A Tight Little Unit
Tony
‘Closed for winter,’ reads the sign out the front of the pool.
‘You’re kidding,’ I say to myself. Yes, there is an early-morning chill in the air but the sun is out and the mercury will rise to the mid-twenties today. This is not winter. A high of thirteen degrees and raining, that’s winter. Plus, the pool’s heated. I’d just got used to the soup-like twenty-nine degrees that the pool manager likes to keep the water temperature at, a good few degrees warmer than any pool in Melbourne. One time I asked him why he kept it so hot. ‘No one will come if I don’t,’ he replied. I guess no one will come if the fucking pool’s closed.
I’m a swimmer. Always have been. The story goes that before I was born my older siblings were promised a pool once the youngest could swim. After nine babies, I imagine doubt was growing that the pool would ever be built. Once it was clear that I was the last, a concerted effort was made to teach me to swim. Throughout the summer of 1964–65, I spent a lot of time at the Norwood pool in Adelaide, being coached by my very motivated siblings. It wasn’t long before I was declared proficient and the digging commenced.
In more recent years I’ve become enamoured with open-water swimming, and have increasingly enjoyed (if that’s the right word) swimming all year round, including through Melbourne winters in Port Phillip Bay. When Beck suggested we move to Mount Isa, I lamented that the nearest open water was the crocodile-infested mudflats and mangroves of the Gulf of Carpentaria, five hours to the north.
Until now, Beck and I had been making do with the pool. Despite the heat, it is underutilised and we often each have a lane to ourselves. The pool is on the western edge of town, adjacent to the mine, and as I swim down the lane each time I swing my head to take a breath I see the lead stack looming ominously overhead. In the evening, with the light of the setting sun refracted through the dust and fumes of the mine, it’s quite beautiful, but it’s hard not to imagine the toxic particles drifting down and landing on the surface of the pool. The official line is that the prevailing easterly winds blow the pollution to the west, away from the town. The theory goes that when the wind changes an alarm sounds and the smelter is shut down to prevent the lead blowing over town, but on some days as I race down the pool, sucking in the air, I can taste the fumes in the back of my mouth and wonder how diligent the mine managers are.
I take a longing look at the smooth surface of the pool through the chain-wire fence before slouching back to the car. Before going home I decide to detour to Brumbies, the only non-supermarket bakery in town, and pick up a vienna loaf. I text my poet friend Terry to lament the lack of sourdough.
‘All loaf, no vienna,’ he replies.
I manage a smile but my mood plummets when I walk back into the house. Diana’s sitting in her chair and I can instantly tell her mood is flat.
‘The pool’s closed,’ I tell her.
‘Is that right?’
There are lolly wrappers on the kitchen bench, along with empty plastic eye-dropper vials, and a tea cup with a used teabag stuck to the bottom next to the sink. Beck’s out of town for work and it’s just Diana and me for the week. I feel my irritation rising.
‘I’m going to give the lake a go,’ I tell Diana, picking up my keys and swimming gear again.
The ‘lake’ is actually a dam around fifteen kilometres out of town. Beck says they used to swim out there all the time as kids, but now it’s mainly the domain of jet skis and people fishing. I’ve asked a few locals but haven’t been able to get a read on whether you can swim there now or not. Some screw up their noses and talk of duck lice. Others mutter about crocodiles, though it’s widely accepted that freshwater crocs – the kind that are harmless to humans – are the only ones that inhabit the lake. While driving out there, I recall something Beck’s brother David told me on the phone a few weeks ago: ‘You’d be crazy to swim there. I know plenty of dickheads who bring back salties from the gulf and release them into the lake.’
‘Why would they do that?’ I asked.
‘For a laugh.’
I don’t find the idea at all funny.
The place is almost deserted when I arrive, and I park next to the picnic area. Then I spot one man in his early sixties drying himself on the cement slab in front of the canoe shed.
‘So it’s okay to swim here?’ I ask.
‘Absolutely. I swim every week.’
He points to an island in the middle. ‘Sometimes I swim out there, and then on to the one behind it, and I’m gone for hours.’
I don’t doubt it. He looks in good shape – the term ‘fit as a trout’ suddenly makes sense. I eye the distant islands, and then a line of yellow buoys closer in. A couple of laps around the buoys will be more my style, I decide.
The man tells me the canoeists have cleared a path through the duckweed directly in front of the canoe shed. ‘That’s the best place to enter,’ he says. ‘And don’t leave your towel or clothes next to the lake’s edge, if you don’t want to get infested with lice.’
I thank him and strip down to my bathers and walk to the water. It’s brown and murky, and surprisingly cold. Leaving my thongs at the edge, I tentatively step out onto the rocks and mud, and steel myself as I ease into the water. The channel is narrow and the weed is just below the surface. I force myself to glide quickly over the top, holding myself as high as I can, barely breathing, until I’m in the clear. Then, relieved that I’m not already itching from lice, I swim towards the middle yellow buoy, a couple of hundred metres directly out from the shore.
Once there, I strike out to the left and pick up my pace. But I have an overwhelming sense of wanting to close my eyes and go to sleep. It’s as if I’m not getting enough oxygen to the brain. I immediately think of Diana in her chair or at the kitchen table, when she vagues out and becomes listless, sometimes falling in and out of sleep without seeming to realise it. When I watch her I imagine that this is how she’ll die. Slowly running out of oxygen and drifting off to a final sleep in her chair. It doesn’t seem like such a bad way to go.
As I round the yellow buoy at the western end, my oxygen intake and expenditure reach equilibrium and I feel a boost of energy. Not unlike Diana on the days following her admission to hospital after her heart attack, perky after spending twenty-four hours on oxygen.
I sprint along the line of buoys to the other end. When I get there I remove my goggles and look around. There are a couple of fishing boats out near the island, and one person walking a dog along the shore, but apart from that the place is empty. Not that I would know anybody. Other than Beck’s mum, nieces and their families, I hardly know anyone in town. I share an office with one other person over twenty years younger than me, and have very little cause to engage with other professionals in town. We don’t have kids in school and so haven’t buddied up with their friends’ parents.
Nevertheless, I have made a few tentative forays into the community. Not long after moving here I was driving down East Street, past the tennis courts, when I noticed a sign advertising Monday-night social tennis. I love tennis. I grew up with a tennis court and have played all my life. Despite the fact that I’m a completely mediocre player, I decided to try it out. I was greeted by Brendan, the club president, and his twelve-year-old son, Matthew. No one else turned up. After waiting awkwardly for a while, Brendan suggested Matthew and I have a hit. I felt slightly embarrassed but Matthew seemed completely at ease. We played a set and I won. His heart wasn’t in it, I suspect. It wasn’t surprising that neither he nor I suggested a second set. The following week I fronted up again. Brendan was dutifully there but no one else showed – not even Matthew. That was the end of social tennis.
A couple of weeks later I decided to join a writing group that met monthly at the library. I had a faint hope I’d meet some like-minded people, and that one thing would lead to another and we’d all be having post-group drinks at the pub across the road. But country towns are full of shy people, and when the convenor dismissed us at six on the dot everyone scurried out the door.
Despite this, I like the writing group. One of the things I knew Mount Isa would offer me was the time and solitude to write. I’m by nature a gregarious person, and have to force upon myself the discipline required to write. I sometimes wonder if being the youngest of a large family has something to do with this. I have a fear of missing out. As a child I was unable to lie in bed if I heard someone else up and about. I would drag myself out of bed so as not to miss out on any of the action, even if the action was merely someone eating toast.
My older siblings have strong memories of me always hanging around. As teenagers, they’d be engrossed in lurid conversation with friends around the kitchen table or in the lounge room. After a while they’d look up and see me quietly perched on the kitchen bench or on the back of the couch, eavesdropping. The conversation would stop, and either they’d wander off, leaving me stranded, or I’d take the hint and slink away. Later, like a moth drawn to a flame, I’d find another possie from which to listen and observe.
But in Mount Isa, without the distractions and the FOMO, I’m carving out time to write. Mainly it’s weekdays in the mornings between six and seven, before work. On the weekends I scrounge time in among the garage sales, the gardening and the house rearrangements that Beck insists upon.
‘I thought the plan was to get rid of junk, not buy more,’ I say in vain, trying to resist another circuit of the garage sales.
‘Think of it as a social outing – a date even,’ she says. ‘And while we’re out we’ll stop by the nursery. Isn’t that exciting?’
I groan. ‘Why’re we buying more plants? Once your mum dies we’re out of here.’
‘For the resale value. And who knows how long we’ll be here for? Mum’s looking sprightly, don’t you reckon?’
I know this will lead to an afternoon of hole digging and planting. My day of writing lost. I tell Beck half the plants will die and it’ll be a waste of time and money.
‘We’ve no shortage of time,’ she says. ‘And stop being a tight-arse – we’re not paying rent.’
On top of all of this, I have Beck and Diana. We are becoming a tight little unit. Even with her intermittent flatness and untidiness, Diana is very easy to live with, and I feel very welcome and comfortable in her house. On our first weekend, as Diana was getting ready to go to church, Beck flippantly asked her to pray for us. ‘Why would I do that?’ she replied, quick as a flash. ‘I’ll sing a prayer of thanks that you’re here.’
Diana is also very interested in my work. She’s particularly fascinated by the large native title meetings that I run. Who comes to them? What are they hoping for? Sometimes our conversations focus on the high drama associated with these meetings – the fights between families; the inter-generational resentments played out in a new arena; the deals struck to keep the claim afloat; the invective thrown at me, the white lawyer, who for a time at these meetings becomes the embodiment of the dispossession and oppression by the colonists.
To my surprise, I don’t encounter in Diana the pervasive antagonism towards my work and Aboriginal people that overlays many of my interactions in western Queensland. The conversations that go dead when I’m asked what I do. The scepticism towards native title. The belief that Aboriginal people get special treatment, and it’s only a matter of time before they take the pastoralists’ property.
Diana displays none of this. At times she displays ignorance, sometimes referring to an Aboriginal person as ‘dark-skinned’ or even ‘coloured’. But this is said as a point of reference, not as denigration. She’s interested in the individual, and she offers no judgement.
And Beck and I are becoming closer. We’ve always been good mates – we like each other’s company and make each other laugh. We have that ease that comes when you know that neither of you is going to be a dick or embarrass you in front of your friends or colleagues. Beck lights up a room when she enters it, and being back in her childhood home in Mount Isa, with its limitless sun and sky, has brought her even more sparkle and joyfulness, which she has transported into Madang Street and into our lives.
‘Aren’t you pleased I brought you here to paradise, and now I’m abandoning you?’ she teased as we drove to the airport yesterday morning, past the mine workshops and rail shunting yards.
‘Are you telling me you’re not coming back?’
Beck smiled and shrugged.
‘Ah, I get it,’ I continued. ‘I stay and look after your mum on my own.’
I stop my daydreaming, pull my goggles back on and do two more laps of the buoys before getting out. I feel cleansed and less irritable, and relieved that I’ve found a place to swim. No lice and no crocodiles – at least, none that I’m aware of.
I dry myself and sit in the sun for a while. It’s mid-morning now and the temperature is rising, but I can feel my body temperature falling and I start to shiver. This is known as ‘the drop’. When you swim in cold water, the body protects itself by shutting down the circulation of blood from the extremities – the arms and legs – and attempts to keep the warmest blood close to your internal organs. When you get out of the cold water and are exposed to warmth, the circulatory system kicks back in and the colder blood in your arms and legs cycles back into your core, bringing your body temperature down. I get in the car and, despite the trapped heat of the sun through the windows, shiver all the way back into town.
On the edge of town I call into the First n’ Last store. Without a doubt this is the saddest shop I have ever been into. It’s a takeaway shop that doubles vaguely as a grocery store. The oil from the fryer always smells stale, half the shelves are empty, and what stock it does have is ridiculously overpriced. Usually my sole purchase is the local paper that comes out on Tuesdays, Thursday and Saturdays. It’s good only for the crossword (and the garage sale listings).
Diana has had a shower by the time I get home and seems chipper. I put on a pot of coffee, open up the house and tidy up the detritus while waiting for it to brew. I plonk the paper onto the table. ‘Let’s do the crossword.’
Diana immediately climbs out of her chair and shuffles towards the table.
‘One down, loosen, seven letters,’ I say.
Without missing a beat, Diana answers: ‘Release.’