Sophie, Dog Overboard : The Incredible True Adventures of the Castaway Dog (23 page)

Brian had told him when they'd spoken weeks earlier that the dog had been looking more and more dire every time it was spotted over on Keswick. Peter could see that it still looked thin—the ribs were showing and it looked drawn around the chin and eyes, but it didn't look sick. Its fur was thick and full of color. Peter was relieved to see that by the looks of things, it had found at least some food on St. Bees.

But when Peter whistled to it, the dog did not come bounding over, tail whipping, tongue flapping, ears perked the way his dogs used to, sometimes knocking people back a few steps in their enthusiasm. Robinson Blue Dog looked at Peter, looked away, looked at Peter,
then started running. It broke into a gallop, its hind legs meeting its front, heading off to the north part of the island, towards Shark Point and into the hills of St. Bees.

Sophie had arrived in time to revel in the island's abundant population of blue tiger butterflies, elegant big-winged creatures with swathes of electric blue across their glossy black base. These butterflies flutter all over St. Bees most of the year but in January, seem to multiply and descend upon Homestead Bay, floating about the daytime skies like confetti, collecting in the palm and the melaleuca trees. They head for anything damp to rest on, such as Peter's washed clothes hanging on a makeshift clothesline, or maybe Sophie's fur after a swim. Did she notice them? The marvel of a butterfly is not lost on dogs—there are stories of working dogs losing their stubborn focus on a eight-hundred-pound cow at the sight of a butterfly or a dragonfly winging by. Perhaps, as Sophie rolled on the beach in the mornings or under a tree when the sun became too hot in the afternoon, she'd be stopped or awoken by a butterfly landing on her. It's the sort of image the Griffiths would like to envision to temper all the thoughts of the fear and distress she must have experienced. Jan, herself, has had moments of delight watching these butterflies on the family's trips to Keswick and St. Bees, admiring them looking dazzling in the sunlight, landing on leaves and each other, and making elegant silhouettes against the purpling cloudy skies in a brewing wet season.

Beyond the goats, the butterflies, the lizards and the wallabies that Sophie must have seen during her jaunts into the hills, she must also have known there was human life on the island. Even before she locked eyes with Peter that January morning, she would have smelled it and also heard it.

During the day, as Sophie roamed the island, she'd have heard Peter's music in the distance and perhaps felt calmed by his presence. When there were no choppers or small planes flying overhead—the local news chopper scouting for scenery shots, perhaps, or visitors dropping in to Keswick for a weekend—Sophie would have heard the beat of Peter's tunes pouring into the tropical sky, which might have been one way that she avoided mistakenly entering Peter's space when he was around. She would also have been hearing the sound of a four-wheeler Argo buggy, a battered blue thing that roared like a Harley Davidson. Peter had been careening the mobile around the island for decades when he needed to venture beyond the main camp, roaring up the hills and across sand.

So on January 18th, she finally made herself known to the person she must have been able to hear and sense. Though she didn't ever appeal to Peter for friendship or rescue, Sophie seemed to have made her way towards him deliberately. It would seem that Sophie wasn't looking for a chat or rescue but that she did need the sense of company. She wanted to be close to people but at a safe distance. That Peter was friendly but not overly
concerned about her presence was perfect for her to take comfort in from afar.

Sophie and Peter had something in common: both of them wanted to be left alone as long as there was human contact close by.

Over the next few weeks, Peter would see the Robinson Blue Dog at various times throughout his days and nights, seemingly uninterested in the three ragged houses on Homestead Bay that might have provided it with shelter. He noticed that the dog was looking skinnier and skinnier, but was still not nosing up to his place for a meal, despite his best efforts to tempt it with bowls of dog food.

During their daily conversations, Peter told his brother David whenever he had seen the dog and the brothers would talk about what it might be eating. There were still plenty of goats out there and what about the wallabies? It didn't seem to be getting into any of that, otherwise it would be looking plumper. This meant that the dog had to be someone's pet, abandoned or lost, or it would be running far wilder.

Despite its scruffy state, Peter noticed that the dog moved smoothly and swiftly, passing by the scattered mangroves on the shore of Homestead Bay at low tide. It always looked alert and purposeful. Its ears were perked but for a flop in the left, its paws moving lithely. In the evenings sometimes, he'd see it coming over the dark rocks on the north side of the island where Shark Point disappears around the corner directly across from
Keswick and where St. Bees becomes a series of boulders and bays. It was usually morning the few times Peter noticed the dog making its way from Honeymoon or Stockyard Bay on the south side, back over to Shark Point and then disappearing around the shoreline or up past the edge of the forest. The dog seemed to be getting around but Peter figured it was making its bed somewhere over near Honeymoon Bay or perhaps somewhere behind the abandoned line boat on Stockyard Bay.

He could tell from paw prints and frequent sightings of the dog's hindquarters as it scuttled away at the sound of him, that it was gradually coming closer to the house. He told David the latest, who, knowing full well the danger posed by a dog to the island's delicate ecosystem, had decided to tell the QPWS marine park rangers about the animal.

When the rangers first heard of the mysterious beast, not long after Pete's initial sighting, their instinct was to try to trap it. For that, they needed Pete to do some groundwork. “We said, ‘Pete can you try and befriend it?'” ranger Steve Fisher explains.

The rangers knew they'd be going over to St. Bees in late March and they were trying to work out how to humanely deal with the dog. If Peter could tame it by then, they could remove it from the island without too much effort or grief.

But Peter's efforts weren't enough. The bowls of dog food that he was leaving just off the path between the beach and his shed were not being touched.

“It seems to be hanging around Honeymoon Bay,” Peter told Steve Fisher. “But I can't get it to come in here.”

Peter would see the dog rolling around on the beach—Sophie was having at least a little bit of fun—and sniffing around the casuarina and palm trees, then nuzzling into rocks, probably fishing for food. But the dog eluded all his invitations to come closer. Several times, Peter whistled to the dog as he saw it run across the mudflats just after sunrise. But this only resulted in the dog bolting, or at least directly ignoring him.

Whenever one of Peter's friends visited him on the island, they too would whistle and yell, “Hey boy!” if they saw the dog in the distance, but it usually broke into a run immediately. At some point in late February, Peter noticed a significant improvement in the dog's weight. Perhaps it had found a good feed, quite likely it was a goat or two.

Peter and the dog he'd named after the famous literary castaway enjoyed this standoff for most of January and February. And Peter didn't push it. He was developing a healthy respect for this solitary creature and although he couldn't get it to interact, they shared an apparent awareness of each other. Peter felt an affinity with the animal who was choosing to go wild rather than make a friend. They were two solitary creatures on an island together.

In early March, Tropical Cyclone Hamish threatened to bear down on Mackay and the surrounding coast
and islands. In the end, it wasn't nearly as bad in and around Mackay as the media first predicted. On its way towards the coast, it turned south and headed towards New Zealand instead of central Queensland. But it still reached category five and hit the area with wild rainfall and turbulent winds that snapped branches and loosened coconuts and hurled sand around, creating piles of debris all over beaches.

In Mackay, Jan and Dave huddled up in the room under the house, having closed all the windows and stowed the outdoor furniture. They sat inside and watched the rain lash down almost parallel to the ground, listening for cracks and thuds close to home. Ruby was in there with them, whimpering and fretting a bit at the frenzied energy and all the loud noises. Jan stroked her and assured her, “It's going to be all right, Ruby Doobee.”

Over on Keswick, Brian and Lyn Kinderman had cleared the deck and propped boards up against the doors. Brian had joined a few of the others tying wire around the building materials on the construction sites. They were now feeling relatively safe, sitting inside with good supplies of Bundaberg rum. The guesthouse and Keswick's other residences were built to withstand up to category four cyclones, but even so, Brian and Lyn ended up losing the guttering and amassing some other minor damage, after days of 70-to 80-knot (93 miles per hour) winds, almost three times higher than the speed at which planes are prevented from landing on the airstrip.

On St. Bees, Peter had followed his usual routine: go to bed and listen to music. He had never felt the need to make his way to the concrete cyclone bunker behind the south house nor to make a huge effort to tie chairs and buggies up. There are an average of four to five cyclones every year in tropical Queensland and the biggest danger out on the islands is branches flying like missiles through the air and roofs coming off houses.

Presumably, Sophie had also worked out a plan of defense, detecting at some point that the gathering winds were blowing palm trees at crazier and crazier angles and that the rain was obscuring the ordinarily crystal view of Keswick. She must have realized the weather was too wild for her to be outside and found shelter somewhere on the island, possibly around one of the houses. She could have sniffed around the decks of the south or north houses to make sure they weren't inhabited, then curled herself into a corner underneath, to be out of the rain and muffled from the roar of the wind. She might, alternatively, have dug a great big hole somewhere under a canopy of trees and nestled in for the duration of the storm under leaves and branches.

Sophie wasn't usually frightened of storms. She didn't exactly love thunder but neither did she fret and shiver the way some dogs do. Nonetheless, Jan and Dave had always had her in with them in wild weather. She would lie there next to them looking around, seemingly aware of what was happening, but the most anxiety they'd known her to show was barking
occasionally when she heard a bang or crack in the distance. This was hardly preparation for being right out there in it, though.

Several days after the worst of Hamish hit St. Bees, David Berck and one of the homestead's co-owners, Frank Debrincat, were out on the island cleaning up the coconuts and palm fronds scattered about the bay and making sure that the doors and roofing were still on the houses. David had flown over from Mackay to meet Frank. Peter had come through cyclone Hamish without incident, but he was suffering from throat cancer, and had very reluctantly left the island for treatment in Brisbane.

Frank headed down to the south house to check on its screen doors and big old table. The table was well protected under the deck roof and too heavy to be lifted by any but the most savage storm, but Frank just wanted to be sure. He made his way along the dirt and rocky path between the houses, winding around a corner and under overhanging trees. As he approached the old generator shed next to the path he was in his own world, thinking about the weather and the beauty of the island.

The shed, a green wood-panelled shelter with the windows and doors busted out, stands about two hundred yards along the path between Peter's and the south house, and still contains an old diesel generator that the Bercks used until they installed a newer, bigger one near the north house in the 1990s. The shed, rarely used, is warm and dark and full of spiders and crawly things and most likely a haven for snakes—none of
them deadly. Most of the snakes on St. Bees are non-venomous tree snakes, the sparkly green variety that spend their days slithering from one tree branch to the next and sleeping.

Just as Frank was passing the doorway, he got a fright. He heard a growling noise. He swallowed. There were white teeth baring from one of the dark corners of the shed and then he saw eyes and fur. The fur was thick and dark blue, ruffled up around the creature's neck as it growled at him, eyes ablaze, still lying down but its head raised from sleeping position, legs readying to stand if need be.

Shit, a wolf
, Frank thought, panicking.

Frank had heard there was a dog on the island but he hadn't been thinking about it at the time and this beast seemed far more threatening than Peter had described. Frank wasn't about to give it more of a scare or a challenge. He was wearing his usual Carhartt shorts, his legs bared, an easy target for an angry, scared hound to latch on to.

The beast continued to growl as Frank backed away, not taking his eyes off the animal's, which were still glowering from the corner of the shed.
It must have been sleeping there
, thought Frank.
What is it?
It was blue and furry and angry. It did look like a wolf.
But there aren
'
t any wolves in Australia and even if there were, how had this one got to St. Bees?

As he moved away, the animal slunk out the shed door and bolted. “That's the dog,” he realized, as he glimpsed
its blue coat in the daylight and saw that it was more scared of him than the other way around. Frank took off in pursuit. He whistled and called out but the dog was long gone, somewhere over near Shark Point.