Southern Boobialla (Myoporum insulare)
Often known as Tucker Bush or Native Juniper, it is a salt-tolerant plant that can grow as a tree up to six metres high or take a prostrate form, particularly on cliffs and rocky headlands. It flourishes on sand-dunes and in coastal regions. In summer the small white flowers can have quite a long blooming season, which is then followed by a crop of smooth round purple fruits about six millimetres in diameter. The fruits are inclined to be sourish in taste but are not unpleasant. Although the fruits of the M. insulare are safe to eat in small quantities, those of some Myoporum species have been found to be toxic to humans, so identification needs to be precise.
Atkinson’s Guide
Daybreak: Go outside for exercise and toilet.
Giving myself permission to think about my parents’ deaths seems to have freed me in some way, and I spent a night without nightmares, just a strange series of dreams about rock-climbing across water-filled abysses. I even found myself thinking what an interesting place this island would be for climbing, which made me laugh out loud. You’re a prisoner here, for God’s sake, Alix! Get a grip. It’s the daymares that really get to me now, my mind constantly filled with images of Dave and Matt, determined to find me before their time is up.
Today’s the day when the four of us were booked to return to the mainland on the Dodgy brothers’ boat. I can’t believe we only arrived last Thursday. Four days. It feels more like four weeks. I don’t know what I’ll do if they don’t get on the boat, and I don’t yet know what chances there are of escape from the island if they do. What their departure would give me is an opportunity to seek out all possible ways of attracting attention and do a thorough exploration of what this isolated landmass has to offer.
I’m going to make my toilet break very brief this morning in case they make one last thorough search before they leave. If they leave. Then my usual timetable will be completely disrupted because I have a dangerous plan.
6.00–8.00 a.m.: Housekeeping.
Housekeeping today was all about weapons. After an uneventful toilet run, I dressed with considerable difficulty in clean underpants, jeans, clean socks, boots, and a used but not too dirty shirt, giving my trusty Amnesty T-shirt a well-earned airing. Then I filled my anorak pockets with necessities: the morning water ration decanted into a specimen bag and tied securely; eight boobialla fruits likewise; knife in the easy-to-reach top pocket; rock and hammer in the wide front pocket. After a bit of thought, I added matches and a pen. A pen in the eye always takes them by surprise. Sometimes Kathryn’s maxims have a lot of sense to them.
8.00–9.00 a.m.: First meal.
Going without water so I could carry some with me seemed like a good idea in the planning, but I’d forgotten how dry my throat gets in the early morning. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to last until midday, but couldn’t afford to increase my water ration. In fact, I’ll have to start reducing it from now on. At any rate, no matter how frugal I am, the water will run out before the food.
Of course I know from Atkinson’s Guide the famous ‘rule of three’, that a person can survive only three days without water and that the daily requirement is two litres per person. I have been dangerously below that limit, but there are other factors to be taken into account, such as exposure. Living in the cave should enable me to survive for longer with less, especially as I am only going out in the cool of the evening and early morning. Food helps too, providing fluid and also salts and minerals. I don’t know how safe my regime is, but I can’t see any alternative with the resources I have available.
I excused myself from the need to eat my breakfast slowly, on the premise that if they don’t leave any supplies in the cabin I would soon run out of food anyway. I grabbed handfuls of nuts and sultanas in succession and stuffed them into my mouth. Despite the fact that it was my own rules I was breaking, I felt wicked and energised. Then I sat like a big fat boa constrictor digesting its prey and paid for my excess by feeling full and uncomfortable.
10.00 a.m.–12.00 p.m.: Write up diary.
I didn’t bother to change position, since I’d be going out quite soon, but I did my exercises diligently, and brought my diary up to date. When I ran out of things to do, nervousness hit me and I had to try some yoga breathing, but it didn’t help much. And then came the sounds I’d been dreading – the heavy tread of two pairs of boots and Dave’s voice yelling: ‘Alix! Where are you? The boat’s coming today!’, and then Matt’s voice, not yelling but conversational, addressing Dave but perhaps hoping I’d be able to hear. ‘Don’t work yourself up, mate. She’ll be there when the boat comes.’
‘Think so? She’s really stubborn.’
‘I know so, Dave, because your little friend didn’t steal any of our food. She’ll be starving by now, so she’ll come crawling and grovelling back. I’m looking forward to that.’
He laughed, a jolly little laugh.
‘Then what?’
And Matt laughed again. Then suddenly his tone changed. ‘Then we’ll see.’
One set of footsteps receded and then Dave’s voice came again. ‘Alix, don’t be scared. I won’t let him hurt you. I’m your friend.’ Now his voice, still calling ‘Alix!’ also began to recede and I managed with great effort to recover from the shock of their presence, finish my writing, and prepare for what had to be done.
4.00–5.00 p.m.: Meal and water.
It’s now four o’clock and I’ve been out of the cave for what seems like hours. The boat was booked for noon, and I worked on the assumption that no matter what their plans, they’d go to the jetty to meet it, but I still set out with considerable trepidation.
My main problem was that I needed to be able to see the boat arrive and leave without being seen myself. I also needed to reassure myself that they were not still scouting my side of the island. The only way to do that was to go to the edge of the valley and take a look. So, knife in hand, heart in mouth, that’s what I did. The food and weapons slowed me down, but I couldn’t risk leaving them along the way for searchers to find. The need to wipe out every footprint made the journey even more nerve-wracking. After each step I had to turn my back on my destination in order to ensure that my tea-tree branch scuffed out every tell-tale mark of passage.
The only sign of life was a flock of birds that rose from the underbrush, disturbed by my careful footsteps. I took that as a heartening indication that the area had been undisturbed since Matt and Dave had passed through, but continued to proceed cautiously. Nothing else stirred, and I began gradually to relax a bit and think about where I could find a viewing point.
On the first morning on the island I had tried climbing the height above the sandblow that traverses the island, without success. Thickets of tea-tree and sheoak were so knotted and tangled by the wind that there seemed no way through, so then I turned my attention to a rocky point that jutted out of the western side of the island. This little promontory was well out of view of both jetty and cabin, but I didn’t want to be visible to the men on the boat as it arrived. Keeping as much cover as possible in the low-growing scrub, I scouted among the rocks for a possible hiding place. My first foray was unsuccessful, but on the second time round I ventured out towards the edge of the rocks where they formed a finger out over the sea. Feeling very exposed and looking nervously behind me every moment I found, under a ledge of rock, what looked like some kind of burrow.
One of the reasons I chose the north-western end, where my cave is, was what I found on the morning of the first day when I went to explore the south-eastern end, which looked, with its sand dunes and low scrub, far more accessible than the west. It was also closest to the cabin, and I strolled along the flat open sandy area that joined the cabin and the jetty, turned into the sandhills and began a gentle climb. As I wandered further into the dunes I began to notice burrows, and from their size I guessed that this was a mutton-bird rookery. As I realised this I also remembered other creatures that were attracted to rookeries, and went cold. Among the dunes were slender dark objects I had subliminally taken to be washed-up sticks, or ropes. Lots of slender dark objects, one of which then began to move.
So did I. There is a tradition that geologists are unfazed by snakes, but this is definitely not true in my case. I fear them with a dread that goes way beyond the rational. How I got out of there without putting my feet down on the ground I don’t know, but I swear I managed it.
The odd thing is that I have only ever once been threatened with this particular danger, and that was not in Australia at all, but in good old safe-as-houses England. I’d been swimming with a group of climbers at the end of a hard day’s climb in one of those legendary crystal-clear pools I’d found so hard to discover, when suddenly a moving object brushed my leg underwater. I scrambled out quick-smart and yelled for the others to do the same, and we all watched in fascinated horror as what must have been an adder slid out of the other side of the pool, probably trying to get as far away as possible from us, and disappeared into the undergrowth. I don’t know about my companions, but even though it was quite a small and unassuming little creature, and probably far more scared of me than I was of it, I never entered any kind of wild waterway in the UK again.
To be on the safe side, I carefully memorised Professor Atkinson’s advice on dealing with snakes and I believe it has helped to prevent any further incidents of this kind. In the bush I always wear above-ankle boots, thick socks and long pants, which is precisely how I am dressed today. I normally wear gloves when collecting firewood and try to keep to marked paths whenever possible. I am also meticulous about stepping over logs the Atkinson way, which involves climbing to the top of the log, looking carefully down and only then stepping off on the other side. And of course I never, ever, put my hand into any kind of hole or crevice.
Faced with entering a burrow and perhaps sheltering in it for hours on end, all my fears returned. It didn’t look like the home of either bird or serpent, and it appeared undisturbed as if it had been empty for some time. It was only just large enough to fit one scrunched-up human, and it took some deep breathing and mustering of courage before I could bring myself to crawl in.
Once I did my fears subsided. There were no signs of habitation and, like my own cave, it seemed to be the result of natural forces, and not the work of animal or human. Unlike my cave, it had filled with debris, but apart from this it was fairly clean and well ventilated and afforded a panoramic view of the ocean. No boat could arrive from the mainland without being in full view from this eyrie and I immediately set about making it as invisible as possible to anybody approaching by boat.
Again keeping a wary eye out, I backtracked and found two small tea-tree bushes, about the height of the entrance. I pulled them out by the roots as gently as I could, mentally apologising to them for my necessary vandalism, then spent some time filling in the ground and covering the area with leaf litter. Next, with considerable difficulty because I still had to cover my tracks with the smaller branches I was carrying, I hefted them onto my back and made my way, keeping to the rocks where possible, back to my new hiding place.
I left the two bushes outside while I settled my belongings in my shelter, then pulled them across the entrance to form a hide, so that I could see out but no-one would be able to see in. Then I waited.
As a special treat and to relieve both the nervousness and the monotony, I allowed myself to eat my snack half an hour early. Perhaps it was the effect of hunger, but the boobialla fruits were a pleasant surprise. They didn’t look promising. Pea-sized and an alarming dark purple, they had a worrying resemblance to deadly nightshade berries. I bit into the first one tentatively, and found it tasted like a rather sour and salty plum. As I ate one, then another, the taste grew on me and I enjoyed the aftertaste for some minutes.
I dropped the large central seed-cases into a specimen bag and planned to scatter them when I next collected some fruits. That way I wasn’t being a complete environmental vandal by preventing the seeds from germinating. Whether the birds that would normally eat and distribute them would be interested in such thoroughly chewed pits was another matter, but at least I could try to do the right thing. Although what the right thing is does become much less clear-cut when it’s a matter of your own survival.
Then all thoughts of food were forgotten. First, the sound of an engine, then the boat, with the unmistakable Mick Duffy at the helm, hove into view. Of Kel there was no sign, which was strange. It had seemed like a two-person boat at least. I didn’t know how long they would stop, but I thought I heard voices about twenty minutes later, and soon after that the boat appeared again, heading for the mainland. I craned to see who was on it. A mist had come up over the sea and the figures were no longer recognisable, but I counted three males and recognised Lana by her bright hair that no mist could disguise. My heart thumped with incredulous relief. It seemed I was wrong, and both Dave and Matt had left as they had planned.
I was alone on the island. I still had to find some way of safely attracting attention, but at least no-one was coming after me.
I found myself shaking and unable to move, so great was my surprise. I drank my water ration and scrambled out of the shelter, not bothering to brush away my traces. But somehow I couldn’t believe it without checking. I climbed up the ridge to try to find a vantage point from which to see the cabin. Just to be sure.
Eventually finding a gap in the scrub, I peered through and saw . . . nothing. The cabin was closed up, the barbecue covered, and the fishing rods were gone. But I still couldn’t bring myself to go down there, and anyway I needed to return to the cave to get the rest of my stuff. Still, superstitiously, I kept on covering my tracks this close to enemy territory, even though I felt assured that the enemy had gone, at least for now.
I will stay in the cave for tonight. Just knowing I’m not confined here any more makes me feel quite sentimental towards my shelter, and despite its many discomforts I am almost reluctant to leave it.
Sunset: Second toilet run. Prepare for sleep. Finish diary.
This could be my second last toilet run. I take the opportunity to sit on the headland, writing my diary, breathing in the sea air, remembering how Jonathan used to call it ‘ozone’, and that I would always remind him that ozone actually smells more like chlorine. The feeling as I sit here is almost anticlimactic, as I realise I may be leaving my cave for good. I decide that tomorrow morning, before I go anywhere, I will venture down that rock stairway and explore the little beach.
It’s almost completely dark by the time I’m settled for the night, and I have to use the torch to write the final entry in my diary at 5.56 p.m. on Monday the 16th of April.
* * *
I’m so stirred up I can’t sleep, my brain whirring like a windmill in a hurricane.
To calm myself down I begin to make plans for my new, if limited, freedom. Basically I’m exchanging cave confinement for island confinement, but there’s no question about which is preferable, so I’m nervous but excited. If I can get into the cabin, I’ll have no more food problems, and even if not, I’ll have plenty of water, and can cook bush food on the outside fireplace, making survival certain instead of, as it seemed until recently, coming to its time limit.
I’ll stick to my plan to go down the rock staircase, partly out of curiosity, because I’ve been so longing to do it, and partly out of caution. If I can’t get into the cabin, and I have to see that as a possibility, I’ll need to exploit all available sources of food. For the same reason I’ll stick to rationing my supplies until I’m sure of replacements, but I won’t need to follow my timetable, and can stay out all morning if I want and explore this whole area, since I may not need to come back here again.
I should be at the cabin by lunchtime and if all goes well, I may be able to have a proper meal to celebrate. Fantasies of wood-fired stews of shellfish and karkalla leaves finally let me drift off . . .
Dreams. About rock-climbing with Jonathan and Lana. Jonathan is obsessed with the idea that I want to climb with Lana more than with him. He’s dangling on a rope, threatening to cut it, saying, ‘Choose. It’s me or her.’
Which is strange because Lana is about the last person I’d expect to see at the end of a rope. Certainly I didn’t ever see her doing anything remotely sporty. She can’t even swim. The person I first went climbing with was Jonathan, and all my early Australian climbs were with him and his friends so that makes sense, but why does he still appear in my dreams? I don’t like the way dreams are forcing me into introspection. I never used to dream like this. In fact I hardly remember dreaming at all. Now each night I seem to be dragging myself back into the past. I suspect this is what counsellors make you do, which is why I’ve always resisted the idea of seeing one.
Kathryn believes I have a fear of commitment and she’s always having a go at me to see a counsellor so that I can be cured and go out on ‘dates’ with her. She thinks I haven’t got over Jonathan dumping me and that I go rock-climbing in all my spare moments to avoid having to build up a social life of my own.
I suspect that she’s right in many ways about this. I also suspect it isn’t quite as simple as that, but I have to admit I haven’t thought about it all that much. My work is so demanding that in my spare time I like to get away, in company but without intimacy, to drink in the beautiful Australian outdoors and feel the texture of rock under my fingers. It’s hard to explain to a non-climber just how much pleasure there can be in rocks, both in enjoying the variety, the colours, the responses to your touch, and in conquering a difficult and challenging climb.
In fact it was rock-climbing that brought Jonathan and me together. After my pathetic reaction to my brother’s visit, I was determined to find some kind of social life at university. I couldn’t be sure that this would come from other students in the science faculty, who would probably mostly be male. And English. I’d had almost no contact with English men, so I decided to broaden the possibilities by joining a club. After a careful survey of what was on offer during orientation week, the number of contenders dropped quickly. The Young Conservatives Club, the many Christian societies, GROW (‘find your inner self by reaching out to others’) and Women Who Want to be Women were early casualties, followed by other religious and political groups.
The final choice was out of four: the university’s branch of the Pennines Rock-climbing Association, the Chocolate Appreciation Society, an international students’ club or a hiking club.
I recognised a girl from Lambton School at the hiking-club table, which was enough to tell me that it was not for me. Face averted, I quickly moved on. The chocolate fanciers were handing out free Mars Bars and seemed quite friendly, so I signed up for that. Then I moved on to the rock-climbing club. A lone figure was sitting there, hair askew, reading a Gerald Durrell paperback. He looked up as I approached. ‘You English?’
I wondered if it was a trick question. ‘No.’
He leapt from behind the table, and grasped my hand. ‘Then please join us. We’re nearly up to quota and I’m trying to keep this club a Pom-free zone.’
How could I resist? It turned out that all Jonathan and I had in common was Anglophobia, but it held us together for the three years of my undergraduate degree. And when, just before it was time to graduate and go ‘home’, I got the letter from my mother telling me that she and my father were moving on to Laos and I realised I had no home, it was Jonathan who urged me to find a postgraduate course in Australia. ‘You can just nick over to South-East Asia any time from Oz,’ he said. ‘It’s like our backyard.’
I don’t think either of us realised how much being on his home turf would change him. Or had being away from it changed him and he had reverted to his real self? I had somehow thought I wouldn’t be so foreign in Australia, but to Jonathan’s friends and family, to the people he introduced me to at parties, it was always: ‘This is my wife, Alix. She’s a Dutchy.’
For some reason this Australian version of Jonathan found my Dutchness highly amusing. If we met his friends at a coffee shop he would turn it into a kind of party trick. ‘What’s the Dutch for “with cream” Alix?’ he’d ask, smirking in anticipation.
‘Met slagroom.’
‘What if we wanted to go to the lolly shop?’
‘Snoepwinkel.’
Then his favourite. ‘I need to go to the hospital, Alix.’
‘Ziekenhuis.’ This would have him almost pissing himself. Even though I felt uncomfortable, it seemed churlish not to play along since Jonathan enjoyed it so much. I hope none of his friends ever needed to use the Dutch words. I only learned them piecemeal and second-hand from my parents, so they were probably hopelessly out of date.
Because my father was determined we would all become fluent in English (the international language and, by extension, the language of God) the only Dutch words my parents used tended to be exclamations of shock, anger or elation, which I would instantly memorise. If a visitor came and used phrases of contemporary Dutch I would store them up and savour them. But not Abel. He regarded English as his ticket out, and I doubt if he would remember more than a few Dutch words.
To the students and staff at my new university things were even more complicated. My application had been full of anomalies. My nationality was Dutch, but my place of residence was Manchester, and my permanent place of residence was Madagascar. When, during the graduation process, my parents moved to Luang Prabang (‘Where the fuck’s that?’ one frustrated clerk queried. ‘Sounds like Shangri La.’) I began to wonder where exactly, if anywhere, I did belong.
Again, the only people who accepted me without question were the rock-climbers, and I think it was the climbing that kept Jonathan and me going and supplied me with most of my happiest memories of the eighteen months it took me to complete my graduate studies. We travelled all over Australia in our efforts to find the most difficult or most beautiful climbs. So when I told him I’d been offered a senior position at a fat salary, the fact that it was in Western Australia seemed unimportant.
‘What?’ And then a silence. ‘When did you apply for this?’
I was taken by surprise at his reaction. He had quite recently finished his studies, and although he had a job in Melbourne, he talked endlessly about moving ‘onwards and upwards’. I had just assumed that he would come with me and make his upward move there. ‘You’ll get work straight away. There are plenty of jobs in Perth.’
‘I’ve never even been to Perth. I don’t have any contacts there.’
There was another silence and I felt a sudden shift in the air as if something between us had suddenly disconnected.
Then he looked at me. I still remember that look – hurt, sad, bemused, but not angry. ‘You’re going whatever I say, aren’t you?’
I found it hard to look at his face. ‘It’s a great opportunity. I’ll be managing all the field work – Broome, the Kimberley, Norseman . . .’
I wonder now what would have happened if I’d been more tentative, asked him how he felt. But I didn’t. I simply presented it as a fait accompli, and took it for granted that he would follow me there, as he would have taken it for granted I would follow him if the circumstances were reversed. What I didn’t take into account but now, with all the advantages of hindsight, I can see quite clearly, was that our career paths were beginning to diverge.
I was in a rapidly expanding field where jobs were plentiful and well paid, and where there was a shortage of qualified geologists. For me, the time was ripe. You could go in with very little experience, prove your worth, and cut a swift path to a senior position, even as a recent graduate.
For Jonathan, it was the opposite. The legal workforce moved slowly, along historically defined trajectories, and the path to senior levels was arduous and heavily tainted by nepotism. No wonder Jonathan was afraid of disrupting it.
That evening, however, he arrived home with champagne and roses and cooked a celebratory dinner. I thought everything was going to be all right.
I left for Western Australia about eight months after my journey to the Philippines. Jonathan didn’t follow me. I don’t think he’d even considered it.