Castaway (4 page)

‘Flamin’ illegals,’ muttered Uncle Mungo with disgust.
‘Look at ’em. Dunno why we bother with rubbish like detention centres and stuff. Waste of taxpayers’ money.’

The image on the screen was of a group of people behind a high fence, holding on to the wire and staring forlornly through the mesh. There were some small children as well. They all looked desperate and hopeless.

‘… the arrival of two boatloads of people into Darwin last week,’ the voice-over was saying. ‘However, government policy is to send all illegal arrivals into detention offshore at Nauru. If they have reached the mainland, they are sent to one of the detention centres such as Port Hedland, until their status can be verified.’

‘Baloney!’ said Uncle Mungo, louder this time. ‘Blow ’em outta the water before they get here’s what they should do!’

‘Mungo!’ said Aunty Lou, shocked. ‘You can’t really mean that! They’re human beings, the same as us. They’ve gone through hell and high water to get here. I don’t believe people do that just for a better standard of living. They risk their
lives
to get here!’

‘Well they can sign up with Immigration like the others, and wait their turn. Why should they get special treatment just because they pay someone to ferry ’em in a leaky old boat? You think we should feel sorry fer
’em? Cripes, Lou, they pay a lot of money to get here illegally.’

Aunty Lou stared at Uncle Mungo for a moment, and then said a little more forcefully, ‘Yes, Mungo, I
do
feel sorry for them. They are running for their lives from desperate situations. Wouldn’t you pay everything you had to save your family from suffering and persecution?’

Uncle Mungo looked a bit startled for a second, as if he had been caught off guard. But he recovered quickly, shrugging and shaking his head: ‘Sorry, Lou, can’t agree with you. We work hard fer what we’ve got. If I had my way, no illegal immigrant’d ever be allowed t’ stay in this country.’

Sam, George, Tess and Darcy went to bed early, anticipating a crack of dawn start for the drive back out to the station the next morning, but Aunty Lou and Uncle Mungo stayed up chatting in the lounge room after bidding them goodnight.

Sam woke up a couple of hours later and, feeling thirsty, got up to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. As he passed the lounge room, he heard voices coming through the half-open door.

‘… all me fault,’ a gruff voice was sobbing. ‘It’s all
me fault. I shouldn’t’ve tried to lift the tree in one go. Mac was all for cuttin’ it in half first, but I reckoned I could lift it off in one go …’

Sam heard a nose blowing noisily into a tissue, and then another voice said, ‘It was an accident, Mungo, an accident. You can’t think like that. It won’t help Mac any if you fall apart. You’ve got to be strong for everyone else now. Those boys need you to be a father figure for them while Mac’s away.’

‘I almost killed their dad, don’t y’ see? If it wasn’t fer me, he’d be okay. He’d be out at Brumby Plains instead of lyin’ in a hospital bed, probably never able to walk again!’

Sam was stunned.
Dad’s accident was Uncle Mungo’s fault? Pig-headed, bigoted, argumentative Uncle Mungo? If he hadn’t insisted on doing things his way, Dad wouldn’t be in hospital.
As he stood there trying to take it all in, Sam became aware that the voices were still talking.

‘… really good of you t’ talk to me like this, Lou. Especially with all the trouble y’ got right now, too. Mac comin’ on top of Harry like that. Must be pretty hard for ya.’

It was Aunty Lou’s turn to blow her nose noisily. She sniffed a few times, and said, ‘I never really thought he’d leave, you know. Not leave the kids, anyway.
We’ve been through a few rough patches, but I thought things would get better. I haven’t told the kids yet, but I think Tess suspects something. It’ll do them good to get out bush for a bit. I haven’t told Sarah either – she’s got enough to think about right now …’

‘No worries, me lips are sealed. Won’t say nothin’ to anyone. You’re a trouper, Lou, a real trouper. Well, thanks for all that. I’ll be off to bed then, better get a good start in the mornin’.’

The sound of a glass being set down on a table and the creak of armchairs as Aunty Lou and Uncle Mungo stood up shook Sam back to reality. He bolted for his bedroom and quietly shut the door. Lying there in the dark, he pondered what he had just overheard.

If Uncle Mungo hadn’t insisted on doing things his way, Dad wouldn’t be in hospital. He’d said so himself!
A hot surge of anger welled up inside Sam, and tears pricked his eyes. He wanted to go and punch his uncle,
right now!
but then he heard his mother’s calm voice telling him just a few hours ago to look after Uncle Mungo. He turned instead to the words he’d heard from Aunty Lou. Poor Tess and Darcy. It sounded like their father had left his family. Sam had always thought Harry was a bit odd, but he never imagined he might do something like this. Everything was a terrible mess, whichever way he looked. He rolled over to try and
sleep, resolving not to think about it till the morning, but the image of Uncle Mungo on the tractor, demanding to do things
his
way, kept intruding into his mind.

Tess and Darcy didn’t come back to Brumby Plains with them the next morning. At the last moment Aunty Lou suddenly remembered that both of them had dental appointments on Friday, and there was no way they could miss them.

‘You’ve been on a waiting list for three months!’ she said when Tess and Darcy protested bitterly. ‘It’ll only mean a couple of days. I’ll drive you out on Saturday morning, I promise. We’ll go to the Parap markets on the way and bring out a heap of food for everyone, okay?’

The first thing Uncle Mungo did when they arrived back at the homestead was to fire up the chainsaw and attack the tree. Branch by branch he stripped it down to its trunk, not taking any chances. He wouldn’t let anyone help him, and grimly ordered the others to stay away. Jaz ushered Sam and George up inside the house to have some lunch.

‘Let him be,’ she said to them. ‘It’s his way of dealing with what happened. He’ll be okay soon.’

Sam didn’t much care if his uncle was ever okay. He had brooded the whole way out to the station, only responding that he was tired when Uncle Mungo tried to start a conversation. He sat on the verandah with George, listening to the screeching and revving of the chainsaw as it reduced the huge tree to a pile of firewood. When the cacophony finally stopped and the silence rushed in, the two boys walked over to the machinery shed and peered around it. Uncle Mungo was sitting on the ground in front of the crushed van, the chainsaw at his side. He had his head in his hands, and his big shoulders shook. Sam motioned to George to come away, and they left him there amidst the piles of wood, sawdust and bark.

After lunch, Uncle Mungo and Old Jock prepared to go out along the fence lines that still needed repairs.

‘What about the Deception Point fence? Dad wanted
George and me to fix it the other day.’ Sam stared at Uncle Mungo as if daring him to say no.

‘Yeah, I’d forgotten about that.’ He pondered for a moment or two, and turned to Old Jock, who had just come back into the house after loading some fencing gear into the ute. ‘What d’you reckon, Jock, about the lads goin’ out to fix that Deception Point fence line while we do the weaner fence and the other ones?’

Old Jock grinned at Sam and George. ‘These fellas’ll be just fine. Haven’t seen the quad runner yet that could throw ’em!’ He chuckled to himself as he went into the kitchen to make a thermos of tea to take with them. ‘They’ll be fine, Mungo, don’t you worry about them boys!’

Sam and George loaded up some star pickets, wire strainers, tools and fencing wire, and climbed aboard the quad runner. Sam slipped a water bottle and a packet of sandwiches into a saddlebag – fencing was hungry work, according to George, who had been eyeing the leftover cold lamb in the fridge – and they set off down the track towards the Point.

The fence was damaged in several spots where branches had blown against it and snapped wires. The work was easy, and within an hour and a half they were back at the campsite. Sam switched off the ignition and sat on the bike for a while, listening to the tick-tick-tick
of the engine as it cooled, and enjoying the sound of nothing. George had already jumped off.

‘C’mon, Sam! Let’s eat those sangers – I’m starving!’

‘You’re always starving,’ said Sam, but he climbed off the bike and wandered over to where George was poking around the old oven. No one knew who had first built it, but it was a proper old baker’s oven, made out of handmade bricks with an iron door set into the space above the firebox. Sarah used it sometimes to cook bread when they camped out here. There was a chimney at one stage, but it had long rusted away, and the smoke escaped though the hole that remained. The last time George had looked in the oven, it was housing a nest of baby bush rats. He opened the door to see if they were still living there.

‘What the …? Hey, look at this!’

There inside the oven was the atlas he had found on the beach, and his water bottle! He pulled them out. The atlas had dried a bit, as if someone had laid it in the sun and fanned the pages out to stop them sticking together. The water bottle was empty.

Sam was dumbfounded. ‘That’s really weird. How could they have got here?’ Both boys stared at the atlas and the water bottle in complete confusion.

‘Maybe it was some of Uncle Mungo’s illegal people,’ said George finally. He looked around, as if expecting
illegal immigrants to come bounding out of the bushes to demand the return of the atlas. Sam scanned the ground, but it was pointless looking for footprints – he and George had been walking all over the place and any strange marks were long gone.

‘Can you see the boat wreck?’ He craned his head to look out towards the Point, but the tide was nearly in and the reef and its victim were hidden by the calm, flat water.

‘Let’s go and have a look along the beach.’

George moaned that he was dying of hunger but he followed Sam just the same.

‘What do you reckon about Uncle Mungo chopping that tree up all by himself, huh? He’s a pretty strong guy, hey!’ George was hugely impressed by his uncle’s feat.

Sam just grunted. He didn’t want to talk to George about what he’d overheard, not yet anyway. He led the way along the top of the dune and was about to slide down the embankment to the beach when something stopped him in his tracks.

‘What?’ said George, looking past his brother, trying to see what he was staring at so intently.

‘There’s a body on the beach – look!’

Less than thirty metres in front of them, directly below the dune, a small figure lay a short distance from the incoming tide.

‘Oh man,’ whispered George. ‘Do you think it’s dead?’

‘We better go check.’ Sam’s mouth formed a grim line as he set off down the slope.

‘Sam, wait! Look out there!’ George pointed wildly out to sea past the body. A familiar and deadly shape was cruising towards the same stretch of beach, the long knobbled back and scarred head of Lumpy clearly visible in the shallow water. His tail moved sinuously from side to side as he swam directly at the shape on the sand.

Sam didn’t stop to think. He snatched up a big rock and charged down the slope, yelling and screaming, and hurled the missile as hard as he could at the crocodile. It hit the reptile fair on the skull with a crack that George could plainly hear, and the crocodile disappeared in a swirl and thrash of foam. George ran breathlessly up to where Sam knelt over the body.

‘George – watch out in case he comes back again.’

He gently turned the body over, and it moaned softly.

‘He’s alive! Quick, let’s get out of here, get him away from the water before that croc comes back again for another go.’

They dragged the small figure up the beach as fast as they could, and then half carried and half dragged him
awkwardly up the sandy slope. He wasn’t very heavy. In fact, when they managed to haul him to the top of the dune, they realised he was a child.

‘Oh man,’ panted George, when they laid the child in the shade of the big tamarind tree at the camp. ‘Do you think he came from that wrecked boat? What’s he doing out here, and how come he’s sick?’

Sam examined the child as much as he could. There didn’t seem to be any injuries, but the child’s lips were split and cracked. His hands and feet were spongy and raw, as if they’d been in water for too long. Short dark hair stuck up in spikes, crusted with salt and sand. He was clothed in a pair of once-white baggy pants cut off at the knees, and a torn, stained T-shirt. He was very thin, and his brown skin was dry and scratched.

Just as Sam sat back wondering what to do next, the child’s eyelids fluttered open. His eyes were a startling green, with long black lashes, and they stared in terror at the two faces that stared back. The child tried to cry out, but no sound emerged, and he coughed weakly and slumped back onto the ground.

‘Quick, George, get the water bottle out of the saddlebag!’

George raced back with the bottle and handed it to Sam. He uncapped it, and offered it to the child, who didn’t seem to understand.

‘Water, water,’ said Sam, and proceeded to tip a little into his mouth.

The child struggled up weakly. Sam and George helped him into a sitting position, and held the bottle to his mouth. The child drank as much as he could and then started to fall again, but Sam supported him with his arm.

‘George, take the seat off the bike – you know how it unclips. He can lean against it.’

They made the child as comfortable as they could. He lay back against the soft cushion of the bike seat and continued to drink sips of water. Sam tried to stop him drinking too much at once. He recalled Mac telling him how people who were this thirsty got sick if they drank too much water too fast. When Sam judged the child had recovered a little, he brought out the packet of sandwiches and unwrapped them. The smell of roast lamb on fresh bread made the child look up, startled and hungry, and he snatched the offered sandwich from Sam’s hand and devoured it.

‘Well, he likes lamb sangers, I guess,’ smiled George. ‘Where d’you reckon he’s come from?’

Sam had been wondering this himself. The child had to be from the boat. There was no other way he could have got here.

‘Not sure but I reckon Uncle Mungo’s gunna have a fit.’

‘An illegal immigrant? Yeah – the boat, of course!’ George thought for another moment. ‘But there must have been other people with him – he can’t have been on his own.’

‘Maybe they all drowned when the boat hit the reef. Sure looks like he’s the only one here, doesn’t it?’

The child finished the sandwich and looked at them properly for the first time. The terror in his eyes had been replaced by a frightened wariness, as if he had decided that Sam and George, while strange, were not dangerous. The green eyes were huge as they stared out from the thin brown face.

‘Who are you?’ Sam asked.

The child looked at him blankly.

‘I guess he doesn’t speak English. WHO – ARE – YOU?’ said George, slowly and loudly.

‘George, I don’t think he’s
deaf
…’

The child blinked for a moment, as if trying to remember something, and awkwardly, as if his voice was rusty with disuse, a sound croaked out: ‘Hullow … pliss … Or-stra-lie …’

‘That sounded like
hello, please, Australia
,’ said George in a rush. ‘Hey, maybe he does speak English?’

Sam pointed to the ground and said clearly, ‘Australia.
Or-stra-lie
. This is Australia,’ and nodded his head several times.

The response from the child was dramatic. He grabbed Sam’s hands and held them tightly, talking rapidly in a language they didn’t recognise. Tears began to roll down his cheeks, and he cried as he talked, weeping uncontrollably.

‘Whoa, mate,’ said Sam, feeling a bit uncomfortable. He patted the child on the shoulder, and gradually the sobbing subsided. They all sat there looking at one another.

‘What do we do now?’ asked George.

‘We can’t tell Uncle Mungo about him, that’s for sure.’

‘But he’ll know what to do. He’ll just phone up the people in town and they’ll come and get him and look after him.’

‘Yeah, and they’ll lock him up in a wire cage, like those people we saw on tv. Or they’ll send him over to that island, all on his own. No, we gotta think of something else.’

‘Well we better hurry up, because if we don’t get back before dark, Uncle Mungo’s gunna come looking for us anyway.’

George was right. But they needed time to work out what to do.

‘C’mon,’ said Sam. ‘Put the seat on the bike, and we’ll go back. We’ll hide this bloke in the hay shed till we work something out.’

As they stood up, the child saw the atlas where George had left it on top of the oven. He cried out, and pointed at the book. George looked at Sam.

‘It must be his, hey? Better give it to him, or he’ll start crying again.’

A little while later the three of them were bumping up the fence line back towards the homestead. Sam drove, with the child in the middle, and George holding him on from behind. He still seemed to be quite weak, but he had appeared willing to go with them. They went slowly, stopping several times to give the child a rest, and more water.

Just as they came in sight of the house, Sam pulled up. He peered through the trees and realised with a sinking heart that there was a police vehicle parked beside the house.
Surely they couldn’t know already?
As he watched, two uniformed police officers came into view, with Uncle Mungo beside them. Sam felt the child stiffen behind him, his arms tightening around Sam’s waist. It must have been the sight of the uniforms, he supposed. If this child was a refugee, he probably didn’t trust anyone in a uniform.

‘George, take off your T-shirt, and put it on the kid. You sneak around on foot to the hay shed, and I’ll drive
straight up to it. That way if anyone sees us, they’ll just think it’s you, from a distance. Put your hat on his head too.’

The child accepted all the subterfuge as if he knew exactly what they were doing. He immediately seemed to understand the need to be secretive, and huddled close in behind Sam’s back as they took off again for the shed. They reached it without incident, and Sam drove right in amongst the stacks of hay. Quickly, he helped the child climb up to the loft, a large platform suspended below the roof which held a few spare bales and an assortment of old gear. They used it as a storage place for odd bits of saddlery and things no one wanted but couldn’t throw away. It had been Sam and George’s cubbyhouse a few years earlier, but they hadn’t been up there in ages. It would make a perfect hiding spot.

George arrived soon after, out of breath, and climbed up the ladder to them. They cleared a space between the hay bales, moved some of the junk out of the way, and found a couple of old horse blankets to cover the rough wood. Sam gave the child the water bottle, and tried to explain that he must stay where he was, and that Sam and George would come back with more food. Somehow the child seemed to understand, and nestled down between the boxes, pretending to hide.

Sam nodded and smiled. ‘That’s right. You’re really smart, aren’t you? Just wait here till we come back, and don’t make a sound.’ He held his finger up to his lips, and tiptoed to the edge of the loft. As he descended the ladder, he looked back and saw that the child had hidden himself completely out of sight.