Islands Are Not Playthings.

My partner Maggie, a civil engineer, once said that if the elements had better project management, the stubborn small outcrop of rock and everything on it would have disappeared long ago.  But somehow the relentless wind, waves and currents had conspired against each other, so despite their best efforts to swamp the island they somehow ended up holding it together.

Many islands have disappeared. The rising sea level has been vanquishing islands for years. First to go under were the long, low sandy atolls that were barely there in the first place. Then the larger deposits of sand with ecosystems, societies or tourist resorts slowly went under. Building sea walls did not help. The rising oceans tainted the water table with salt so nothing would grow and besides nobody wanted to holiday, let alone live, on a tropical island surrounded by concrete walls so high that you could not see the sunsets. They looked like high security prisons built on sinkholes.

The ocean kept rising. As the polar ice melted, more land became available in the planet’s north but of course it was still cold and uninhabitable. That land had been under ice for eons and what wasn’t rocky scree was now marshy tundra that looked like a dirty sponge thawed after being in a freezer.

So where do the people go? These people who wake up one morning and find the sea is in their crops, under their beds and over their roads. Apparently, you can fly over chains of atolls where dead coconut trees and lines of power poles rise above the water as roosts for gulls and pelicans. So where do the people go?

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‘Islands Are Not Playthings!’

The words are said with such weight by Jackson and Annie Carmichael’s daughter Millie, that I’m afraid that they will break through the hall’s stage into a dusty abyss beneath the floorboards where student overacting, fluffed lines and bum notes have been collecting in a jumble for decades. But the sound of a few adults tittering is suddenly swamped by the cheers of children and the rest of the grownups filling the old hall. The school play concludes on a high note.

Afterwards, walking home along the potholed main road, Millie and Hunter are filled with post show excitement, whispering, and giggling and calling the end of year play the island equivalent of a Broadway smash. Before we left the hall the comments and compliments from delighted and proud parents seemed to indicate agreement and Mrs Cutler, a staple at the school since the 2020s, gave me a rueful grin and a shoulder shrug when I caught her eye. She had been against the idea of the parents and kids writing their own play about the island.

At the first meeting she announced, ‘I am not supporting a performance of some piece that is not from the approved curriculum.’

But the idea of a new play caught fire with such speed and intensity that she was never going to win. To her credit when she was outvoted, she took the decision in true island spirit and worked with the rest of us to make the alternative play a success.

The play’s title was “Islands Are Not Playthings.”

Our island would be a poor toy anyway. Fringed by sharp coral reefs, with a precipitous perimeter for the most part and a central rocky spine made up of sharp ridges and gullies, the island would make an uncomfortable plaything for any gigantic child to hold. With hardly any sandy beach, cold water and little accommodation the island was never a desirable destination for holidaymakers, even when they still existed in enough numbers to create demand. But now with fewer islands it is not holidaymakers that are arriving here. Islanders do not do well if they are away from the sea so the Swampees, the new slang for the homeless from swallowed islands, are now rehoused on other islands whenever possible.

On our island, the Swampee camp, a tent village that is looking more and more like a town, is being built on the other side of the central ridge. On the windward side, it is wetter and wilder and the old conservation zone is being “temporarily” developed for the good of mankind and in the spirit of international brotherhood. We have been fighting against it for some time. Maggie is part of the committee, and she has been high profile in the press explaining our position.

 Last week after exhausting all the legal options we were told to expect Swampees within weeks. Village elders have been visiting the island from their drowning atolls in the Central Pacific. We have been polite to them but almost everyone has made it clear we are not happy. Most mainlanders are surprised by our attitude. I guess they expect us to be more supportive given we can imagine our futures if the roles were reversed. It is not that simple.

The girls and I walk along the road lit only by stars to where Millie has to veer off on to the rutted drive that leads to her house, perched on the spur above the island’s wharf. Before she goes the girls hug and swear undying friendship until at least tomorrow. It is a mild and breezy night and the steady wind from inland mutes the sound of the ocean. Instead I can just hear the sound of the earthmoving equipment. The government is in a rush to finish the camp.

Hunter falls quiet on the short walk on to our home. She yawns extravagantly and I say, ‘Straight to bed when we get home, Mum will be back tomorrow.’

Hunter replies, after another epic yawn, ‘I wish she was here tonight.

She would have liked the play. Mum loves it here even more than Pop did.’

Even before the legal battle Maggie worked on the mainland. As an engineer working in the ecofuels industry Maggie can support us all while I continue to renovate her father’s house and look after Hunter. Robert, Maggie’s father was third generation islander and when he died, the house built by his great grandfather, was falling down around him. Tomorrow the ferry will bring Maggie home for a week before she returns to her next FIFO shift.

Hunter is asleep as soon as her head hits her pillow. The thick red curls of her hair and her freckled pale face, calm and beautiful in her sleep, show her islander heritage. She is not my child. All I know is that Hunter is the result of some poor judgement at an alternative energy industry conference in Houston. I met Maggie later.

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The next morning is cool and foggy. I lie in bed looking out the smeary picture window. Our back paddock is a grassy carpet that runs for thirty metres until it ends abruptly at island’s edge. A cow’s moo bores through the mist and heavy air. I get up to a cold floor under my feet and when I open the window a damp saltiness runs up my nose like the waves on the beach at the bottom of the cliff. There are footsteps in the wet grass heading from the house toward the fog-shrouded cliff.

The cliff is not fenced. Robert pulled down what was left of the original that dated to the 1890s. He put in the posts for a new fence but had not finished it when a heart attack dropped him a month after Maggie and Hunter’s return but before my arrival. Maggie found him in the driveway after her morning run. He had fallen on to his back and his face and flannelette shirt were wet from a morning shower that had just passed.

Maggie said that when she was walking back out of the house, dry eyed and calm after checking a still sleeping Hunter and ringing Dr Jason,  the summer sun briefly emerged from behind the rain filled clouds and Robert’s wet shirt and pants started to release steam. She only started  to cry when she saw the steam rising in the sun’s rays.

I make a mental note that finishing the fence had to be next week’s job. I feel a pang of worry and a sharper wave of annoyance and go to Hunter’s room. It is just before 7.00 and her bed is empty.

I yell her name but there is no answer, so I rush into the lounge room, find my runners and go out the backdoor dressed only in boxers and a t-shirt. I jog into the cool mist, following the tracks in the grass and yelling her name.

The fog is thicker and I can’t even see a fence post so I decide I better stop running before I run off the bloody edge. I walk quickly instead and call Hunter’s name again. I think I hear talking and then the tocking sound of rock on rock but it could be nothing. The fog is dampening all sound. A fence post appears in the mist and the prints in the grass veer suddenly left and merge with the cliff top path that runs back toward town. The path passes The Bosun’s Seat, a rocky outcrop that is served by a viewing platform, wooden picnic tables and seats. The public area is well fenced but on adjacent private properties the trail is only partially separated from the nearby drop by sagging barbwire and lantana thicket.

Relieved but still annoyed I keep walking. Suddenly the Bosun’s Seat rears up out of the fog and I can see two human shapes on the viewing platform. As I get closer a zephyr of breeze sends the shrouds of fog swirling and thinning.

The diffuse blob of the sun, hanging impotently in the sky hardens and comes into focus. I yell ‘Hunter’ again and this time the shapes turn. Hunter and Millie look at me with that annoying, annoyed expression unique to young teens. There is a third person. It’s a woman, she is much older than Hunter and Millie and while the sun is bright for a few seconds I can see she is tall and wide and dressed in a colourful mix of op shop clothing. I have not seen her before but her Pacific Islander heritage is clear. She is not local but must be one of the elders from the Swampee camp. Maybe I scared her, as there is a mixture of fear and defiance on her wide features. I stride closer, the fog swirls again and when I reach the girls the woman has disappeared into the mist.

‘What are you two doing here? Does your mum know you’re here, Millie? And who was that?’ I blurt.

I am struggling to keep my cool, which is not helped by the lack of response. The girls are blank faced and silent. After a few seconds I turn to Millie. We are closer to her home than ours.

‘Go home, Millie. Maybe Hunter will see you later,’ I bark.

The anger in my voice gets through and without a backward glance she turns and heads inland. I collapse on a bench, the tension draining away. Hunter is still in her pyjamas, a long sleeve t –shirt, lightweight tracksuit pants and Ugg boots now sodden with the heavy dew. The ground is suddenly very interesting to her. I take a deep breath to further calm myself.

‘What are you doing here, Hunter?’

After a second Hunter replies, ‘Millie said to meet her here this morning. She wanted to tell me about her mum and dad. She thinks they might be breaking up.’

Hunter finishes the sentence with her voice hitching and I realise she is close to tears.

Not the answer I am expecting and without thinking I put my arm around her. It is a move that is not often welcomed but this morning she nestles a little into my shoulder. She feels cool and damp and I am pleased. I realise how desperately I want this child to accept me.

‘But when we got to the seat someone was already here. She scared the shit; I mean she almost scared us to death when she said hello. The fog was so thick and we never thought that anyone else would be here. Millie even screamed when she spoke.’

‘Is she from the camp?’ I ask.

‘Yes. She said her name was Bronwyn and that she liked to walk around her old island. But our island is much bigger so she has been walking since before dawn and stopped when she got to the Bosun’s Seat. I think the fog scared her. She said her island never gets fogs.’

‘What else did she say?’

‘Bronwyn told us that she was here to help get the camp ready for the people from her island. Then Millie told her that we did not want her and her islanders to come and that Mum was leading the fight against them coming here.

‘What happened then?’

Hunter paused.

‘She looked sad, and I think she was mad at Millie, but she didn’t yell at her.

Instead, she told us what had happened to their island, how the sea just gradually kept coming up till they had to pack up everything and leave their homes behind. And then she asked our names and she told me she had a message for Mum. And I got scared about what she was going to say about Mum. But she just wanted me to tell Mum that Bronwyn understands. She said she is an islander too and if things were around the other way, she would not want us to come and stay on her island. Then she said something weird. She said that islands, but not always people, welcome everyone. You just have to want to stay.’

Hunter paused so I asked, “What do you think about that?”

Her words come in a torrent.

‘I think that Mum and Millie and everyone has got it wrong and the play was wrong too. Because Mal, you were a stranger once. You came over after Mum and me and no one here knew you. I heard Jack at the shop say that when you first arrived you looked like a total wuss,  and that he for one couldn’t see the bloody appeal. So when Mum comes home today I’m going to tell her that we were wrong and she needs to go and meet Bronwyn.’

 I look at the ground and try to take all this in, both Hunter’s fierce position and Jack’s, hopefully only initial, low opinion of me.

‘Look!’ Hunter says, pointing out to sea.

I look up to an emerging vista of sunlit ocean as smooth and unruffled as a waiting bath. Framed by dispersing mist, the mail boat/ferry from the mainland is centre stage, a white wake trailing behind as it motors towards the harbour. The last diaphanous threads of mist waft past, melting in the sun’s heat and then, like a radio being turned on, the sound of the waves against the cliffs and the calls of the sea birds fill my head. Hunter and I stand up. I offer my hand, which Hunter considers then takes. We walk down to the village to wait for the truck that will bring Maggie up from the wharf.

 Photo by tabitha turner on Unsplash