What a difference 31 years makes

I am with Ruby who is the daughter of my friend, Pam.

     When I was 14, Ruby’s age, I, too was happy to frolic in the surf wearing my brand-new strapless, blue Expozay bikini which I had purchased on my parents’ Myers account from Pacific Fair at the Gold Coast.  I was staying with my friend for the Easter holidays and what else to do on the coast than go to the beach and splash in the waves.  I was unconcerned about the ultra-violet radiation frying my Reef Oiled skin. 

     This photo, taken by Pam who was laughing at the extremes of our attire, reminded me of those Easter holidays and my blue bikini.  I had scaled the peak of beach fashion. 

     This photo also reminded me ageing is not so bad.  Age has given me the wisdom to know that total cover-up is the best defence against the sun’s harsh rays (I had just removed my calf-length spandex tights to swim) even if I look like something out of Lawrence of Arabia. 

     Age has also taught me not to lament the loss of smooth skin, firm breasts and thighs that once remained more or less in the one place and a flat stomach (my current belly has a mind of its own). 
    You see, with the help of strong and durable fabrics that contain elastane like Lycra, all those soft, dimply, wandering bits can be concealed (especially if the fabric is black) and tastefully restrained.  Thank you, Dupont!

My Island Homicide on Naghir Island

The ill-fated trip to Naghir

In the first week of January, 2009, Tony and I planned to head to Naghir, the Mills’ family island for the day.  It would have been the first visit for me and the first in 30 years for Tony.  For years I had listened to Ina’s stories about Naghir and I was keen to see the island.  The BOM had predicted 5 knot winds for the next few days and this was perfect for crossing the 25 nautical miles between TI and Naghir.

     The evening before leaving I asked Ina to draw a mud map so I could find my way around.  She sketched it out and identified some landmarks; Pine Creek, the cemetery, the well and her mother’s grave.  She then wrote, ‘caves.’

     ‘Don’t go near there,’ she said, dropping her voice as she tapped the paper.  ‘Us kids, when we been walk past, the hair on our necks stan’up.’

     I knew exactly what she was talking about.  She'd mentioned those caves before and the hair on my neck had stood up.  Since I have a deep respect for the spiritual and religious practices of other people and cultures, I wasn’t going anywhere near the place.

     I showed Tony the mud map and related Ina’s warning about the caves.

     ‘As if,’ he said. ‘They’re caves.  There’s bones.  It’s nothing and I'll go for a look if I want to.’

     I pleaded with him not to go to the caves and he dismissed my concerns as superstition.

     Next morning we set off from the Rosehill Ramp just after seven.  The sea was mut-thuru, like glass and the sky was clear. I said a small prayer and asked God to keep us, the adults and 7 children aged between 4 and 12, safe.

     Naghir rose from the horizon like a giant, equilateral triangle.  

     A few miles into the trip, I was able to make out some contours on Naghir in the bright morning sunlight; the yellow-green, a deep cleft in Naghir Hill, a hill to the left.  Travis Island to the west was also lit up.  I also noticed the fractured surface of the water.

     Past Wednesday Island a dark curtain appeared to hang over Naghir yet Travis Island and Moa to the north were brightly lit and green.  Bizarre, I thought.  The Madam Dugong was no longer slicing through the water.  She was rising and falling with the waves.

     I got Tony’s attention and motioned to the waves.

     ‘We’ll head towards Twin Island,' he said, 'in case it gets worse.’ 

     I knew to trust Tony.  He’s a seafarer and he knows the sea instinctively.  Yet why was I feeling so uneasy about choppy water when this wasn't part of the BOM's weather advice.

     And why the hell was Naghir still hidden behind thick, dark rain that appeared as a black rectangle when the foliage and rocks of Moa and Travis Island were still visible in the bright sun. 

     As we levelled with Twin Island, Tony made a left turn for Naghir.  Not long after the sun vanished behind patchy cloud and Naghir, now within a few miles, was menacing.  We were now close enough for me to make out the boiling, grey mass of cloud above Naghir, streaks of vertical, black rain and mist rising from the sea like steam.  The Madam Dugong handled the waves well, but one doesn’t travel to Naghir with seven children when there are waves, cloud, rain and a destination that presents as a scene from a horror movie. 

     I was torn between my duty to trust Tony and a desire not to be part of a trip that may offend some spirits in a cave we’d been warned not to enter.  I wanted to turn around.  One thing Tony doesn’t like is me telling him how or where to drive a boat.

     A flash of something bright to the south caught my eye.  Forked lighting.  I tapped Tony on the shoulder, pointed and before I could speak, he’d turned the vessel for Twin Island.

     We waited out the squall in the shack and headed back to TI as the weather calmed and sky cleared.  By the time we got to Wednesday Island, the sea was mut-thuru.  At the ramp, the sun was blazing.  Naghir rose clearly from the horizon, a giant, equilateral triangle.

     As soon as we arrived home I rushed to see Ina, keen to get her take on things.

     ‘I was so worried about yufla,’ she said before I could start talking.  'All morning I been think, I never asked them ancestors for permission for you to go and to keep you safe.’

     ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘they told us’ and I related our not-so-successful trip to Naghir.

     I didn't want to go to Naghir for a long time.

'Tis the season for staph and streptococcus

Deck the shelves with antibiotics, tra la la la la la la la lah.
‘Tis the season for staph and streptococcus, tra la la la la la la la lah.

     An outbreak of festering skin sores on our feet and lower legs is sweeping through 10 Pearl Street.  It reminded me of a time 37 years ago in PNG where I am certain little has changed.

     Our family moved to Lae in PNG when I was eight.  For the first few weeks I was in a state of shock, the type of macabre shock that entrances a young child who has had a charmed and sheltered life.  It was shock that grew, much to my delight, as I encountered the extraordinary in the ordinary of life in a third world country. 

     Mothers pulling nits from their children’s hair and slipping the parasites between their lips. 

    The rich, acrid and often nauseating smells that overwhelmed me at the markets where my mother insisted I accompany her; smoke from two-toea stick tobacco, bitter coconut oil in the Nationals' afro hair, a pungent waft of fish laid out on banana leaves in the steamy, equatorial heat.  There were cus cus, small, native mammals with large, innocent eyes in home-made bamboo cages and pigs, both waiting for slaughter.  
The campfire smell of the billum, the traditional string bags the women sat around weaving after rolling the plant fibres (and sometimes cuscus) along their muscly legs to make twine. 

     People crippled or disfigured at birth, there being no health care system to treat such conditions; faces bulbous with cancers and deformities, people of all ages limping from polio, elephantiasis-like and other diseases rare in Australia, handless and feetless limbs, often wrapped in rags to cushion the stump, a mangled and permanently closed eye, the long, keloid scar suggesting a bush knife attack. 

     A man beating his wife by the roadside as she squatted and shielded the blows to her head.

     “Don’t look, Catherine,” said Dad.  Of course, I looked.  It’s just not right, I thought.    Someone should do something to help her.  Except the shiny bush knife on his belt, the one with the 50 centimetre blade was a good reason to turn a blind eye. 

     All this was happening in Australia's neighbouring country.  In fact, it was more like another planet.

     But what I found most fascinating in those early weeks were the tropical ulcers that erupted on my and my brothers’ feet.  We ditched our sandals and sandshoes upon arrival in our new country and embraced the laid-back lifestyle and freedom to roam. What started as small scratches from mosquitoes and thick foliage we explored, seemed to thrive in the hot, wet humidity and flower, literally bloom across and into our skin.  They were perfectly round, like deep ponds of shiny, pink water, always with a halo of red. And the flies loved them.

     Out came the gentian violet, bright purple liquid that stained the skin.  It was supposed to kill the bacteria that caused the ulcer.  We needed to keep the sores clean and dry which was a losing battle in the 99 percent humidity and given the desire we had to keep running around without shoes or long pants.  The aim was to prevent a scab from forming; that meant ‘big trouble.’  I also remember gallons of the golden yellow acriflavine liquid and the fire-engine red, mercurochrome, other topical treatments for tropical ulcers that were completely ineffective.   

     One of us must have developed the typical red line that tracks up the leg denoting serious infection or developed a terrible fever which also meant ‘big trouble’ for there were injections of something in a huge glass syringe with a terrifyingly large needle more appropriate for use on elephants.  The drug worked, the sores healed and we seemed to develop an immunity that, for the most part, kept the ulcers at bay.  We were reminded of our season of sores only by the deep, round scars decorating our lower limbs.

     However, 37 years later, I still bear the now-faint scar of my deepest, largest and most fabulous tropical ulcer.

     Fast forward to the present day on TI.  This naigai season, the doldrums before the wet season, has provided perfect conditions for skin sores;  still, hot, humid.  I don’t know enough about tropical skin infections, but we’ve all developed circular, seeping, red-ringed sores on our legs and feet.

     “Is this normal?” asked Nicola, as she performed the ritual treatment on her sons’ legs.

     “It happens when it’s hot and warm,” I said, ho-hum.  “You get used to it and it’ll pass when the rain comes.”  I told her about the outbreaks of APSGN, the strep skin-infections that can lead to kidney disease and have hit TI twice in the past four years. 

     Nicola was shaking her head. “I’ve never seen anything like these sores that just won’t heal.”

     Fortunately in the Torres Strait, we have only sores, sores that generally heal with topical antiseptic and good hygiene.  If they become infected we have access to free medical consultation and free antibiotics. 

     We don’t have mothers de-nitting their children’s hair in public and consuming the nits.  We don’t have native animals being sold for food in circumstances that would give the RSPCA and Australian government apoplexy.  We don’t have people suffering the pain and indignity of gross deformity or amputees using dirty cloths as prostheses.  And we don’t have men exercising their right to beat the crap out of their wives on the side of the road.  
     We are living in the luckiest part of PNG’s lucky neighbour, every reason to be jolly.

If you love something, set it free

If you love something, set it free. If it comes back it is yours, if it doesn’t, it never was.

     I first read this quote by Richard Bach in 1981.  It was on an A4 poster with a watermark backdrop of a seagull.  A fellow boarder had it on the wall above her bed.

     Even as a 12 year-old I found the simplicity in this statement irritating, perhaps exacerbated by the insipid, pastel tones.  It may have been one of many catalysts that contributed to the development of my cynical nature.

     Anyway, it’s a quote that has stayed with me all these years.

     I’ve found it really only applies to rescued native animals and lovers.  Except with the latter, and I am referring to the past tense these days, that meant loveable, but not in the enduring sense. If they came back they needed an extra and very forceful push to go and stay gone.  And stray puppies and kittens, well, you can’t set them free. It’s best to call the animal patrol officer so they can be euthanized.  That way those rescued native animals you set free actually have a chance at surviving instead of being ripped to pieces.

     Richard Bach’s words of wisdom hit home the other day.  In the past few weeks, Pepper Zen had taken on the demeanour of an angel, or so I thought.  She’d stand in the middle of the yard and flap her wings looking beautiful and ethereal. I thought of the voluptuous renaissance beauties immortalised by Botticelli and Titian.  I glowed with pride each time she did this Angel's Wings routine.  It was a divine affirmation that my feathered friend was truly heaven sent.  

     The other evening Nicola and I were on the patio as Pepper and the children played in the yard.  Pepper did her Angel Wings routine, this time while running as fast as she could.

     “Isn’t she beautiful?” I said.

     “She’s starting to fly,” said Nicola, laughing.  I understood immediately why she was laughing.

     If you love something, set it free. If it comes back it is yours, if it doesn’t, it never was.

     Fuck that, I thought.  Pepper’s not going anywhere.

     “Where are your scissors?” I said, already at Nicola’s back door.

     And I cut Pepper’s right wing.  

Christmas Day: Accursed or alternative

I woke at 12.30 am on Christmas Eve and gulped ibuprofen, desperate to dull the razor-sharp pain in my right tonsil.  Not long after I snuck in Panadeine Forte a couple of hours before they were due.  At 2 am, nauseated by the pain, I was throwing up into a small black bucket I wasn’t sure was liquid-proof.  I didn’t care because Tony had to deal with it.  I was too sick.

     “Take me to the hospital,” I whispered, no longer able to vocalise my words.

     I am no stranger to tonsilitis.  It’s my ‘thing’ when I am run down.  I should have known better since my most recent attack was two months earlier.  The time before that I went, ignominiously at midnight to the hospital for pain relief when the oral stuff didn't cut it.  I wanted stuff that worked.  Morphine.

     The nurse took phone instructions from the doctor on call.  The first two attempts at pain relief, prednisolone failed and that left only morphine.  It worked. A warm, dreamy sensation flooded my arm and chest while the drug was being injected.  And the pain relief was instant.  I dozed for a few hours in A&E, waking as soon as I slipped into unconsciousness.  Strange, I thought.

     At 6 am a woman presented in the bed next to mine and I listened to her moan in pain from the other side of the curtains.  Fever, two days, sore throat and ears.  Another victim. 

     In my delicious pain-free, drug-haze I willed her to ask for morphine.

     It turned out there had been a spike in tonsillitis presentations and hospital admissions of adults rather than children which would be expected.

     By the time I was discharged at half eight, I was buzzing with what I thought was good health thanks to modern day pharmacopeia.  Hell, I didn’t even sleep though I was wrecked considering I’d had no sleep the night before.  Christmas day was going to be a success after all.  We’d decided on Friday Island, the same beach as last year.  I shopped, I cooked, I chatted over cups of tea.  If anything, I was a little hyperactive. Bloody good stuff, that morphine.  Don’t remember it working so well last time.

     By early afternoon, Ollie down stairs had been diagnosed with tonsillitis.  By mid-afternoon, #2 son, Sutchy had succumbed.  Oh dear.  Was the universe attempting to stop us meeting our Christmas tradition of spending the day on a beach?  Were our plans cursed by three sets of dodgy tonsils?

     We were all on penicillin so I was hopeful Christmas day would dawn, the drugs would have won the battle with the evil strep bacteria and we’d speed off to Friday Island and enjoy the sun, sea and sand.  Not so. 

     I woke, feeling like I vice was tightening around my neck.  Ollie was a mess and so was Sutchy.  In fact, Sutchy was so bad he didn’t want to go out in the boat.  That means Sutchy was desperately ill. 

     You see, Sutchy is the hunter in the family.  He complains like a stuck pig if he can’t get out each day to fish, dive, bow-hunt or otherwise kill something and eat it.  On Christmas morning he stumbled out of bed, holding his throat.

     “Can we stay home?” he said to his father.

     We had to.  Alternative Christmas plans were in urgent order.

     We ate and we chatted.  I was flat and perhaps a little snappy.  I know, that's hard to believe.  There were some stimulating mental games.

Finger soccer.  Perfect for teenage boys.

We took photos of our Christmas pearls.

Us lot on TI.  A short visit to the Friday Island pearl farm a few weeks ago enabled me to buy pearls for the whole family here, Cairns and Toowoomba.  Great quality and great value!  First year in three we've had presents.  Thank you Takami and Rhonda and staff.

Ash and Mikes in Cairns wearing Christmas pearls.  PS Aren't they gorgeous?

     Then I slunk off to sleep for two hours.  Eileen and Nicola chatted.  The kids were well behaved and did something that didn’t require adults to tell them to ‘be quiet.’

Tony slept off the Christmas dinner.

Gina Rose waited in hope for the next meal.

Dr John read some engaging literature: Not for parents: The real wonders of the world (Day of the Dead)

Pepper Zen was resplendent in the garden.

     I woke, buoyed by the rest.  Over a cup of tea I related to Dr John my feeling hyperactive the day before.

     “Could it have been the prednisolone?”

     “Prednisolone is well known for causing agitation,” he said with a dry smile, as if I should have known.

     “Okay, so if I am in Cairns and I have to go to the hospital because the pain from tonsilitis is so bad, should I just say, Steroids don’t work with me, just give me morphine?” 

     “No,” he shrieked and levitated at the same time.  “Never ask for morphine down south.”

     Uh-oh.  I guess not.

     When the sun had all, but disappeared I took a very slow walk to Back Beach and on the way located some of the absent children.

Sunset cricket.

I had to get in a visit to a beach on Christmas day.

     It’s been years since we stayed home on Christmas Day.  In fact, I can't think of a Christmas day we've not spent at a beach.  On a positive note, there was nothing to organise and not much to clean up except the dishes.  It was a nice alternative to spending it on a beach.  But I sure as hell would have liked to have had a different throat for the day.

Pepper Zen's Christmas message

Quack, quack, quack.  Merry Christmas to all and sundry.  Spare a thought for those less fortunate than yourselves, those who are without family, food and shelter and who live in war-torn regions.  
     Now to the point, I beg you to think about all the animals whose lives are cut tragically short as humans pursue their desire for meat.  They are creatures just like me. 
     Consider limiting your intake of animal proteins and adopt a diet higher in plant proteins such as pulses and avocado.  Feel free, of course, to consume the wonderful sources of protein animals like me, the simple chook and the doe-eyed cow offer: eggs, milk, cheese.
     Please, please eat less animal flesh (preferably none) and increase your health by consuming a diet much higher in vegetables.
     Do your bit to stop the unnecessary slaughter of innocent and defenceless souls who are, all of us, God's creatures.
     Quack, quack, quack and go in peace and love.
     Pepper Zen