Rottnest – the chook house

February 21, 2024

Rottnest 2024

It is the last day of a two week stay.

This is a luxury that few can/do indulge in. We have seen the chalets next to us empty over and over again; the fresh sheets deposited, the cleaners come in, play loud music and bang around indoors. Slam doors. Clean?

Most people seem to only have a few days, and the lucky ones an entire week but we have 14 impossible days. Fourteen! So long, that when the holiday begins there is no counting down. This really does make the unwinding easy.

It is hot, sure here, but worse on the mainland. A plume of heavy smoke rises from the mainland then drifts and fades across the horizon, and a bush fire is presumed. It is a long way away. Fire is frequent. Perth is a tinder box. No longer is it a surprise to hear the radio give a warning to “leave now or be prepared to defend your home”. “It is no longer safe to leave, choose a room with two exits and running water.” Good grief.

Our tenant in Fremantle has a broken air-conditioner. No air conditioner at Longreach and fans with cut off arms that blow mere wisps of warm air. But we have the sea a few metres from our door. From here organising a new Daikin is a challenge. G has Telstra, check the reviews. In this heat the quotes go through the roof. Ten grand! “It’s brutal” writes the tenant:, the heat, even in Freo. We can plonk ourselves in when the heat overtakes us. We can get a fancy Campari drink with a slice of orange and lots of ice and carry it to the beach and sit in the water whilst wearing prescription sunnies and a hat!

If Rottnest were to burn I imagine sitting here in the safety of the blue water, delivered here swiftly through the muscles of others, safe all the same. Different if a plane were to go down I sometimes think. Would I be abandoned by the rush of people to get away from the burning craft and down the inflatable slide. I am amused and thankful the way airline staff instruct me that in an emergency they will assist me, but really? I might succumb. I am ready to go down with the plane.

The water has been clear and the reeds wave underneath as I swim. Languid. Me in slow motion. Mike says it is good swim with me. Slow. No pressure. Sometimes there are silver fish near the surface and bigger blotchy well-disguised ones in the seagrass. The snorkelers know their names. There are rays too. The bird watchers spot a black shoulder kite and a kingfisher.

Something happens around middle age when men (and some women, although decidedly less I think) become fascinated by birds of the feathered kind; seeing them, hearing them, pointing them out, offering the binoculars to the less fascinated. There are binoculars that you can get that tell you the name of the bird you are looking at. Does that spoil the not knowing? There is an app that can identify them by the sound they make. It confuses the hell out of the birds too as they hear some other non existent bird chirping back at them. There is an app that you can point to the stars in the night sky and be told what is the star you are looking at. Jupiter! There is an app that tells you what the ship sliding across the horizon is called and where’s its home port and what cargo it carries. (We keep track of the jilted sheep carrier that has drifted back and forth for over a month now while no one with authority knows what should be done. And the sheep are just fine, far away enough from shore not to pique any nostrils.)There’s an app that Jane uses to teach herself Spanish (it dings and pings) and a word game that Liz plays. G has several to work through each morning and the list is growing

G has a manuscript to read. I have read mine. But first he has worldle and wordle and quordle and squaredle and…

My phone is only receiving SOS and hence I have no apps. App-less. This is a welcomed unburdening. At least I will know about The Fire if it hits.

A misty rain has fallen on the last day and I wonder if the chalk has been wiped from the road. “Henry and Charlie Stop” with a solid line and repeated a few hundred metres further on. Is this a parent’s instruction to small children to not go further or is this part of a game, a race between small boys that marks a beginning and an end? Is this a worried mother who does not realise that there is no need for barriers and rules at Rottnest. As long as the kid can swim.

Tourists get unbearably close to the quokkas. So close they are almost kissing the comatosed marsupial, down on their hands and knees with their phone in the face of the small unmoving critter. We have Federer to blame for this phenomenon. Despite the signage there is still petting and poking, allowing sips of water from takeaway cups, bowls put out beside chalets.

G hates a cabana. He especially hates the blue and white stripes. An almost identical structure, but of a solid colour does not get the same derision as the blue and white cabana.

A bird has pooed on our bedsheet. It must have made its way through the open window to see what goodies could be had. It is a big poo with sand in it and we presume it is a seagull till the raven shows itself as a thief on other persons balconies. Smart not scared, ballsy birds. King of birds. Argh Argh.

On the shore line, a baby seagull, although as big as his mother, beeps continuously at the nurturing bird. It follows and squeaks at her. It bothers her about her bill. She moves her head away and sometimes steps away from him but the baby is always there, right behind or beside her. Clamped on. Mum, Mum. Sometimes she flies off and then the baby is immediately silent as if the cry would tell other birds he was vulnerable and alone. He is only annoying and a cry baby when his mother is right there. Sound familiar?

There was a time when I could climb the hills with the power of my own shoulders but now like others I have lithium. All sorts zoom by on all sorts of powered mobiles and I wonder when as a species we will give up legs entirely. G makes the effort still and despite a back pack the weight of a coke drinking toddler he is determined to make every hill, not rising from the saddle, like Lance’s great rival. No one recalls his name.

Mother to small school age girls at the stairs that lead to the beach:

“Look where you are?”

“Your friends are back in Perth on the oval, the oval!”

“You are by the ocean!”

She pleads with them not to splash her, she’s exhausted.

She gets up from a cross-legged position effortlessly, no hands.

This is one of the things I am looking for. How easily do people get up and down from the sand? Do you have to roll over onto your hands and knees and push up? Do you ask your partner to give you their outstretched hand? This skill might save you from an old person’s home. Practice now. Get up off the floor and keep doing it. Whatever way you can. On your own.

Instead the older people stand on the beach. They contemplate getting down. You can see it cross their mind. But then wonder if they will ever get up again. It is along way down and even a longer way up. Instead stand around for a short while, make like you want to dry off, that you don’t like the sand, then go back to the chalet. Or buy a chair.

Small child to other small child on balcony:

“Josh, if there is a fire on the balcony, what would you rather? Burn or Jump off?”

For two days I have pain. So much pain that I could hardly roll over in the bed. I lay there and wondered if I should go home early. But that would mean busting in on J and his lemon tart party. G is at the golf course while the fog still hangs across the greens. Why be here in pain? Like the school children. Look where you are. If you can rise from the bed? Can you see the ocean from the bed? A swim helps, stretches, pain killers. Swimming. The ocean the great healer. Each stroke. A balm for more than muscle.

We talk about swimming. Always how? How to continuously stay afloat without pain, with breath, without exhaustion, with ease. Imagine swimming the Rotto Swim? He has filmed me. Really am I that slow? Did you take it in slow motion? No. I film G and later we look at the film. It is a blurred pink thumb of mine across the lens. His stroke is there, somewhere, behind my thumb. Ha. We laugh. Really laugh, deep down in the belly. That is good for your swimming. Laughing.

Tonight the sea breeze is in. We haven’t had it for days and mostly the bay has been a hazy blue and purple. It has been slick and smooth. Cataract blue. There is the slap of the waves on the shore line and the incessant thwack of flyscreen doors that cannot close properly. We have new neighbours and their children freely roam the beach and paddle out to a boat a father has motored over in. There was some early tension over the getting of the key and the usual palaver over credentials not sighted but all is recovered now, tinnies of Swan draught collect about the legs of the chairs. The oyster catcher is the only lone creature on the beach; his red bill deftly pokes the sand as he carefully places one foot down followed by the other.

July 19, 2019

Rottnest Winter 2019

At short notice I book four nights at Rottnest.

Weather is predicted to be cloudy, raining and cold.

It is all those things. But damp and sodden, the trees turn Tolkien and the earth Hobbitville. Skies are dramatic and brooding to fit with the nature of the teenagers who accompany us. They move slowly, silently except for the synthetic shuffle of puffy jackets and the scrape of ugg boots. Their mouths barely change shape, thick lips hang slackly, despite the grunts that are coaxed from them. Their eyes sometimes glisten at their own jokes, shared between them and their phones. They are big, awkward and take up space – spread out on a couch each, while as parents we shrink, take up less and less space, sitting upright at the kitchen table, doing the nine letter word.

Today, as I look out from the kitchen table to the sea view beyond, the sky and sea meld together – like grey flax cloth – the small ripples on the water the imperfect French weave. There is a grumble of ocean, always. The Rottnest soundtrack. Unlike the summer months the people are sparse, hidden indoors, and hence the noise of humans is rare. Many chalets are closed up and empty. Old people and grandparents come, but families are mainly elsewhere. My facebook feed tells me they are following the sun. Doing cartwheels on beaches. Sipping Prosecco on Croatian balconies.

Here, we watch the storm clouds roll across the horizon and sheets of rain fall like curtains on the sea. Container ships still move with regularity across the straight horizon. We hear there has been a surge in the numbers of quokkas and they seem abundant, but sleepy. They curl themselves into a ball and tuck their heads into their bellies to sleep. Their scaly rat-like tail acts as a stabiliser. Heavy rain has meant they have drunk more than they would and this has changed their biome. Some are suffering poor cellulose digestion and a favourite quokka, who resides near the Longreach shop, is ill and weak. His name is Peanut. He has fallen to his side, cartoon-like, and three vets stand around him. Their expertise comes up wanting. One notes the poor body condition and how this does not look like an acute illness. The desire to give him water must be subdued. The ranger will collect him to see if anything can be done. Later we hear he has been revived, somewhat, and returned, replenished with the pulp from the juice extractor.

In the settlement the seagulls remain fierce, swooping and stealing croissants right from your hand before a mouthful can be consumed. English women and their young girls in metallic coloured sneakers and plastic tiaras shriek about the persistent scavengers. They cover their food with napkins to get up from their table to get cutlery. A peacock hovers too. He fiercely attacks a quokka over a dropped morsel. In order for the mothers to drink their pink wine in peace the girls are watching Barbie on a propped up cell phone whilst intermittently squealing about a watchful bird. We move closer to the shore to escape them and they follow us.

In the evenings there is the Tour de France, Wimbledon and World Cup cricket. India, despite Dohni, is beaten by New Zealand. Riske nearly beats Serena. One night the boys, pillows in knapsacks, go to the cinema in the shed and see Rocket Man. Who would have thought that in 2019 I would have an Elton John song playing over and over in my mind.

At sunset we walk the coast to watch the sun shoulder its way through the clouds, leaving them bruised and longing. The salt lake, with the surprising name of Lake Baghdad, is full and the sun strikes its surface, so it glistens like polished brass. Pines make perfect tree cut-outs on the hills in the distance. The walls of the yellow cottages are more brilliant and the trunks of the stubborn trees are dark and wet. Their bark is gnarly and textured like the fur of creature intent on camouflage. Graham quotes Edward Hopper – “all I ever wanted was to capture sunlight on a wall.” And I think – all I ever wanted was to write about it. The bay is empty of boats and the beach person-less. A large pile of seaweed takes on the shape of a beached whale. Sometimes someone is bravely fishing from the jetty, but mainly it is barren too.

March 6, 2017

Rottnest 2017

It’s all about the silence. Although it isn’t silent when you listen. There is the slap of the sea – constant, background. There is the screech of children. Sometimes a meltdown from the chalet behind. And always the bang of screen doors. There is the latch on the gate, the diesel hum of boat motors, the flip flop of thongs on bitumen. There is the crash of glass bottles entering the recycling bins, the whistle of a boatie to the landlubbers on shore. A father chastises a son for talking back and a mother attempts to smear sunscreen on a wriggling, moaning child. But there are only a few cars. There is a rubbish truck. There are no horns or sirens. There are bicycle bells. There are few telephones ringing, except for those timing the cooking of the pasta.

Rottnest.

The Cairns – they come every second year. They wish for yearly. They are Sydney-siders. Big city people, but lovers of the simplicity of Rottnest. We will always have Rottnest. Rottnest has seen new partners, seen pregnancies and babies added. Beds have been upgraded with bed runners and better mattresses. New tiles, new lights (still too bright), a change in couches (too hard) and outdoor balcony seating. We no longer can move a couch from the chalet onto the balcony, so instead order a foldaway bed and install it out there. The Cairns have a three-bedder and so an expanse of balcony and extra large kitchen and fridge. The three-bedder is looking very good. Another Perth mother arrives with a lanky girl child. She makes wonderful curry and goes to Mass. She talks about her street where she has moved from the wealthy to the poor side, since splitting with her husband, and how wonderfully refreshing the poor side is. They have a gifting shelf in their laneway where people exchange all manner of books and knick knacks. Since separating she has brought back inside a beloved Jarrah table, a family treasure, which was relegated to life on the porch in the home she shared with her husband. A teenager has not come this year – but two small boys are now two older boys, only inches apart. Still boys. Still lovers of cricket and riding their bikes.

Day One Monte stacks it in front of the Visitor centre and requires fixomull to a scraped knee. His diabetes is no longer new. His pump gives him and his parents freedom from needles, but still requires the input of calculations and knowledge of what has been eaten and of how much carbohydrate it contains. It is second nature to Monte to count everything that goes into his mouth. Every chip, every BBQ Shape. “26 Shapes Mumma.” He has a record low of 1.8 one day on the balcony, appearing to the adults unlike himself, a callow meek Monte declares, “I am Low.” Low he is. He is told to sit. Troy gets juice from the fridge and two glasses are downed. In minutes he is back to over 6. We, the diabetes rookies, are nervous and ill-equipped. The parents and the child have it all down pat. No one panics. Juice and jubes and the blood glucose is back on track.

Monte, diabetes or not, is determined to do well. He is competitive with everything. He aims to be the best. He is sore at losing and when things don’t appear fair. He is like a wind-up toy with an Ever Ready battery. He keeps going despite being red-faced and hot. Sometimes his face folds and he hides himself under a Turkish towel on the beach. Sometimes he won’t swim. “Chop Chop young son,” is called to Troy as he stand up paddle boards towards the shore, after-all another man is required on the cricket pitch.

Raff is a harder nut to crack. Brilliant light blue eyes and wry smile. Tells it like it is. He says he is bored, but also that he is having the best time. He rejects the application of sunscreen or the wearing of a hat. He plays cricket but won’t watch it on the telly. He loves school and can’t wait for the holidays to end so he can go back. Both boys love Jasper and he plays with them well, with a patience he does not have for his parents. On the last night they play a game where they must search for each other while trying to get home to the base without being caught. Raff: “The most intense game ever.”

Nostalgic treat – original Tim Tams and Neapolitan Ice-cream.

Middle aged couple pre dinner and lunch time cocktail – Aperol Spritz.

Typical discussion – ailments, need to reduce alcohol consumption, difficulty with reducing alcohol consumption, lack of interest and desire in decreasing alcohol consumption, how lack of alcohol just makes them cranky.

Milly’s laugh – “howabouthoseeagles”

Troy’s story – Snoopy (said with a lisp) and Mr Michaels.

My lip is burnt and it makes me touch it. I worry it with my front teeth.

Like the teenagers. They too have burnt lips. Mothers give them cream, similar to what used to be applied to nappy rash. We swim at Little Parakeet and are joined by other old friends. They too chaperone teenagers. We reminisce briefly at what Rotto was like when our children were babies. When at nighttime they slept and we barbecued attached to baby monitors. They have a teen girl who has taken to “Fuck you” and giving them the finger. We have a sullen, string bean boy. More broody and somber. Disdainful of questions. Irked by any attempt of mine at humour or dance. Even if it will only be seen by him. My mere swaying with the beat can send him into a frenzy of STOP MUM. Strangely it only makes me want to dance more.

So. Two middle-aged couples on the beach while our teens roam about the beach, without energy, without vim. Sapped. Arms flop about their bodies like lifeless limbs. A French couple squabbles with a small boy having a tantrum on the sand. An open hand strikes the boy. Leave him be, we all think. It is easy to parent from afar, when you are not in the thick of it. Perspective is clear, a way forward, so easy to see. But when you are amongst it, not so much. What should you do when they unleash the “fuck you” we ask, but never seem to get an answer. Perhaps they too, don’t know. I guess we will muddle through, like we have with all the previous parenting woes, only to find out later that, despite trying our best, there was indeed a less painful way. Later we joke we don’t know which we would prefer – the fuck you or the silent moping. They tell the story of threatening to remove teen girl’s bedroom door if it was slammed one more time. Slammed hard. Makita comes out. Door hinges unscrewed. Later, on opening their own bedroom door it nearly falls off as teen girl has loosened its screws with a Stanley knife. Touché, thinks Dad. A valid response to authority.

Then comes Australia day.

I love Australia, but not when it’s shoved in my face. I don’t like balconies festooned with triangles of Australian flags. I don’t like boats with massive billowing flags fit for a parliamentary flagpole. Boats anchor – A Salt Weapon, Reel Xtreme. I don’t like Aussie Crawl played over and over again, or Men at Work, whilst middle-aged men in Australian flag hats and boardies sit with a beer and sing the chorus and play air drums. Later said man will wander from the beach to the shops and take a piss on the brick stairs between the chalets. Choice. When two blondes, fresh from their shower, with large glasses of white wine pass under our balcony to join the Men at Work boat, I ask politely if they might relay the message to turn their music down. The glare – long and hard eyed, the clenching of their teeth somewhere behind their closed lips, the lack of a verbal response, the cackle when they reach their friends, their pointing me out as “that lady on the balcony” was all a tacit agreement that we do no longer (if we ever did) like each other. It makes me think of dogs and their mostly excellent reading of each other’s body language. As humans – we think we rely on verbal cues – but we are just as much influenced by a look, a small movement of the lip or eyebrow. So in dog language we gave each other the “look away.” Don’t mess with me.

On the mainland it is sweltering. A seaplane, supposed to be part of the sky show ahead of the fireworks, turns without enough speed for a hot windless day, a wing dips, a motor stalls, and it plunges like a poorly made paper plane, into the river, killing pilot and passenger. We think of Big Steve (back in the US) and of his job sorting out the cause of any similar “fatal.” G says he would hate the way a passenger died, because of a pilot’s inexperience.

The sky did its thing tonight. After a hot day the storm clouds have arrived and made a sunset of rose and mauve. The wind, which was playing havoc with the Big Bash TV reception, decided to fade and allow some uninterrupted viewing. It must be hot on the mainland. Cricketers are sweating. The distant lighthouse stood solid and beige while the sky all around changed and morphed. A big white voluminous cloud puffed itself up and all around it other darker clouds swirled and spread. The sea turned from soft mohair blue to beaten pewter. My raised stinger welt begins to itch. The fan ticks.

I dream that I am entering a lift as someone with a thin whippet style dog is exiting. Some how there is a cavernous gap between the landing and the lift and of course, as it always is in dreamland, this is not abnormal or a surprise. What is shocking is that as the man leaps across the dark and endless gap but the dog does not. He, then at one side and the dog still in the lift, urges the skinny thing to jump across to him and as it does so he pulls on its leash and its head slips loosely from the collar and the flimsy dog disappears into the dark. A thump is heard as it hits the bottom and then nothing. It is somehow my fault, in my heart, that this dog was afraid to jump, failed to jump, didn’t leave with the man. I wake up, annoyed and made itchy by the stinger welt across my chest. I itch it. Stop. Itch some more. Think of John Turturro in The Night Of.. and wish for a pointed knitting needle. Itch some more.

January 26, 2016

Rottnest 2016

I am reading Carol by Patricia Highsmith. It is not Rottnest. It is Manhattan 1950’s. Still. It is moody, full of cocktails, road trips, hotel lobbies, minks, telegrams. People spend time in libraries. Under the fan in the bedroom with the ocean view, by the lap lap of the waves I read it, every now and then pausing to view a yacht slowly make its way across the screen created by the window. G has removed the flyscreen so the view is clear and unpixellated by the mesh.

Smoke haze obstructs the horizon as the mainland burns. Often there is that feeling here. That over there something catastrophic has happened and you’ve all been blown away – but here on Rottnest we are none-the-wiser and continue on, oblivious to your fate. We will do okay till the shop runs out of supplies and then it will turn to chaos here too. Smoke is thick so the silhouette of the city is gone. The twinkle of lights peters out. In a sudden shift the wind turns and the boats swing around to face the ocean and a squall makes a mess of the once smooth surface. From slick to rippled. From the balcony I can see into the cabin of a stinker and see he too watches the Big Bash on his wide screen.

We are here with teenagers. They sleep late and often have to be woken and prodded to rise from their beds. They have sunburnt lips, leave their shorts on the floor in the kitchen, lose stuff, drink too much juice and serve out way too much Nutragrain. They take several showers a day, leave the light and fan on and have to be reminded to not use a new glass every time they need a sip of water. They have moments of sullenness and answer everything with the same indignant huffiness. They are able to wash the dishes (once a day), take the rubbish out (after being asked) and get supplies from the shop. They call each other old boy. Sometimes it is hard to tell if they are having a good time or not. It is so not cool to be enthusiastic or smile, except at each other. They have banded together like we are some common enemy and I remember doing something similar with my sister against our parents. An us and them approach to the family holiday.

I want to grab him and hold him close. I see mothers on the beach with toddlers wrapped about their torsos – their chubby thighs clinging intently to their mothers’ sides. Not that he ever did that. He never has liked to be held and hugged. So that after a while you no longer even try to touch him. You just give up. You tell yourself that it’s not his thing- he’s not huggy. And when you see other boys hug their mothers you think lucky you.

There is a screeching child in a boat off shore. The noise penetrates my colouring-in. Yes really. It seems my fifty plus brain has a new found intolerance to such a noise. Somewhere from deep inside the description grizzle pot bubbles to the surface and I am reminded of being called that by my own parents when I squawked my discomfort at some minor thing.

They say the job of parents is to create happy memories. These become the trust account for the later adult to draw upon – but I think how the brain is hard wired to remember most of all what is frightening, new and extreme. It is designed to deeply recall the things that threaten safety. Given the new safety of children and the need felt by parents to make childhood safe how will they remember theirs – a blanche mange of juice and chocolate.

On the day of the thunderstorms one boy has burnt his bottom lip so badly that it blisters and the other nearly faints in Subway. This they may remember.

Teenage brains are also primed to seek danger and risk and at no other time is the brain ripe like it is to the addictive pull of dopamine – driving forth the need to have it flood the brain. It is why the teenager is apt to be able to learn and desire in both good and bad ways with more abandon and passion than at any other time. It is why alcohol is consumed and drugs tried in excess and the background worries of parents seem small and mundane to the dopamine-fuelled teenagers. What can possibly be more important than feeling this alive? Memories made at this time are more indelible, fixed like they happened yesterday. That first grope in with a Hale boy in a bungalow at Thompsons. The smell of coconut tanning lotion. White bread from the bakery spread with Vegemite. Phoning my mother from the pay phone, as requested. That tequila sunrise at the Quokka Arms. When the brain is fuelled with dopamine anything seems possible and whatever created the release is well remembered by the addictive brain. It seems we all have one –a brain that seeks pleasure as its primary aim – it is just important to have the right drug ready for them – with any luck they fall passionately in love with art, politics, music, sport, the environment – rather than the heady pursuits of drug taking.

It took only seven minutes for the small town of Yarloop to incinerate. It was the kind of fire that made the sky wonderful at Rottnest. It was a timber town and now nothing remains but scorched earth and bits of blistered sheet metal. Pictures from the air make it look like something built of cards that with one puff is blown over. Residents wish to start over, despite the pain. It seems the human desire to keep rebuilding and creating cannot be stymied by bushfire.

January 18, 2015

Rottnest 2015

Mini Murmurations.

Starlings do this thing. Instantaneously. Like a sheet shaken out. About to be laid over a bed. Thrown into the sky in one action. Graham is sitting on the arm of the couch on the balcony trying to capture the moment on his iPhone. It escapes him every time. They are alerted by. What? No one can work it out. Milly is sent to startle and throws sticks into the casuarina. They do not stir. Then, when no one is ready they fling themselves into the sky, light, like screwed up tissues. All a flutter. One flies into the house, attempts an escape through the fly screen but then crashes into a glass plane. It lies momentarily stunned on the cork floor tiles. Graham scoops it from the ground and releases it. The starling flies off, uninjured.

Later, back on the mainland it is discovered ( by Graham) that the birds are not Starlings since they only live on the east coast and perhaps the bird most likely is a Swallow – the Welcome Swallow.

January in Rottnest is new for us. A decade of trips in November during school term has come to an end since private school demands attendance, especially during exams. It is warmer than our usual holidays. Every day a cloudless blue sky with predictable easterly winds that change to south-westerly by the afternoon. No blankets required at night. Warm enough to inhabit the balcony all night long.

As we enter Longreach we sense a difference, but it takes us a few moments to realise what the difference is. Have some trees been removed? The rear brick fences of the chalets have been cut down, so a brick fence only a few feet high surrounds each yard. Everything on view. Bikes and the detritus of beach life. There is a feeling of over-exposure, less privacy. It takes us a few days to adjust, and then it is as if there has always been low fences. More cricket is played on the street. More view for the barbecuers. Not liking the change, turns to liking it, forgetting it was any other way.

Monte – pale, nuggetty, five years old. Bullish. Exuberant for life. He moves so fast that often he almost topples on the turn, but rights himself before he falls. He has only just learnt to ride a bike, but needs no trainer wheels, and can make the steepest hill. He perfects the skid. He needs someone to tighten the string of his swimming shorts and to tie his shoelaces, but he knows to check before he eats anything and to ask how many can he have. How many chips Mamma?

Monte has been a type 1 Diabetic for a few years now. He has a pump that feeds the insulin directly into him, so there is rarely a need for needles. The pump is carried in a pouch, like a traveller’s wallet. A five-year old, like an astute tourist in a dangerous land.

I’m low, says Monte.

Mother Milly has become an adept reader of her son’s endocrinology. From marketing to maths. From regular mother to someone who understands the intricacies of a disease and a physiological process because it is the condition her child has. She has no choice but to become fully informed. Like being on a roller coaster, sometimes she panics, but there is still no getting off it. She has to open her mouth and holler, fling her arms in the air and then cease, get a grip, and hang onto the carriage, ride the thing till it comes to a stop at the end. Her child is with her and she has to take the plunge too. She has learnt that other mothers are interested, only in as much as they want to know how she saw the disease develop. What were his symptoms? Perhaps they have a child that may one day be afflicted. But when it comes to understanding more, she sees them glaze over.

Monte, denied an adventure with the big boys pleads his case, Hugo can take the diabetes bag.

The diabetes bag is the lifeline to all that is going on in the world of Monte’s blood glucose. Seemingly only a moment away from being too high or too low. Despite the technology of a pump there is still the required calculations to make. All through the day he is being tested and the insulin amount dialled in. Both parents have become skilled in the area of nutrition and glycemic index, of calculating the amount of insulin that is required to counteract the food just consumed. Sides of packets are read for their sugar content. But still there are the inevitable fluctuations that result in a low. Luckily Monte can tell his own symptoms. He can feel a tingling is his legs. Milly is always at the ready with a jelly baby or an orange juice. At the peak of the Longreach hill, on the way to the settlement, the mother and son are beside the road with bikes laid over. Amongst the tall grasses they sit and a skin prick to a finger tells her, “No, you are not low – it is just the hill. It has exhausted us all.”

The day we leave Fremantle a fire takes hold of the bushland and suburbs of Bullsbrook. It is too late to leave. Leaving now will result in death. Take refuge in a room with two doors…. The radio makes its familiar emergency notice. The one that gets the hairs on your arms rising. The bush fire takes days to control and stains the horizon with its billowing smoke. It feels like the world has imploded across the water. Perhaps we will spend the rest of our lives on the island. At night the orange of the flames can be seen. Smoke still in the morning.

Beach cricket. Monte has the prekindergarten child’s inability to lose gracefully. He can never understand why he is out. It is never fair. It is always too early or Hugo is being too hard. But before the game begins they shake on “being out means no tears.” No downside mouth turns. Handshakes aside, tears still flow.

Rafferty is only slightly bigger than the younger Monte. They could be confused as twins. The older boys call him the Raffinator, but the nick name is ironic for this small boy’s aim is not destruction or leadership. He exists in his alone world, riding his bike single mindedly up and down the road, or searching the beach for shells that resemble letters to make words, or checking his newly purchased soft toys for defects in the stitching. He speaks in a husky, beyond-his-years voice with iridescent blue eyes and the closest he gets to eating lettuce is rubbing it against his tongue. I want a T-shirt that reads I love Raff.

The teenage boys are sinewy and brown. They are bullied into washing up, into emptying a bin or two. When their sheets make their way onto the floor they sleep on bare mattresses. They lose stuff. They forget stuff. They leave piles of wet belongings like snakes shed skin. They hold themselves away from you when you ask for a hug. You remember them young and their bodies soft. You remember them telling you where it hurt. When they told you stuff. Before they rolled their eyes when you spoke. They now know the island like it is a second home. They make their own movies, take their own pictures, post to their own instagram accounts. They are forging their own Rottnest. They can ride every hill with ease and speed. They can have a stack and not cry. Let a bubble of blood form a clot on their knee, and not ask you for a bandaid. They can walk off on their own to be on the jetty whilst you order a meal at the pub. When their food arrives he cannot be located and you begin to imagine yourself as Harrison Ford in Frantic. Then, the speck of him is there, slowly returning up the beach. Just walking Mum. They spend the afternoons in their room with their headphones and their technology, but still are drawn into the beach cricket games, the beach paddle ball competition, the snorkelling and endless trips to the Geordie shop to purchase sweets and ice creams. Making memory of beach, of summer, of family. Salting their veins.

Bus ride – once the island had trees before the need for fuel. Then the trees were felled and burnt and now the island is barren and scrubby. Volunteers still plant. Little squares of plastic mark their progress. So easy to cut down and plunder. So much harder to regrow.

At night we have various cocktails made with Campari or Aperol, Prosecco and Cinzano Rossi. It is our first year requiring the presence of a jigger from the mainland. Teenagers are sent to the shops for oranges so slices can adorn the drinks. Then we play Cards against Humanity. Strangely, or not, couples seem to find their partners answers the funniest. Milly – beautiful laugh. Learning the meaning of words such as queefing. Then, the adults all do a skin prick test to assess their own blood glucose. Why? To see if it hurts? To marvel at how, despite the excesses of ice-cream and alcohol, homeostasis remains. Blessed is a working pancreas.

We cook from Yottam and Graham makes tortillas with Masa flour. The smell of maize flour makes everyone think of various South American journeys. But I have never been to South America. To me it will always remind me of home, of Rottnest, of men in board shorts and no shirts standing at the bench top working the tortilla press with a red cocktail to the side, whilst women cut onions and make salsa and small boys play cricket on the sand.

Maths. The maize flour will send Monte into a massive low. It is decided he can have pasta and left over Bolognese instead.

Other holiday-makers join the balcony. They have brought their own Hendricks to make gin and tonics. They add slivers of finely sliced cucumber to thick-bottomed glass tumblers brought from home. Jasper’s T-shirt with the silhouette of a wolf stirs the man to tell his wolf-bite story. He was bitten on the ankle by a young wolf he was walking on a chain at a wolf sanctuary in England intent on conservation and reintroduction. When asked what was the purpose of the walks he says that the wolves required the exercise. The trainers spoke to the wolves in Inuit.

The The plays. Echo and the Bunny men. Nick Cave. Beck.

Boat grounded. Man stands and inspects it, hands on hips. Rocks it. Doesn’t budge. Rocks some more. Another man, his boat still afloat a few metres away enters the beach. Not a sideways glance. Hops on his boat and motors away. Never a word between them. From the balcony we think, Not very Rotto. Friends join the man with the grounded boat. More people will it from the grip of the sand with hands firm on hips. The bottom hangs on. In the end the tide does their work for them. Later they secure it further from shore.

Hugo has a scratchy eye. Sand for sure. Tightly hanging on to the underside of an eyelid. Bike ride to nurse’s station. Blue light. Flipped eyelid. Like rolling a blind. Unsuccessful flushing. Cotton bud. No corneal ulcer. Instantly better. Nurse’s bread and butter. Earlier in the week the tanned beachy nurse told me of the face-plants of cyclists – the ones who, riddled with fear, don’t lose their grip on the handlebars and meet the bitumen with their face instead of their hands. Then how she’d spent her shift by the side of a woman with a slowly leaking aneurysm, choosing to die at Rottnest, with her family all around her. The nurse was moments from sending for the flying doctor, after more than ten hours of dying, and the woman, maybe knowing she would be flown away from her beloved place, passed away. Later the family gave the nurse champagne.

Walking back from the pub the iPhone cameras come out. A beautiful place in which to chose to die. Light pools, sand, gum leaves. Shacks and verandahs with dart boards. Black bitumen roads shining silver. The black blobs of quokkas waiting to unseat cyclists who travel too fast.

The morning is still. We get out early. Our tribe of beach goers. Small boys, big boys, men, women, diabetes bag, flies. Turkish towels. Graham and I take the beach wheelchair and the regular chair too. The others cycle. We get there first and inspect the scene. Far below lies a crescent-shaped beach. Turquoise water. It is a narrow sandy path between thick scrubby bushes. It is a single file path made by feet. I transfer to the hippocampe and leave the titanium one by the bikes and we push it through the path, taking out the sides of bushes, till we get to the rocky path. Now there is no set path, just goat trails. It is a two-person job to get the chair down to the beach. Discussion over piggy backs gives way to just carrying the chair with me in it. Holus bolus. Like I am a queen unable to touch the dirt. Cleopatra-like (wish). Handed down the cliff and limestone till the beach is made. Over salt bush we hurtle. No thought as to the journey back. We swim. The water is icy. A red starfish is found. Small boys get to feel it, comment on how they find its sliminess disgusting, before it is returned to its crevice. Boys snorkel. Small boys practice skimming rocks. Home time.

The uphill journey gets to the rocky ledge before another man, a stranger, appears and offers his muscles to the task. Three men now – and the job is easier. I suspect it has made his day – to help someone. To feel the value in his working muscles, lift another person. Just as his appearance was a gift to us – as the scaling seemed bigger and harder than the descent – his helping has given him a story for later in the day. He will tell how on a steep rocky path he came across three people, one in a wheelchair, scaling the path from Armstrong Bay. He gave his arm to the chore and the woman was returned to the safety of the road, to the familiarity of bitumen and manmade surface.

November 26, 2013

A Finnish Sock Knitter and The Marine Mammal Researchers

Rottnest.

This year we have new comers. Old friends have new partners. But even though couples have split, friendships are secure. They’re those thirty year friendships that, like good wine, age and mature. They become deeper, richer, more satisfying. There is the familiar laugh. There are the remembered stories. The retold jokes. Almost like siblings. Maybe better – because you choose them. You live separated by oceans and deserts. The world could be cleaved in two. You could have lost contact, but you didn’t.

Sam. A boy – his skin the pale blush of an apricot – is a natural enemy of the sun. He is plastered, covered, drilled into a cap. The older boy needs less instruction regarding the sun. By eleven, the routine is second-nature. School has taught them something life-saving. No hat. No play. Sam has natural exuberance. He is a born story-teller. He amazes his own father with his natural right-fit. How did I end up with a kid so bold? He is the kind of kid who trusts himself, already. He can belly laugh. He can still be fooled by stories of pirates and sea caves. Up the beach he has made friends already with kids from another chalet and is involved in building a castle.

The first day brings wind. So much that a woman on the beach in front of us merely play-fights with a sun shade like a washer woman with the sheets at a Hill’s hoist. She speaks to the balcony where her husband sits watching – Who bought this one? Where are the sand bags to keep it anchored to the sand? Instead it billows and becomes parachute, threatens to carry her, Mary Poppins-like down the beach. But it is Rottnest and even an husband’s failed purchase can’t make you stay cross.

Jasper. The first ocean swim of the season. Forced to cross into the weeds to collect the skim ball has him balking. A year ago he would have refused to swim and have the feathery weeds finger his skin. A father prepares to go after the ball, heading towards the shore to take off his shirt. But then the boy dives in and crosses the weeds. Done it. Tick that fear off.

Friends. Despite staying in Bathurst, they meet us at the Big Blue of Longreach. Tania has bought Exit Mould to clean her accommodation’s bathroom – saying the fungi on her bathroom tiles is so bad that it has turned to moss. That they even sell Exit Mould in the General Store says something. Back to our chalet for bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches on toasted white bread. After lunch on the Longreach balcony perhaps they are thinking of a change in accommodation next year. Move from the ghetto. The kids are sent to the shops for a lolly treat so peace can be extended on the balcony. They return with deodorant style sticks that deliver sugared corn syrup and additives to your tongue via the rollerball. It is all about the delivery. The BrainLicker is examined and declared an evil sweet. Made in Spain. Who would have thought? Only at Rottnest.

Professor of Parenting. Five-year-olds are on the beach in front of us. A small powered boat is anchored in the shallows. It is the only thing to target. They throw bombs of sand toward it. The wet sand sticks to the boat’s side and lands in it too. The failed husband calls from the balcony to the kids and asks them to refrain from throwing sand at his boat. They don’t stop. We all watch from our vantage as he heads down the stairs to the beach. He squats on the sand and motions with his hand for the kids to come speak to him. He speaks too softly for us to hear but we can see him pointing to his boat and explaining perhaps why he would rather they didn’t continue to pelt it with wet sand. His body language is soft, kind, gentle. The small tribe of boys runs off down the shore. After all a pelican is in the shallows fishing. He turns and walks back to his balcony. We want to applaud. We nickname him Father of the Year. We imagine what he might have said. We expected a telling off. We imagine what we might have said, had the boat been ours. We admire the man who has chosen to make himself small in front of little children rather than wave his fist, point a finger and shout.

On the index finger of my right hand I have an infection in the nail bed. A cut hair from a canine patient somehow made its way down the side of the nail and festered there. Eventually the body repelled it. I was driving the car, when I noticed a black hair poking from the nail bed and I worked it out. A long hair emerged. For several weeks since the nail has still not been right. It has a scar to its surface as it grows, and the skin is still sore around the base of the nail. The nail grows furrowed, like it keeps a memory of the hair in its surface.What else will work its way out from beneath the skin? I paint the cuticle with betadine. It reminds me of doing the same thing for my mother shortly before she died. She had an infected nail too. She needed some one to look after it for her because it was hard to look after your right hand with your left when you are right-handed and nearly ninety. I took her hand in mine and tended the nails. Her hands are so familiar to me. I can still see them in my mind. They are almost easier to recall than anything. Of course they aged over time, but their essence was always the same. Long fine fingers.

Marine Mammal Researchers. She is exactly how you might imagine a marine scientist to be. She is beer bottle brown. Her tan is so deep it can’t fade, not even in a Scottish winter. They live by the beach in the Bahamas so the sound of the water on the shore is their traffic noise. They have mongrel dogs who share their house. One was killed by a stingray barb to the chest as it chased the fish in the shallows. On their first morning Charlotte goes out running and decides to cross-country. Why you may ask. Because she is Charlotte. She has head phones and music, maybe a podcast of This American Life, as she lopes out. Fearful suddenly of snakes in the knee-deep shrub, she turns her music off and takes to the bushes with a stick. She comes across a fence with a sign that says trespassers face a $1000 fine. She wavers. But the way back is two hours. She scales the fence and finds herself on the runway and the sound of aircraft above. She runs the airstrip to find the airport closed and another fence barring her escape. She tests this one with a stick, incase it is electric, before over she goes. Back on the road she meets some other tourists, but they are lost too and can’t give her directions to “Long Bay.” Despite the three-hour run she still has the energy to ride to the West End and see the seal colony. That night many bottles of wine are drunk. Charlotte = Excess. We hear how the marine scientists fell for one another. How Charlotte didn’t know what was coming over her when she was compelled to drop things just to reach down to retrieve them and somehow find her body closer to that of the other woman. Being in love is like that. Genderless.

Perri. When she wakes in my house she tells me her dream of killing a man with a dart. She has a white towel around her, like she has stepped from a sauna. The man wouldn’t die. He needed slashing. Not just prodding. In dreams the killing is always protracted. Then we talked about knitting. Knitting needles can’t be brought in your hand luggage, not unless they are made of bamboo. Too weapon-like. I must go to work but I can direct her to the wool shop where she can buy the double-ended needles she needs to make the Finnish socks. She has three to make for a friend going somewhere cold – where a Dutch heel is needed and the love of a hand-made sock can do more for your health than most things.

When Jasper is sulking Perri suggests I try asking; “What do you need to feel better?” Charlotte says that is therapist speak for “So who’s grumpy now?” He cannot be jollied from his hump. He stands back at the beach. He won’t join in the cricket. Watching him is hurting my brain and my heart. I want him to pull himself out of his mood. I think of my father and his favourite line, “buck up” to a child with a sullen face. But wanting it doesn’t make it so. Asking him what is his mood about does not receive an answer. The more you pry with Jasper the deeper he sinks into himself. A touched snail. I wish I could learn to stop asking. I try Perri’s line. Nothing is his response.

We are about to have coffee at the Geordie Cafe when my phone rings. The phone says it is Jasper but it is not him. Instead a woman says – is this Jasper’s mother? He’s had an accident and asked me to ring you. He’s fallen from his bike. He’s grazed his face. I ask the woman where he is and tell her to tell Jasper that his Dad is on his way. Graham wants to know how bad the injury is? It’s his face, I say. Gravel rash is always painful but especially so as it crosses your lip and cheek and eyebrow. Luckily the teeth are intact. We never discover what was the cause of the bike accident. There were no Quokkas to blame. No other cyclists or random sticks or potholes. Just over the handlebars he flew, seeing the road as he came down hard to meet it. At the nurses station they cleaned the wounds and trimmed the flap of skin hanging over his lip with a scalpel blade.

Confined to the chalet for the afternoon with three new Simpsons comics. His good mate stays with him. Later Charlotte describes his scabs perfectly – fried egg and creme caramel.

Just Graham and I go together to The Big Blue. It is rare to be together, alone on the beach. I swim and then once back on shore Graham goes to the far end of the beach to snorkel the reef. I am alone on the beach in the sun. I can’t really manoeuvre far but can position myself towards the sun and close my eyes like a cat sun-baking in a windowsill. I am alone. On the beach.

If you are able-bodied this might not seem significant. But to someone dependent on the propulsion of others, this is deeply gratifying. To be that person who wakes up before the rest of the chalet and strides out with nothing but their bathers and a sarong and then dives into the ocean for a morning swim and then takes a leisurely walk home along the shoreline – this is the thing I yearn for most.

At Magnetic Island there are times of the year when you are unable to swim in the ocean because of the Irukandji jelly fish and their deadly stings. For me the ocean will always be full of the Irukandji – a thing to look at and long for.

A family pass by. Perhaps they wonder how it is that I have come to be plonked here on the sand. Like a forgotten something. I pretend not to notice them as they dawdle by.

I make do with being on my low slung beach chair sitting in the sun. The ocean is endlessly comforting. Like watching a fire, the shore line is movable and beautiful. The wetness receding. The dryness taking over. Beach sand like blotting paper. Sand as lip, wave as tongue. Over and over the lap and constant sweep of the water. It is company that is perfect. I reach down into wet sand. I feel it slip through my fingers. I plunge my hand deep. Bury me. Water laps about my wrist.

January 12, 2013

Rottnest 2012

Every year we go to Rottnest in November. It is our family tradition. We have done it since Jasper was in utero and before he was even thought of. In those days we had an imaginary child called Pee Wee. Somehow she skipped childhood and we never envisioned her at Rottnest. She was a gamine who grew up to be a singer in a jazz band and who lived a groovy loft on Manhattan. In our musings we were aging grey-headed parents who visited her there. But that’s another story. Instead we got a blue-eyed boy, who, like the real boy he is, comes with us on holiday, a forty minute ferry ride from home.

Arriving at Rottnest is like going home. You have stepped out of your Fremantle cottage to shortly enter your more primitive but better abode. This home has no messy desk, no laundry, no bills and, most of the time, no telephone coverage.

So much of every part of the holiday is soaked in familiarity. Do you remember the year I nearly fell off my chair onto the Dugite? What about the time Vinnie cracked his helmet smashing into the wall as he stacked his bike? And when Jasper caught his finger in the flywire door? Each year melds with the former so it can no longer be recalled what year it was and who was there. That time we stayed in the back row, with Troy and Jo and the boys were babies. Remember when we showed the Nordic Anja the flickering of the orbiting satellites. She had never seen a sky so black, so unaffected by city light. There is the routine of arriving at the ferry terminal early enough for someone to unload the plastic containers full of belongings and beach gear and still have time enough to drive home again and return riding their push bike, into the head wind, with the semis roaring by. This year Jasper is old enough to do the bike run too.

There must be enough time to sweet talk the ferry men into the delivery of the-above-allowable-safe-lifting-weight beach wheelchair in its bag. They have not denied me thus far.

Once arrived at the island there is the picking up of the key from the accommodation office. Invariably the unit is not ready, but they have taken to texting you when it is, and so we just go to the bakery to wait. Here donuts are bought. Not because they are especially good. It’s just what we do. Energy for the hill. Is the peacock that frightened Jasper as a baby still alive doing its dance? The seagulls that live around the settlement are the most brazen and will snatch a chip right out of your hand just as you are about to put it in your mouth. But this year I have learnt that seagulls mate for life, and some how knowing this makes me feel kinder towards them. Somehow I notice that they are in pairs when I have never seen this before. Before I thought of them as flying rats. Me; older, softer.

There is the ascent to climb on the way to the Longreach. The kids race off, well ahead on their geared bikes. No one is pushing a pram, or hauling a trolley with little ones. The way is known to the boys. Past the Police station, the nursing post, the oval, the Basin. This year I am walking alone to the chalet. I have a heavy load of extras under the chair and a bag on my lap. But it is not super hot and who is in a hurry anyway. The odd moth-balled quokka is about attracting the odd tourist who squats in front with a camera. To the boys the sight of a quokka is no more interesting than that of a seagull. The new attraction is freedom. Ahead of the parents. Gone.

The oval is dry, the grass cracking, and the sign still says the water used to reticulate the grass is unsuitable for drinking. The potholes in the bitumen remain.

The hill to Longreach is my test. One day I will falter here. One day I will not have the steam to make it up unaided. For now it is doable. Tough if it is hot and the chair is loaded. But still. Flies make a nuisance of themselves when my hands are too busy pushing to shoo them away. At least the glasses keep them from the corners of my eyes. I am slow enough to look up and see the windmill and marvel that its spinning is providing the island with its energy. A large black skink, like an expensive sunglass case, slithers through the scrub. I love the whoosh whoosh of the giant windmill blades as they rotate. They give the wind muscle. Cyclists whizz past going down hill, wind-smiles on their faces. I look at the bitumen as they pass, think about how sweet it might be to stroll up the hill, taking step after step in soft leather sandals, then put my head down and keep pushing.

Then the familiar Longreach Bay comes into view. It has a large section of light blue water where there is no weed. We call it the Big Blue. Yachts are anchored to moorings around the edge of the blue, but it is mid-week and there are only a few. The moorings are familiar too. There are ones that we swim out to as a test. There are ones that we have swum to and then whilst treading water in the deep we have gasped as beneath us the dark shadow of a stingray swims by. There is a descent now to the front row of Longreach chalets. I can get some speed up. I get my own wind-grin. Still the others will have been there a good fifteen minutes already. They will have brought the luggage inside. They will have chosen their beds, checked the fridge is filled with the groceries delivered by the shop and rearranged the kitchen table. Graham will have disconnected the tv and faced it, like a naughty child, into the corner. Single-handedly he will have manoeuvred the couch out onto the verandah and faced it towards the Big Blue. We always strung a hammock, but since a child died when a pillar collapsed, the authority that runs the island has banned this. On this holiday a worker erects a sign on the balcony saying maximum capacity of nine persons. Graham will have set up the sound system and might even be flopped on the couch with his feet up.

When I arrive the boys will have their shoes off. They will be jumping on the bed, climbing the door jambs Spiderman-style and exiting through the windows of the front bedroom. They will have scattered the cork tile floor with their belongings. Already Hot Wheels will be lost in the far reaches under the beds. It will have taken only a moment for them to turn feral. From now on they will sleep in beds full of sand, with black feet and salt-encrusted hair. They will wear the same boardies and t-shirts for days. They will reluctantly put on sun-screen and a hat. They will joyously travel to the shop several times a day for whatever it is the adults need, just in case they can wing an ice-cream or a sweet lolly.

Sometimes there will be a surprise in the chalet like a new coat of paint. This year there is a photograph of a sunset at The Basin adorning the wall.

Otherwise it is like returning to your own home. Few things are different. They have decided to give you more dishwashing liquid, but anyway I bring my own. The scrubber is still crap. Don’t worry I bring that too. The single tea towel is still inadequate. I have several. They have dispensed with the enormous stainless steel pot big enough to boil a whole crayfish. Shame. They still only give you one roll of toilet paper. Tight. Over the years the beds and pillows have improved but we still bring our own foam eggshell and our latex pillows. Because that’s the thing about Rottnest. It is a little bit of home. For the people who go there regularly, it is just an extension of chez-moi. We have friends who take their own elaborate coffee makers and their Thermomix. They make sure everything is just so. Someone might have the ritual of tying a red ribbon to their gate latch for the littlies to know which is their chalet. Someone else might set up a table for cards or scrabble or jigsaw puzzles. Someone might set up a sun shade on the beach and leave it flapping there all week, like they own a bit of Longreach.

You know it so well that you recognise the sound of the closing of the yard gate. It has made a groove in the sound memory of your mind. You know that at night the bathroom door will bang softly, but loudly and consistently enough to keep you awake if you don’t stopper it with folded cardboard. You know the sound of the metal latch on the front door, designed to stop it slamming shut in the afternoon gusts. You know which bay will be most sheltered for the direction the wind is blowing. You know one day one kid will be sunburnt and another will fall off his bike. You know that ice cream will make it better and it will come from the freezer so cold that you can’t scoop it out with a spoon unless you boil the kettle and warm the spoon first. Note to self – next year bring the Zyliss ice cream scoop. When one boy has forgotten a toothbrush and he is sent to the shop to buy one he returns with a toothbrush so old-fashioned that it reminds you of your own childhood. It has a handle of a single colour. It has no grip for your thumb. No knobs to scrape your tongue. It has no fancy bristles of different lengths or fading colours to massage your gums. It reminds you of when the Colgate toothpaste tubes were metal and to squeeze them in the centre got your Dad riled. It reminds you of communal bathrooms in caravan parks where your mother made you wear your thongs in the shower incase you caught something off the concrete. It is the simplest of brushes. He tells you that that is all the shop had in the way of tooth brushes. Nothing fancy.

August 29, 2012

Rottnest Winter

Three women with a median age of fifty go to Rottnest. Essentials have been packed. Bewley’s tea, a stainless steel teapot, Borsin cheese, bottles of Pinot Gris, my preferred washing up liquid and scrubber, the Tefal pancake pan, the Global knife.

We take various half-finished craft projects and yet started ones. C. is the aficionado of all things textile and while A. and I are less skilled, we are no less enthusiastic. C. has hot machine washed and caused the felting of op-shop jumpers of various colours – a teapot cosy will be hand sewn and embroidered from these. A mish-mash of wools are brought – these will form many various crochet hexagons for the purpose of ? That’s not the point. It’s the doing. The luxury of hours and hours of doing without interruption from the word “Mum”.

Children and partners have been dispensed with. Mine are overseas. C. and A. have teenagers and they have been left to cope, or else. Skill-up kids.

A. is making a blanket for her one-day house in Brittany. Little strands of sky blue wool mark the squares her partner has knitted. Like my knitting project, hers has mistakes – the odd dropped stitch, wayward yarns. We don’t know enough about knitting to know how to fix errors, so we just carry on knitting. One of C.’s tasks this weekend will be to show me how to pick up a dropped stitch.

In the South end of Thompson Bay, known as Nappy Alley, we three settle into our chalet. No nappy duty for us. Even the sound of children is something of an anathema. We have a room each. A. makes sure each bed has its plastic sheeted mattress covered by the blanket before it is remade for extra comfort. We have enormous bags with hardly a thing in them. I have brought a hot water bottle, but the weather does not require it.

There is time for walks, and even swims (dunks really) and more than enough time for craft. A. and C. even do a water-colour each and manage to play scrabble at the same time as knit. We cover our faces in papaya peel-off masks. It does nothing to appease the wrinkles. We exfoliate with loofas. For breakfast we have pancakes with thin slices of green apple and honey yoghurt. For lunch we have tomatoes and asparagus on toast spread with Borsin.

On the sunny patio we drink Pinto Gris. We attempt to nap but simply end up fighting with our blankets.

On the third day A. goes back to the mainland since her job won’t let go.

C. and I go to the shop for one more bottle of Pinot Gris and some smoke salmon to put in our fritatta. The shop is largely deserted, as is the whole island. We are at the counter waiting to pay. A middle-aged woman in front of us has purchased a souvenir plastic place-mat of Rottnest (the kind of thing you can’t imagine buying), but instead of exiting, she wanders back into the store. She is short and round with a full length black skirt and comfort sandals. She has a blonde bob and a perplexed look on her face. She shuffles, like the signals her brain gives her feet aren’t quite strong enough. We are both turned to watch her. She is that kind of person. Is she lost? Is she not sure how to exit the shop? We are both observing her and smiling at her ineptitude when we notice her large pink underpants appear from beneath her long skirt and fall, in an ankle-hugging way, around her sandals. What do you do when you see someone’s underpants slip down? You look away.

We leave the shop and sit outside on a bench to discuss the woman and her underpants. Fifty something with no elastic. We feel a mixture of girlish giggling and pathos.

I remember being a child at school with underpants devoid of elastic. What horror! Firm one minute – sprung elastic the next. A tight-fisted gripping of the cotton beneath the skirt. A staying at your desk as long as possible. A cursing of the inequality of dresses and skirts. A strange waddle on the way home. But your mother sorted it for you. Those one were chucked out. Stupid pants!

Miss Falling Undies emerges from the shop. Her dignity is recovered, but something has gone on in the shop afterwards. She has lost something? Money perhaps. She sits on a nearby bench with another woman, older and a potential big sister or even a mother. The older woman has white hair and a sensible perm. She has slacks on. She’s cross. The older woman is saying, This is why no one can be bothered with you… The underpants woman sits facing her looking glum. She’s heard all this before. She has no defence. Her bottom lip is pouting, her eyes cast down and she looks like a six-year-old being told off. No one can be bothered with you.

I wonder did she remove the knickers, ball them up, and put them in her bag? After all the skirt is long. Did she hoist them up in the cereal aisle between the Weetbix and the Nutrigrain? What kind of holiday is she having whilst being chided by a relative? Can she tell her rebuker she needs new underpants now?

I see a red post box and think how if my mother was alive I would be compelled to send her a postcard. She would like to hear the story of the woman whose underpants needed new elastic.

November 26, 2011

Young Guns

What is it about Boys and Guns?

So much pleasure from the finding of sticks that look and feel like guns. They scramble the dunes looking for the best bits of driftwood to make the most perfect revolver. The wood is metal grey, worn smooth by salt and sun. The wanted pistol moulds into the hand, with a snug trigger, a round muzzle and angled grip. In the end they have an arsenal lined up against a sandy coloured rottnest wall. Sorted into piles of mine and yours. Perhaps they could buy a bag from the store to carry them home in. Small hand guns, bigger rifles, bazookas, rocket launches.

At five in the morning two boys leave the chalet through their bedroom window to go back down onto the dunes to look for more weapons. Get an advantage on the enemy. The sand is night-cool on their feet. Shiny black King Skinks scuttle through the undergrowth. Parents have midnighted their room with the heavy curtains drawn tight. When the small boys get up the older two will have an advantage. Better guns.

ps Check out the stick guns

November 23, 2011

Rottnest Recollections

Jasper – skinny, ribby, already sun burnt by the weakened sun on the first day. Out under cloudy skies there is beach cricket. Wobbly driftwood for stumps. Rashies stretched to knee length dresses. Then a strange rain shower. Never before in November. Short, fast, but wet all the same. A hurried retreat to the chalets. Rain pock-marks the ocean. The children take turns to have a meltdown. Bolognese is being cooked all along the lane. Disobedient children have the law laid down; No quokka hunting for them. Evan asks if we intend shooting the quokkas we find. Smell the frying onions. Men playing twelve bar blues on the ukes.

***

Young boys go past on the shore with brand new bikes. In the salt water. Their wheels make a delicious noise on the hard, wet sand. They leave a trail as if pushed through setting cement. We raise our eyebrows. We all know it will be bad. Minutes later a clothed woman is chasing them down the beach. Next comes a father. Marching the boys back, wheeling their bikes now, one still manages to get it in the sea. Lap lap splash – a wave on the wheel. Then the father – “I told you to fricking keep it out of the fricking water.” – using all his will power not to swear as he passes us. Other adults. He has used it all up. He yanks on an upper arm, jerking the boy and bike further from the water’s edge, and then slaps the boy hard across the back of his legs. The boy is felled. An axe to a tree. To his knees he drops on the sand, buckling over. Wincing with pain perhaps, but with humiliation more.

***

Sam is five. He has cherub cheeks. His eyelashes are pale tipped. He loves Star Wars. On the nightly Quokka hunt he tells onlookers sipping wine on their balcony – “Jedi Business. Go back to your drinks.” Tim buys him a soft quokka toy, instantly disliked by White Ted, but friends with the more amenable Blue Ted. White Ted is grounded for 14 days for trying to kill quokka ( Sam explains – bears eat meat and quokkas are meat ), but the bad bear won’t stay in his bag. White Ted keeps undoing the zippers and needs to be given to Tim in order to remain grounded.

***

White caps signal the increasing wind. The once peaceful, calm ocean turns to dirty rough water. On the horizon grey clouds stamp down like stained feet. Sam, pale face, stays back in the chalet with me while the others take on the head wind on their bikes. He is entrenched in war fare on Graham’s iphone, using his thumbs, dexterously, straw bale hair and strawberry blushed cheeks. He is pouting while he works; “what the hell”, his expletive when war doesn’t go his way. Outside I can hear a father say, “keep swimming, keep swimming,” urging children, stick-like and freezing to continue on.