Coasts of Cape York (31 page)

The ‘Catalina' was ready for take-off by then, having been refuelled and had its pre-flight checks mostly done. The group climbed aboard and settled in the same seats as the previous day. As he did up his seat belt Willy experienced a sudden feeling of dread and wondered if it was a premonition. ‘Are we going to crash on this flight?' he wondered. As he usually really enjoyed flying the vague feelings of apprehension bothered him. ‘I'm being silly,' he told himself. ‘We are mostly flying over land, or near it, on this flight.'

Some lunches in cardboard boxes were passed up to Harvey and Mr Hobbs. Then the door was closed the ‘Catalina' rolled back into the water. Willy watched with interest as it was towed away from the shore and turned around. Being so low to the water that some of the spray swept over his porthole gave him a peculiar feeling of sinking, but the flying boat bobbed about easily on the small waves. The motors were started and run-up, then the aircraft taxied out into the open water.

Despite Willy's irrational misgivings the take-off was uneventful. Once airborne the aircraft turned to starboard and flew over Horn Island and then over Prince of Wales Island. As it did Willy glimpsed several large, ocean-going ships to the north of the islands. ‘They are in the main shipping channel through the Torres Strait,' he noted.

The aircraft continued to climb, going up to 1,000 feet according to Mr Johnson. Through his porthole Willy could see east over the Endeavour Strait and was just able to pick out the coastal settlements near Bamaga: Seisia and Injinoo. He noted with interest that he could just make out the other side of the peninsula. ‘That is the Coral Sea in the distance,' he told himself.

Their course then was southwards over the waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria, with the western coast of Cape York Peninsula a kilometre to port. Willy knew that this coast was very different from the east coast but even so it made him shake his head. Below him slid mile after mile of shallow water full of sandbars and mudflats, seemingly endless beaches backed by low scrub and dry bush and huge tracts of mangrove swamps intersected by twisting creeks and inlets. And in all that vast expanse there was barely a hint of any sort of human settlement or development.

Half an hour's flying brought them to the Aboriginal community of Mapoon. This was easy to identify, located as it is on a narrow peninsula on the seaward side to the large estuary of Port Musgrave. Willy ticked it off on his map and returned to staring out at another fairly boring looking strip of sandy beach backed by swamp and scrub.

Andrew came and stood looking through the porthole in front of him. Willy noted his continual glances from a chart he held to the coastline outside. “What are you looking for Andrew?” he asked.

“A place called ‘Flinders Camp',” Andrew replied. “I presume it was used by Matthew Flinders back in 1800 or 1801 during his circumnavigation of Australia.”

Stick, chortled with laughter and called, “You hear that Marjorie? Another circumcision of Australia!”

Willy glanced at Marjorie, who blushed but giggled. His mother then called, “No more talk like that thank you!” That caused Willy to blush and pretend he had not heard. Instead he looked down, hoping to see some sign of the camp. But he saw nothing.

Andrew shook his head and said, “No sign of anything. That must be the Pennyfather River down there and that means we are past it. Never mind, we will be passing Dyfken Point soon and I want to see that.”

“Why?” Willy asked.

“Because this is the first piece of Australia's coast that we know for sure the name of the sea explorer who charted it,” Andrew replied.

“Who was he?” Stick asked.

“A Dutchman named Willem Jansz or Jantzoon, back in 1606,” Andrew replied. “He was the captain of a Dutch ship named the
Dyfken
. Dyfken means ‘Little Dove'. He is credited with being the first European to discover Australia.”

“I thought that was Captain Cook,” Stick said.

“Captain Cook! Fair go Stick. He wasn't even the first Englishman to visit Australia. All he did was chart the east coast. He is important because he gave a good report, which was something Jansz did not do for this part of the coast,” Andrew replied.

“I can see why,” Norman commented. “Nothing down there but sandbars and swamp.”

Willy could only agree. As they discussed this the beach ended in a very obvious cape, a very large bay opening up to port. ‘Albatross Bay,' he noted after studying his map. As they passed the end of the point Mr Jemmerling came on the intercom to inform them that they were detouring to overfly the bauxite mines and port of Weipa.

For the next fifteen minutes Willy was given a bird's eye view of the huge open cut bauxite mines and the rail system that hauled the red ore to the bulk loading facilities at Weipa. The ‘Catalina' then did a wide circle, allowing Andrew a good look at the huge bulk ore carriers moored in the Embley River and Willy a clear view of the Weipa Airport. Further inland he could just make out the runways, taxiways and buildings of the huge Scherger RAAF Base. ‘We aren't allowed to fly near it,' he thought.

Then it was on down the west coast, the turbulence slowly getting worse as the air heated up. Mr Johnson took the ‘Catalina' up to 2,000 feet to ease the bumps a bit.  The beaches began to alternate with low cliffs of red rocks.

“Bauxite,” Willy's father explained. “That is the ore they use to make into aluminium.”

“That is Pera Head, that rocky cape,” Andrew said, adding, “The
Pera
was another Dutch ship that sailed past about 1623. She was with another ship called the
Arnhem.
The captain was Jan Carstenz.”

“Arnhem!” Stick said. “Does that have anything to do with Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory?”

“Yes it does,” Andrew answered. “Arnhem Land was named after the Dutch ship, which is named after a Dutch town.”

“I thought Arnhem was an Aboriginal name,” Stick commented.

“No, it is Dutch,” Andrew assured him.

Norman now added, “Arnhem is the town in the Netherlands where the British paratroopers tried to capture a big bridge over the river Rhine during World War Two.”

“The ‘Bridge Too Far',” Willy said. “I saw the movie.”

“That's the one.”

The next place of interest, after many more miles of boring sandy beaches and uninhabited scrub, was the Aboriginal community of Arukun at the mouth of the Archer River. As they flew off southwards across a vast area of mangroves and melaleuca swamps Andrew said, “That is one of the places where Jansz had some of his crew killed by the Aborigines. He wrote in his report that it was all just a huge swamp full of black savages, mosquitoes and crocodiles, so the Dutch were never interested in setting up colonies or trading bases in this part of the world.”

Willy could only agree with his assessment. ‘Even now it doesn't look very hospitable,' he thought. ‘Certainly no place to crash.'

A few minutes later they passed another cape, this time a wide, bulge in the flat coastline with yet another twisting, swampy river pushing through sandy shallows into the sea. Andrew pointed and said, “That is Cape Keer-Weer. That is Dutch and means ‘Turn back', or ‘Turn again'. It is where Jansz stopped exploring and went back to Batavia.”

‘Dutch again!' Willy thought. ‘I wonder what happened to Jacob van der Heyden? And what was he looking for?'

There followed another half hour of flying over vast stretches of sandy beaches and swampy flats. A cut lunch was served by Harvey and Mr Hobbs: sandwiches with cold fruit juice.  As he nibbled at the ‘ham, cheese and tomato' Willy kept looking out. Inland the savannah woodland stretched away unbroken until lost in the misty haze of the interior. “We are moving into that vague area where ‘The Peninsula' becomes ‘The Gulf Country',” Norman explained. Over the years he had travelled extensively through the vast area of flat plains. “In ‘The Wet' this whole area just becomes one gigantic, muddy lake, for hundreds of kilometres,” he explained.

They flew over the very isolated Aboriginal community of Pormpuraaw. Willy noted and airfield and a collection of buildings and a lonely dirt road that wound off eastwards through the bush. His map told him that it connected with the Peninsula Development Road at Musgrave Station over 200km away.

Then there was more lonely scrub, mudflats, saltpan and swamp until they reached the mouths of the Mitchell River. Here Willy spotted several more large crocodiles. The saurians were basking on mudflats and slithered quickly into the brown, muddy water when the aircraft approached. ‘Saurians,' Willy told himself. ‘Big, slimy reptiles.' Then he remembered that the missing motor launch with ‘Gator' Smith and his crony on it had been named the
Saurian
. ‘I wonder where those murderers have got to?' he mused.

It was now 1:30pm and the course was changed to fly inland to follow the Mitchell River. As they crossed the coast the turbulence increased quite dramatically. Mr Johnson called to inform them they were climbing to 5,000 feet. Willy thought that a good idea. ‘Nothing much to see anyway,' he decided, noting that the area below seemed to be just more winding river channels in mangroves, backed by huge swamps and areas of flat heathland or claypans.

He also noted that clouds were starting to appear; fluffy balls of cumulus, mostly at about 2,000 feet. The Catalina flew over the Aboriginal community of Kowanyama, significant because, unlike all the others, it was not on the coast. There was a spider web of dirt roads there and more signs of human settlement.  Willy noted that there was a road all the way from now on, winding across the swampy flats and crossing dozens of winding creek lines. The homestead of ‘Rutland Plains' station slid by underneath, a twinkle of iron roofs in a vast sea of hazy green.

Then it was on to ‘Dunbar' Station. Willy began to get bored because of the sameness of the country. He also found it much harder to keep track of progress on the map because the features were so numerous and so similar. “You could easily get lost flying out here,” he observed.

He noted that the clouds were thickening up. The number of cumulous clouds grew significantly in a very short time. They also showed signs of vertical development; the tops billowing and growing upwards as thermals pushed from within. The aircraft began to buck and swoop quite noticeably. “Ten thousand feet,” Mr Johnson called.

So up they went again. Now Willy found it hard to pick out details on the ground and he lost track of where they were in the vast sameness of it all- just flat bush and winding, braided river channels and hundreds of dry creeks. The only thing he was sure of was that the Mitchell had very little water in it and that its bed was now mostly white sand studded with millions of trees.

An hour droned by, Willy half nodding off. The turbulence prevented this but he found that he was becoming heartily sick of the loud roar of the radial engines. Marjorie was looking very pale again and Stick went off to the toilet several times. Willy thought this was to be sick as he came out looking very green and drawn. He went once himself and enjoyed stretching his legs and looking at different parts of the aircraft.

As he came out of the toilet Willy met Mr Jemmerling, who was coming down from the flight deck. Mr Jemmerling smiled but looked quite haggard to Willy. The aircraft was buffeted so badly by the turbulence that both had trouble staying on their feet and had to brace themselves against the sides of the corridor. “Hello young Willy. Would you like to go up to the flight deck for a while?” he asked.

“I'd love to,” Willy replied. “That is if you don't want your seat.”

Mr Jemmerling shook his head. “No. I'm feeling a bit worn out and am going to have a little lie down for half an hour. You can take my place.”

“Thank you sir,” Willy said. After Mr Jemmerling had made his way into his sleeping cabin Willy walked forward.  As he did the plane dropped suddenly and he experienced that peculiar sensation of weightlessness, to be almost immediately replaced by the need to brace his muscles to hold him up as the aircraft was lifted just as quickly. With some difficulty he hauled himself up the narrow stairway to the flight deck. ‘Getting a bit rough,' he thought.

As he climbed up onto the flight deck Willy looked out through the front windshield- and got a shock. Seemingly filling the whole windscreen and directly in their path was a gigantic cumulonimbus storm cloud!

 

CHAPTER 20

 

A NASTY SURPRISE

 

As his mind registered the massive size of the storm cloud Willy experienced a spasm of what he was ashamed to admit was fear. ‘Holy Mackerel!' he thought. ‘Surely we aren't going to fly through that?'

Before he could open his mouth to ask the question the aircraft dropped so suddenly he had to cling to the arms of the seats on either side. Willy felt himself go cold and saw that the co-pilot, young Hec, was wrestling with the controls. He steadied the machine, just before an updraught pushed it up again. The pilot, Mr Johnson, saw Willy and turned to him. “Hello, are you a navy cadet or an air cadet?” he asked.

“Air cadet. I'm going to be a pilot,” Willy replied, his eyes scanning the instruments and noting that they were still only at about 9,000 feet.

Young Hec laughed and said, “Good for you! This will be good practice for you then.” He then turned to Mr Johnson and said, “Ok now?”

“Yes, don't get too close,” Mr Johnson answered, turning to look at the massive cloud, then back at Willy. “You buckle up young fella. This could get a bit bumpy.”

Willy lowered himself into the seat behind Hec and did up the seat belt. This took a bit of doing as the aircraft was now pitching quite alarmingly. Once again he wondered if they intended to fly into the storm cloud but even as he did the ‘Catalina' began a gentle turn to starboard.