[Grant Watson, E. L. (Elliot Lovegood), 1946, But To What Purpose: the autobiography of a contemporary, The Cresset Press, London, Chapter 15]
CHAPTER XV
Bernier Island
The lock-hospital on Bernier Island had been inaugurated by the West Australian Government with the most admirable intentions. The problem of syphilitic and otherwise venereally infected natives had to be dealt with. White men had brought diseases to a race with little or no resistance to infections, which were as yet unknown in this part of Australia. Syphilis, in particular, assumed surprising and dreadful forms, and in the nature of things the disease spread and came back again to the white settlers with gathered potency. The idea was to collect all possible cases, and isolate the men on Bernier Island, and the women on Dorre Island, two uninhabited islands which lay some thirty miles from the mainland in Shark’s Bay. Here hospitals were built, and a doctor was appointed to travel from one island to another, and tend the patients. The method of collecting the patients was not either humane or scientific. A man unqualified except by ruthlessness and daring, helped by one or two kindred spirits, toured the countryside, raided the native camps, and there, by brute force, ‘examined’ the natives. Any that were obviously diseased or were suspected of disease were seized upon. These, since their hands were so small as to slip through any pair of handcuffs, were chained together by their necks, and were marched through the bush, in the further search for syphilitics. When a sufficient number were judged to have been collected, the chained prisoners were marched to the coast, and there embarked on an ancient lugger to make the last stage of their sad journey.
These journeys, from start to finish, often took weeks; often the patients died by the way. Flies buzzed about their suppurating sores; their chains were never removed. Men, women and children were mingled indiscriminately, and it would be a wonder if not all the survivors were thoroughly infected with all possible varieties of venereal ailment by the time of their arrival at their respective destinations.
At the islands a competent young doctor was in charge; he was more interested, I think, in spirochetes than in suffering men. His story and the story of the natives I have written, with but little deviation from the actual events, in my first novel. On the outermost fringes of civilisation the bonds of restraint are likely to be loosed, and thus it was we found them, in the process of that loosening, when we landed on Bernier Island, to start our enquiries regarding the four-class social organisation of the Aborigines.
The Government cutter Shark, an old though well-built tenton craft, had been put at our disposal for transport. She was sailed by an ancient mariner who went by the name of Henrietta. Henrietta was the very image of a Daddy Neptune: of large girth, ample beard, blue, watery eye, and possessed of most enormous feet, which through having been exposed for so long to salt water and tropical sunshine were two or three times as large as feet normally are. He was a ‘wet-bob’ if ever there was one, genial and good tempered, and not to be hurried. He drank deeply and often, and on many occasions was sunken in a drunken sleep from which nothing could waken him. He was assisted in his island-journeying by a small sailor called Tony, who was a great fisherman, and who invariably cooked the fish he caught in plain sea water, and served them, scales and all, without any accessories.
On arriving at Geraldton from Sandstone, the members of our expedition had taken a coasting steamer to Carnarvon; here, in this desolate township, we had made the acquaintance of Henrietta and The Shark, and here waited some days until Henrietta was in a mood when a journey to the islands seemed possible.
After many delays, we loaded our stuff on board, bags and bags of it, for we went provisioned for several months. The journey was a delight: the blue, sparkling tropic sea, the stiffening breeze, the sense of adventure, the plunge to the unknown: and as details of the voyage, the sight of acres-yes, literally acres-of sharks’ fins cleaving the sea’s surface as the sharks lay basking, and the sudden appearance, close to our craft, of huge turtles, who lifted their shell-and-weed-encrusted carapaces out of the transparent waters and, with enormous sighs, greeted us, to sink again with gurglings and upbubblings into the depths. Also there was Henrietta to listen to. He knew all the coast from Carnarvon to Wyndham, and talked with a rare, salt flavour to his words, and chuckled at his own stories, as his great feet splayed the deck, and were themselves wonders of biological interest. He was glad enough to let us sail the boat while he sat in the shade of the cockpit and let drop, as occasion offered, his wisdom.
Although the wind was blowing half a gale at noon, and we had been forced to reef, it declined with the sun, and we were not in time to avail ourselves of the land-breeze to make the bay close to the hospital, but had to row in the dinghy through the quick-failing light to a small cove to the south-east of the island. Brown, Louis and myself and our two dogs were got ashore together with our camp-beds and other essentials. On Henrietta’s advice we camped on the sand to avoid the ants, which he said were terrible-bad inland. We made a fire of dry seaweed and flotsam, cooked our supper in the dark, while all around us swarmed multitudes of quick-running crabs, which scuttled in long, echelon formations, lifting their stalked eyes like periscopes, and flapping them back into their appropriate grooves at any alarm.
That night we slept with the stars above, crabs underneath, the unknown island on one side, and the sea’s wavelets lisping up the beech on the other.
The next morning we made up the coast to the landing-bay. Here we disembarked all our gear, and were helped by the resident stockman, whose official duty was to look after the few sheep and cattle on the island, but whose real function was to keep order amongst the native patients. This he did roughly, but not with undue brutality. Indeed, he was sorry for them, and ran considerable risk of infection on their behalf.
We established camp about half a mile from the hospital, and our first task was to deal with the ants. We dug out their nests and filled them with hot ashes. This kept them occupied for a while, much in the same way as our bombings keep the Berliners occupied. As soon as they had things a bit straight, and were again on the prowl, we gave them more hot ashes. Our war was never completely won, but we kept them in check. Most of our time on the islands, we had to hang up our boots and clothes to the tent poles to prevent them being eaten during the night. Even our toe-nails were attacked while we slept.
Life on the island, despite ants, centipedes and small scorpions and a great number of ticks, was far pleasanter than life in the bush had proved. Here, on the edge of the sea, a breeze freshened soon after sunrise, increased in strength with the day until noon, when it was blowing half a gale, then sank as evening approached to a dead calm after sunset. The flies were blown clear of us during the daytime hours, and this was a great blessing, for in the inland bush flies blackened all one’s clothes, and were a continual buzzing nuisance. Life was indeed very pleasant on the island. We worked under a large awning; here we interrogated the natives, and when we needed refreshment, the sea stretched its clear, blue water invitingly for us to bathe. At first we were a bit shy of the sharks of which there were an infinite number. They were well fed on the huge shoals of fish. Dr. Hicksey, who was in charge of the hospital, was bolder than we, and would swim far out to sea. He was never attacked. He declared they were timid creatures, and would turn away if he splashed his cupped hand on the water.
Bernier Island is about eighteen miles long, and never much wider than a mile across, frequently considerably less. It was uninhabited except for the hospital occupants:—a central ridge of decaying corraline rock, and on each side sand-dunes. To the West the Indian Ocean sent its great rollers smashing on a wide shelf of submerged reef. Here, at low tide, there were marvellous pools, each one a tropical aquarium, with delicate, brilliant corals, and even more brilliant, minute tropical fish, lurking amidst the coloured fronds of madreporite and algae. Here were prickly echinoderms and holothurias, and many sorts of sea anemone and sea slugs, and round the edges of these miniature watery worlds were to be seen at night-time thousands of small phosphorescent medusae with down-hanging tentacles. On the western shore were sheltered beaches of yellow sand, where the running crabs marched to and fro in armies, popping in and out of their -holes and flicking their eyes up and down. These were often amusingly, though tiresomely inquisitive. If one sat on the beach to rest or merely to enjoy sun and sea, they would group around and poke with their pincers, hoping for something edible.
The days and the weeks passed to the rhythm of good health and hot sunshine. At midday our shade-temperature usually recorded a hundred and fifteen, but the dry wind made even this great heat endurable. By sunset it was cool enough to need to put on a sweater. It seemed a perfect climate, and though we were on what was practically a desert island, there was plenty of good food, what with the fish we caught and what we brought from the mainland.
The weeks grew to months, and, although thoroughly living in the present, enjoying the work and the marvellous bathing and the expeditions that we made exploring the island, I came to realise, always more and more, how much I was involved in a friendship which seemed to grow through the very fact of absence, and of letters that were brought over by The Shark on her occasional visits to the island. I would see her small sail, a gleam of white in the blue sea, watch it slowly grow larger, as she tacked nearer, and then at last when she tied up at the moorings I would be down on the beach, to meet the dinghy and see the mail-bag shaken out on the sand. Always now, the letters would be there.
On one of these crossings Mrs. Bates was a passenger. She arrived, very tired and very cross, for she had had a terrible time. She had stayed for some days at Sandstone, then had been forced to follow, first to Geraldton then to Carnarvon. At Carnarvon the yearly race-meeting was in full swing. Every house, every bed, every chair was occupied. Crowds of drunken, swearing men, and no place for a lone woman. Henrietta was in a blissful state of continuous intoxication. Nothing on earth, or from heaven, would move him till the end of the races. He drank and slept and drank again, and Mrs. Bates had to live how and where she could, sometimes on a table for the night, when she was lucky. And when at last the hated races were over and Henrietta sober enough to sail The Shark, they had the worst crossing on record. Thirty-six hours of being tossed and buffeted and buffeted and tossed on a small boat, and wet through all the time, and very sea-sick. This undeserved suffering was put down, not quite logically, to Brown’s account. It must have been galling, also, to find us so comfortably established and happy in our work. There followed an ever-widening estrangement.
At the end of the first ten weeks, soon after Mrs. Bates had rejoined us, I was sent over to buy provisions, and was given what seemed to me a very large sum of money, for the spending of which I was responsible. There was an exultation in being completely on my own, and with ample funds in my pockets. I stayed at the best hotel, and bought and loaded my provisions on to The Shark. This took some time, for Henrietta was never a man to be hurried, and the moorings beyond Babbage Island were far out, and every load of stores had to be pulled in a small boat. And when all was ready, I found how hard it was to wean Henrietta from his bottle. During some’ days of enforced waiting and idleness, I explored the hinterland of the town: a desolate waste, whose only features of interest were the bilge wagons of wool-bales that were drawn by teams of camels from the interior. These were brought to the end of the light-railway track which ran some three miles across Babbage Island to the pier.
To this pier came from time to time steamers plying from Singapore to Fremantle, to be loaded with bales of wool. The arrival of the Singapore boat was an event, and one not to be missed by dwellers in a desert township. Those who could spare the time went crowding on to the trucks, to meet in the berthed ship at the end of the pier varied specimens from the great world beyond:—Manila men, Chinamen, Japs, Whites, all mixtures of all races; and here could be bought bananas and mangosteens and mangoes and oranges and lemons and other more contraband products of the tropics.
On a certain clear, cool evening I made one of the party going to visit the Singapore boat. The dusk came quickly, and as I had no friends or acquaintances on board, I climbed to the top of the high pile of bales that were there waiting to be embarked, after the initial business of unloading had been accomplished. I was alone on the top of the bales, at about mast height, and could easily survey the whole length of the brilliantly lit ship: She had not only her ordinary illuminations but huge arc-lights were giving out a whitish-blue glare for the unloading of the holds. Almost naked Chinese coolies were at the work, their sweatdrenched bodies gleaming like the scales of fish newly pulled from a phosphorescent sea. In the stern a cod-faced Chinaman was dangling a line overboard. He was motionless, without expression, seeming quite cut off from all the activity around. Along the passages and companionways coffee-coloured stewards hurried with drinks on trays, and white men and women surged to and fro, in and out of the deck cabins. The boat hummed with the divers noises of humanity, and I, from my vantagepoint on the wool-bales, watched and took in some portion of that life, and felt it mine—yet was aloof from it; though tasting with appreciation its mixed savours.
For some undiscovered reason the moments burned with an extraordinary brilliance, and looking back over the long years between, that tropical night-scene declares itself as one of those rare events when life’s rising wave breaks in foam. I felt exalted, beyond myself. Like Whitman, I felt myself to be at one and identical with the existences of other individual men. Whether I knew them or not, whether they were white or brown or yellow, they were my brothers and sisters, however strange and different from my ordinary self they might be. For those rare moments I encompassed all, and when the bell sounded to warn the visitors from the town to take their places on the trucks for the return journey, I felt I could not be troubled to move out of that aura of wonder where I then dwelt. I would let the train go, and walk back at my leisure along the three miles of embankment across Babbage Island to the mainland,
I watched the swarming gangways, saw the people crowd into the, trucks, and when at last the train had steamed out into the darkness, I lay back and looked up at the stars.
This sight was in strange contradiction, yet the complement of the other, and the complement also, and in a full and satisfying manner, of something within myself. For a long while I stayed there, and must have dozed, for when I woke the activities on the ship were much subsided. The arc-lamps were no longer burning, the hatches were covered by tarpaulins, and most of the ship’s company were between decks. Only the cod-faced Chinaman did not seem to have moved. He was beside his line, with his gaze fixed on the drifting float, just as he had been before.
I clambered down and began my journey back along the embankment towards the town.
Babbage Island is a low-lying bit of sandy land, and quite flat. The railway is raised some ten feet or so above the surrounding level for most, if not all, of the way. Along the side of the rail runs a narrow path, and along this I walked. My serene mood stayed with me, until suddenly. I became aware of threatening grunts which drew quickly nearer. Looking round, I was horrified to see a large bull camel mounting the slope of the embankment, and making in my direction. His intentions were obviously far from friendly. In a flash I realised I was in deadly danger, for what was to prevent this cross-tempered brute from overtaking me and chewing me to pieces? Such things had happened, and the semi-wild camels when encountered on foot were most reasonably to be feared.
I ran as fast as I could, but the camel ran too, and I could hear that he was gaining. If I went on along the path he was sure to catch me. I sloped down the embankment, and ran along in the shadow. The camel followed close, and in a few more steps would have caught me, had I not chanced on one of the low tunnels, about five feet high, that had been made under the embankment, to allow water to flow through at times of exceptionally high tide when the island was flooded. Into this I dived, and there, gasping for breath and very thoroughly frightened, I crouched down, hoping the camel would miss me in the darkness, as at first he did.
Soon, however, he returned, and recommenced his grunting and snorting at the mouth of the tunnel, which was fortunately too low for him to enter. Horrible creature, how I hated him and his strong stench! How I wished I were a Giles and could know how to talk to him, to put him in better mood.
We had reached an impasse: the camel could not get at me so long as I was in the tunnel; he was too tall to enter, but, on the other hand, I could not stay there indefinitely. The place was far remote from the activities of men. No one would miss me at the hotel, no one would come and look for me, no one might visit the place for weeks or months.
I began to remember that I had seen these short tunnels traversing the embankment at more than one place. Probably they were at regular intervals. I would have to make a bolt for it, and so, when I had made sure that the camel was at the righthand entrance, I slipped out at the left, and ran as fast as I could under the protection of the embankment. The going was uneven and the way impeded with scrub, and so, that I might get on faster, I ventured up on to the path again. This may or may not have been a mistake, but anyway the camel got sight or sound of me, and again took up the chase.
Again I dived into a protecting archway, and again recovered breath, and now gradually my sensations changed. I was not so frightened as I had been at first; I felt I was playing a more or less equal game with my pursuer. Again I slipped out on one side while he was on the other, and so, aided by several tunnels and several rests, I got at last to where a gate at a levelcrossing cut off one part of the island from the other, for here, at this place, a high wire fence stretched north and south.
With a vast relief I stooped under the wire, and when I had left my camel, grunting and swearing, some little distance behind, I sat down and, strangely enough, I laughed. It was not, I think, merely hysterical laughter, but rather an upbubbling of gladness that I was alive and safe.
As I look back upon that night, it seems that into it had been crowded a good many significant happenings. I had been lifted to the zenith of an impersonal and serene gladness, and I had been plunged to the nadir of panic, and in the end I had escaped sound in limb and soul to laugh an uncontrolled and elemental laughter.
A few days later, having collected our mail, and having at last been able to separate Henrietta from the attractions of the town, I set sail with my boat-load of stores for Bernier Island.
I was glad to be back, and it was pleasant to continue our work and to slip again into the ways of that easy, healthful existence. At this time there followed one another, moments of strange gladness. Life was made rich by joys which seemed to fall unsolicited, and these still gleam as undeserved beatitudes. But again, even at memory of these, I am held up with a feeling of guilt, for how can such experiences have right in a world where human suffering, as in this present war, like an everspreading and consuming malady, restrains most human feeling to moods of hatred and revenge—yet, they seem not unrelated, for where the height of care-free happiness may rise, there the declivity may be most inevitable. Out of the past, the present has come forth, though why so related is more than can be guessed.
I have stood sometimes on one of the miniature beaches on Bernier Island where a crescent of sand was caught between the the low coralline cliffs, and here, far from the camp, I have looked down at the thousands of shells and shell-fragments at my feet. There they have lain, a mingling of pinks and greens and whites and yellows and blues on the fine-powdered sand. They have gleamed wet from the waves, and I have wondered at their useless and unappreciated beauty, for no eye was there but mine, and that by merest chance, to see their loveliness. The creatures of slimy parenchyma that had produced them were already dead, and certainly when living one would not credit them with any aesthetic appreciation for their own creations. Surely they were useless in any human scheme of things, and only by accident had met any eye of appreciation. Yet an attentive regard of any of these least, lost relics must find in miniature reflected the glories of sunrise and sunset.
Sometimes I have stood wondering with a glad astonishment, and would look from the shells to the clear water which lapped in such small wavelets on the beach. The tiger-sharks, following their sundown habit, have come swimming close inshore, scraping their bellies on the sand, while their fins, perforce, stuck well out of the water. They, too, would thrill me with the same strange gladness. No one was near; no one was more alone than I, standing on the edge of a small island in the Indian Ocean beside a shark-infested sea. I knew that the dead seashells at my feet would be turned over and made into different and ever-useless patterns at the change of every tide.
I did not know why it was that such things pleased me so greatly, only that they seemed to bestow on me the priceless value of their uselessness. I should have liked to have been able to speak as Keats would have spoken, but my ecstasy was dumb.
It might be that, on the following day from such an encounter, I would see in the hospital the frightful and indescribable growths that venereal disease can produce on the bodies of innocent natives when these maladies, in their full potency, encounter the unprepared and unresisting flesh. My life would then seem checked, convulsed and shrivelled, as now in wartime it is shrivelled, with a blind pain as instant as my former joy.
The weeks progressed until, partly because Brown’s task was nearly accomplished and partly because of the growing tension between himself and Mrs. Bates, he decided to leave the island. He and I and Louis were to make a preliminary journey up the Gascoyne River. Mrs. Bates was returning to Perth.
Perhaps it should be mentioned, as a comment on the weaknesses and limitations of our humanity, that the other two white men on the island, the doctor and the stockman, had been taking shots at each other with their rifles amongst the sand-dunes. We semi-civilised scientists, though not quite so crude in our antagonisms, also found island-life a bit of an ordeal, where two might agree, but three must fall on hatred and suspicion.
Although the island beauty was so beguiling, we left with no deep regret.
