Ocean's Gift (Book 1 of the Ocean's Gift series)

Chapter 7

Joe:

When the plane landed safely on the airstrip, to my stunned amazement, there were three people waiting in a shed at the edge of the gravel. I helped the pilot pull my bags out and drop them on the gravel, then shouldered my backpack and other bag and looked around. The other two guys headed off down the track next to the shed, toward the buildings on the east coast of the island. I watched them, unsure.

The remaining man in the shed came over to me. “You must be Joe Fisher, Dean’s friend. I’m Skipper Hartog. You can call me Skipper. Everyone else does.” He reached out to shake my hand.

His shake was firm and calloused, which made me worry my hands would feel too soft to him, like I was too soft for this work. I’ve worked for months out at remote sites, sleeping in a tent and cooking outside. I’ve had to shake my sleeping bag out every night to make sure nothing else was alive in it and if I forgot to zip my swag up properly I was guaranteed not to wake up alone. Sometimes I couldn’t have a wash because there were crocodiles in the bloody river. This bloke goes fishing every day. How hard can it be?

He led the way down the track, keeping up a commentary over his shoulder as he went.

“You get your own deckie’s camp, down by my jetty. It used to be my Dad’s main camp, till we built the big one I’m in now.” He pointed at a bright orange building, between us and the ocean. “There’s food in the fridge; if you want anything else or you run out of something, let me know and we’ll get it shipped over in the next week or two, on the carrier boat. Your water is rainwater – keep your showers and washing short, or you’ll run out and then you’ll have to pay to bring it over from the mainland, or have cold, salt showers.

“You’ll have your own dinghy to use. It’s my spare, but it’s always been the deckie’s dinghy, so you can go fishing or visiting at the other islands if you want. There’s a club on Little Rat.” He pointed vaguely south. “We buy some beer through the Co-Op and have a few evenings there in the season, especially when there’s bad weather and no fishing the next day.”

He stopped in front of the door of a boxy old asbestos donga, painted the same eye-watering shade of orange as the other house to the north. He unlocked the door and swung it open, leaving the key in. “This is your place. Power’s off my generator, so if your lights go out, come and bang on my door and I’ll take a look.”

I frowned. “I’m a licensed electrician. I can fix a generator.”

He looked thoughtful. “Dean did say you were a sparky, but he made you sound like Superman, too, ‘cause he’s full of shit sometimes. Well, if you want to do some electrical work for me or the other fishers after we’re done fishing for the day, go ahead. You can probably get some good cash jobs that way, because it’s cheaper than flying a sparky over from Gero. You’ve got to be better than the last deckie Dean recommended – he got drunk and stumbled off a cliff, right at the beginning of the season. Dumb as a box of hammers, that one.

“We’re a pretty good bunch over here, a good community. We take care of each other and try not to piss each other off. Keep the noise down, be nice to your neighbours and you should be okay.

“Oh, and one more thing – all the women out here are pretty tough, all from fishing families. Don’t mess with them.”

I snorted. “Or I’ll be dealing with big fishing dads, brothers and husbands?”

He almost smiled. “Something like that.”

He continued along the track, which changed from rock and concrete to white pieces of dead coral. “Stick to the paths and tracks, take a torch when you’re walking at night. There, that’s my occupational health and safety responsibility done. You’ll want an early night, because we start before the sun’s up. I’ll show you the ropes tomorrow. I’ll come bang on your door when it’s time to get up.”

He disappeared from view around the next house, his steps on the coral bits sounding like someone sweeping up broken glass.

I went into the donga with my bags. Inside, there was a tiny little kitchen with a wonky kitchen table and four mismatched chairs. There was a wall that ran most of the way across the donga, with a gap near one end. I took a step through the gap, to find a bedroom with two double bunks, one on either side. A doorway at the other end of the room led to a boxy little bathroom, with a shower and a basin.

Where’s the toilet? I wondered.

I dumped my bags on the floor between the bunks and went back into the kitchen. I looked out through the salt-encrusted window to see an old dunny, down a path outside. Well, the bedroom’s bigger than my swag and there’s a flushing toilet. That beats digging a hole when you don’t want to bother with one of those chemical bucket toilets.

I looked around the kitchen. There was a tiny, boxy TV on top of the very old fridge, with a vintage VCR that looked about as old as I was. It was held together with brown sticky tape. There was a stack of recorded videos next to it. I took a look at the handwritten labels.

They all seemed to be holiday videos, from someone called Debbie who went to the US. Debbie does Dallas, Debbie does Iowa, Debbie does college...it looks like Debbie really liked Dallas, because there’s three videos with that name, all numbered. I stuck one of them in the VCR and turned the TV on. I hit play and opened up the fridge.

Nice, beer. There was half a case of beer in the fridge, varying from good stuff to a few odd ones that I’d never seen before. Swan Gold? The logo looked like something my Dad drank when I was a kid. I wonder how long it’s been here?

I put the retro beer back in the fridge. In with the beer, I had some random sauce bottles, salad dressing and an unopened carton of long-life milk. Where’s the food?

I opened up the freezer. Frozen meals, steaks, frozen vegies, a loaf of bread and some sausages, all of them encased in the ice coating the inside of the freezer. I managed to free up a box so encrusted in ice I couldn’t read the label. I knocked some of the ice off and recognised a picture of lasagne. Dinner.

I looked around for a microwave, but came up blank. I wonder if you can cook these things in the oven? I bashed some more of the ice off into the sink until I could see the instructions on the back. Yeah, you can do frozen meals in the oven, without a microwave. Who would have guessed?

I could hear weird noises. Hell, it sounds like the neighbours are having sex, so loud I can hear it next door.

I went outside to see if I could work out who my noisy neighbours were, but I couldn’t hear anything from out there. I went back in.

Yep, I can still hear them in here. I looked around and the little TV screen caught my eye. It looked like while Debbie was in Dallas, she saw more action than I ever got. I watched it for a few minutes, not taking my eyes off the screen as I groped around for the remote control. Eventually, I found it and pressed the fast-forward button on the VCR. By the time I’d fast forwarded to the credits at the end, I felt like a real idiot.

Ah, shit. They’re all dodgy copies of old porn films. I bet Dean’s stayed here, watched them all and told me about them in detail at night on site. Nothing to do at night here, either.

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