The Bay (26 page)

‘Can't imagine you confined to a classroom,' said Eddie. ‘You show me what to put down and I'll add to the archive as I go through the boxes. How about that?'

She quickly brought up the file on her computer and they sat together as she explained the system. Then she pointed to a desk in the corner of the room. ‘That can be your research centre,' she declared. ‘No one is using it. And when you've finished, you can buy me a drink.'

Eddie was soon totally absorbed in the old diaries, journals, ships' logs and notes kept by the lighthouse keepers. He found anecdotes and records of events that were straight out of the pages of a boys' own adventure book or a swashbuckling movie. They were so interesting he kept reading extracts to Tina until she interrupted.

‘Rule number one. Reading aloud only permitted for major discoveries, or sexy bits. I've got work to do, you know.'

‘Okay. But what an amazing lively town Beacon Bay must have been in the old days. Full of a lot of hard-drinking working men, from the sound of it.'

‘Some of the older women of the town have told me The Bay was not the place for refined young ladies. It was considered a bit down at heel and working class. It was a place for slumming, before it became a place for sunning.'

‘Very nicely put.'

‘Flattery will get you anything,' she said, and returned to her paperwork.

Eddie picked up a new file, forcing himself to concentrate. The variety of information was at once enlightening and confusing; so many diverse impressions, so many interesting stories. Everything he read gave him fresh ideas for his developing documentary. He became so engrossed that he didn't notice Tina leave to make her final patrol of the day. When she came back he still had his head down, carefully scanning old black and white photographs.

‘These are great photos, if you like slaughterhouses. Nineteen-fifties. Where'd they come from?' he asked.

‘Sid Wainwright donated them. He was the last meat inspector at the abattoir, near the whaling station. Sid only had a box brownie with one speed and one aperture opening.'

‘Well he had a good eye for framing a subject, even if there is a lot of blood in these shots,' Eddie said. He flicked through some yellowing newspaper clippings. ‘Sid had funny ideas about what made news, judging by what he kept. Some bloke hanged himself under the jetty one New Year's Day. “Gruesome start to the year” the local rag called it. And here's another tragedy, “Bomb Blast Kills Boy”, an unexploded World War Two bomb a kid found in the sand.'

‘Yeah, it was from a whale chaser the Americans commandeered for an ammunition boat in the war. The crew got on the turps and crashed it into the old jetty. That was hushed up. The wreck is a favourite spot for local divers,' said Tina. ‘Sid has the story, among many. He's one of the town's great ear benders. He only needs an audience of one and he's away.'

‘You mean he's still around? How lucid is he?'

‘Sid? He's in his eighties and seems in good shape. But he's deaf as a post without his hearing aid and you can't get away from him for hours at a stretch.'

‘I've got to talk to him. How fantastic to get
that
on camera: the old boy reminiscing around the town. How it was, what happened, what he thinks of it all now. Where can I find him?'

‘No worries there, I've got his number,' Tina said and tossed a set of keys into the air and caught them. ‘It's lockup time and you owe me a drink. Remember?'

They sat under palms in the patio of the Big Pub and took in the state of the surf just across the road. The usual locals having an early sundowner were talking about the recent local rugby league team victory but lack of crowd support was a worry, and the run of brilliant weather that was giving the tourists a fabulous season. There were also the backpackers, many of them from overseas, reading mail from home, writing postcards and entries in diaries, and comparing travel experiences.

At one table Holly was having drinks with her children, who were both a little sunburned, and laughing at the photos they'd just collected from the chemist around the corner. Billy and his family were eating hamburgers, Stolle was talking to a man and scribbling notes. The back of his T-shirt was emblazoned with the motto ‘Globalisation Sucks'. The hard sunlight that dominated the day had softened, the nor'-easter was dying down, and the ocean glare had been replaced by a subdued blue. It was as if The Bay was taking a breath before an evening of frenzied enjoyment.

On rocks by the beach a handful of drummers and a couple of didge players were warming up with impromptu bursts of music, in preparation for their evening ritual of sending the sun down in a crescendo of sound. Several people danced on the sand, each wrapped in their interpretation and enjoyment of the rhythm.

‘Are you going to bring Sid here for a comment on the changing scene?' said Tina. ‘There was a funny old pub on this spot in the twenties.' Not waiting for a reply she went on, ‘Have you settled on a theme for this doco yet?'

Eddie took time to answer. ‘Probably end up being several themes, but one thing is obvious. Paradise found, paradise for sale, paradise lost.'

‘I know what you mean. We must have passed a dozen signs just on the way here, all saying “For Sale. Development Opportunity”.'

‘Everyone keeps saying this place is so special, but just how far will they go to keep it like that in the face of development pressures? The Bay is a hot site on the web, on the itinerary of half the world's backpackers, on the agenda of every Aussie teenager, and in the eyes of every greedy developer who passes by.'

‘A good question to ask. Best of luck in finding an answer,' Tina said, raising her glass. ‘You're up against the Greed is Good tidal flow. We'll even lose our beaches if we don't put in offshore reefs because of our building interference. Making headway against that is like paddling . . . well, you know.'

Eddie nodded, and they both tuned in to the drummers who were lifting the tempo as the sun dipped towards the distant ranges.

Sid's old brick and weatherboard house tucked on a small block right across from Tiny Bay Beach was a gem.

‘I knew every inch of The Bay so when the missus and I decided to build I bought the best bit of land. I still don't get tired of looking at that,' he said, pointing to the sweep of ocean stretching to the horizon. ‘The Cape is to the left so the lighthouse beam peers into our kitchen every night.'

Beyond the headland, across the bay, were the distant ranges and the length of Mighty Beach disappearing into the northern haze.

Sid was steady if cautious on his feet, white hair stood in tufts that refused to lie flat, there was a gap or two in his cheerful smile and behind his thick lenses his eyes were a washed-out blue. He wore a hand-knitted vest over a shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbow. Touches of ‘the late missus' were everywhere. Photos and mementos crowding table and shelves, crochet on almost every surface, the handiwork of Mrs Wainwright, whose basket of thread and crochet hooks rested beside her leather chair in the glassed-in sunroom. Here Sid sat, occasionally glancing at the empty chair beside his own.

‘The missus and I sat here to watch the sunset most nights for over fifty years,' he said. ‘They never seem as bright as they used to when she was here.' He gave a bit of a smile. ‘Might have to clean the windows, eh?' He ran a finger across one of the glass louvres. ‘Now, young man, what do you want to know?'

He relished the company, and sipping his sherry told Eddie how he'd come to The Bay as a young man to work in the abattoir that was next to the whaling station. ‘Both were messy jobs, so the set-up close to the beach was convenient. And in those days it was away from the town centre. Town has spread a bit. Just a few fishing shacks along the beach in the sixties.'

‘Yeah, now look at the development,' said Eddie. ‘This will soon be a place only for rich people. I can't afford to live near the beach.'

‘Greed. Gets everyone in the end. I have 'em banging on my door a couple of times a week. My kids will probably knock this place down and put up units.' He sighed. ‘But we've had good times here. Watched them grow up on the beach down there.'

‘Tell me about the whaling,' Eddie asked, to change the subject.

‘You've never smelled anything like it,' he said. ‘By God, it was a stench. A lot of the men who worked at the whaling station never really got rid of the stink. Didn't help marital relations,' he said grinning. ‘You always knew when one of the local girls for hire had been with a bloke from the whaling station.' Eddie smiled and Sid gave a bit of a wink.

‘So you were the local meat inspector?'

‘That's right. I was also hired to be the whaling inspector. Whaling had stopped before the war and was just getting going again in 1946.'

‘What did you do?'

‘I had to measure the whale, check it wasn't undersize, or milk filled or pregnant. I had to write a lot of reports along with the gunner's report about the actual kill.'

‘What were the whales used for? I thought once petroleum and electricity came along, that wiped out the need for the oil.'

‘The oil – it smelled like cod liver oil – was in demand for food products in Europe after the war so it was sent by road tanker to Brisbane and shipped to England. It was also used in all sorts of things like processed stock feed. The meat was used in pet food. Some was sold to fishermen on the coast here as bait for traps. I even had an American come out wanting to buy the whale meat to feed minks on big mink farms.'

‘Uh, oh,' exclaimed Eddie. ‘Killing whales to feed minks for fur coats! The animal libbers wouldn't like that.'

‘People weren't so fussy back then.'

‘Was there a lot of interest around the town when whales were caught?'

‘When a whale was pulled up on the jetty onto the railway flat top and a small engine – we called it the green frog – hauled it to the station, it was like centre court at Wimbledon,' declared Sid. ‘In those days no one thought about saving the whales. Not until the damage was done.'

‘I guess they had no idea what they were doing. Killed off their one industry, eh,' Eddie remarked.

Sid picked up an album from the small table beside him and pulled out a newspaper clipping. ‘This only came to light a few years go. The International Whaling Commission had very strict regulations and yet listen to this
Herald
article I kept.' He adjusted his glasses and read, ‘Files kept secret for many years have revealed that the Soviet Union systematically slaughtered a large part of the world's protected whale population, selling some valuable meat to Japan.' He lifted a finger for added emphasis, ‘Long buried documents show that the Soviet Ministry of Fisheries, in a military-style operation lasting forty years, deceived the commission about the number of whales it slaughtered.'

‘God, by how many?' asked Eddie.

‘By thousands.' Sid continued to read, ‘As a result of the plunder, the humpback whale herd around New Zealand and Australia was exterminated by 1966. Six years later, the sei whale herds in the Indian Ocean were destroyed, and by 1975 the sperm whales north of Hawaii had all but vanished.'

He put down the clipping. ‘Bloody criminal. As bad as the Japanese today,' said Sid, unselfconscious at his change in attitude towards his one-time profession.

Eddie was hooked by Sid's strong, clear voice. He looked good too, probably be even better on the screen. He briefly explained to Sid what he was trying to do with the documentary and was comfortable about asking him to play a role, convinced that inside the old man was a performer just waiting for the right stage. ‘Why don't you take me and my camera on a tour of The Bay and talk about how it used to be?'

‘Ah, no one is interested in the ramblings of an old geezer like me,' he said modestly. But Eddie could see he was flattered.

‘Let's go back to the old whaling station and you can describe what it was like. We can use the photographs that are around, including yours.'

‘I'll think about it, young fella. Let me think about it. Might be orright.' He smiled, and Eddie knew he had the old man on board. ‘But there's nothin' up the beach now, you know that. Mighty Beach is nothin' but a beach now.'

‘All the dunes and the bush belong to the council, don't they?' said Eddie.

‘Little bit where the parking lot is, but the rest is privately owned. Used to be the whaling station property. Americans owned it, until it went bust. Dunno who has it nowadays. Worth a bloody fortune, I'd say.'

Kimberley arrived at The Teepee in a linen dress, carefully applied make-up and yellow sandals with small kitten heels. Billy reacted by covering his eyes as if hit by a blinding light. ‘Who is this vision of loveliness?'

‘Come off it. I need my hair trimmed and could you blow it for me so it looks, you know, together.'