On the Dam

“And how did we obtain this … conveyance?” Sir Eric asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm. His little saurian eyes, almost lost in his fleshy rubicund cheeks, were heavy with contempt.

“It was part of the old station outfit, Sir Eric. Bush carpentry. It was enough then. The river wasn’t much more than a creek, except in the wet.”

Sir Eric nodded wordlessly. The craft, a deck built over two rusty pontoons with a large but antiquated motor in the well aft, chugged slowly on. An awning amidships provided shade for the collapsible chairs and the little refrigerator.

Sir Eric made notes on a pad, and wiped at runnels of sweat. He was a heavily built man, but his figure bespoke muscle as well as fat. Looking at him, Rickles remembered that he had come up the hard way. His biographical notes gave bare details: born in London’s East End, product of a comprehensive school and a technical college. Among his achievements a light-heavyweight belt as an amateur boxer. Representative of the consortium which had built the dam with the aid of state government financing, he had been in a London winter a few hours before.

Like portraits of Sir Winston Churchill, who Sir Eric to some extent physically resembled, he still sported a few strands of red hair on his balding head. “Eric the Red” had been his nickname until it ceased to make sense.

A hamper was opened, and food shared out. Sir Eric took more notes and surveyed the waterscape with binoculars. The craft chugged between new islands and across wide stretches of water. The sun slid out of the high noon as the hours went by.

The edges of the float’s deck were circled by a ring of tiny, gem-like green tree-frogs. As the dam filled, the tropic water over what had been a derelict cattle-station boiled with life—water-goannas and rifle-fish already gaining weight, vast shoals of the latter already darkening the water. Swarms of magpie geese roosted in the upper branches of the drowning trees, and flocks of parrots wheeled overhead.

“I trust you’ll have thought of some way to control those birds before our agriculturalists move in,” Sir Eric said.

“Our biologists are working on a number of lines. If all else fails, it’s hard to see why netting over the crops wouldn’t be effective.” Sir Eric’s sardonic look said a great deal.

On the islands jabiru storks, the “policeman bird” of the Kimberley, patrolled with constabulistic stride, beaks stabbing to snap up frogs and lizards. They passed the half-submerged stone walls and tin roofs of the abandoned, flooding homestead, crowded, as they could see, with snakes and other animals that had found a temporary refuge there, and between whom the rising water had forced a truce.

A dead cat came floating out one window, its ears above water like the spinnakers of two sad little yachts. As they watched it disappeared, snatched from under in a flurry of foam.

“There are plenty of freshwater crocodiles here,” said Rickles. “They’re breeding up fast. We’re hoping that they’ll be good for tourism.”

Sir Eric continued to stare at him. Another trickle of sweat ran down his face. He pointed wordlessly, and the others followed his finger. “And just how much has that cost? Go closer.”

Rickles, obedient to Sir Eric’s gesture, steered the float across the chocolate-coloured water. An expression of rage on his face, Sir Eric bit his cigar in two and flung one end over the side. Its brief sizzling matched his temper.

A line of vehicles—jeeps, trucks, even some heavy earth-movers—stood axle-deep in the rising water of the dam. The water was already well over the engines of several of them.

“Somebody has evidently overlooked them,” he said. “I wonder what else has been overlooked. I take it the water has damaged them too badly for them to be salvaged. It’s just as well I came out here. They’ll be under water in a few days! Tens of thousands of pounds—I mean dollars—lost!”

“Most of them are worn-out plant, Sir Eric,” Helen Samson, Rickles’s personal assistant, tried to assure him. “It was decided they weren’t worth taking away. See!” She pointed to the gaping bonnet of one truck, “The engines have been removed. So have all the usable parts.”

“I’m sure!” Sir Eric’s voice remained heavy with sarcasm. He turned away from the drowning vehicles, and surveyed the party with an intimidating slow-motion stare. Those that could drew away. He did not actually utter the words “Heads will roll!” but they hung heavy in the air.

“I wonder if they would have been abandoned like that if I had given notice that I was coming,” he said. There was a steely reptilian hiss in his voice. “Well, doubtless the London board will be able to draw their own conclusions. I take it there are inventories and service records of the vehicles which can be examined.

“It should be possible to tell the state they were really in. Could they at least have been disposed of for scrap value? Or”—again with heavy sarcasm—“perhaps it is proposed to make them an artificial reef? A nursery for game-fish?”

Rickles and Peter Docherty, representing the company’s accountancy consultants, exchanged worried looks.

There was a sudden bumping and scraping. Somebody tripped as the pontoon lurched. Docherty grabbed at one of the stanchions supporting the awning.

“And what was that?”

“It’s all drowned hills and valleys under the water here,” Rickles said. “It hasn’t been charted properly … machinery, submerged trees, all kinds of snags. It could be deep or shallow.” He pointed across the water to where the upper vanes of a nearly submerged windmill could be made out.

“Why hasn’t it been charted properly?”

“We were going to do it when the water stopped rising and cleared.”

“You talked about the dam’s tourism potential. How much water-skiing do you plan to do through a lot of submerged machinery?”

“We weren’t planning to water-ski here,” said Rickles. “Or anywhere else on the main dam. See there!” He pointed to a set of deep furrows gouged in the red earth and mud on the bank of a nearby islet. It receded rapidly as the pontoon chugged on.

“A saltwater crocodile’s taken off there. Very recently. We thought there were still some in the main dam. But that’s the first hard evidence I’ve seen of one. The little Johnsons—the freshwater crocs—are harmless of course. But no water-skiing. It would just be trawling for them. No swimming, not even in the diversion dam. We’ll install a big pool when the chalets are built.”

Jim O’Connor, the Aboriginal stockman and guide, nodded, “Salty,” he confirmed. “Big one. Really bad bugger.”

“We’re hoping the Environment Department will give us permission to shoot them,” said Rickles. “That’s the main tourism we’ve got here that’s really unique. That and the fishing, of course.” He pointed at the vast cloud of inch-long rifle-fish visible near the surface. “They’ll be a foot long soon, and they make good eating.”

“Anyway,” said Docherty, “tourism’s very much a sideline. You’ve seen the figures. It’s irrigation that matters. If we can clear the pests out of the cotton …”

“Yes, and I want a full report on progress there. By tomorrow please! A full report!” His contemptuous look was reciprocated by most of the men on the float. Only Jim muttered something enigmatic about “Big fella.”

“We’ll be going to the biological station tomorrow.”

“There!” Jim pointed. Two bulges of eyes, two of nostrils, on the water not far away. They looked like the eyes and nostrils of the little Johnson crocodiles seen through a magnifying glass. They sank out of sight into the muddy water as they watched. “Big salty,” he added. “Biggest I’ve seen. It’s watching us.”

“Have we got a rifle?”

“No. They’re protected, anyway.”

“What if it tries to climb up here with us?”

“I think we’ve got too much free-board for that.”

“Have you seen how high they can jump?”

The float puttered on. A great water-goanna swam past. Marooned creatures—rock wallabies, dingoes, even some cattle with great scrub bulls—could be seen on the drowning islands.

“Are those cattle to be taken off?’

“It won’t be easy. Those bulls are among the most dangerous creatures in the world. The water probably won’t go too much higher, and the larger islands will make natural zoos. I’ve got some artist’s impressions back at the camp.”

They moved on into what gave the appearance of being open water. They had all been drinking steadily—beer, bottled water and soft-drink in insulated flasks—in the heat. There was a sudden screech of metal and the craft lurched to one side. Rickles threw the engine into reverse, and the craft tore free of the snag.

As when the Titanic scraped down the side of the iceberg, all was suddenly silent for a moment except for a new water-noise, and a bubbling.

Expressionless as an ancient lizard, Sir Eric gazed out at the opaque water. A fast and furious line of bubbles rising from the starboard pontoon bespoke serious damage. Already the craft had a perceptible list.

“Oh Gawd! Oh Gawd!” Jenner, the engineer, was suddenly white under his tan. “I’m going to try to run her ashore!” he said. “That pontoon’s badly holed, and she can’t float with one. This thing was never meant for deep water.”

The starboard pontoon dipped lower. Chocolate-brown water poured over the combing into the engine well. There was a violent hissing, sparks, and the engine stopped.

For a moment the group on the float stood in silence again, as the magnitude of the accident sank in. A current of the drowned river, still flowing, was bearing them away from the land.

Rickles and Jenner tore off their shirts and tried to stuff them into the gash torn in the ancient rusty metal of the pontoon, but it appeared most of the damage was now too far under water, and the holes too big.

“We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” said Sir Eric.

“Yes.”

“Is there any chance this thing will float on one pontoon?’

“It was built to carry things across little creeks that most of the time you could wade if need be. One float might hold it on the surface, but the deck will go under. Vertical.”

“And there’s a crocodile following us?” This was directed to Jim. He nodded, and pointed.

“I saw his eyes again a few minutes ago,” Jim said.

“And if we don’t come back, nobody knows where to look for us.” The great new lake, spreading out behind a newly-completed dam, was probably one of the most remote and isolated places in the world. There were men and a couple of boats back at the camp, but no way to reach them or signal their plight.

“We’re going to get wet.” No one mentioned the crocodile now. The Australians knew too many stories of tourists—and others—“taken” by crocodiles in tropic waters.

Sir Eric pointed to a large island ahead of them. “Will we run ashore on that?”

“No,” said Jim. “We’ll pass it close.”

Sir Eric pointed to the coiled-up mooring line. “If someone could swim ashore with the end of that—two people perhaps—we could pull the pontoon to the shore.”

“I think the crocodile is under the float. I’m sure it’s not far away.”

“Somebody has to go,” said Sir Eric. “Me and one other. We can tow the float. I’m not too old to swim. In fact, I’m still a strong swimmer. And … at least the water’s warm.”

“But why should you do this?” Despite their dire situation, Rickles was amazed. “Why not one of the younger men? Why risk yourself?”

Sir Eric looked at him with eyes that were curiously calm, the sarcastic reptilian glare gone from them. There was a peace, almost a happiness, in his face and voice the other had not seen before. He spoke like a man whose lifelong secret dream had suddenly beyond hope been made real.

“You must understand,” he said. “I am a knight.”