Thirteen Pearls Read Online Free PDF Page A

umbilicular.’
    â€˜Ring me,’ Mum said.
    â€˜Yeah yeah. You’ll have your textile workers to console you.’
    â€˜My baby . . . ’
    â€˜Oh puhlease.’ I hefted up my backpack and marched into the terminus.

    I had never been further than Cape Tribulation, and then only by four-wheel drive with Tash’s oldest brother. No, he hadn’t been interested in the pristine rainforest; he wanted to thrash his jeep on the Daintree ’s rutted roads. I stared out at the glossy green mountain forests spilling into muddy turquoise sea and I wished I could be down there with the Ulysses . There had once been a hippie colony further north in Cedar Bay that Mum had visited for a few months as a kid with Nanna. People had lived in dome houses or beneath tarps and had eaten paw paws and coconuts and fish. Mum told me how she’d run wild with the other kids. There was no school and she ’d learned to swim by being chucked into one of the creeks that gushed out of the rainforest to the beach and where bright snakes wriggled beneath the crystal clear water. Mum and Nanna had helped plant fruit trees and used dragnets to catch fish for dinner.
    But when they’d gone back years later the colony was abandoned, water lines had been ripped up, and the orchards had grown wild and were overrun with feral pigs. The government had revoked the original miner’s licence, kicked out all the people and burned their houses. Mum and Nanna had both burst into tears when they saw the devastation.
    I imagined what it might have been like, sailing into Cedar Bay when Mum was there the first time. The calm sea swishing softly against the Ulysses’ sleek sides. Kerosene lamps and flickering candlelight winking welcome against the black velvet of the mountain encircling the bay. Swirls of phosphorescence in the water . . .
    The double propeller plane bumped in a pocket of turbulence. Below, lush forests gave way to an army of spear grass that marched over the flat red earth. Rivers twisted and spiralled in a complex system of tributaries like a tangle of silver snakes that blurred the land’s edge into a muddy red-blue swirl.
    Horn Island airport was tiny. I’d always bagged out Cairns as being the last outpost compared to say, Sydney or Melbourne. A fluttery rush of insecurity trammelled up from my gut. Where exactly was I going?
    I waited to get my bag, then caught the shuttle bus to the ferry that took me across a narrow stretch of water to Thursday Island. Wind scoured my flushed cheeks, a welcome relief from the stifling heat, as the ferry ploughed through the sea to the small island with a dense scattering of houses above the mangroves and a hill at its centre. From what I had read, Thursday Island lay smack in the middle of two seas. From it you could watch the sun rise over the Coral Sea and set over the Arafura Sea. I leaned against the bow railing, enjoying every salty gust, and tried to imagine my reunion with an uncle I hadn’t seen for years.
    The pick-up arrangements from T.I. had been vague. Uncle Red had been almost impossible to talk to. The phone had kept ringing out whenever I’d tried to call to find out what to pack, what sort of toys Aran liked, what they might need from Cairns. From what I’d gathered in our one brief conversation since he ’d told me my flight times was that I was to go to the bakery and wait to be picked up.
    Sleepy buildings lined the main street. A poster announcing a diabetes support group for islander women caught my eye. The shop fronts were sun-faded relics from the fifties, but the merchandise through the windows was modern enough. At the top of the street I turned, attracted by a glimpse of blue sea, and meandered back towards the coast, where huge mango trees dripped yellow-green mangoes. The road was spattered with a gluey mess of fruit pulp and bat guano.
    I took a deep appreciative breath. Ahhh . . . the sweet smell of the