Letter 22 / 9 / 82
This is our third day on MI, so I guess we'd better start remembering that the outside world still exists.
The trip from TI went very smoothly. 9 am check in, 10 am on the boat to Horn Is, 11.15 am take off, 12.15 pm Murray Island
James was terrified on the plane. As we took off he was shaking and crying, and clinging to my neck until he fell asleep on my shoulder. Just before we landed he woke up because I was moving around trying to get a good look at the island - and he trembled and whimpered until he felt the wheels bumping along the grassy runway ... he'll just have to get used to it, poor kid! And that was a really smooth ride, no turbulence.
The brown bump
(This is one of the smaller lumps - Dawar Island)
Our first view on MI was a brown bump in the ocean, and a couple of small knobs next to it.
The airstrip is right on top (about 300' up, I think). There was a tractor and trailer waiting to carry baggage and passengers down to the village - with the ubiquitous dogs panting along behind. In the village we finally met the chairman, James Rice. He wanted to house us in with the single white schoolteacher (who has only been here a couple of weeks - but that is another story) but his house was full with a couple of nursing sisters who are staying there too. So we were glad to have the 'guest house' to ourselves. It's a large warehouse, and when you get inside and step around the piles of building materials, you go through a door into a large 4-bedroom home. It's all lined etc so you're not aware at all of being in a warehouse. It has a (non-working) fridge - which I use as an ant-free, mouse-free zone - a gas stove, and a kitchen sink with a rainwater tap. Outside we have a flush toilet, laundry sink, (cold) shower and rotary clothes hoist. All very civilized.
Living on the beach
If you take about three steps from our bedroom window you are on the beach. It's about ten steps down to the water. It's a short, sloping beach, but because of the reef surrounding the island the tide (apparently) never comes in to the extent that it swamps the houses.
The beach is sandy, with lots of beautiful shells. James always comes in with some in his chubby little hands.
The beach is sandy, with lots of beautiful shells. James always comes in with some in his chubby little hands.
The ocean (outside the reef) is calm and clear. It looks beautiful for swimming, but the sharks are plentiful and come right into the shallows, a metre or two off the sand.
Heaps of fish!
Its all true about the fish, though. Mmmm! At first glance it looks like there is a thick layer of dark weed just in the shallows - but it's actually sardines. Yesterday morning Peter looked out of the bedroom and noticed the sardines were very agitated because of big fish activity further out, and they were just boiling up onto the sand. So he dashed out with a washing up bowl and grabbed a bowlful by hand. The Islanders reckon they fry them up and eat them whole, so we tried it. But we found that the scales were rough, the back-bone tough, and the stomachs bitter! So for lunch we tried heading, gutting and scaling them - it wasn't too hard, they are 4" long or so. Then they were quite nice, and the backbones fell out easily.
Friends and relations
We are being "taken care of" by Wilfred and Margaret.
Margaret is white, but thoroughly Islander, doesn't speak English (says she's forgotten it), and is fat, loud and coarse - but generous at heart. They have an 8 year old thalidomide girl called Bai (I thought that was more than 8 years ago?), then three boys: Dadaboy (4), Melpal (3), Kakam (2) and a gorgeous girl: Lenwat (8 months) ... and one due in May!
The children are loud and dirty etc, unlike other village kids, but for the time being at least we have to let James play with them. He usually chooses to copy the 4 yr old - and he's the worst.
The father, Wilfred, is very dark-skinned, so his children have turned out medium brown like most Islanders.
I haven't been sick since we've been here - must be the fish. But that's all we eat. We haven't yet latched onto anyone here who still does gardening, so we have no veggies. A small range of foods are available at the store - for a price. But nothing with fibre or vitamins or anything good. We managed to get some oats yesterday - and I'm glad that they are "traditional" and not "instant". We have a few cartons of supplies coming from TI on "the next boat", which may be this week, next week, or next month - according to the rumours. Its a 10c phone call to TI (we are glad of the week we had there making some friends) so we can ask people to put small amounts on the weekly plane for us - again, at a price.
Fishing strategy
This morning Wilfred caught three (large) fish, all different: a big fat coral trout, a trevally, and a snapper - and he gave us half of each. Peter hasn't caught any yet but we had an exciting time last night. The routine is: just before sundown you take a throw-net or fish spear and pick up a few sardines at the water's edge. Then you bait up your light line (about 40 lb line) with a sardine and cast out to catch a few 18" barracuda. Then you bait up your 150 lb line with a 'cuda (down south we'd gladly eat the 'cuda) and go for a mackerel.
The other day we were given shares in a mackerel 4-5'long.
Last night there was quite a large group of men on the favourite section of beach for fishing, everyone catching 'cuda except Peter - there must be a few secrets about just where to cast. Then someone gave him one and then they were all after the mackerel. Peter's line suddenly went off, cutting his arm, but at the same time so did three others. One chap was free and came to help Peter, and for a while he was winning. Then suddenly it took off again and he couldn't bring it in. The other guys had the same trouble, and brought in three 6' shovel-nosed sharks - Peter's shark got off in the shallows.
The people have a very healthy attitude towards sharks, because they can appear to be stone-dead but then suddenly turn the full-length of their body and snap your leg off. the children were all kept well back while they clubbed the sharks - which then only had to twitch once more and everyone took off up the beach. It was quite a violent scene in the moonlight. One shark they cut open and returned to the water for his mates to finish off, the others were left on the beach until soundly dead because they can sell the jaw-bones for money.
So Peter still hasn't caught a fish. The black bream is a popular eating fish, and for that some people (usually women) will spend hours fishing in the hot sun with flour dough for bait. (At $2/kilo for flour that can be expensive too.) Peter hasn't caught one of those yet either.
Mer Island
I've hardly begun to tell you what its really like here. The village is on this flat sandy area, probably about a mile long on the NW side of the island. In this part of the world the seasons go by the wind - there's the SE season (dry) and the NW season (wet). I think now we're almost between the two, but its not uncomfortably hot - cooler than Darwin
Behind the village stands the hill of Gelam; tall, steep and grassy - but totally dry right now. As far as we know, the other side of the island is rugged and rocky, although I'm not quite sure how you'd get there from here. Yesterday we escaped for a few hours, took a few Minties and a bottle of cordial, and tried going right around the island. We worked our way around the head of Gelam (the dugong that the island resembles), past the beach and clambering over rocks ... not easy carrying James! It was very rugged and exceedingly beautiful. At one stage we were standing on a rock staring at the reef and both thinking that it would be shallow enough to wade out, when a couple of huge sharks cruised past right at our toes. Opposite that end of the island are the other two small islands - Waiar and Dauar. Waiar is just solid rock. Dauar is a little more hospitable but still very steep. Wilfred said he'll take us out there maybe on Saturday.
Ships
On Sunday there's going to be a public meeting about the Paluma. Its a ship that's just been bought by the ADC (Aboriginal Development Council) to operate between Cairns Cairns
Now we understand why there was all that fuss in the news about Prime Minister Mal Fraser going fishing when he was up here - he didn't take any little old boat, he took the Melbidir, the peoples' lifeline! Some of the stores run out of food if the Melbidir doesn't come on time.
Anyway, in the short term it's a nuisance if the Paluma starts coming while we are still living here in the guest house, because right outside our bedroom is the freezer hut - an enormous walk-in freezer with a large, noisy generator attached to it. That will be thumping away day and night once the fish business starts.
Already its 3 pm on Thursday.
James is asleep - he's really thriving in this environment, although the food is giving him problems. He won't eat fish ... or anything really except bread, cake, milk - and he keeps getting constipated. Peanut butter is about the best I can get into him. I made some oat biscuits today - that moved him a bit, but he can hardly live on those. Normally he'd eat sultanas and apples - hopefully there will be some of those on the plane for us on Monday.
Peter's out making a map of the village. We promised ourselves we'd start "work" today, but its hard to know where to start. We're still very tied to this one family - they are very good to us but they don't actually speak the language, Miriam.
I made us some "namas" for tea. Its really pickled fish. You just cut up fish really small then soak it with chopped onions in white vinegar and soy sauce - its very nice. And we bought some sweet potato, shipped in from TI, and they bring it in from down south somewhere...
Peter's just got back, so I'll close or I'll never get this finished.
