The Curious Affair of Scuppers Bilgewater and the Lesser Speckled Dunk Island Scrub Hen Read online

then we'd had a couple of stiff heart-starters and, as we layed into the rising swell of a warm nor'easter and a carton of cold Fourex, I began to feel more like my old self.

  And it was about half way through my eighth Fourex, if I remember correctly, that I happened to notice the old reprobate checking over a particularly good looking digital SLR camera, attached to which was an even better looking, very long, telephoto lens.

  Perhaps there was some sort of photo competition going, I mused, with the first person to produce a picture of this "Lesser Speckled Dunk Island Scrub Hen" bird, winning a big cash prize. And camera gear like that is exactly what the job would call for, I assured myself, while at the same time wondering how the light-fingered Scuppers might have acquired it.

  On approaching Gropers Gully Cove I eased the throttle back and, on Scup's instruction, steered the Pigbucket slowly into the adjacent shallows. Scuppers was over the side and wading ashore with considerable vigour even before our pointy end had touched the Gropers Gully sand spit, his camera wrapped securely in a plastic bag. At the tree line he turned back and gave me a wave then disappeared into the undergrowth.

  And then, having not the slightest interest in the affairs of the Lesser Speckled Dunk Island Scrub Hen - or any other variety of scrub hen for that matter, speckled or not - I happily left him to it. Instead I reversed the old scow off the sandbar and drifted her back into the confined waters of Gropers Gully's deep little steep-sided inlet.

  And that's where I dropped anchor - under the shade of the big old Moreton Bay fig that leans out over the water there - following which I settled back for a quiet afternoon's relaxation. Being a sporting enthusiast I'd made sure everything I needed was on board: a paper with the racing form, my mobile to ring Bill the Bookie, a tranny with the race caller turned down low, another cold slab of Fourex... I mean who could want more?

  And it was just after the second race at Doomben, if I remember rightly, that I noticed on page five of the paper, a brief item mentioning how the Dunk Island Naturists Association had been awarded the singular honour of hosting the International Nudie-beach "Babe Of The Year" contest at the Dunk Island Nudiebeach Resort's beach that very afternoon.

  What an interesting concurrence of events, I remember thinking. Old Scuppers on one side of the ridge looking for scrub hens (the usual standard of his preferred female companionship I might add half in jest), and the cream of the world's nudie-beach babes parading around in the nick on the other. And what a surprise the old pirate will get, I mused happily, should he end up on the wrong side of the peninsular.

  After that I must have dozed off for a while, because the next thing I know there's a thumping noise waking me. It's this police boat coming alongside and we're being boarded.

  And that's when I saw old Scup. He was sitting down the blunt end of their high speed rocket ship looking pretty glum and even more the worse for wear than usual, his camera and telephoto lens nowhere in sight - confiscated, I was informed during the course of proceedings, for assessment of its contents. When I hailed him and asked how he'd gone with the scrub hen pictures he just gave me a funny look.

  Our seasoned saltwater sleuths gave me more than a funny look, though. Before dumping Scuppers back on board they went through the old Pigbucket like starving rats in a sewer. They didn't find anything, of course, something of which I tried to apprise them as they jimmied apart the general fixtures and fittings in their search for false bottoms and compartments and the like. In the end, though, with considerable lack of bonhomie and grace and a trail of splintered panelwood, they left us to it.

  And no wonder, for at that particular time I was making very sure that nothing other than our food and refreshments came aboard without its being twice double-sealed in heavy duty plastic - and business had been totally in the doldrums for some time anyway. In fact it was so quiet that on the return crossing I started giving some thought to starting up the tourist charters again - you know, to help with the boat payments.

  Back at Bootleg Creek I'd only just managed to successfully disembark old Scup when who should arrive again but the Tight Black Suits. They made a number of unnecessary changes to my accommodation arrangements, my luggage and my facial characteristics and then summarily commandeered the boat.

  This was a huge turn of luck, as it transpired, because that night the whole aft section of the Pigbucket's hull let go and she sank at her moorings in something like three fathoms and forty-five seconds.

  I say "luck" here, because earlier in the week my part-time alleged associate and so called friend had made arrangements for an eleven thirty p.m. rendezvous with a Taiwanese freighter.

  For that very evening.

  With the meeting to take place somewhere on the seaward side of the reef about five miles out from the Bommy Island breakers.

  (Turned out to be a bugger of a night for swimming, too, as it happened, which is exactly what we'd have been doing had we ventured forth as agreed.)

  Anyhow, being now unable to put the Pigbucket to auction - as was doubtless the finance company's intention - they instead on-sold the boat to a shonky salvage-dealer mate for scrap, following which they sooled their Incredible Hulk debt collector onto me.

  This? "person"? lifted me one-handed by the shirt-front from my regular spot in the gutter adjacent to the Arrghme Hearties Arms Hotel's front bar, then held me out over the water of that establishment's currently-vacant water-taxi dock - the better to emphasise his employers' poorly articulated but crystal-clear message (?wherein they sought the repatriation certain monetary items in respect of the alleged balance owing).

  -From me! When the obvious person to sue would have been the lying Neanderthal thug that sold me the old scow in the first place ? a suggestion I chose not to voice due to the fact that 1), he and the Incredible Hulk debt collector happened to be one and the same person, 2), a feeling that the aforementioned person may not be amenable to the idea and, 3) (? should 2 prove the case), a lack of sufficiently anticipated medical insurance.

  Also, coincidentally and at about the same approximate time, certain other matters were coming to a head, matters which were having a direct affect on my general affairs and wellbeing - you know the sorts of things: solicitors' letters alleging paternity and Final Demands in the main, along with other legal trivia. Worse that that, though, was the realisation that the North Queensland air was beginning to irritate my sinuses. I mean like, really irritate them.

  Then suddenly the answer came to me: I needed to move to somewhere drier!

  ?And quickly, too, like before the symptoms became critical and I found myself suffocating - either by natural degenerative processes or via certain, more-traumatic, acquired conditions.

  What I needed to do (I'd suddenly realised), was move to somewhere possessing an atmosphere far less burdened with moisture and salt; somewhere totally deficient in the perspiration-odour of gentlemen wearing undersized black suits; somewhere like? Well I dunno... Central Australia, say - to Alice Springs even.

  Yeah! Alice would do! The atmosphere there is certainly low in relative humidity.

  Well! The transformation was just amazing. Within weeks of my first breathing the outback's dry air I was a new man, with a new lease on life.

  Lease?!! This was no lease; this was a whole new Happy-hour.

  An absolute age had passed since I'd last been in Alice and much had changed there during that time. Most notable among them was Sergeant "Knuckles" McThud's transfer to Darwin, leaving few law minions about who might happen to remember one lairizing young teenage tearaway in particular.

  Once there I shaved my moustache and beard, as my nautical look no longer seemed um? Well: "appropriate", somehow. Instead I let my hair grow long and took to wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, plus some dark glasses to protect my eyes - from the elevated UV, you understand. I mean the change in my general appearance was such that I doubt my own mother would have recognised me.

  (Actually, she di
dn't. When I turned up at the old homestead and stepped out of the Land Cruiser she fired two rounds at me from her pump-action twelve-gauge and two more when she woke up as to who it was. I saw her lift the muzzle a fraction before she fired the second lot though, so I knew in her heart she still loved me. Ruined a bloody good hat, but.)

  Interestingly, in all the years since that trip to Dunk Island not a trace of old Scuppers' mangy hide has been seen, nor has anything concerning his whereabouts ever come to light. I feel I should mention, though, how late one night a year or so back I was sitting half-asleep in front of the telly, when a news item came on concerning a confrontation between one of those Japanese whaling ships and a Greenpeace protest boat - you know, down in the Southern Ocean. And I would just about swear that I caught a momentary glimpse of old Scuppers' acne-scarred, varicose-veined visage leering out from under an anorak hood (or whatever it is they wear on deck in those waters), as he blasted away happily with a water cannon - though it was impossible to be certain this was him.

  I'll add here as well, that occasionally, when lying awake at night, I find myself wondering how the festering old fart actually went with his efforts to photograph a Lesser Speckled Dunk Island Scrub Hen, because we never had a chance to speak of the