Shipwrecked
I left Singapore on a steamship headed for Papua-New Guinea, a no-nonsense passenger and cargo ship, relishing the ten-day relief from overland travel that being on board the Eastern Queen gave me. The bunks had clean sheets and a steward to make them up every morning. We ate three meals a day in three shifts, crammed into the tiny dining room. The passengers were mainly small-time planters and businessmen, or missionaries returning from furlough. We were all people who didn’t require luxury or entertainment. We were all grateful that the Eastern Queen was cheap and clean-enough. For ten days we sprawled on the deck and chatted. I had ample time to share my dilemma.
I told them how I had missed out on sightseeing in Singapore.
“The travel agent was an ogre. I nearly missed the boat. I didn’t know I needed a visa for PNG. I thought that because Brits have free entry to Australia, and PNG is an Australian colony...”
“Oh no,” a Dutch planter interrupted me, “the Aussies are very protective of their baby colony. Even their own citizens have to get visas. They don’t want any subversive elements sneaking in and causing unrest.”
“That’s what I discovered. They travel agent wouldn’t hand over my ticket until I showed him a visa. So I rushed over to the Australian embassy and they told me to come back with three photos and a ticket to leave PNG. Somehow I persuaded them to give me a visa in less than half the minimum time.”
“So it all worked out and you are here.”
“Sort of . . . well, I got onto the boat OK; but not really. You see, I can’t afford to use my air ticket. I’ve only got ten English pounds left. I’m going to need more money than that to get down to Melbourne. The only way I’ll manage is if I can find a cheaper way of getting to Queensland and cash in the air ticket I bought and not use it.”
One of the missionaries called out across the deck, “You should go along to the Port Moresby Yacht Club and check the notice board. Yachties often advertise for crew. Or you could put up your own notice. Offer to cook.”
“Yes,” another planter – English this time – chimed in, “you can work your passage. Lots of people do that. And actually, this is exactly the right time of year: before the cyclone season while the trade winds are blowing south. There are bound to be boats going down.”
I didn’t get as far as the yacht club. As soon as the Eastern Queen docked one of the missionaries’ friends brought the local paper on board and they showed me a small advertisement that said an overseas skipper was seeking a cook. Ideal!
A week later I found myself with my new skipper, Ray, reporting to the coastguards that we were leaving Port Moresby and heading for Cairns. Ray lodged our route and estimated time of arrival, and we set sail. The yacht was called the Driftwood, appropriately named for the material it had been constructed out of. It was just long enough to manage an ocean voyage.
At first Ray was busy setting a course and there wasn’t much for me to do. I listened to timbers creaking against each other, ropes whining, sails occasionally flapping against each other. When we were out of the harbour and pointing towards the open sea there was time enough to show me my duties.
Ray taught me how to move the tiller so that the compass needle held steadily to the direction he nominated and I soon made myself at home in the galley. I was the entire crew. My duties were cooking, general cleaning, and half the steering. Everything else was down to him; he attended to all the rigging and, of course, the navigation.
I enjoyed the daytime when we were both awake for a twelve-hour stretch. But the dark tropical nights were scary. They were broken up into four alternating three-hour shifts of which I spent two in my bunk and two alone on deck. Every shift I held the tiller and looked around me, left, right, ahead, behind. All I could see was the horizon surrounding me for 360°. Sitting alone in the centre of this huge circle it was hard not to panic.
The first time it happened I searched for something that would keep my mind as steady as I was supposed to keep the tiller. I started singing hymns. I sang all the verses I remembered of every hymn and Christmas carol I could think of. Then I performed my small repertoire of popular songs, then nursery rhymes. Eventually I had to start again. Each night I remembered more words and the cycle became longer.
On my second watch during the fourth night out from Moresby, I reached the end of my chain of songs and looked around. The Driftwood was gliding over a glass-smooth ocean; the water seemed eerily flat and I vaguely imagined I could hear waves breaking. The moonlight played on a silver path across the surface of the ocean. Then the boat suddenly stopped gliding and my hand jerked off the tiller.
The boat started to bang against something hard and waves were breaking into the boat and my feet were wet to the ankles. Ray appeared in the hatchway, pulling himself out of sleep and out of the cabin simultaneously. He said nothing, just grabbed the anchor and leapt overboard into the crashing ocean.
It occurred to me that he’d lost his mind. My life unravelled in front of me as I watched the anchor rope uncoil after him, over the side. I was standing alone on the deck of a thirty-seven foot yacht, fetched up at a precarious angle on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef.
The first thing I did was throw up. Then I waited, but there didn’t even seem to be anything to wait for.
Clouds came together in front of the moon and it became quite dark. Suddenly Ray’s face appeared in the waves. He pulled himself up onto the deck, said nothing, grabbed the second anchor and jumped back into the ocean. This time I did feel able to wait.
When he pulled himself back on board a second time I asked him what the hell he thought he was up to, going off without a word and leaving me alone on the ocean. “I couldn’t waste time explaining anything. You see the Reef’s so wide – fifty miles across. . . .”
“So?”
“So if the boat got washed into the middle, then we’d never get it off. Never, ever.”
“Oh my god!”
“With a smaller reef it can be best to let the tide wash you right across it. But we can’t do that here. What I’ve done is keep us close to the outside edge.” He started drawing plans with his finger on the wet wood and showed me how he had dived right down the side of the reef. “I wanted to make both ends of the boat fast as close to the edge as I possibly could,” he said.
“So we’re at the edge of the reef and the two anchor ropes are going down the side, like on a cliff. What do we do now?”
“When the next high tide comes we’ll still be close to the edge. It’s our best chance of getting the boat off this damn reef.”
This strategy saved our lives, but in the meantime all we could do was wait. In 1970 small boats did not carry radios. The tide table told us that the coming 4 am high tide would be relatively low, but that the 4 pm one would be a good one. It was going to be a very long wait.
“What happens if the anchor ropes don’t hold?”
“The boat will get washed too far in and we won’t be able to get it off. Then all we can do is walk across to the other side of the reef.”
“That sounds impossible. . . .”
Before we tried to sleep we stashed a container of water and some dried fruit underneath the tiny dinghy, which was lashed onto the back of the yacht. I asked Ray to include my shabby blue backpack. He explained that we might have to carry the dinghy miles over the reef, and then row for perhaps a hundred more to reach the mainland. So I wrapped the pages of my diary in plastic and ask him to find space for that precious package. We lay down on our bunks. I slept, as much as is consonant with being very, very frightened, and as much as is consonant with being on a boat rising and falling so irregularly that I didn’t know whether it would fall onto its left or its right side.
With dawn I cooked breakfast as usual. With the rising sun I did the laundry and tied wet clothes to the rigging. The tide was low now, and the boat was lying pathetically on its side. While the laundry dried I donned a mask and snorkel and left the boat to see the sights. What sights! I saw coral for the first time and never on any subsequent tour trip did I see such bright, such clear, such varied coral. When the sun was really high I prepared lunch. I already knew that we had no radio and that shipping routes avoided proximity to the reef; now it occurred to me that not a single aeroplane had gone over all morning. We were stranded in a dangerous situation, but ironically one of incredible beauty.
At three o’clock we started getting ready. I brought in the laundry and stowed the crockery. We checked that everything was tied down. After a while the boat began to rise and waver in the water. As soon as he considered it high enough, Ray told me to help pull on one of the anchor ropes. We pulled together until we had some slack rope behind us, and made that rope fast. We pulled in a little of the other rope and made it fast. Then we returned to the first … pulling in lengths of rope from each anchor. I was surprised at how much strength I could muster when I understood that this was the only way to preserve my life. The yacht inched forward, but I had little sense that we were making progress. Then, suddenly, a wave broke across the bows and we knew that we had reached the edge of the reef. A second wave broke in my face, the rope in my hand slackened and the boat righted itself. Ray started the four horsepower engine as I pulled in the anchors, and we chugged away from the reef through the rest of the waves, heading out to sea again.
He said we would make a loop and come back towards the reef, using daylight to find the correct channel through it. Ahead of me lay a fresh attempt to approach Australia. The prospect of my working holiday became a reality again.
We found the channel before nightfall, and we slipped quietly through it. We sailed with great care through the lagoon inside the Great Barrier Reef asthere were small reefs everywhere. While one of us steered, the other peered over the bow, keeping a continual look out for submerged reefs. A week later, just at dawn, we slipped quietly into Cairns harbour. Two uniformed immigration officials were standing on the wharf.
“Ahoy there! Are you the Driftwood?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve been looking for you. You’re more than a week late. You’ve been declared missing. There’s an alert out for you.”
“Yes. We ran into a little trouble.”
After Ray had filled out extra forms for the Coastguards, saying that the boat had arrived with no souls lost, we went through into the tiny immigration hall.
“Do you have a clean chest X-ray, with you, Miss?”
“Sorry I don’t.”
“I can only give you one month. Go up to the hospital and get yourself X-rayed and report to the nearest Immigration Office. Then they’ll give you permission to stay in Australia for as long as you want.”