Coasts of Cape York Read online

  CALCULATED RISK

  While Jacob worked at the apparently hopeless task of retrieving his maps and notes Mr Southall continued questioning. “So, this Gator character and his crony Corey, where did you meet up with them?”

  “In Sydney. Karl knew them. We needed a boat and he knew them. I didn’t like the idea but I did not have enough money to hire my own boat. Also Gator and Corey know about boats and had been up to North Queensland before and neither Karl nor I had any experience of boats, so I said yes,” Jacob explained.

  “So whatever you are looking for is at sea or on an island?” the navigator commented.

  Jacob looked surprised and then made his face go blank. “What makes you think that?” he replied.

  The navigator smiled and said, “Because if it was on land you could have driven there.”

  Willy saw Jacob’s face twitch as he tried to control his expressions. Jacob made no reply.

  Mr Southall looked puzzled. “Did they know what you were coming here to look for?” he queried.

  Jacob frowned and said, “I don’t know. Yes. I suppose they must have. Karl must have told them. The whole thing was his idea.”

  “Why?”

  Jacob shook his head and looked uncomfortable. “I can’t say. It really doesn’t involve you and my family are involved. It is for them to decide.”

  “Fair enough,” Mr Southall replied. “OK, you look just about all in young Jacob so we will tuck you into bed. George, you look after him please. Young Willy, you’d better get back out with your mates and we will do something about making this ship smell a bit better.”

  Reluctantly Willy made his way out. He noted that the port door was now shut but all of the deck near it was awash with several centimetres of water and spew. The seaplane was rocking and pitching so much that he had to walk with both hands on the seats or sides to stay on his feet. He saw that the deck all the way aft was sticky with a slush of vomit and water and the vile smell made his stomach turn. That more was liable to be added to it was plainly obvious from the miserable looks and peculiar colouring of some of the cadets.

  It gave him a mild spurt of malicious satisfaction to see that Finlay was visibly green around the eyes and cheeks. Pilot Officer Lowe, a chubby female officer, looked a sort of pasty grey. Even Marjorie looked deathly white under her freckles and her eyes looked bigger than normal. The only spare seat on the temporary webbing seating was between her and Dodd so he squeezed himself in.

  Marjorie at once gripped his arm and pressed against him. “Oh Willy, I’m glad you are back,” she said.

  “Why? What can I do?” he wondered aloud, a little annoyed at the public display of affection and the way others looked at them. Because ‘fraternization’ was strongly frowned on in the Air Cadets he had no wish to have people suspect that he and Marjorie were much more than just friends.

  “Just because,” she muttered, pressing closer.

  ‘She’s scared!’ he thought, quite surprised at the idea.

  Cadet Under-Officer Mathieson leaned across and said, “What’s happening Cadet Williams?”

  Willy really admired CUO Mathieson, and one of his strongest ambitions was to be promoted to be a CUO just like him. CUO Mathieson was in Year 12 and looked the very image of the sort of young officer Willy wanted to be. So he proceeded to tell him everything he knew, others nearby leaning over to listen.

  It was uncomfortable though. The tail of the ‘Catalina’ was swinging much more than the hull and from time to time it would go up and down with sicking swoops that even left Willy bathed in a cold sweat. Sometimes the undersides would smack into the surface of the sea and send a shudder through the aircraft. It was then that Willy understood how Marjorie was feeling, both mentally and physically, and he was ashamed to admit to himself that he was just a tiny bit afraid.

  Marjorie pressed his right arm and whispered, “Wasn’t it awful. I’m sorry we weren’t able to save that other man before the sharks got him. I was sick when I saw what they had done to him.”

  Willy’s mind swirled with horrific images of that corpse and of Uncle Ted’s mutilated body and he croaked, “Yes. I don’t want to talk about it thanks.”

  Marjorie, who had been at the farm the night Uncle Ted was murdered, gave him an understanding nod and squeezed his upper arm. Willy had to resist the temptation to put his arm around her and felt a surge of affection for her.

  The talk died away after a while as the cadets began to succumb to exhaustion. Just bracing against the continual rocking and sudden movements was tiring. When the anxiety and morbid memories were included it quickly added up. Willy badly wanted to be able to stretch out and sleep but there was nowhere he could.

  For another hour the flying boat powered up and down to maintain a safe position clear of the reefs. Willy found he needed to go to the toilet. He waited till he saw Flight Sgt Anderson come out and then made his way forward. After visiting the toilet, which was a nauseous experience because it was full to overflowing, Willy found he was thirsty. He made the few steps across to the galley to get a drink. A glance to the right showed Jacob sleeping on bedding placed on the floor of the crew cabin.

  The flight engineer was there and met his gaze. “Too rough for him to sleep on the bench seat,” he explained.

  “I’ll buy that,” Willy replied, bracing himself against another sudden lurch. “It’s getting rougher isn’t it?”

  “Yes it is,” the flight engineer answered. He looked grey with fatigue himself and that made Willy even more anxious.

  At that moment the co-pilot came down the steps from the flight deck. He nodded to Willy and said to the flight engineer, “We are going to have to risk a take-off Cyril. The wind is not only picking up but is changing direction. It is swinging around to the north and is starting to blow straight down this channel between the two reefs.”

  The flight engineer nodded and looked grim. “So the sea will get even choppier and more unpredictable then. How long before the tide turns?”

  “It turned about twenty minutes ago, just after midday,” the co-pilot answered, “But it will take a couple of hours to reverse its flow in any noticeable way. We can’t afford to hang around that long.”

  The co-pilot now turned to Willy. “Can you get your officer son? I need to brief him.”

  Willy made his way aft to the port blister where Flying Officer Turnbull was seated with two sick cadets. “Sir, the co-pilot would like to speak to you,” he said. From the blister he was able to see out over the miles of churned up sea and seeing that made him truly frightened. He realized he could no longer clearly see where the reefs were because the sea was so confused and there were so many whitecaps.

  ‘We are in trouble,’ he thought.

  Flying Officer Turnbull made his way forward. A few minutes later he made his way aft, stopping to speak to groups of cadets as he did. At each person he checked they had their lifejackets on and their seatbelt securely fastened. When he reached Willy and his group he said, “We are going to take off. The captain warns that it will be rough and that it might be dangerous. You need to be ready to evacuate if we crash.”

  “Crash!” Marjorie gasped.

  Flight Sergeant Anderson gulped and looked scared. “Can’t they just motor around behind the reef or an island or something?”

  Flying Officer Turnbull shook his head. “I asked the captain that. He says that the problem is that the sea is becoming so confused that they can’t see the reefs clearly and we could run onto one.”

  “Better to crash in the open sea,” CUO Mathieson added.

  Willy tried to imagine struggling out of a wrecked aircraft into the welter of surf on a coral reef. ‘We would just be ground to pulp,’ he thought. ‘That’s assuming we can even get out.’

  Then another ghastly thought came to him. ‘If we are down in the sea then the sharks might come!’ That chilled him even more and he could only pray that things would go well.

  To his dismay he heard the aircraft’s e
ngines begin to bellow. He wanted to cry out that he wasn’t ready, that they hadn’t discussed this and needed more time to explore the options and to discuss the situation. Then he felt Marjorie gripping him tightly and he realized that he wasn’t the only one who was scared. That helped. He smiled at her and put an arm around her.

  ‘The officers knowing that we are friends won’t matter if we die,’ he thought.

  Then he made a conscious effort to act calm and to help the others. It made his face feel like it was made of plastic and it felt very stiff and unfeeling but he managed to pretend he was interested and enjoying the adventure. The ‘Catalina’ began to bump and smack into the waves as it picked up speed and Willy began to try to remember what he had read about flying boats and safe sea states for take off and landing.

  Spray began showering back over the entire hull as the bow pounded harder and harder into each wave. From his vantage point Willy could see forward along the side of the hull and that was no help to his peace of mind. He watched with alarm as the bow drove hard into a big wave, sending a huge shower of water back over the aircraft. A lot of this was sucked into the engines or caught by the whirling propellers and then blasted back past him in a roaring mist which all but blotted out visibility for a few seconds.

  ‘Will all that water cause the engines to fail?’ he wondered. He was very aware that the failure of even one engine in the middle of a take-off could have catastrophic effects on the aircraft’s performance. As the bow slammed into yet another wave, causing the entire machine to buck and shudder, an icy clutch of real fear gripped Willy’s heart.

  The plane powered into an even bigger wave and seemed to lose all forward momentum to an alarming degree. ‘We will never get flying speed,’ Willy thought. Now his face was a frozen mask, a grin fixed on it. But inside his heart was hammering and he knew he was afraid. ‘I will keep pretending I’m not so that Marjorie isn’t too scared,’ he rationalized.

  The ‘Catalina’ bounced and hammered across more waves, its progress all but hidden by the flying spray. Willy saw the starboard float dig deeply into a wave crest, causing the aircraft to yaw noticeably. Then the float dragged itself free and the engines kept bellowing. His sight of the propellers was lost in the sheer volume of spray and foam they lashed up and Willy could only hope that Mr Southall had a better view forward than he did.

  As the bow dipped and the tail gave a sickening upwards swoop Willy feared that they were about to drive right under. Then the aircraft shuddered, shook, then powered on. ‘We aren’t going to make this,’ he told himself. ‘The waves are too big for us to build up any real speed.’

  But then Willy noted that the waves seemed to be getting smaller and as the spray thinned a bit he noted a huge area of churned up water a few hundred metres to starboard. That puzzled him for a second, even as his brain calculated that the maelstrom was getting closer with every second. Then he gasped. ‘That is waves breaking on the reef! We are trying to take off in its lee,’ he reasoned. He now understood that Mr Southall had taken the ‘Catalina’ out into the rougher water to start the take-off run and that they were now coming in to the relatively smoother water as they picked up speed.

  Even as this realization came to him he worked out that the take-off course was diagonal to the edge of the reef. With every passing second the aircraft’s course was converging with that welter of foam. ‘If we don’t get off in the next few seconds we will run onto the coral!’ Willy thought.

  Now the aircraft was hammering along rapidly over the smaller waves. Willy began to will Mr Southall to pull back, to try to take off. ‘Do it! Do it now!’ he thought, gripping Marjorie tightly.

  He noted that the spray was now coming from underneath in a solid curving wave. That told him that the ‘Catalina’ had ridden up on its chine and was now aquaplaning on its ‘First Step’, the cut-away section of the hull. Clenching his teeth and staring anxiously out Willy saw that the starboard float was now almost over the breaking waves which marked the edge of the coral reef. He even got glimpses of dark objects in the white foam. ‘They are lumps of coral,’ he thought. ‘If the float hits one of them we will rip a wing off!’

  Suddenly the nose went up and the tail dipped so fast that the narrow fuselage under Willy kissed the waves, sending up more spray. The water was so close that Willy let out a gasp of pure fright. But before his scared mind could articulate thoughts about crashing the waves suddenly dropped away and he felt the zooming, soaring sensation of a take-off.

  ‘We are off!’ he thought as he saw the churning sea drop rapidly below. Mr Southall held the angle of attack as steep as he dared for a few seconds to ensure that they were well clear of the biggest waves. Then he levelled out in a way that sent Willy’s stomach up into his chest. The ‘Catalina’ settled, bumped, then resumed rising.

  ‘Safe!’ thought Willy as the view opened up and he was able to see right across the reef and out to the far horizon. Only then did he realize he was gripping the seat and Marjorie so tightly that his knuckles were white and hurting.

  Hoping that nobody had noticed Willy released his grip and gave a quiet sigh of relief. The ‘Catalina’ went into a wide, sweeping bank to starboard and then continued to climb. As it did Willy noted the distant coastline and a group of large islands ahead. The huge curve in the coast he recognized as the shore of Princess Charlotte Bay.

  “We are going south,” he said to Marjorie.

  She gave him an anxious smile and nodded. “We are alright now aren’t we?” she replied.

  Willy gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and then shook his head as Cadet Bull, who sat opposite, called back, “Unless a wing comes off.”

  As the aircraft settled into a steady climb Flying Officer Turnbull made his way aft, checking on each cadet in turn. Satisfied that no-one was hurt he said, “We are heading back to Cairns.”

  “So we aren’t going to Thursday Island Sir?” Stick asked.

  Flying Officer Turnbull shook his head. “Sorry. We need to get this fellow to hospital and there’s a body to hand over to the police.”

  “So he really was shot sir?” CUO Mathieson asked.

  That caused Willy to experience a sickening flashback to the torn corpse and he almost vomited again, except that his stomach was empty and felt very sore. He also felt a twinge of regret. Thursday Island was a place he had never been to and wanted to visit. It had an aura of mystique about it, one of those legendary places that are far away and exotic.

  To distract himself from his horrible thoughts Willy looked down. Just below him were a group of large rocky islands which he remembered were the Flinders Group. To help take his mind off death and horror he tried to remember the names of the islands but he had left his chart in the wardroom and knew it would not be wise to try to retrieve it at that moment.

  A few minutes later the aircraft flew across the coast in Bathurst Bay and all Willy could see below were vast tracts of bush and rough hills. These seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see before they were lost in the haze. Only a couple of tiny, wriggly scars indicated the route of dirt roads. There were no farms, no fields and no other signs of civilization for quite some time.

  Later they flew directly over the small town of Cooktown. Looking down Willy could clearly see the grid pattern of streets and a number of tiny vessels moored in the Endeavour River. From then on the ‘Catalina’ flew just off the coast, allowing Willy a grandstand view of the beaches and jungle-covered mountains that lined that part of the Coral Sea. He was able to identify Cape Tribulation and the Daintree Rainforest. The Daintree River was very obvious to him and from then on he was in home territory and could recognize most of the large coastal features: Low Isles off Port Douglas, Wangetti Beach, Buchans Point and Double Island, then the beaches just north of Cairns.

  By then the ‘Catalina’ was descending on its landing approach in to Cairns and, as always, Willy stared down with fascination at the all the tiny houses, roads and cars. ‘Just like a model,’ he told h
imself, knowing that he said that every time he took off or landed. Seeing what looked like a tiny person on a tiny bicycle just added to the pleasure.

  ‘Going to land at the airport,’ he thought as the whirr of machinery made him look forward. The starboard landing wheel appeared in view, folding out and down. That did not surprise him. The ‘Catalina’ was an amphibian. ‘Be easier to get an ambulance to the sick man,’ he thought. Then he shuddered as he tried to suppress the next idea. But it came anyway. ‘Or a hearse.’

  Sugar cane fields and mangrove swamps slid by below them, coming closer by the second. The road to Machans Beach swept underneath and then the Barron River and the mangroves along its banks. ‘We seem to be too low,’ Willy worried, staring ahead at the long stretch of bitumen with its white painted ‘piano key’ markings. The flaps were fully extended and the aircraft rocked and wobbled as it encountered ground turbulence. Mr Southall quickly corrected and they slid down to an almost faultless touch down.

  As the wheels touched Marjorie hugged Willy’s arm and said, “Down! Thank heavens for that.”

  “Don’t you like flying?” Willy asked, trying to pretend that he wasn’t secretly relieved himself.

  “Yeah, it’s alright,” Marjorie replied, “But I just wanted this trip over, you know, with the dead body on board and all that.”

  Willy could only agree. For once he was glad the flight was over. But he kept on acting as though nothing unusual was happening. As the ‘Catalina’ taxied in off the main runway to the General Aviation side of the airport he looked around and took in all the sights. This included noting all the types of aircraft parked there. That all helped to keep his thoughts off death.

  Once the ‘Catalina’ was parked and the engines switched off the cadets were told to disembark, those in the tail section first. That meant that Willy was among the first off. As he climbed through the door and down the short flight of steps onto the tarmac he was dimly conscious of the wave of tropical heat which engulfed him. But as he was a Cairns lad, born and bred, he barely noticed the 32 degree summer temperature. It was the last day of October and he thought it perfectly normal. What he was very conscious of was the group of people waiting and the four vehicles parked nearby. Among them were the ambulance that he had expected, and a dark panel van which he suspected was an undertaker’s vehicle to collect the body.