I have spoken to many travellers who have their own ways of acquainting themselves with a place. A guy I once met in Byron [Bay] said that on arriving in a new place, he would take his shoes off and feel the land underneath his feet. He said that no two places have ever felt the same and that the connection to a place’s energy is through the earth. A man I knew in London would go to what he considered the centre of any place he happened upon and sit for hours silently watching the people go by. For myself, I simply either feel at ease or not, there is no great myth or ritual… except that I tend to personify places. I imagine that they are speaking to me in a private dialect that only we share. Predictably the ocean speaks to me in the same way.
So what of Denham? Did she speak to me?
She did far more than converse…she sang me love songs.
It wasn’t so much that I was enjoying the worldly (and truly wonderful) elements of Denham – the pub [naturellment!], the foreshore, the beach, the genial host (the now infamous and lovely Old School); it was more that the entire time that I was there, I was having the most beautiful conversation and love affair with Shark Bay herself. Kalbarri had felt like a homecoming, whilst Denham in contrast felt new and undiscovered; she was a precious secret, guarded closely by her local crew, but she’d personally asked me to come to her, to say hello, just for a while.
Patchouli felt less in awe of Denham, she enjoyed the pub, the foreshore, the beach and the genial host; but as my affair with Shark Bay was an unspoken thrill entirely inside my own mind, she was not privvy to the joy I felt as I gazed around in wonder. There were parts of this section of coast that we didn’t go to – places that some new friends I made whilst propping up the bar one night told me about, but it didn’t matter to Shark Bay and I because not seeing or knowing everything there was to know, kept the magic alive between us and she knew that I would be back to explore further another time.
Whilst his mother was drifting around in a joyous dreamworld in the hot sunshine, Poetboy was discovering precious gems of his own. Ever the keen fisherman, he was thrilled to have been equipped with a life jacket and two way radio by Old School to “give the boy some freedom and space of his own”; so off he trudged, with the his usual brooding intensity and muted enthusiasm, to the end of a Jetty within our view from Old School’s property, to while away the afternoon. Some time later the radio crackled, and Poetboy’s concerned voice came through saying “Er, Mum, you better come here”.
I rolled my eyes. Poetboy has quite the appetite for drama. “What’s wrong sweetheart?” I answered. crackle… hiss… There was no answer. Suddenly Poetboy appeared, his face red, his eyes wild and concerned, out of breath and panic creeping into his voice as he announced “I’ve hooked a Dugong, you have to come [to the jetty] quickly”.
Dugong and Calf
“Of course you have darling” my patronising response to my son’s obvious distress. Old School looked at me oddly and rose from the table where he, Patchouli and I had been chatting and supping beer, relaxing in the welcome cool breeze afforded to Old School’s house by the nearby ocean. Unaccustomed as he was to my son’s flair for storytelling, he was off to investigate the notion that a Dugong had unwittingly swum into my boy’s line…and rightly so…if Poetboy had maimed a Dugong, accidentally or not, I could only imagine that this would be serious business.
Off they hurried to inspect the damage to the alleged Dugong. I took Baby J and followed in
a relaxed fashion, reaching the jetty some ten to fifteen minutes after Poetboy and Old School. As I approached, there were a few people gathered around on the jetty. Apparently I had just missed THE REAL LIFE DUGONG that it seems did exist in somewhere other than my child’s colourful imagination. At this point I felt like, well, a bit lot of an arse. Someone official looking took it upon himself to explain to me that a little hook like that wouldn’t hurt the Dugong and that it had been fine and in good health; I nodded and smiled at the right times, cheeks burning from shame that I had disbelieved my son when he required my help and from the shock that my son had in fact managed to hook a Dugong.
As we prepared the FunBus and the White Knight a couple of days later for our departure, my motivation to move on had waned. Not so much because I didn’t want to leave Shark Bay, but because due to some weather warnings and time restraints, we had decided to definitely head south again instead of pushing further north. It was part of the plan that had been discussed and changed and discussed some more since we first left Perth, but to know that our trip was now homeward bound, took much of the wind from my sails. Nonetheless, we were headed back to Kalbarri so the children would be thrilled.
So as we cleaned and fixed and folded, turning our little homes into vehicles once again, the familiar shape of Poetboy came running from the Jetty. He was red faced and panicked [again]. “Oh Lordy, what now?” I asked no one in particular.
Poetboy threw his fishing rod at the ground, and as it bounced awkwardly, he threw his bucket down after it and started to scream and wail and shout. Patchouli who was closer in proximity to this spectacle than I, tried to approach him, but somehow this evoked more screaming and shouting and finally he turned on his heel and marched away toward the main street of Denham.
“He’s been bitten or stung” Patchouli informed me. Someone had said that it was a Stonefish. This wasn’t good. Old School calmly instructed me to take Poetboy to the local hospital/medical centre. “Great idea in principal” I thought, but first I would have to find him and calm him enough that he would get into the Funbus. Baby J and I followed Poetboy’s path down the street.
Poor Poetboy
A short time later, we were at the medical centre and were being seen to by a lovely nurse. She had informed us that as Poetboy had calmed down somewhat by the time that she had met him, that it wasn’t a Stonefish spike. Through Poetboy’s description and the symptoms, it turned out that he had been stung by
Spikey!
a Black Trevally (Happy Moment)*. Poetboy sat patiently whilst he was being treated. His hand was throbbing, his entire arm was numb from the poison and his vision was affected (temporarily). We left with him dosed up on painkillers, his arm in a sling and a prescription for antibiotics. Denham had certainly left it’s mark on this family, in exceptionally different ways.
INFORMATION SOURCE: Scuba Equipment USA
