Blueback

Abel loved being underwater. He was ten years old and could never remember a time when he could not dive. His mother said he was a diver before he was born; he floated and swam in the warm ocean inside her for nine months, so maybe it came naturally.

Abel Jackson had lived by the sea here at Longboat Bay ever since he could remember. His whole life was the sea and the bush. Every day was special, his mother always told him this, but it all became much more precious the day he first shook hands with old Blueback.

Some nights [Abel] stood on the back verandah to watch the kangaroos gather in the orchard […] Looking at those roos he wondered what it would be like to live in a big family like one of theirs. He figured it would be crowded and noisy but probably a lot of fun as well. When I’m older, he thought, I’ll have a family of my own. I’ll make sure we’re a crowd, a real mob.

Abel knew all about fishing for food but he couldn’t understand people who wanted photos of themselves beside huge dead fish, fish killed for fun.

“Things aren’t the same, Abel. It’s getting harder to hold on to good things.”

Abel poured the tea. “Are you lonely here on your own?”

“I miss you,” she murmured. “I miss you terribly. But no, I’m not lonely. Sometimes I feel I should be. But this place is a kind of friend to me. Maybe I’m a bit odd.”

The deck of Costello’s boat was awash with blood. Abel had speared fish nearly every day but he had never seen such slaughter as this. Fish lay in huge slippery mounds and so many of them were under-size.

Those men didn’t understand that a place isn’t just a property. They didn’t see that Longboat Bay was a life to his mother, a friend. And maybe a husband to her as well.

“The ocean is sick,” said Abel’s mother. “Something’s wrong.”

It was a mystery. And the more he thought about it the more the whole sea seemed to be a puzzle. Abel wanted to figure it out.

“You two,” [Stella] said. “You seem to be able to talk to each other without saying anything.”

“Practice,” said Abel.

“It’s the fish in us,” said Dora Jackson. “We don’t always need words.”

She walked down to the shore to see a strange jumble of white stumps on the beach. As she got close she saw they were whale bones, thousands and thousands of them all along the bay. They stood like posts and broken teeth and tombstones where the storm had exposed them. Dora Jackson stepped over and under and around them. It was like walking through a graveyard. These bones had lain here under the sand of Longboat Bay for a century or more. She’d walked over them for forty years without knowing. It was a terrible feeling having history unearth itself so suddenly.

[The Jacksons] had lived from the sea all this time. Dora saw what must be done. Now it was time to help the sea live. She must protect the bay for all time.

“All these years I just wanted to know about the sea. I’ve been everywhere, I’ve studied, I’ve given lectures, become a bigshot. But you know, my mother is still the one who understands it […] She learnt by staying put, by watching and listening. Feeling things. She didn’t need a computer and two degrees and a frequent flyer program. She’s part of the bay. That’s how she knows it.”

One afternoon [Abel] walked up past the orchard to the peppermint tree and stood there a long time. He thought about his father and felt close to his memory there. He put his cheek against the rough bark the way he had as a boy and hugged the thick trunk.

“We come from water,” [Dora] whispered. “We belong to it, Abel.”

Abel and Stella went back to being scientists […] But they never discovered the secret of the sea. Abel figured his mother knew all the secrets by now and his father before her. He guessed that Mad Macka might have a few ideas too and that his own time would come eventually. In the meantime he let the sea be itself.