3. A Pearl Farm
I get submissive with stronger people. Reminds me of never wanting to be underestimated.
Anne speaks passionately of her work. How many of them are burnt out, losing hope to the cause, how the government have cut subsidies for support. About the family problems and home lives they can’t control, about the psychologist being there two days a week not being enough, about the suicides, about the low literacy—English as a fifth language, about the perpetual stream of funerals. And the kids who go away for school being shunned for white talk.
It’s 6:30am now, coffee time before R comes to collect me for work. How motivated I am is not as motivated as driving here yesterday. It’s quiet. There is red dirt, white sand, old boat bodies, mozzies.
The mule jerks on take-off, gets bogged. Bruce appears in his 4WD. His hat is tall, with a pattern and mabé pearls wrapped around.
The isolation! The history! People in cliques. The fight to shut my mouth, listen, not have to prove myself to anybody, learn from everybody.
Curious. Conflicted. Things like all the rubbish being burned.
Last night the band playing at Kooljaman said, “we find if you have an intention, things sort of come together.”
At dusk the light is yellow, we sit on the couches out front our dongers. Some girls are younger than where I’m at. Like J. The fuckin’ this and fuckin’ that. Gloating she got period at 15, smoking bongs at 15.
The weirdness comes from me! I’m being super awkward. When there’s time for people to get to know me, it’s easier.
Sit with Bruce, his hair bright white, his voice mumbled and clear. He tells me I can buy a drawing for one million dollars.
She’s meant to be a free spirit; she gives judgment and bad looks.
B drives into the sea, gives gangster hands going past another boat. At Shell Island we sit in the sea with beer. Everyone says it’s cold but it’s not cold to me. The water is like glass. The sunset is burning. There are good people here, people with science and environmental backgrounds.
Mornings with chill to air, dew on car windows, drips from roof, noises in room, people waking up, then hot hot hot.
Hanging linen on washing line requires strength. When I swing my arm to grab the middle, ready for the fold, I smell myself.
Mud Crab and P keep coming by, yapping away. Not sure if Mud Crab has teeth.
About looking inward and seeing nothing.
It’s windy this morning. It isn’t calm with J’s music playing. Photos and writing this year. Photos and writing.
It was choppy out on the water. The first time I’ve felt sea sick. Karen and I had some kwells, a profiter roll and a lamb wrap. Making the top bunks was tricky. On the boat back to shore it was low tide. We stopped and waded through the water to the exposed mud flats. One of the guys drove a ute, it’s wheels fully down, to us. We filled the tray with cardboard boxes.
I sit with Bruce, we talk about the rubbish. His eyes are rheumy, blue almost, with long eyelashes and prolonged stares. He says I’m pretty, like a queen. When he agrees his eyes close and dips his head. He’s always wearing his hat. When we’re driving back in silence he says, “she’s funny that girl.” I had been thinking about the same thing. Farther down the dirt track he tells me someone has been walking along there in thongs and then they turned around.
Finding a groove, trying to learn to let go…to trust my priorities.
The white great grandfather—what is it, bird picking or something—married three sisters, many killed.
Bardi = land
Jawi = islands
One Arm Point established in the 70s on the mainland. Mobs thrown together. There is still tension. It’s an oral culture. They can’t tell other’s stories.
They have traded mother-of-pearl well before modern history begins. Riji is in a tear drop shape, like sadness. They ground it against rock to smooth it.
They are saltwater people.
“Because I know it’s my ego being wounded—never my soul.”
At Masters Pearlers the tide is high but I know it no other way. We sit on the verandah, I hear crocodile stories. Everything is blurry, music plays. I make beds and clean half the bathroom. I feel contemplative, like I am odd. It’s easier to dance with the crowd.
Nellie asks T what we could learn from their culture. He goes to say there are secrets, but she tells him that’s not what she wants. He tells her something about our need to categorise.
The first day to immediately shower and lay on my bed after work. I’m so tired. The power just went off. My fingernails are dirty, my arms darkened, back sore.
I walk through the sheets; struggle being a housekeeper, accept being a housekeeper.
P: “All I want ta be doin is cruisin on the river, shootin pigs on the bank, big thing of piss besides me and just shootin, maybe a croc n some water buffalo.” Water buffalo?
The tides of King Sound whirled around. Bobbling, pulling, water for days. There are strong female characters here.
After work I sit with Bruce. He tells me the jobs of his past and how he used to hang with the hippies in the 70s. He points to a tree and tells to pick the leaves, crush them in your hands, smell them, sit them in water for an hour and drink it. It will clear the mind, help with cold and flu. He wants friends, he tells me.
B cleans the boat, walks around barefoot, cap back to front.
Collected my first frog from the bathroom—he didn’t want to let go. I rode around in the mule, did so much washing. It was muggy, everything was dusty, the tide high. No one from home knows my reality. They probably never will.
A lady with pink lipsticks is in a huff and puff over the washing machine not having a sign. Frankly, I don’t give a shit.
I go paddle boarding with J and it’s a beautiful time. Stella is on the beach. It’s high tide through the mangroves. The saltwater is strong. I feel good. So happy to be out here.
I might be weird. I still say more than I want. But I’m learning. Learning that it’s okay to be weird. And as I grow older I will care less if people don’t take to me, care less to prove myself.
In a box of favourites Mud Crab chooses Old Gold and Moro.
The solstice. I finish work early to do editing, which I’m glad to have and not glad to have. There are pangs of loneliness.
She waddles her arse, sticks her nose in the air. Her tone is condescending. Early twenties, a time of arrogance. I will not back down or get caught in her pettiness.
At dinner I ask other’s the highlights of their days. Billie returns the question to me. Listening to Fuzzy and dancing through the sheets, I tell her.
I liked today. The sun shone, I laughed, saw a baby king brown. We had Lauren cleaning in morning, she was hungover from Kooljaman, she’s a good egg with her sushi and sarcastic mood.
I’m not loving myself but I kind of love being true to my beliefs. I don’t want to sell pearls. I want to feel, to scream, to learn, to write. I want to drive around in my mule and collect frogs from toilets.
B is at R’s. I’m in track pants and a small singlet. When I lift my arm I’m conscious of my hair. His eyes keep flicking to it.
A perfect memory: the look on R’s face, waving to Victor at camp kitchen. In the days before she had greeted him near the social, and outside her shack. I tell her, Wow that’s so cool that you know who he is. Nah, she tells me, I just call them all Victor. When Nellie calls Victor a bin chicken I am annoyed. He’s an Ibis, Nellie.
Lauren and I sat under the stars on the sand dunes and smoked. We went to her donger and she played her uke with sweet melodies strung together. The singing came to Victor, such a lonely bird…
Laughing with Sophie. Laughing with Lauren about Victor.
We’re sitting behind R’s hut talking about how calming bird watching is. A small bird on a branch takes flight, comes straight for me, almost does a cross configuration around me, flutters, seconds feel like minutes.
Broome was soul good. Coming back were donkeys, shadows across the road, a new financial year ahead.
Mud Crab comes out of the Esky toilets singing me Happy Birthday. In my thirties I will...
We’re sitting out the back of R’s shack. B comes, he stands in front of me, the bay behind him, he smokes a cigarette, mumbles away. His phone rings. Hello. Yep. Yep. He runs off. We hear the sea legs start, an engine rumbling. I stay pondering in the same direction where he stood, toward the bay. I see him glide from the mud flats and into the water, speeding out into the bay to collect the tour he forgot.
Yesterday calmer at work, the day before bullshit.
When I sat on top of the sandhill and spoke with Tom on the noisy streets of Madrid I saw four shooting stars.
The seats are still around the fire and so Sophie and I sit in silence in the door of our rooms.
Skin not great, reflection of lifestyle. Bad mood cleaning today. Linda bossy, me worse. Short, sharp and sour. Alone in my earphones. Saw Victor at camp kitchen. The sun shining, beige sheets drying, two mules running about. Peaceful pigeon doves.
Nellie calls me to her room, passes me a smoke. She shares observations. She saw I had my own world. She saw a big personality straight away. She knows we have the same…something.
Feeling so skinny, so fit. Hey Beautiful. Hey Gorgeous.
See a flash of light; the end of a shooting star? “You’re seeing stuff us normal people can’t see.”
Bev and I see a fruit dove from tent nine. It’s colours magnificent. Must be a female if serene, Bev tells me.
Lauren and I read tarot cards at the restaurant benches. It’s ambiguous, we make it work.
I feel I have much to do with never ending distractions.
Mud Crab and P told Linda who told Lauren who told Karen, Peg and me, then I told Sophie, kept Nellie guessing. Secrets out! Finn’s quit. Tara walks back to her house with her head in the dirt.
“So Melbourne even the cat was vegan.”
Sitting in reception chair. Voices of G deck.
Mud Crab shows us a beautiful tawny frogmouth. Its stark green eyes pierce me when it moves its head around. I’m a metre away. That’s Neville, R tells me.
Shit phone signal. One bar to no service. Mouth raw from choc, beers and cigarettes.
Mud Crab’s at the door to his room. He clicks his fingers for me to wait and goes inside. He brings out a big mud crab he caught yesterday. I keep him in the laundry basket, he tells me.
Warming wind, feel toasty in socks and turtleneck. Patches of face dry, rash on chest and neck, eyelids red raw.
In the toilet last night I removed a frog from the toilet seat and squat, there’s another one on the toilet paper holder. I talk to it.
R’s shack. The night takes a turn. Espresso martinis and The Doors.
I feel so hopelessly stressed. Too much happening at once then there’ll be nothing. I want to cry, want to curl up.
The road to town. The sound of bottles rattling—we take them with us to be recycled instead of thrown in a hole. I drop R to her friend’s house with nice furniture and lots of plants. I returned to the farm and go to her empty shack.
Sitting in the shack with fly wire for windows and the bay as the backyard, I start the edit. I emerge to Linda having been fired. FUCK THIS MAN! There’s no consideration, no care for us as individuals. We’re just machines. I can’t sleep, my body is telling me to go.
In the dark of the morning the moon shines over Jurassic Park. The rising sun seeps through a hole in the toilet wall. There is dirt everywhere.
My underwear is the same colour as my sheets. My chest in rashes. I want a hug.
The most hectic week, no spare moments. People in weird moods. In the dark of the TV room, I gave Mud Crab his whiskey, he cracked the can straight away, a pained look on his face. I walked back to my donger, cried.
A messy night on G deck. I shut Billie’s positivity down. I grumble to Sophie. I laugh at B saying that black fellas swimming in the windy ocean makes them itchy.
My heart hurts, my body hurts, my mind hurts. Breaking points. There is no love. No excitement. There’s sunshine, stress, driving fast in mule, shouting at Victor. There’re pimples, muscles, the unknown. A world of sheets, the blue sky, sheets on the ground, so much pindan.
Walking past G deck to work there are shouts of encouragement. I can’t look. I hide my tears behind my sunglasses.
Those close to me don’t get best parts if they can’t handle hard parts. A new moon, a new beginning.
Geckos are falling off the room! One near J’s door, one next to me sitting on the step, one in my shoe. I was at the social when I finally took my boot off and watched it fall out, its tail half hanging off, its pattern striking against the filthy floor.
This place is a junk yard.
Shouting at the shower curtain FUCK OFF.
Words, they swirl in my mind, they form sentences I did not create. They are there, words I didn’t know I knew. Ideas that have never come before.
Get drunk get loud be adored be alone.
Best thing I’ve heard from J’s mouth is that anyone who works in Indigenous Affairs in parliament should have minimum two years’ experience in community. She grew up in the territory. She knows. I respect.
Woke at 3am, lights on ten minutes later. Now it’s 7am and I’m up the sand hill getting reception to send the email. Have done more than quote. No more capacity. Need freedom, need coffee.
Anxiety. Mug of prosecco, cigarette, music. No work. No call, please don’t call. A spasm in my hip — funny sleep, stressed body. What do? Here, people want to talk everywhere I go.
Lauren’s wearing lipstick. Something different, she tells me.
Absorb female relationships.
When I walked up to the restaurant toilets you could feel the shift in the air. Warm pockets of air. T passes me, he feels it too.
Day off. Floated in the musty blue water.
I sit where I used to sit with R, out the back of the shack. The tide is high. The warm wind from the ocean cooling. Flies stick, sand flies taste. Messy mind, coming to other side. Shell be right mate.
B’s telling the creation story, of the different history of the mainland and the islands. Half way through he stops “…or no I have bacon on low heat.” He jumps up, strides to the social.
The tide is below the mangroves. We walk in the soft mud. There’s a man with a fishing rod. I say g’day. “You haven’t been swimming in them waters,” he asks. Yes we have, I tell him.
The shower is hot, my hair dirty, sand falls from my body. There was a moth on my door, it looked like a butterfly.
No no no, I’m not liking me right now. I whine about housekeeping and be all sassy and fiery and repetitive. My hair is frizzy, my skin like pizza, eczema on my wrists and chest and eyelids and I think, am I happy? Much of my soul ain’t being fed. But I need the money. Money.
The morning is as clear as B’s gangster rap music.
I wake early, before my alarm. The pink streaks of sunrise are reflected in G deck’s windows. I want to read, read and read.
“Progressives might benefit from considering lower-class points of view and the experiences that forge them, at least once in a while.”
Fucking beans for dinner again.
I walk past G deck. B says my name softly. He’s sitting on he’s velvet-like chair, palm outstretched, a bird perched on top.
I take Mud Crab to Lombadina for smokes in exchange for him cleaning the social for me.
Floating on water, letting day wash away.
T repeats his points three times. He has a way with words and an attitude that accepts his past and allows for him to look to the future: no choice but to move with the times.
He starts the tour with “My people have been sustainably for 40,000” and the magnitude of this statement floors me.
He jokes about their new accessories: polaroid sunglasses and hunting tools from Bunnings.
His eyes like Bruce, with a burning, glassy glaze.
Blackbirding. It’s blackbirding, like slavery.
We do as we’re told, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I think of being at the end of the chain. Housekeeping. Forgotten. They don’t care about us.
B, Lauren, Nellie, Mud Crab and me. The music is loud in my old speakers. B knows everyone in the dirty cars at Lombadina. Mud Crab knows where to go in One Arm. We wait out the front for B—at the house with the baby sea eagle—and Mud Crab comments that he’s the old outsider. We’re all outsiders, I tell him, that’s why we’re here.
I ain’t talking about work unless I’m at work.
My idea of greater good feels fake.
Days off here are what makes it worthwhile. Billie and Nellie the right company. At Kooljaman, Billie and I float, vent about the farm. The tide’s still high when we head for the cave, wading through water, clambering over rocks into the shade. Nellie takes a photo and there’s a rainbow in it. She plays the ukulele. Don’t go backwards, focus forward; across the sand, through the cave, out to the clear blue ocean of the Kimberley coast.
We’re together in our own worlds. Nellie sorts her shells; Billie and I dress our hair in seaweed. There’s a whale on the horizon. A dolphin, an empty beach. When I dive, I open my eyes and the sunlight sparkles through the blue. Underneath the water has that hum, that other world I’ve been before.
Back on the patio, not wanting to be here. A strong feeling. Transformative. I go into situations with pre-conceived attitude. Here, on most days, I am failing at presence.
A happy place. We trekked across the white sand and came to a deserted beach with turquoise water and the sound of waves rolling higher and higher. There was a single shade structure, a lone 4WD with no number plate. Three men came in another 4WD, also without a number plate, and soon both cars left. I ran to the water, it’s warm and clear, waves like a bow and arrow. I dove in and opened my eyes again. Billie, Lauren and I splashed around like kids. We bobble, we float, feet orange from pindan. Two eagles soared, we ran under the breadth of their patterned wings.
A bottle of wine sees me debate Nellie. On what, was it the meaning of life? This morning, I slept through my alarm. When I get out of bed it’s cold enough for jumpers and socks. By 7:30am, time for work, it’s warm enough for shorts and t-shirt. Everyday is the same. The buzz of the generator. The distant vibrating of a mule. Birds meeting. This sacred land.
CARPE DIEM.
I miss R. No choice but to return to donger and hear gallery talk. I don’t like my job, I need the money. Nellie gives her opinion like it’s fact. You want to talk, talk with me, not at me. There are different kinds of intelligence. Breathe.
I used the toxic cleaner by mistake. Inhaled it. My chest felt shallow. I poured it to the dirt—Bev said it was the best way. I’m supervisor now.
This morning, last night, freezing. Coming back from the social just after 6am, B is listening to gangster and dancing at the top of G deck stairs. Just before 7am I start walking through warm air pockets.
Here I laugh a lot and hate a lot. I’m too observant, cautious, and then the opposite, not calm, not enriched, not fulfilled. Saying things I regret, fired up over things I don’t care about. I’m not special I’m not normal.
Salty hair in ringlets, lazy arvo on patio.
In my new shack. This, with my yellow-sunned mornings, the ocean my backyard, dirty flyscreens, Boards of Canada and Nils Frahm, geckos, bottles and plants collected from housekeeping, is Sarah space. This time is special.
I won’t forget this feeling. Of how angry and frustrated and exhausted I am from another big day cleaning. I hate it, I really do. We didn’t stop, I ate on the run. The boss’s care is not empathy. She says she understands, but she doesn’t. The pressing time, the physical strain, the small pay. When I find a whole pizza left behind at Divers, I parade it into the office. The boss snaps that we don’t miss anything, confined to housekeeping all day. Well what would we know, I tell her, we’re never here. I take the pizza and go halves with Bev. No one else deserves any. I retreat, drink a double wine alone in the shack. Fuck, at least I don’t have to be in a bad mood around people. These moments, they won’t last forever. It will be a snapshot in time. Of all I once was.
I’ve been mopping, quickening pace. There’s a big bump in the join of my right index finger.
I slide to the social for dinner, going past my donger, then back to the shack. Lauren comes to see if I’m okay, she heard I had a shit day.
I come over the rise of Jurassic Park mumbling Hindi words to myself. The paths are overgrown, the wind is noisy. The edge of the sky is bright orange, illuminating the silhouette of the spinning windmill. I love it here.
I walk across the social lawn. SMILE, Mud Crab yells to me. FUCK OFF, I yell back.
The sky is streaked with pinks and yellows and clouds out past where the veg garden was, where, if you slide down the side and duck under the Christmas tree, R and my plastic chairs still sit.
Karen and I in town, at Matso’s. Two men played rotating instruments and sung. There were people I recognised from around town. An old hippie man in baggy clothes dancing. I want to dance like that man, feel nothing but hands moving through the air. Not care. So we did, Karen and I, we stood and we danced.
Listen to people, listen to nature, listen to my soul. Remember these times.
A third birthday. There’s mum’s bringing crappy presents despite being told not to. There are party pies, sausage rolls, fairy bread, men standing around drinking beer, women with make-up caked on their acne. A catalogue life, pumping out children, filling credit cards. The mum’s want to take a photo. They coo to their toddles, “yeahhh besties. Put your arm around each other. Yeah, like that. Oh that’s so funny. Okay now pose girls, pose for the photo girls. Yeah pose, that’s perfect. OMG supermodels.” A three year old supermodel, is that the plague?
I drink wine, voice opinions, go to the toilet, there’s a frog on the seat, I wet my hands, it jumps out of my hands to the floor. When I go back, it’s back on the toilet seat. I lean over it and pee.
Out the back of the shack, smoke on the water, drips from the roof, photos of shadows.
Woke at 4:30. The full moon is still in the sky. I walk to the shack via the social. Mud Crab tries to talk to me, but I haven’t had a coffee yet. The sun edges closer. The water is a rich blue. Yellow and pinks appear on the horizon. There is nobody. There has been no service since yesterday morning.
I got very drunk last night and realised stuff. I don’t want to see people today. FUCK TODAY. SO LAZY. STUPID BOOK. FUCK!
R’s dad’s operation went well—so happy for her. Hoping she’ll be back in a few weeks.
I’m itching from here to buggery. Rash on chest, rash on face. The washing powder? This place? Allergies? Opinions?
“Like an arrow that needs to go back before you forward.”
From windy to windier. In the social, Nellie talks at me and I can’t be bothered. I give enough responses and leave to be in my own world.
I might be a little depressed. Feigning happiness because of the beauty that surrounds all the frustrated moments. The future is Fuzzy. If I walked out now and as bitten by a baby king brown, I wouldn’t be sorry.
The glisten of the sun and the sprinkler through the trees, through the fly screen, to eyes half closed, eyes itchy. It’s another windy morning. I think of permaculture.
Nellie reads to me and I’m stunned by her writing. I want to be able to write like her; deep, observant, poetic.
Billie is in her robe, drunk, mumbling. I like how free fall she is.
In my donger, there is no phone reception. There never is.
9.25 hour day housekeeping. My body is tired. I manage two cigarettes and two glasses of wine I opened from the bottle I used for the trade market with B last night. The shack is lonely after the cigs. My words are there; disjointed and not enough. I have to work hard to be better. I want to share my ideas.
What would happen if I shake the destructive tendencies. The smokes, alcohol, weed, food. Could I do more? Because now, in this beautiful place that infuriates me, I think if I do x, y, z then I’ll be happy.
A frog I rescued from a toilet gets stuck in the entrance’s floorboards. Mud Crab arrives and makes the frog yelp as he pushes it through, then he invades my personal space telling me things I don’t care about and jokes I don’t find funny. I continue to pretend.
Body too tired to move. Another nine hour day. Voices in my head calm, accepting this as part of a bigger journey.
B takes the new sea legs for tour. They leave from reception, I walk past, look across, the old people strapped in look chuffed, Victor scrambles away from the reversing boat.
A ghost town. I skirt the part where the leaves are thick, past the shells of old dongers, past the sand dunes, snake land, past T’s camp. There is nobody on the patio, nobody at G Deck, nobody at the Eskys. I do not talk at dinner. I want to be asleep by 8pm.
Spirituality and science.
Affect = influence
Effect = result
The smell of shit at HQ. Watching birds through fly screen. The family from Victoria in camp kitchen tell me how great it is that they can take as many oysters as they want from the rocks.
Time for work. I put sunscreen over pimples and freckles. My socks have holes. My runners are orange. Broken ear phones. Fingers sore with dermatitis.
I slept the first half of the night with the air con on.
The social has only white bread. A squirt of soy milk. Catering spread. No muesli. No yoghurt. Asking the restaurant girls for the food we pay too much for, J gives me attitude. Don’t be like her.
As soon as I turned off the lights, the dreams of last night came back to me. What were they?
It’s funny really, being part of this world. Being accepted and liked seems like everything, but in the wider world it means nothing.
B describes his parents: “my mum’s a gangster and my dad works in community.”
A Friday off. The early morning cool. The taste of plunger coffee. The birds together. The beep of the sea legs. Out on the water. Giant tides. B a geologist, a boat driver, a singer, a comedian. J and Sophie talking. Nellie smoking a cigarette.
The first day of Spring, for the South. The waves are gentle on the shore. It’s spring tide. Bev and I have never seen it so high. This morning, behind Skippers, we inspected a tree with a tall white trunk. We walked to Diver’s Creek. I’m in a good mood, thinking of love and the open road. I walk along the sandbags, jump down, look through the holes in the mangrove to where the luggers used to come through. At Diver’s, Bev calls out, there’s a tiny baby bird under the front tree. It flaps its wings, tries to walk. One foot is deformed. It flaps again. Bev puts her hand done and it joins her. I get water from the bird bath but it doesn’t want water. It’s in my hands now, its yellow head staring at me. It flaps again. It’s on the ground, back in my hands, doing backflips, bent in half. Convulsing. Bev rests it against the mother-in-law tongue and it doesn’t move again. Back at HQ Bev messages me from the camp kitchen; there’s a beautiful white moth with red decoration. It’s on the tea towel at the front door.
I’m alone when I swim. I pull the paper through the water, clear and calm. It becomes transparent, like the moth’s wings. It breaks up, goes different directions. I can’t catch it anymore. Rainbow shadows dance on the sandy floor. I fall back and drift. Listen to the other world. I come back up, everything is clear, the paper’s gone. I collect shells, hear distant voices, laughing. I put on my floral shirt, flashes forward to somewhere else, some hot beachside place like here. A time I’ll be even calmer.
I shower, lie under air conditioner, read. Going between the social and R’s shack I see Bruce. I go to him. “Do I know you?” he asks. Yes you do, I tell him, you broke my heart. He laughs. We talk for a long time. He gives me his bandana, gifts me a riji pendant.
A flock of corellas come to the sand dunes behind me on front beach, flying right over head, the collective flapping of wings, so close I could touch them. They land, soon take flight again. I’m lying topless. Thoughts send me into a spin.
Take Mud Crab to One Arm for smokes. I get a smile from a girl with hair tight in a pony tail. I’ve seen her before. She’s beautiful, filling her basket with expensive plastic. There is no choice. We buy Old Gold on special—$6. We drive into the community, to a house. There are roads with dogs, houses with fences, no gardens, 4WD and boats in front yards. When we head home and I accelerate, I wind my window up and Mud Crab does the same.
When J and Tara leave the beach I keep basking in the still-hot late afternoon sun. I’m just below the high mark of high high tide. When I swim it’s the same as the night before, I won’t go under I won’t go under then next thing I’m kicking below the surface with eyes open—just like Billie told me to do. It’s clear then it’s dark. On my towel I lose my top right away.
Nothing in this is like as it happened in real life. At the same time, everything is.
I collect shells, don’t swim, it’s too windy. When I sort my shells I’m centred and concentrated. I scrolled online for wire-string then realised I could recycle and see what there was at the farm’s personal tip to use.
Bought a new old camera from Nick.
I want a simple shack of my own. A workshop.
I slept until 6:20. 6:20! Sophie says the water’s gorgeous. I want that salty feeling. I plunge in and take three kicks. I collect a couple of shells. Back at the shack there is a couple hours of Sarah time. The corellas are screeching, they are a broken record, my soundtrack. I have inspiration today.
I cook breakfast with Lauren and then we spend hours with Bruce. I carved with the Dremel, once down once back, and dipped the stick in the red ochre, coloured in the lines. He says he wants to share what he does, that no one in his family are interested. I miss jewellery. I could do such hobbies forever.
We go to Lombadina. It’s breezy. Lauren collects shells. I read, I swim, make my salty hair saltier. There’s a RAV4 bogged in the sand.
The yellow moments in the shack, shell treasures, the receptiveness of the guitar. Days like today make it all worth it. I’m here, in the moments I craved.
“I hope there are days when your coffee tastes like magic, your playlist makes you dance, strangers make you smile, and the nights sky touches your soul. I hope you fall in love with being alive again.”
Because underneath all the defences, problems, people, I like who you are. I like your mind and I like your spirit. And I like how you want to do life.
Go to social and Bob is talking about big titties. She had big melons did she, Jacko asks him. Biggest titties I’ve ever played with, Bob says. Yuck. They’re old men. I know that Bob doesn’t like me. And I don’t care. Walking across Jurassic Park I collect two corella feathers. It’s 6am and they’re already loud.
Such a deep sleep last night and still feel so tired.
Gah so good to hear his voice.
The shack, my space, filling it with treasures. I go to see Bruce. He gives me nothing and I give him nothing. Then he gives me his Dremel and some rijis to carve while he’s in town. Lauren is taking photos of him and so he invites me along. We go to the look out. He’s dressed up. There’s a fierceness in his eyes, he does not smile. I slip around the sides, taking my own photos of the American Indian Aboriginal Australian man, my friend.
5:10am walking to social. Mud Crab starts talking to me but I don’t want to talk right now. And I don’t want to be rude. In the shack, I can hear the ocean when the kettle stops boiling. The sky’s pink around the windmill. I let my mind subconsciously take in what it can. I need to do a lot more reading to improve my writing.
Someone was bitten by a snake at Stonehouse. Bev and I check it for ‘snake entry.’ Fucked if I know. She starts cleaning the dishes and I walk off on her doodling. At Divers she hits her head on the air con. She’s dazed. Poor dear, terrible feeling that. The weather is warming by the day.
Mud Crab keeps seeking me out from a mile away. He’s had nine teeth ripped out.
I am sweating in the shower, washing my hair, the bottom is blue from the water, the air con has gone out with the switch to the generator.
What if he came and I could feel him in flesh and make him smile.
I feel a new wave of motivation. I think of life after this.
I go to put washing on and get distracted by how beautiful Billie and Peg look in the afternoon light of G Deck. I get a wine. Sophie comes. They talk the farm and marine stuff.
I take my dinner in a container and come to the shack.
I hear the corellas coming and then they’re above me, all through the trees of Jurassic Park. I flush the toilet and a frog spirals out from the rim.
Yesterday cleaning the reception toilets Mud Crab comes to me: “you in a bad mood today?” he asks. I tell him, It’s first thing in the morning and I’m scrubbing toilets. And even earlier this morning when you tried speaking to me it wasn’t even 5, I’d just rolled out of bed man.
I’m here! In my shack, playing guitar, out on the water, lying on the beach, writing, thinking, the warmth, the wildlife.
Steven and I are cleaning Stonehouse. Mud Crab comes by. He’s been off work the past few days. Someone dobbed in his drinking to Jacko and now Mud Crab’s pissed off. Plus there’s this stuff with his ex and his son. He tells me it’s R U OK? Day and that his sister messaged him to ask if he was okay. No he’s not okay, he tells me, so now he’s going to go mud crabbing and hopes he gets eaten by a crocodile or he’ll otherwise hang himself from a mangrove tree. When he walks back to his rusting ute, I feel my heart beating. What should I do?
B and T are cut off from the bar.
B: Fuck em.
T: Fuck em
B: Fuck all of em.
T: Fuck all of em.
B: It’s alright, Stranded in Style is on Friday and they’re be stranded alright.
T: Okay I’m going to make a cup of tea and join you guys for pool.
Mental roadblock!
The anxiety. I will tell him. I take time, there’s much I didn’t say. I am sorry.
Play guitar gently. Rustles in the bushes outside. The restaurant is loud. Moonlight bright. The slow strumming makes me want to cry.
Sore fingers, ugly chest.
The bats were again making a riot in the blossoming tree outside our dongers all night. There were two hanging dead from the tree yesterday. They’re murdering each other. Cold bloody murder!
This morning engrossed in my memory. Maybe the most beautiful so far. It’s not as cold, only a flanny does fine. The full moon is still high, an orange mist around it. Coming up the rise to Jurassic Park I see how vibrant the pink sky is past the windmills. Across the water, it’s more pastel. I stand at the back of the shack, the bay full of water, the water the same colour as the sky. A photo can’t capture it, it’s in my memory.
I dip in, dip out. My eczema stings. There’s a fear of crocodiles. The path forward will make itself known. He won’t come. I am afraid of vulnerability. Rejection makes me retreat. How I retreat makes me cry. So crabby. I want change.
Am I, have I been, addicted to being lost?
Karen proposes I stay another month and work in the gallery.
As soon as I pull the mule into the shed Mud Crab is in my face: “did you hear what happened?” He’d told Karen a joke.
Mud Crab is wearing reading glasses. I tell him he looks different. He says he’s Matt with the glasses on. He takes them off, says he’s Mud Crab. Puts them back on, says he’s Matt. Takes them off, says he’s SUPER CRAB.
J hoses the bats down in the tree. But they return in the night for more cold bloody murder.
Plan is work until November, head south for Christmas/New Years, summer in surf with jewellery, photography and finishing touches on story.
Will miss these moments alone here. Have ideas. On so many things. Like using recycled things to create new things. That should be a fashion. We’re striking for climate and yet living in a culture of consumerism. This is killing our planet, killing our minds.
One more sleep until R’s back.
Thinking again about consumerism. About flipping life as we know it on its head. Learn the skills, sell the pieces. PEACE BY PIECE.
I walk around with attitude. I’ve lost my path. I have so much fire. I hear myself trying to show off.
The day finally here. Ocean is loud this morning, it’s windy. Saw Victor and Beverley when getting coffee from the social. Last night at party the restaurant girls were wearing strands and sneakers. I commented they looked funny and Peg told me, Let them be.
The sun in the rear view mirrors; the dust on my windows, easy to look at, blaring round circle sun setting across the road, a bare road, my glasses intensifying the red, shadows. Intermittent conversations with R.
Back to idea with jewellery and meditation. Recycle. Edit.
Wake with no alarm. Go make a coffee at 4:43am. Had been in bed early. Had eaten dinner alone sitting on patio chairs listening to the bats going wild. Karen then came. I noticed a cricket on her hanging sheet between the posts. I asked if she was watching the cricket too, then it took flight and in slow motion zoomed straight into my hair.
Tip expedition this arvo, searching for rope to weave milk crates with. Then I fell asleep and woke with the pattern from my material hanging across the window on my roof. I want to talk to him but he isn’t interested. What is wrong with me. Three more days housekeeping then never again.
I ain’t these girls, their music, their acceptance. I might be different with always doing things other than socialising but, to me, these hobbies are important.
Finish early. Sitting on bed in underwear. Have sore back from cutting and taping and creating photography book.
The look on J’s face to the snake last night. It was so long and shiny, right on the patio.
A new moon, nearly October. I slept until I heard the willy wagtail, who’s been out the front prancing around every morning lately. Last day housekeeping and I’m so so so so so so happy about that.
Something in seeing beyond the instant success the internet makes us crave. That I continue to better myself, to grow. I don’t need to push it. It is not a race.
Ice cream hang over. I belong everywhere and nowhere. A crow. The corellas returned. It’s getting so humid.
Mud Crab’s gone missing.
First day in gallery. Realised could wear swim top as bra. Washed my hair yesterday. Might be a little rusty, it’s been years, but can deepen my understanding of pearls.
J is loud in social this morning. Grading shell with Bob she thinks she will get the same wage as restaurant. I pull faces. I don’t think that’s how it works honey. They’ll pay what you’re worth, Jacko tells her.
Bed was clean. I read, rested between stomach and back, first night with no sleeping bag, air con until 3am.
It’s quite light, I go for my coffee at the social, 5:17. I don’t greet Jacko, Bill and Rod. I’m tired. No exercise now no housekeeping. Only able to bend halfway to my toes. Water drips from the eves. A new chapter in my life story? A plan? Is it me against the world.
The morning is dewy. Mist like the mountains, so clear above sand dunes. Body sore, shitty old birks. Back at the patio. Quarter to eight, so hot already. The flies, the sand flies. Retreat to my room. Shower, I smell.
T senior spotted croc marks on front beach. The girls swimming there yesterday had said it felt eerie.
I feel sad. Deep sad. No one to talk to sad.
It’s overcast, hot. J opens her door: “WET SEASON WEATHERRR.”
R and I sit on the couch and watch a gecko play with its tail, spinning it around and around. R tells me she’s never seen that before. I’m dead inside, struggling to care. Writing, editing, photography, jewellery.
Wake up too full. Sit on toilet, go for run. I run into pockets where it’s hotter, thicker, when cool air meets warm air. There are white clouds through the trees. It smells like Asia.
Mud Crab still missing.
Up at the restaurant I see the white of Bruce’s hair and go see him. He’s done a fresh drawing on a riji B cut that morning. Bruce wants to go to One Arm, but not with B. We wait: He doesn’t have kids, because they humbug you know, he tells me. In his hair is a plait from a French friend, and the dreadlock of another friend. The front mabé on his hat is missing. We’re both wearing white shirts. Says he’s tired, that he didn’t sleep much last night. He’s a thinker.
I take B to One Arm Shop. He talks to people hanging around in 4WDs. As soon as he’s out the door, he’s handing out cigarettes. He eats two meat pies. When we’re back, I return to Bruce and we go to his brother’s in One Arm. The house is shaded, littered, wild. There are lots of dogs. Two kids run up. The young boy hugs my legs, the young girl hugs Bruce. The boy has a dirty face, says his four. The girl says she’s seven. The boy asks if he can call me aunty. The girl asks if she can call me mum.
Friday now. Retail takes a different energy. I just like playing with displays, talking to people about their life. When I go to pack down the farm the pearlers are working. They’re in gumboots. Peg and I admire the lustre on a diseased shell. There’s a mismatched number of oysters. I’m sweating. It’s hot outside, cold in the air conditioner. But at the shack it’s just plain stinking hot. R and I sit in our singlet dresses. We listen to Alice in Chains and Tool. I’m in bed by 8:15pm.
Bruce likes to talk about money. How much he has; how much he is going to buy. Be a millionaire. He tells snippets of stories of the land, in the time when he was young, when they speared crocs in the head. His face, cheeks and neck are wide. I swear his eyes are blue. Says how he likes driving by himself, listening to music. I tell him I like the same. We drive to Lombadina in silence, the moon is full and white above the trees.
Think ready for real world. Connection!
Days driving with Bruce. Lombadina, back to One Arm, the beach. He tells me how in the 60s they camped in the sand dunes, how they used to walk between the places around the cape.
Bruce talking about dogs sleeping on the road: “I don know why they camp there.”
There are young boys at the beach side shacks at One Arm. Bruce says, “they’re my mob,” and pulls up by them. They glare across. Eventually the main one comes to the car window and the rest kind of follow. They talk their language with long faces. There is anger, chipped teeth. The only word I understand is money.
Weird day (weird Instagram vid). It started on the water, the end of the world, front of the boat to myself. After work, Bruce wanted to hang. I did his laundry, we drove to his land. We got bogged. I ran over the sand dune to the camp, there was a big bulldog there. When I looked to the water the sun made it dark. I ran back to Bruce. I ran back past the dog, back to the camp and took the shovel. Back at the bogged 4WD, Bruce has a go at digging, then I have a go at digging. I’m still digging when we heard the engine of his friend coming. “Quick give it back,” he says, cheekily snatching the shovel into his grip.
Yesterday we stood around reception watching a snake die. It danced on the lawn. It had been bitten, T said.
There are bites all over my ankles, my feet are permanently dirty, heels cracked from no shoes. Sorting photos makes me feel better.
Bruce drives off on me when I come back to the car from opening the gate. To me, that joke never gets old. His father’s land is where there is freshwater in the trees. Their mob lived under those trees. There are old graves, some with headstones, many unmarked, lots of old bottles, some smashed and some full of sand, from the pearling days. Bruce gets bogged again, his friend pulls us out. He drives fast, real fast. We talk in accents; how ya goin mate. I’m his waitress at dinner.
I haven’t checked the weather for five months.
My new cotton undies are so comfy.
I love the smell of dust blowing through the air con. Thoughts of love have consumed my life for so long.
Decide I can’t work for others—I’m too opinionated.
I wonder about giving up on all that I’ve written.
An irritable mood. Skin bad. Period coming? I’m ready to leave and right now I want to go AWOL for a few weeks.
B says the missions were a guise for slave camps. What Australian pearling was founded off.
It’s a North wind. Bruce tells me he was born with a North wind. He tells me the word for wind is ardi. They’re language is with nature. He holds a near-extinct awareness of this nature.
I want to keep learning and growing and taking risks for the sake of so much more than my ego.
The little boy who wanted to call me mum makes mention of “big mob.” He tells me he likes his mum’s friends who wear pants. His older sister’s clothes are dirty and ripped. She tells me she dresses her younger brother. The younger brother impersonates hitting and punching naked friends.
Had been thinking about Bruce’s connection to country and when in the social making lunch I must have mentioned the lock on the gate to Bruce’s land. “What he’s put it on again?” C, a manager, asks.
Guess so, I tell him. What’s wrong with that, why do you seem so agitated.
“Because it’s our land,” he said.
I looked at him, speechless: “sorry?”
He repeated himself. “It’s our land. Well (the owners) land, but you know what I mean.”
No, I don’t. And neither do you. Wanker.
I dreamt a man was there. But I ignored him. It was too obvious. Too good to be true. Then he disappeared
Sunrise at Shenton Bluff. Five of us. We drive over the wire. Clouds spot the sky, a fingernail moon to the left and the waiting sun to the right. Saw a big mud crab, climbed a cool tree.
It’s when I’m drunk that these thoughts come.
Bruce asks if I want to drive and pulls over in the middle of nowhere. He starts to throw all the rubbish from the floor of his car to outside. “What the hell are you doing,” I exclaim. He picks it all up and puts it back in, we drop it to a bin.
We’re at the restaurant. Bruce says he has a new girlfriend. I ask what her name is. “Sunrise,” he says, “because she gets up with sunrise.” I ask what her surname is. “Sunset,” he says, “because she likes to watch the sun set.”
Bruce is going to build a raft, sail to Kooljiman.
Bruce comes into gallery. I’m talking to some customers. “Have you told them about me?” he asks.
The water was turquoise. He points out freshwater spots, the beaches on different islands where his family were born. They went between the islands on canoes and rafts. We saw dugong. There were turtles and reef sharks all around. We eat a wrap I made for us in the social in the morning. We sleep on the boat, wait for the tide to roll in.
The Southern Cross above the water’s edge, the stars so bright, a glimpse of first light. At Bird Rock our legs dangle off the cliff. The sun is big when it rises, we drink coffee. On the boat, we explore aged mangroves. I have no will to write. It’s time to go.
