The Island(12)

“He comes here and he tells us that because we have no natives, we’re a land without a Dreaming. The nerve of him. What a bloody fraud. Ma saw right through him. All his talk about demons and bunyips. Ma had me and Ivan chase him off with our shotguns! Should have seen him run!” Jacko cackled.

“Oh, dear,” Petra said and she looked at Heather, whose eyes widened with alarm. Heather’s feeling of unease was growing as the ferry chugged inexorably closer to shore. To distract herself, she watched as Ivan steered the tiller with his foot and cast a fishing line into the water.

“What is he fishing for?” Heather found herself wondering out loud.

“If sharks are here, it’s probably big fish like salmon and tuna,” Petra said.

“Do you fish, Petra?” Heather asked.

“Oh, yes. Hans and I go fly-fishing in Germany,” Petra said. “You?”

“Not anymore. My dad grew up fly-fishing in Kentucky, but, gosh, the real fisherfolk in my family are from my mom’s side. Her mom—my grandmother—grew up on the Makah Reservation. Mom said they could fish anything out of the sea. Whales, even.”

“He better stop fishing now. We’re getting close,” Matt said. “Last chance for the dunny, everyone.”

Olivia tugged Heather’s sleeve. Heather put up her hand like a kid in school. “Is dunny ‘toilet,’ by any chance?” she asked Matt.

Matt grinned at her. “Yeah, mate, just inside the little cabin there. Make sure you turn on the light and check for spiders before you sit down.”

Olivia looked at Heather and shook her head.

“What spiders should we look out for?” Heather asked.

“Follow me, I’ll check for you. Redbacks. Real nasty, they are. Hide under the toilet seat sometimes. Can kill you in some circumstances.” Matt walked over to the tiny little toilet, opened the door, and had a look around. “You’re safe,” he said.

“What the hell is that?” Olivia asked, pointing at a massive spider on the far side of the wall. It was a brown hairy thing as big as her hand.

“Oh, those are harmless. It’s a huntsman spider. Actually, they do us a big favor. Eat the flies. They won’t hurt you,” Matt said.

Olivia was not reassured in the least. “I’ll hold it,” she said.

“Are you sure, honey?” Heather asked.

“Yes!” Olivia said, embarrassed now. She folded her arms and stomped to the prow of the boat to be with Owen and her father.

“Is the bathroom OK?” Petra asked Heather.

“If you have a problem with spiders, it might not be a great idea,” Heather said.

Matt took over steering duties while Ivan joined Jacko at the front of the boat. Jacko gave Heather the creeps and she couldn’t help but notice both men ogling Olivia. She hadn’t been sure at first but then she saw Jacko nudge Ivan in the ribs as Olivia bent over to pick something up off the deck. Heather could handle those looks with a contemptuous eye-roll or a cutting remark, but Olivia wasn’t used to this kind of creepy attention from older men. Blue eyes, long legs, blond hair, pretty face—she would be a heartbreaker in three or four years. But not now. Heather was going to say something but fortunately they were getting very close to shore and both men got busy with fending the ferry off as Matt killed the engine and it glided toward a concrete slipway.

“All right, folks, in your vehicles! Be no more than half an hour, forty-five minutes tops, and I’ll take you back,” Ivan announced as he lowered the ferry’s ramp.

“Yeah, get your koala pics and go before Ma rumbles ya,” Jacko muttered.

“Be careful, and seriously, don’t be long!” Matt added to Heather.

They got in the Porsche and set out to explore the island. Heather was relieved to be back in the air-conditioning; Australia was her first experience of a hot-weather climate and she had decided that she did not much care for it. The road wound east from the ferry pier. The landscape was not inspiring. There were no koalas anywhere, just a large grassy heathland that had been burned in a recent bushfire and the occasional eucalyptus tree with a crow in it. Heather looked at the dreary yellow-and-brown nothingness with the feeling that they had been royally conned.

“Well, this sucks!” Owen said, giving vent to what they were all feeling.

“Maybe if we go farther in?” Tom said.

“I think we’re supposed to stay close to the shore,” Heather said.

“We’ll get what we paid for,” Tom said, irritated, accelerating the Porsche.

They drove through a crossroads and came to what was presumably the remains of the old prison. A house and a few tumbledown buildings covered with lichen and moss. An emaciated gray-haired older man stepped out from the shade of one of the buildings and furiously flagged them down. Tom stopped the car and wound down his window. “What are you doing here?” the man asked, amazed.

“We, um, we’re looking for koalas and—”

“You need to leave,” the man said. “This is private land. It’s not safe. You all need to go. Now!”

Heather grabbed Tom’s knee. “I really don’t like it here.”

The man hit the Porsche with his walking stick. “Go!” he yelled.

Tom nodded and rolled the window back up. He was as spooked as the rest of them. They drove back to the crossroads.