Koko fell asleep the moment his head touched
his pillow and slept soundly all through the night. He awoke the
next morning to a glorious day with sunlight streaming into the
room. When visions of the bloodbath in Cowra flashed across his
mind, he got out of bed quickly and went to the window. Beneath him
lay the tranquil waters of Double Bay, just slightly ruffled by a
gentle breeze. And there, little more than a stones throw away,
lying serenely at their moorings in the newly formed Cruising Yacht
Club, were some of the finest sailing yachts in Australia.
Most of the boats were quite large and all
appeared to be much newer and of much superior quality and design
than any Koko had ever seen along the coast of the Northern
Territory. He pushed open the window. Fresh salt air wafted into
the room. From where he stood he could hear the breeze gently
whistling through the rigging of the yachts and the tapping of
halyards against the vessel’s masts. Koko drew a deep breath and
savored the moment. And for the first time since escaping from
Cowra thirty hours earlier, he felt truly free.
Half an hour later, when he had bathed,
shaved and dressed and carefully applied a new length of bandage to
his head, there was a tap on his door and a maid announced she had
his breakfast tray and the morning newspaper. Koko took his bacon
and eggs, toast and tea at a small table overlooking the water and
read the paper.
The Sydney
Sunday Telegraph
seemed to be breaking all the
strict censorship rules with it’s huge front page headline:
‘
WAR PRISONERS ESCAPE FROM CAMP’
But on reading the
lengthy article which followed, which was a masterpiece of guarded
innuendo, the newspaper’s editors had probably saved themselves
from government prosecution, by omitting pertinent information,
such as the nationality of the escapees, any mention of casualties,
or the number of escapees still at large.
Koko spent the rest of the morning
studying the yachts in the bay. First he gazed out intently from
his hotel room window, then later, through a public penny telescope
on Marine Parade, a roadway running along the water’s edge. He paid
special attention to three vessels:
Rani
, a thirty-six foot cutter,
Winston Churchill
, a yawl that looked
to be over fifty feet; and a sleek little white sloop named
Chinook
which was barely thirty feet
long. In the afternoon, Koko hired a tiny rowing boat from a boat
shed on nearby Seven Shillings Beach and rowed around the vessels
to take a closer look at each one.
The inspections confirmed what Koko had
suspected from the shore—all three vessels were rigged and equipped
for blue water sailing and were capable of going anywhere and in
any weather. It was plain to see that both
Winston Churchill
and
Rani
were fastidiously maintained which told Koko
that their owners used them often and probably lived close by. By
comparison, the deck and spars of
Chinook
were plastered with the droppings of sea
birds which meant her owner probably hadn’t been near her for a
long time.
Koko nudged the dinghy alongside
Chinook
and pressed his face against
the glass of one of her portholes. Inside the vessel looked neat,
tidy and well equipped. He casually rowed around to the stern, all
the while taking mental notes. All mainmast sheets and halyards led
back to the cockpit. A salt-spray dodger and cockpit side cloths
were in place to keep her skipper dry in heavy weather. Her cleats,
sheet blocks, and tiller were all well placed for easy handling.
Koko could tell she had been rigged for single-handed sailing. He
glanced at the washboard closing off the companionway. Only a
padlock passing through a light hasp denied access below
deck.
Koko weighed up his options as he rowed back
to Seven Shillings Beach. He quickly ruled out the two larger
vessels. Both would be missed soon after they disappeared, possibly
even before he reached the mouth of Sydney Harbor. Anyway both
would require a full crew to be handled properly. He decided he
would steal the little sloop. He even fancied her name. An American
aboard a pearling lugger in Darwin had once told him that Chinook
was an Indian word meaning, ‘a warm wind’. She looked like she
would go like the wind too. Best of all she would be easy to handle
alone and might not be missed for days, maybe weeks. With a little
luck he might even be as far away as Queensland before anyone
realized she had gone.
The next day was Monday, and the neighborhood
shops were open. After breakfast, Koko went to a menswear store and
bought some casual clothes and a few toiletries from a pharmacy
next door, then he returned to the hotel room and spent the morning
watching the movements in the yacht basin below and planning his
departure.
That afternoon he went shopping again.
This time to a grocer’s shop and a hardware store. He bought an
assortment of tinned food, enough to last several days and a few
other essentials like matches, soap, a claw hammer and a big canvas
bag to put everything in, including his clothes. Then he went back
to Seven Shillings Beach, hired a boat again and rowed out around
the yachts. As he passed
Chinook
he nonchalantly tossed the canvas bag into the
cockpit.
It was almost midnight when Koko
slipped out the back of the hotel into the moonlight. It was a
crisp winter’s night and at first the water was so cold it took his
breath away but in less than five minutes he was aboard
Chinook.
The padlocked hasp on the
washboard was stubborn but proved no match for the claw hammer.
Koko slipped below and brought up sails and stealthily began
preparing to take the little ship out to sea. An hour later
Chinook
passed out through Sydney
Heads and out into the open sea with a freshening south-easterly
filling her sails.
PART FIVE
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
The new anti-espionage role played by the
three Nackeroo coastal surveillance vessels was a vast improvement
of the old hit and miss coastal patrols of the past. After being
fitted with the latest American radio equipment, each was assigned
a specific area in which to monitor radio signals and, if required,
intercept and investigate unidentified small craft. The only
trouble was that after weeks of around the clock monitoring, none
of the boats had reported picking up any suspicious radio
transmissions or sighting any suspect vessels.
One of the boats was assigned to patrol
Van Diemen Gulf, another to the waters surrounding Bathhurst and
Melville Islands and the northern coast of the Coburg Peninsular,
and the
Walrus
was designated
a several hundred mile stretch of coastline from the Goulburn
Islands east to Cape Arnhem. All of the areas were extremely
remote, especially Joe’s
,
with
its myriad of low, featureless bays and inlets and endless miles of
muddy shallows and swamps infested with crocodiles and mosquitoes.
But for Joe, the extreme isolation and the danger of navigating
often uncharted waters close in to the mainland, was lessened by
having first-class communication gear aboard which also eased the
boredom.
Often at night, as they had done at Eagle’s
Nest, Joe and Weasel would keep up to date with what was going on
in the world by listening to the BBC Overseas Service which always
came in loud and clear. By all reports the war in the Pacific was
getting further and further away from Australia. Everyone knew that
General MacArthur would soon fulfill his promise to return to the
Phillipines. After that, it was just a matter of time before the
war came to an end.
‘What do you reckon, Joe?’ Weasel asked
one night. They were on a patrol to Nhulunbuy, on the Gove
Peninsular, the eastern limit of their surveillance area, and were
sitting in the cockpit under the stars with the
Walrus
anchored at a remote river mouth in
central Arnhem Land. ‘When they disband the Nackeroos, will you go
back to what you were doing before the war?’
‘Oh, I reckon so,’ Joe said. ‘That’s if I can
get enough money together to buy another boat.’
Joe heard the sound of canvas rustling in the
shadows up on the foredeck where Monday slept and knew the
Aborigine was listening to the conversation. ‘What do you reckon,
Monday?, he called out. ‘You want to sail with me on an island
trader again?’
‘You know I do, Mr Joe.’ Monday replied from
the darkness. ‘You know I do.’
Joe grinned and turned back to Weasel. ‘What
about you? Will you go back to your bus station in the bush?’
Weasel shook his head. ‘Not me, mate. Wasn’t
it Henry Lawson that said, “Death is the only cheerful thing about
the bush”. No, I prefer the sea now. I thought if you bought
another boat, maybe I could stay with you. As crew I mean. And I’d
been happy to chip in. I haven’t had a chance to spend a penny of
my pay since I’ve been up here in the Top End.’
‘Neither have I.’ Joe shrugged his shoulders.
‘Who knows, maybe we could work something out when we get out of
the Army. Anyway, its late. We’ll talk about it another day. Let’s
go below and get some shuteye.’
*
Just has Koko had expected,
Chinook
was a strong sea-kindly
vessel. If he had to, Koko had been prepared to sail the two
thousand nautical miles northward to the Torres Straight by keeping
just within sight of land, using the old sailor’s adage: ‘Just keep
Australia on your left, mate’
But he had been heartened to find the
sloop was a true passage-maker. She had a copy of the
Australia Pilot
aboard, scores of sea
charts, parallel rules, dividers, and a protractor and a reliable
compass—all that was needed to plot and follow a course. She also
had an inboard petrol engine, a good sail inventory, a small
alcohol stove, a half-full water tank and a locker crammed with
tinned food. Koko’s only regret in stealing such a well-found boat
was that she obviously belonged to a real sailor, not a
white-uniformed weekend sailor who never ventured out beyond the
safety of Sydney Harbor.
The freshening south-easterly breeze
which had greeted
Chinook
outside Sydney Heads had built steadily through the night,
then blown at thirty knots for the next five days. But the sturdy
little sloop took it all in her stride and under a storm jib and
reefed mainsail, she charged northward under threatening grey
skies, leaving a boiling wake behind her. Koko doggedly remained at
the tiller all throughout the five days, only rarely backing the
sails and lashing down the helm, leaving the little sloop hove-to
and fending for herself while he caught a short sleep before
continuing on.
On the afternoon of the sixth day, the wind
had blown itself out and there were blue patches poking through the
grey skies. Utterly exhausted and occasionally hallucinating, Koko
turned the bow of the sloop in toward the shore. Just before dusk,
he dropped anchor in sheltered water in the lee of Double Island
Point, a high rocky headland in Queensland, a hundred miles north
of Moreton Bay. Just as soon as the anchor took hold, Koko went
below, flopped into a bunk and fell asleep.
Koko woke sixteen hours later to blue skies
and sunshine pouring in through a porthole onto his face. In a
second he was out of the bunk, standing on the companionway steps
and looking around outside. The anchorage was perfectly still.
There was no sign of life on the headland or any small craft
evident on Wide Bay, the broad expanse of water separating Double
Island Point from Fraser Island. Koko could clearly see the
southern tip of the hundred mile long, great sand island basking in
the sun on the horizon to the north-east. The only sound that broke
the tranquility of the scene was the forlorn cry of a lone sea bird
as it skimmed low over the ebbing tide in search of fish.
Koko took another long look around then
stepped back down into the cabin. He open a can of corned beef and
a tin of baked beans and for the first time, heated food on the
alcohol stove. Later, as he ate, Koko reflected on the events of
the past week. He had known from the start his only chance he had
of reaching the Top End was by sea, where there was no one to spot
his Asian features and dob him in. So far so good. The most
dangerous part of the voyage north, the unforgiving, exposed coast
of New South Wales was over. Now it would be easier. There was only
a hundred and fifty miles of open sea remaining before he reached
the sheltered waters of the inner passage of the Great Barrier
Reef. There he would pick up the strong, reliable south-east trade
wind which would carry him all the way to the Torres Straight and
beyond.
Because of the confines inside Great Barrier
Reef, Koko knew he would only be able to sail in daylight. But he
would be compensated for this by being afforded a safe sheltered
anchorage each night in the lee of one of Queensland’s many
tropical islands or coastal headlands. But he would have to be
vigilant. The inner passage was used by commercial shipping and
fishing vessels, and perhaps he might even encounter an Allied
warship. And he had been told by Japanese seamen at Cowra that
mines had been laid at openings in the thousand mile long reef to
prevent warships of the Imperial Navy from entering the inner
passage from the open sea. He knew he would have to be careful and
sail hard, but with any luck he would reach the Torres Straight in
two to three weeks.