DIARIES
A Novel
Stuart Jackson
Copyright 2016 Stuart Jackson,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2671-6
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
As before, this book is for my lovely wife, Loretta.
She encourages, supports – and reads the drafts before anyone else!
Chapter 1
THE SAILOR’S DIARY
Strahan, West Coast Tasmania
Tyler Moore was always glad to see the navigational light on Cape Sorell.
No more so than with two dead sailors on board.
When Moore and his crew had picked the pair out of the ocean one was still alive, but within thirty minutes of getting them aboard the fishing boat, the second one too was dead.
It wasn’t that Moore saw the Cape Sorell navigational light very often as a light, because he preferred to avoid going into Macquarie Harbour at night time, but it was a promise of a safe haven. Moore, like most other fishermen who took their boats into the waters around Tasmania, knew too well the vagaries of the ocean and the winds. The waters could be calm and sedate one minute and violent and unforgiving the next. Winds swept in from the vast ocean expanses to the west or the south, unfettered by any land mass, forcing torrential gales and icy blasts before them.
Macquarie Harbour had had a bad name for a long time and it was because it was a treacherous place and there never seemed to be enough information for the fishermen. A fisherman, or anyone boating in the area, needed reliable information about wind and swell. The CSIRO wave rider buoy off Cape Sorell and Maatsuyker Island, to the south, gave good data on swell indications, but the buoy didn't provide wind data and it had reached the stage where the information from the automatic weather station at Strahan couldn't be relied upon. They identified a need for another wave rider buoy, at Bonnie's Patch near South-West Cape. If they knew where the swells were originating from, the fishermen could work out the direction themselves.
Christ, Moore thought, information was survival in this place - survival so you could fish to the optimum and survival just to stay alive.
The sea was unforgiving and – unforgiving – it killed.
He used his radio constantly, but he still had a preference for the many years of experience he had himself and that of his father and his uncle with whom he had fished in his teens. You could stay alive on those feelings, sense the increase in the swell, waves that grew without wind over them, pushed ahead of moving, swirling storm winds. You could smell the rain, see the way the clouds changed as they scurried across the sky and skimmed low on the horizon, and feel the tension in the stomach.
When it got like that you headed for safety.
And on the west coast there were precious few anchorages where you could be safe until the storms had gone. North from Port Davey, itself just north of South West Cape, there was only Macquarie Harbour and there was a lot of sea to travel. And provided plenty of time and distance in which to die.
Which was why the sailors were dead now.
Moore swung the Carrie Ann round to starboard. On his port side was the Kawatiri Shoal and he lined the bow of the boat up between the two lights ahead. One, on the starboard, sat squat on a short headland of rocks, backed by the low, green-grey scrub, and the second, on the port side, taller, and more like a lighthouse, sat on Entrance Island, flat and rocky. Between the lights the water swirled, ahead of calmer water. The flow of water through here was affected by the tides, but also by the local wind conditions and recent rainfall. "Hells Gates", it was called, with good reason, he thought, and entrance to Macquarie Harbour.
Moore had no idea how the sailors came to be out in the middle of the ocean, miles from anywhere. And he wouldn't even have found them if he hadn't taken the Carrie Ann further west than he'd intended. They'd picked up a strong signal and headed for it, extra fish were not to be ignored, and then Luke had seen the light flashing between the waves.
Moore passed the light on Bonnet Island and felt better, the channel widening now, pulling the Carrie Ann around to an almost due easterly track. Macquarie Harbour opened up in front of him. Huge, wide, calm and safe, backed in the east by mountain ranges that folded into each other, that changed colour and kissed long, low dark grey clouds.
The sailors had been in a faded orange rubber raft which was in danger of swamping. Would have, had they not been found. The floor of the raft was awash with water where they lay, lifeless. Graham was the better swimmer among them and he'd tied a rope around his waist and gone over the side and swum to the raft and then shouted back that one was alive. He'd tied the rope to the raft and scrambled into it as Moore and Tommy and Luke, Graham's brother, pulled them alongside. Graham was checking both of the men in the raft and trying to scoop water out of it to stop it going under.
Once alongside, Luke slid over the side and into the raft to help his brother lift the sailors up and get them up onto the deck. The first one was still alive, but only just. They wrapped him in blankets and then brought the second one up; he was dead. Moore got them to pull the raft aboard as well and then helped Luke and Tommy carry the sailor to a bunk below decks.
"Will he die?" Luke had asked.
"No idea, son," Moore had said. "No idea." But he'd looked in a bad way, even then.
He'd radioed ahead to let them know they were coming, to have a doctor ready, and he'd left Graham to chart a course towards Macquarie Harbour while he sat with the sailor. Moore guessed that he'd have been no more than thirty years of age, he had short black hair and there was a cut down the left side of his face that looked recent. It was white and swollen with the water.
Ahead of them now, Moore could make out the town of Strahan.
The sailor had opened his eyes maybe a dozen times, but never for very long. He'd looked in fear and amazement at his surroundings and at Moore. He'd tried to speak a number of times, but the effort had obviously been too much for him, and his eyes had fluttered shut, but before he'd died he'd mumbled something and although Moore had listened intently he had been unable to understand. The man had shivered uncontrollably and then died, his face relaxing.
Moore now nosed the Carrie Ann in against the wharf. There were more than a dozen people waiting. More than usual, he thought. The word had spread quickly, as it tended to. Doctor White stood on the wharf, his black bag in one hand, and there was a uniformed policeman standing alongside him. Harold would be quite excited about the prospect of having to investigate something new and different. Moore stepped onto the wharf and walked up to them.
"Tyler, how is he?" the doctor asked.
"He died."
"I'll go see," White said and headed onto the fishing boat.
Moore turned to the policeman.
"What do you think happened?" the policeman asked. "What boat are they from? We haven't got any alarms for overdue boats. Was there any wreckage? Do you ..."
"Hey, hold on," Moore said.
The policeman drew breath.
"What boat are they from?"
"No idea."
"Nothing?"
"Don’t think they’re fisherman,” Moore offered.
“What?”