dead from herpes float in a black sea.
Tap tap tap tap: the nets drag away the last remaining fish.
Tap tap tap tap: the bullets ricochet off the rocks.
Tap tap tap tap: the storm waves batter and erode the cliff face.
Tap tap tap tap: the island floats further and further away from the continent.
‘Dad, please,’ I’ll cry into the darkness. ‘Will you go to sleep?’
We’ll be groping our way up through the palm fronds. My dad will be plodding behind me. ‘Pick up the pace, Dad,’ I’ll want to say. We’ll be back in the first gully, surveying the last section of the data sheets. We’ll have doubled back a couple of times: Dad will have missed a few of the markers on the page or I’ll have overlooked a stake in the ground. Edging down the gully, I’ll lose my footing on the scree and take a tumble. I’ll stretch out my arms in front of me and my hands will scrape against the bark of a cabbage tree. I’ll wait for my father to say something, but he’ll just stand there, gormless, looking at his own feet.
Most of the birds will have been quiet that day—a few flutterings, but mainly they’ll have been docile clumps of feathers. Some nests will be empty. My dad will make a note on the sheet. Most birds will be brooding, an egg warming underneath. No hatchlings. I’ll place another bird back into her box. My dad will yawn—a big, full-face yawn—and that’ll set me off yawning too.
‘Just a few more to check, Dad,’ I’ll say.
He’ll nod, but it’ll be like he’s not really there.
The night before, I’ll have crawled out of bed to get away from my father’s insomnia.
‘It’s such a balmy night,’ my supervisor will murmur as the canvas chair outside the igloo scrapes against the earth beside him.
I’ll tell him the stories that have been tapping in my brain. He’ll listen, and nod, and scratch his eyebrows. He’ll wait until all the stories are finished.
He’ll let his fingers follow the thread of grey in his long hair. He’ll say:
‘If you were in dire straits, if the island was up shit creek, and all the birds were dying, which would you pick?’
‘Which bird, or which species?’
‘Which bird. You have ten pairs left, say.’ His tone will be careful, measured, as if he’s said this out loud before.
‘I don’t want to think that,’ I’ll say.
‘We may have to.’
The mosquitos will shimmer around our faces. The canopy above us will creak. Tap tap tap tap.
We’ll head west, up the mossy slope. We’ll squeeze our way through a teepee of knotted vines. Dad will direct me to another metal stake. A yellow cattle eartag: Y271. The nest will be in a natural rock cavity, held within the lazy curve of a fig-tree trunk. A ragged-mouthed portal.
I’ll reach my hand inside and my fingertips will brush against downy feathers.
‘Dad,’ I’ll say. He’ll be standing between two tall cabbage-tree trunks, holding the data sheet against his chest like a security blanket.
‘Dad,’ I’ll say again, ‘you’ll want to see this.’ As gently as I possibly can, I’ll draw out the nestling. The chick will wriggle, fluff its wings. Grey and soft and fragile. It will look like those clumps of lint we used to scrape out of the door of the dryer. I’ll cradle it between my hands.
He’ll edge his way closer. He’ll steady himself, his palm pushing into the rough bark. His mouth will open and close. The bird will twitch its dodo-curved beak.
I’ll offer him the chick to touch but he’ll teeter back. ‘I can’t,’ he’ll say.
‘Please, Dad,’ I’ll say. The body will feel warm and alive in my hands. I’ll hold the bird out in front of me, like an offering. The golden-green light of the forest will make the feathers glow and hum. ‘Please, Dad,’ I’ll say again.
I won’t know why it’ll seem so vital for him to touch the downy bird. I’ll know exactly why. This bird will fledge and fly and transcend. It will follow the rim of the Pacific: trace the currents of the Tasman Sea, hairpin along the coasts of South America, trace the scent of fish along the line of the equator. It will sleep and soar and dive and drift. And then it will return. It will circle the island and fly down through the canopy and land, right here, right on the spine of this fig-tree root. It will be part of a flock of a thousand birds, or two hundred, or ten. It doesn’t matter. It will return.
I’ll offer this living being to my father. His face will contort. ‘Please, Dad.’ He’ll lean forward, his fingers clutching at the air. In my hands, the feathers will be soft. He’ll bend down and reach out his hand.
The chick will flick its neck, twist its beak.
His hand will recoil.
‘Dad,’ I’ll say.
‘I can’t, I—’
‘Dad.’ I’ll feel the body struggling in my hands.
‘It’s too—I just—’
His arms will be dithering in the air.
‘I can’t. We can’t. All those things—the rabbits and the poisoned fish and—’
‘And the birds survived, Dad. This one will survive you picking it up and feeling its feathers.’
But the pebbles under his feet will scatter. He’ll say, ‘I can’t—I can’t—’ and he’ll scurry off, over the crumbling rocks, away from the breathing bird in my hands.
I’ll find him out on the clifftop, looking over the expanse. The wind will be pounding; he’ll be sheltering inside a cleft in the rocks. Absent-mindedly—or maybe full-mindedly—he’ll be stroking the palm of his right hand with his left thumb.
I’ll ease myself into the cleft beside him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I’ll say.
He’ll squint at the ocean.
‘I put it back in the nest,’ I’ll say. ‘Everything will be all right,’ I’ll add, redundantly, possibly untruthfully.
We’ll wait in the constricted space. The wind will whip over the top of my head. I’ll wrap my arms around my chest. We’ll watch the grey waves rumple.
He’ll say, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Dad,’ I’ll say.
‘Do you remember Charlotte? The first Charlotte?’
He’ll be staring at the ocean like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, or around his neck. ‘I’m still so sorry—I didn’t mean to—’
I’ll see him going off to that place—wherever it is—that place where he always wants to go.
‘And there’s always more to come,’ he’ll want to say.
‘You can’t keep telling the same story, Dad,’ I’ll want to reply.
Instead of that conversation, we’ll huddle in the crack between the rocks and listen to the hollow cry of the wind. He’ll look into the sky in that crumpled way he always does.
Over the ocean—a long way off—a single bird will be flying. It will be arcing its way towards us, skimming low against the slate-grey water and then up into the pink afternoon sky. It will tilt, stretching its wings vertically, so its span looks like a shard of frosted glass. It will turn away, and the white of its belly will be replaced by the grey of its back. It will fly close, shadowing over us and then diving down into the forest.
‘Aves admittant,’ I’ll say.
Looking at the bird, my father will say, ‘I’m sorry about—’ He’ll sweep his hand, palm up, in a circle. A gesture that incorporates everything.
In the heaviness of the night, my supervisor will spin another yarn. This one will be about Roman augurs. ‘They used birds to predict the future,’ he’ll say explaining how they surveyed the arc of a bird’s flight—or its entrails. Whenever a matter of importance needed to be resolved, the city would call upon the College of Augurs. The augurs would make their way to the top of a hill at dawn and ask the gods for a sign. They’d sit and watch the birds. With a stick, they’d draw a series of lines on the ground. Two straight lines intersecting each other—north–south; east–west. The spaces would correspond to different quadrants of the sky. If the bird flew in a particular direction, in a particular way, into a particular quadrant, then the augurs could make a prediction. The pronouncement would either be aves admittant (‘the birds allow it’) or alio die (‘another day’).
‘We’re doing the same, in a way,’ my supervisor will murmur. ‘Using the birds—and the island, and the water—to see what the future will be. But we can’t wait for another day. It may be a future without them. Or without us.’
‘I don’t want to think that,’ I’ll say.
‘We don’t have a choice,’ he’ll reply.
He’ll shift in his seat. ‘We’ll do what we can,’ he’ll say. ‘When we translocated the GPs to Boondelbah, way back when, I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced it would work. It was a painstaking process. We had to weigh and measure them, assess their plumage to determine their age, shift them into nesting boxes, ferry them over in the Zodiac, feed them by inserting segments of squid and fish into their oesophagus. Then we had to wait. Not just for the fledging, but for the next breeding season, or maybe the one after that. Even then, it wasn’t plain sailing. The worst day for me was when we saw what happened to the first hatchling to die. A fledgling had returned with a mate and set up a nest in his natal box. We watched the brooding process: the disappearance of one for a week, two weeks; the other nesting, still, silent. Then they’d swap. When the egg finally hatched it felt like the birth of my own child.’ He’ll be quiet for a few moments. The lines around his eyes will tighten.
‘What happened?’ I’ll ask.
‘A rockfall destroyed the nest box.’
The forest canopy will breathe above us. The lines on my supervisor’s face will expand and contract.
He’ll look at me. ‘You know what we did?’ he’ll say. ‘We replaced the crushed box, put another plastic container in its place. The next season the brooding pair returned and produced another egg.’
Above us, we’ll hear the whoosh of a bird on the wing, a quiet whistle as it calls in the air. Coming home, or flying away?
And then he’ll tell me about his side project, what he’s really been doing on the island. He’ll have spent the last two days not watching the flights of the birds, but tracing the rim of the island, measuring the sea level, noting the shifts in water temperature. ‘These last three years,’ he’ll tell me, ‘the tides have been different. Cabbage Tree is doing all right at the moment, but Boondelbah lost thirty-four breeding boxes with the flooding of the basalt valley. The islands are going,’ he’ll say, ‘one by one.’
I’ll think of my nestling flying home to a swelling ocean, only the crown of Cathedral Rock reaching out of the water. But maybe there’s something we can do. Translocation has worked before and it might work again.
We’ll talk through logistics, the precarious processes. I won’t yet be convinced, but my supervisor will say that he’s going to try, if the birds allow it.
‘But where …?’ I’ll ask.
My supervisor will tilt his head towards the north-east. ‘Broughton looks good, for the moment.’
‘And then?’
‘Another island? And another after that?’
On the clifftop, my father will be sweeping his hand, palm up, in a circle. He’ll say, ‘Doesn’t this—doesn’t all of this—make you angry? Doesn’t it sadden you?’
‘We don’t have time for sadness,’ I’ll say to him. ‘Come on, we’ve got work to do.’