Father Joe meets us half way. He is an energetic man
in his mid-thirties with a wavy shock of dark brown hair and sharp English aristocratic
features. I like him right away. He gives us a guided tour of the facility. In the science
lab there is a small room with a shortwave transceiver. A student is reading the local
weather report into the microphone. Father Joe explains Nimoa is one of the international
weather stations feeding information to the weather center in PNG. The data goes to
Australia and New Zealand for making weather maps of the whole Pacific. The boy says, "Wind Southeast, 10 knots." into the mike. As it
happens the wind is out of the East at 20 knots. I wondered where they got their wind
data. Here in the Pacific the weather reports are almost invariably wrong.
"Er, how does he know what the wind velocity is?" I can
see a fancy looking barometer and a wet-dry thermometer for giving temperature and
relative humidity but no other instruments.
The boy puts down the mike, finished with his transmission, so
Father Joe lets him tell us how he determines the wind direction and velocity.
"We have a wind-sock there," the boy points to a small,
yellow wind sock directly outside the window. It is next to the building and well below
the level of the trees and so will indicate practically nothing about the real ocean wind
direction. "I check it against a compass," he holds up a pocket compass and
shows me how he has decided the wind sock dangles somewhere between south and east.
"Then I get the wind velocity by looking at the tree there. Depending on how much the
tree bends, I know what the wind velocity is. The New Zealand Meteorological Service sent
us this chart. It shows how to get wind velocity from the movement of leaves, branches and
finally the whole trunk of the tree."
In awe, I look at the chart on their wall and then out the window at
the wind velocity indicator tree. It is a big banyan. By the time its trunk bends, the
whole mission will be blown right off the island.
Joe takes us to his office for tea. "Well, I hear on the news
the trial will start soon." Seeing our blank looks he says. "You don't follow
the news?"
"Uh, no, not really. What trial?"
"The drug runners," he says.
"Oh right, right. Sure we know about them. In fact, we were in
Cairns when it all started."
"Were you? I'd like to hear about it. They came here, you know.
Anchored just where you did yesterday. It was quite an event," Joe laughs,
"Everyone ran off into the bush. They thought the war was starting all over
again."
"Huh? Why would they think that?"
 "Well, this great big airplane flew over us at tree
top level. One of those things with the big radar dome. It must have been following the
drug runners, it made several passes over us every day they were anchored here. At first,
all the children, having heard stories about the airplanes during the war, were sure it
was World War III." He laughs again.
The wheels are going around in my head but no gears are meshing. "Uhh, hold on. This was the yacht with the three men aboard?" He nods. "And
they went from here out to Pocklington Reef and loaded up with cases of Buddha sticks -
hashish - from the wreck there?" He nods again. "And then sailed to
Australia?"
"Yes, that's the one." He says.
"Well what was the airplane doing buzzing them here, before
they even picked up the dope?" I ask.
"I suppose they were suspicious of them," Father Joe
answers.
"Yeah, I know they were. In fact, the customs people took home
movies of them when they left Cairns. But if you were a drug runner and you had a
centurion aircraft buzzing around like a fly over shi...er I mean over a dead fish...
would you go out to an open ocean reef and load up with crates of dope? That would be
stupid beyond belief."
"Well, I don't know. It was certainly very strange. Yes, I see
your point. Very odd. You say the customs people took movies of them as they left
Cairns?"
"They did. We were friends with the guy who sold the drug
runners the boat. His father was a sheriff in a small town in the tablelands. He was a
real-estate and boat broker in Cairns. One day, three guys showed up at his office. One
was a rat-faced little guy with an English Cockney accent and long scraggly hair. He was
the talker. Then there was an enormous hunchback Tahitian and..."
"And an Australian who looked like his face was broken,"
Father Joe finishes. "Yes, that's them."
"Rat Face told Trever they wanted to buy a sailboat, right
away. So Trever showed them this big old derelict steel ketch. They asked how much it was
and Trever started standard boat-bargaining procedures with twice the asking price. To his
astonishment, the guy didn't argue at all. He said,"Right-y-o", hauled out a
great wad of cash and counted off $60,000. While Trever was recounting the bills, the
furry freak brothers began discussing the boat. They said things like "Yeah, plenty
of room. We'll tear out the bunks". Trever got the idea there was something wrong
with this picture so he took off with the loot and went straight to Customs and told them
the whole story. They also reasoned this didn't sound cricket and rushed out a platoon of
surveillance men to check it out.
"On the wharf, right in the center of town, the Furry Freak
Brothers threw out cushions, bunks, and tables, and talked openly about the need to make
plenty of room for the (snicker, snicker, snicker) cargo. That's why they have super 8
movies of the boat as it left Cairns." I finish.
"Very curious, indeed," Father Joe frowns. "It's
almost as if they wanted to be caught. When they were here they acted very odd. Yes, I
must say I knew they were up to something - even without the circling aircraft. It
overflew them three times the day they started out for Pocklington Reef."
"They TOLD you they were going to Pocklington Reef?" I
gape.
"Why yes, they did. Wanted to know if we knew anyone who had
been in there, the depth of the pass and so on. They had no chart of it, you see."
"No chart?"
"They were not very nautically inclined, I think." Says
Father Joe.
Go
To |
CD
Ordering Information | Contact
| This Magic Sea | Thread
of Awareness |
| Log of the Moira | Definitions
| References
and Links |
|
