“I’m Matt, and this experiment gone wrong is me brother Jacko,” Matt said.
“Hey! Watch your mouth!” Jacko snarled.
“Where did this little guy come from?” Heather asked, gesturing to the koala.
“We’re from across the bay there—private island—and there’s koalas bloody everywhere. And wallabies, echidnas, wombats—it’s like Jurassic bloody Park, mate,” Jacko said.
The kids turned to their dad. “We have to go!” Olivia said.
Tom shook his head. “Did you say private island?”
“Yeah, sorry, no visitors,” Matt said.
“Dad!” Owen protested and Olivia chimed in with a theatrical sigh of disbelief.
Tom looked at them. They had had a very tough year. And he’d been so strict on this trip. Maybe a little ugly-American grease would do the trick? “Is there a ferry? We’d be willing to pay,” Tom said.
Matt shook his head. “There is a ferry but it’s not about the money. Ma doesn’t like visitors. Dutch Island is her place, you know?”
“How much money?” Jacko said.
Tom had taken out three hundred bucks at the Alice Springs airport and he’d received his conference per diem of seven hundred dollars. He had close to a thousand Aussie dollars on him. He opened his wallet. “Four…five hundred bucks? Just to see, maybe take some photos? For the kids,” he said.
“You Yanks! You can’t bloody buy everything, mate!” Matt said, shaking his head with disgust. But Jacko put his arm around Matt and led him away for a minute. The two men got into a furious discussion. The Dutch couple had come out of their van to see what was happening.
“Dutch Island, did he say?” Hans asked.
“If you can do nine hundred bucks, that will be three hundred each for me, Matt, and Ivan, who runs the ferry,” Jacko said. “But you’d have to be bloody fast. Just some quick photos and then off again.”
“Nine hundred bucks! That’s crazy,” Tom protested. That was—what? Five hundred American?
“Dad!” Owen wailed again.
“Maybe we should just go back to Melbourne,” Heather said.
“You’ll be missing out. It’s a very special place,” Jacko said. “Unique. Animals everywhere. We make our own electricity. Grow our own food. No phones. No taxes. No law enforcement. When was the last time we had a copper out here, Matty?”
“Before my time,” Matt said. “But that’s not the—”
“Koalas, birds, even some penguins,” Jacko continued.
“Penguins, Dad!” Olivia said.
“Six hundred is my limit,” Tom insisted.
“If we can come too, we can chip in the difference,” Hans said.
Matt was shaking his head this entire time but Jacko’s wolfish grin only widened. “I think we have a deal, then, mates.”
4
The convoy of vehicles stopped at a decrepit wooden jetty poking a bony limb into the bay. The ferry was a flat-bottomed vessel with a diesel engine, a tiny little foul-weather cabin, and a ramp at each end. Very similar to the small ferries you saw on Puget Sound.
Ivan, the ferry pilot, was a tall, powerfully built man in his fifties with long graying blond hair and boozy green eyes. He was smoking and wearing heavy denim overalls despite the heat. He’d been surprised to see three cars but when Jacko gave him three hundred bucks, he tucked it into his pocket and nodded.
Tom drove on first, followed by the Dutch couple and the Toyota.
They got out of their cars while Ivan unhooked the two hawsers tying the ferry to the shore. He used a stick to fend the ferry away from a bunch of old tires protecting the dock and then he put the diesel engine into gear and they were away.
“If you want to see sharks, I’d go to the port side. That’s the left side for you landlubbers,” Ivan said as he stubbed out one cigarette and lit another and Jacko took the tiller.
They went to the port side and caught a glimpse of a tiger shark’s fin, which made Owen favor everyone with a smile. “How big is the island?” Tom asked.
“Four kilometers lengthwise,” Ivan said. “In old money, that’s about three miles wide, and it’s two from top to bottom.”
“Where are the koalas?” Heather asked.
Matt came over from the leeward rail. He had taken his hat off. With his long chestnut hair, Heather thought he looked like one of those men a woman in a ’90s Tampax commercial would be riding her horse to meet. “The koalas will be in the trees,” Matt said. “Look, don’t drive far from the dock. There’s no internet or Wi-Fi and it’s easy to get lost. Definitely stay away from the farm—that’s in the middle of the island.”
“I would like to see an Australian farm,” Tom said.
“No!” Matt said. “You’re not supposed to be on the island at all. Nothing to see, anyway. It’s just a hobby farm now. Sheep, goats, generator, a well. Just for us. Just for the family.”
“So how do you live?” Tom asked.
“The federal government had a prison just down the road here from the 1910s to the 1980s. They paid us rent and we sort of live off the remains of that cash. They tried to run it as a tourist attraction after it closed, but Ma put a stop to all that.”
“She bloody did,” Ivan grumbled.
“Over here! Another shark!” Owen said, taking Tom’s arm and leading him to the front of the ferry with Olivia. Hans followed them, leaving Matt alone with the two women.
“How many people are there on the island?” Petra asked Matt after a time.
“Including the kids, about twenty-five, twenty-seven, I think.”
“Do you have a school?” Heather asked.
“The older kids go to boarding school. The younger ones are homeschooled, if you know what that is.”
Heather smiled. “I do. I was homeschooled.”
“In Seattle? I thought that was a big city,” Matt said, becoming, perhaps, slightly more friendly.
“I just moved to Seattle a few years ago. I grew up on a small island myself. Goose Island in Puget Sound.”
“What was that like?” Petra asked, genuinely curious.
“We moved there when I was little. After my parents got out of the army. It’s sort of an artists’ colony,” Heather said, digging the experience of telling perfect strangers some of her story. “It was founded in the 1970s but it attracted a lot of ex-servicemen, army veterans with PTSD, that kind of stuff. They have art therapy. And nature. And it’s real quiet. It, um, got a bit too small for me, so I moved to Seattle.”
“I did exactly the opposite,” Matt said. “Like your folks. I moved here. I married in. I’m not one of Ma’s sons. I’m a son-in-law.”
“It’s a bit, um, off the beaten track?” Petra suggested.
“That’s the point,” Matt said. “I grew up in a flat in Melbourne. Single mum. The trams, the cars, people yelling. Does my head in, the city. I came here with Tara, Ma’s second youngest. But she and Ma fought like cats and cats. She buggered off and I stayed. I learned bushcraft out here and I can see a hundred different birds on a morning walk.”
“Bushcraft? Birds? You and my dad would get on famously,” Heather said.
“Sounds like we would. That’s not your dad with you, is it?” Matt asked.
“No! Tom’s my husband!” Heather said, coloring.