Beach Spinifex

By Ken Fisher

Footprints disappear into the sea.
Children are missing.
Mothers weep.

Ten-year-old Ku knows that Toop's story of Old Snake is no 'Aborigine' myth. The story is real and it has become as dark as Ku's world turned upside down.
And now that Toopy is dead it is up to Ku to finish the story she hopes will give Banks purpose and bring him home.
As she struggles to imagine a perfect ending Ku discovers the tragic life of Banks who, at the ago of 14, ran away to hide in the sand dines of the north coast. She learns of his bitter loneliness, the ghosts that haunt him and the gentle beauty in his mastery of the sea and dunes.

From the ancient Mooon Creek to an idyllic 1960s beach squat and into the new millennium, Beach Spinifex is a story of loss and longing, of love and joy, the story of those enchanted by the spirit of the sea, the saltwater people.
That's us!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9780992383213

Ken Fisher

Ken Fisher is best known for his prestigious ""Portfolio Strategy"" column in Forbes Magazine, the fourth longest-running columnist in Forbes' ninety-year history. He is also founder, Chairman, and CEO of Fisher Investments, an independent global money management firm with over $45 billion in assets. He is the award-winning author of numerous scholarly articles and has published four previous major finance books, including 2006's New York Times bestseller The Only Three Questions That Count. He has a weekly column in Handelsblatt, Germany's leading finance daily.

Book preview

Beach

1. A Boy on the Beach

Noooooo! the boy cried, swatting away his mother’s hands, shooing her away. Nooooo!

Standing firm at the water’s edge with his dark curls falling over his ears and down the back of his brown neck, he gazed intently out to sea.

Clouds of rockmelon and lemon, in the sky and on the water drifted across his eyes. His shadow reached out to a new wave skipping shoreward.

Sheets of slick watercolour, pink and gold and silver, washed over the beach, swirling around him. He began a strange dance, rocking from one leg to the other, arms turning in wild windmills, feet mashing in the wet sand, sloshing it between his toes. Sand and sea grabbed his ankles, capturing him like magic.

Then, bubbling and hissing, the wave drained from the beach. The boy stopped and squatted into a ball, putting his head down as if listening to a whispered secret.

Rising again, he waited, ready to dance once more.

When the first star appeared in the heavens the boy’s mother approached him a second time. C’mon mate, enough is enough, time to go home.

She took his hands but he pulled them away. She tried again and the boy pulled away again and when she tried yet a third time he flailed his arms and jerked his body left and right and forward and back and dug in.

Frantic, he threw his head round and round, his curls flying in mad dance. Nooooooo! he screamed, Noooooooo!

His bellowing pierced the evening and the calm of the empty beach. A chill ran through his mother. She stepped back wondering at such desperation.

2. June 1974 - The Body

The police boat idled and eased onto the sand bar as if not wanting to disturb the two men waiting there.

The officer climbed out and stood next to the shopkeeper and the ambo.

Anything? the shopkeeper asked.

The officer shook his head. Only the dinghy… capsized in the shore break. He did not tell them of his earlier conversations with fishermen who had seen tigers and a big white lurking that morning.

Now, the shadow of the headland melted into the night and the blackening sea.

Out there, remnant light gathered in tufted whitecaps, luminescence riding on the merciless rip that dragged the river from the land.

Long after dark the men continued to stare at the black surface of the water, not wanting to give up but knowing it was over. They had been searching since dawn, the entire eighteen kilometres to Riverton. There had been six boats and a dozen men. Now, there were only the three of them.

When lightning revealed the billowing clouds of an approaching cold front the officer sighed and looked at his watch to note the time. There is nothing more we can do. I’m so sorry.

As the officer steered the boat slowly back up river to the wharf the shopkeeper sat astern wondering how good lives could so easily fall apart. He was surprised at how deeply he cared for them, the two who had died this week.

Next to him, the ambo closed his eyes. He was not sure if he wanted to find the body and to have to take it away like the others. He had attended three deaths and a possible murder in a week and he struggled to make sense of the connections. He craved the bottle of liquor he had hidden away at home.

The boat was moored. The men disembarked and turned back to the river one more time.

The officer rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands but quickly removed them and the images of the sharks that lingered.

Then, he drew his face up hard. This is a bastard of a river when it’s full of running. It spares no-one… never gives up the body.

With the arrival of the cold front, the wind stirred and spats of rain began to fall. The officer pulled his jacket tight around him. You know, it’s all they want… something… anything… to be able to rest… one day.

3. Black Cockatoos, Death and Frangipani

The tang of baking hardwood rose on waves of shimmering heat from the floor of the back veranda.

Ku and her mum sat at the patio table in the shade of a blue-checked umbrella. Ku stroked the spines of her cherished spinifex flower. Her mum stared away. They had hardly spoken this morning though occasionally, together, they turned to the north to find relief in short bursts of breeze.

At the far end of the yard, perched on an old stump Banks squatted with his arms wrapped around his knees and his toes hanging over the edge. He, too, stared away.

Rippling heat rendered him a ghost and it reminded Ku of the spirits that had come for Toopy yesterday and the way Banks and Toopy had held each other at the end. But there was something else in these spirits, the way they were hanging around like they had unfinished business.

Ku sighed and looked up at her mum. An unbearable silence had filled the morning since Banks had made her mum cry by calling her Michelle, not Mish.

And the silence between the three of them was worse than death, so many things unsettled, too many things unsaid.

When Ku could stand it no longer she called out.

Hey, Banks?

She wanted to cheer him up, to ask him what time he thought the wind would change, though she already knew the answer. The forecast had been for a brief southeast change in the afternoon and Banks had promised to take her to the points for her first blue-water wave.

Ku twisted two spines of the spinifex flower, turning it back and forth. Hey? Banks? she called again, but Banks remained as distant from her call as he was to the sun burning his skin.

A squall of black cockatoos darkened the sky for a moment, interrupting. The birds screeched and bickered and fought for seeds in the unburnt banksia at the edge of the yard. The victors tore at the husks of the banksia flowers and crushed the seeds with their powerful beaks. The vanquished scavenged in the dead and ash covered dunes that rose and fell, like a black sea, to the hinterland.

Fire was an infrequent visitor to the wallum and dunes but it had come this year and unseasonably early. Usually wallum burnt in November after a dry winter and spring and shortly before seasonal thunderstorms arrived to bring new life. This year the land had been dry throughout winter and hot northerlies had brought fire in September.

This fire had burned to the edge of their yard and when it had passed Banks had taken Ku into the dunes to search for injured animals.

They had talked quietly and felt the sand, still warm, on the soles of their boots.

Are they all dead… all the animals and bugs and ants and everything?

No. Not everything. Some will survive… one way or another.

What about the birds?

Most would have flown away… but early fires are bad fires for birds, their nests and eggs get burnt… the newborns can’t fly yet. There won’t be any chicks this year.

Oh, no! Banks! Look! There’s dead echidnas everywhere!

No, not porcupines. Those clumps are grass trees. Three drops of rain and they’ll be the first to shoot again… and the swamp grasses.

"Good. Hey, how come you call ’em porcupines?

Echidnas? Dunno. I guess because my old friend, Moonshine, called ‘em that. He loved to eat ‘em, too.

Oh, yuk!

Banks had shown her the empty seed pods hanging from the branches of the hakea, pink and feminine, prised open by the heat of the fire, their seeds tossed onto the scorched earth waiting for a storm. He had shown her the weeping raw flesh of the swamp mahoganies and little survivors, insects, already busy and waiting.

Near the back fence the fire had miraculously leapt over a single wildflower. Low to the ground, its petals had been singed brown at the edges yet had remained white and fresh in the middle. Banks had made a quick sketch before moving on.

Not far from the white flower they had discovered a dead wallaby. They had pulled a joey from its pouch and carried it back to the house.

On the drive to the wildlife carers, Ku had repeated over and over, Mum, drive faster. On the way home, they had not spoken until she remembered the voices of the carers whispering of the joey’s slim chances and the look that had been on Banks’ face, just for a moment, frightened and hopeless like the eyes of the dying animal.

And that day, too, she had not been able to bear the silence.

What about frogs, Banks? Do they die?

Frogs? No, not frogs. They’ll be waiting underground, waiting for rain, holding on to their songs way down in their bellies.

He had turned and smiled at her. And when it rains they’ll come out and sing like you never imagined. All those fat bellies full of song, eh? You’ll see.

She had felt her mother’s happiness in the way that Banks had made things right. Happiness had come easily to them, then.

Now, in early December, happiness seemed impossible.

Lost in her thoughts, Ku was unprepared for the gust of wind that snatched the spinifex flower from her hands. It leapt off the table onto the veranda floor and tumbled quickly away.

Ku jumped up and screamed, Catch it!

Banks swooped from his stump cutting off its line of escape and let the flower bounce softly into his hands.

Awww! Catch, Banks!

Banks held up the flower in mock triumph. He turned it slowly against the sky to see if any of the spikes had been broken. It’s okay, he said.

The glare of the sun closed his eyes and he swayed on sleepless legs. An after-image of the flower burned in his mind and behind the flower there was Toopy’s voice commanding him to take Ku for a swim, saying, I promise not to die while you are away. Other people need you, too.

They had swum for awhile and on their way back through the dunes Ku had stopped suddenly. Dropping her board and bag she had plopped onto her belly and slipped under the barbed wire fence. Whooooooa! Banks! Look!

That day it had been Ku who lifted the flower up to the sun.

Whoooooo hoooo! It’s perfect. Look! Oh, it’s really gold and rounder and bigger than Mum’s! Here, you carry the boards and towels and stuff. I have to carry the flower. We can’t squash it.

Banks had humped their gear up the hill following Ku who had held the flower before her like it was a gift for the gods.

When we get home you have to distract Mum. I’ll put it in the bowl. That’s the rules. I have to put the white shell in front of the bowl. That’s the rules, too.

Banks had known all this. A year ago, when he had first begun living upstairs with them, he had watched them play the game.

The best flower was set in the shallow bowl of a Blue Gum burl, its long, golden spines spread out like the sun against the red and burgundy of the hardwood. It would sit in the bowl in the middle of the dining room table until a more worthy specimen was found. Then, the white shell would be placed on the table to declare a challenge.

Between October and December, with each new discovery, the mother would trump her daughter and then the daughter would outdo her mother. It was a ritual of competitive exchange, the display of the flower a symbol not so much of victory but of often declared love.

Banks had often thought of Ku and Mish as a double spinifex flower, two flowers so perfectly joined at the stem that you had to look closely to see that there were two, growing together, forming a single, perfect sphere as if nature had decided that they would make life’s journey together. He had seen the two of them as one, the way they chattered and laughed and enjoyed the smallest thing as if the whole damn world had been made just to delight them.

For a year he had been a part of that, too, but now he was back downstairs, alone again. He felt the sun in his face and his world closing down. He tried to let go of the image of the flower and the searing light now behind his eyes, and to let the darkness creep in from the edges.

But her voice came again.

Hey! Banks?

Banks? Ku called again. Banks! Oi! Banks!

When he didn’t respond, she yelled, Hey, Joey!

Lowering the flower to his waist, Banks opened his eyes and looked at her.

Sorry… what?

Sensing that something was not right, Ku said, Geez, mate, ya look all sooky, like Omelette.

Mish looked up from the table. Omelette?

You know, that sad looking guy on the front of that book holding the bones of his head.

His skull, Mish corrected.

Who’s Omelette? asked Banks.

Ku raised her voice in frustration. You know… the guy with the skull.

Mish laughed. You mean Hamlet?

Yeah, yeah, that one! Him! You look like him, Banks!

Banks carefully handed the flower to Ku who carefully handed it to her mother.

Banks managed a half-smile. More like my soul than the bones of my melon… beach spinifex, a dried up seed, an orphan tossed by the wind an’ swallowed by the sea. Yeah, that’d be me alright… I…

He never finished the sentence. His words had started on a note of humour but had trailed away until they were empty and sad as though he had followed them to a place he did not want to go.

Ku heard the change and saw his smile disappear. It’s still a flower. It’s still beautiful, she countered hopefully.

Grateful that her daughter did not know of Hamlet’s fate Mish stepped in to protect her. You need to go and sleep, she said bluntly to Banks.

Could… forever… he mumbled back at her, grabbing a towel off the railing and walking to the side of the house where a track led down to Mooon Creek. Goin’ down the beach…

Mish stood and watched him go. He moved slowly and awkwardly, not at all like the man who usually moved over sand as nimble as a ghost crab. She saw the red raw scar on his shoulder struggling to heal.

Ku saw her mother wince.

She hated it when this happened, when things fell apart so suddenly. At times there had been a glimmer of happiness or at least togetherness, the three of them again, laughing, enjoying something, anything. In those moments she could imagine that things could be the same again.

But always Banks would set himself apart.

She wanted to yell at him and she sensed her mother did too but today no-one’s heart was in anything. Toopy’s death had brought real sadness. Nothing was going to change this hot and dreadful Sunday, the day Ku had hoped would be the day she rode her first blue wave.

Mish disappeared into the house and caressed a slightly bent spine of the spinifex flower back into shape before rearranging the flower in the hollow of the burl. Closing her eyes she drew a slow breath. Banks’ words still grated and she had not missed Ku’s resentment. Mish tried to imagine a happy ending but her mind remained as empty and stark as the sky outside.

Returning to the veranda she placed a glass bowl filled with water on the table in front of Ku and then walked to the edge of the veranda and picked two frangipani flowers.

Here ya go, babe.

Together, they breathed of the frangipanis before setting them afloat in the bowl.

They’re beautiful, Mum.

Yes. Mish put her arm around Ku’s shoulder and kissed her gently on top of her head.

For a while, Ku cuddled her mother and found some comfort in the frangipanis.

Soon though, her worries returned and she cast her eyes out over the black and white ash that spread to the western rim of the dunes. The charred skeletons of the banksias and the black scribbles of ti-trees reminded her again of Toopy and death.

Toopy had said something in those last two days about it being time for the old and the weak to move on and she had said it way too much like Banks had talked of the animals that had died in the fire.

Maybe the morphine had made Toopy say these things. Maybe it had been the fear of death or the fear of what she was leaving behind. She had spoken of fires and drought and broken hearts and broken drought and fires of the heart and she had tried so hard not to cry.

All of these things began whirling inside Ku’s head. Deep down, there was something else and she feared it most of all. When she had called Banks, Joey, for the first time only minutes ago, he had gone weak at the knees. She knew it had something to do with his past and his dad.

Banks had always said his dad had been dead for a long time but he never was, and he had appeared a week before Toopy died and the ghost of his dad had not made him happy but had made him fall apart because after a year of happiness he had moved back downstairs, alone again, just like that.

Ku knew Toopy had been scared of Banks’ dad’s ghost, too, because Toopy had started writing a story for Banks to help him remember his strengths when she was gone but when Banks’ dad appeared it was like the world went upside down and Toopy had been unable to think of a proper ending.

Now, the story scared Ku more than all these ghosts and everything else.

Minutes before she had died Toopy had placed her hand on the manuscript of Old Snake. The story is yours now, she had said.

The words made Ku quiver and the whirling and swirling became faster and faster.

Her story now, the story Toopy said was real… and, in the story, the children were missing and Old Snake was dying and people were crying, and… and… it was real, not just a fairy tale or an old Aboriginal story but a real story that had turned awful and scary just like their lives had turned awful and scary… where bad things were happening and everything was falling apart, just like that… and Banks, back downstairs, needing a story to give his life meaning and him looking like a ghost or Hamlet and the sad bones of his head… and the story of Old Snake, on her bed, right now, without an ending, unable to help Banks who had gone kinda crazy…

… and why, a long time ago, did he run away to hide at Mooon Creek?

Ku grabbed at the edge her seat.

Ku, are you alright?

Ku shook her head miserably, Oh, Mum, if only…

Suddenly, the rising northerly gusted again, lifting the umbrella and jerking the table.

Ku’s hands darted out to save the bowl and the two flowers.

Catch, Ku! That was lucky.

"Hooo-hoo, yes! Ku giggled, but before she saw the tears in her mother’s eyes and the frangipanis riding wild on rough waves.

4. A Lantern at Mooon Creek

Banks shuffled down the hill and turned east along the winding, dry creek bed to Mooon Creek Bridge then onto the beach.

Squinting into the glare and haze he dashed over the hot sand and into the tepid shore break. He tried to float, to relax, but a strong side-current tugged at him uncomfortably, dragging him awkwardly along the shoreline.

Back on the beach again, his feet were stung by twisting ribbons of sand that snaked southward like a ghost river.

A lone, ragged spinifex flower tumbled toward him. He bent down to catch it but it slipped past him and he fell to his knees grabbing at the sand and squeezing it hard in the palms of his hands, feeling ashamed of the way he had treated Mish and Ku this morning.

Turning to the dunes where he had lived so many years, he thought of his father, the father who had brought him to this place in 1970, the man who, a week ago, had reappeared after more than twenty-five years.

In July of 1974, at the age of fourteen, Banks had come here for the second time. He had come alone.

Then, he was known only as Joey.

****

A decrepit EJ wagon crabbed over the bridge and pulled to the side of the road.

Here ya go, mate, Mooon Creek. Make sure ya hide your tent, you’re not meant to camp here, copper might move ya on… no-one really checks, but.

Joey removed his gear from the back of the car and untied his board from the pile on the roof. Thanks for the lift.

No worries. Might see ya ‘round, eh? someone said from inside.

Yeah, that’d be great.

The driver hammered the accelerator. The car’s baldy tyres spun in the dirt until they grabbed and left Joey in a cloud of smoke and dust.

Joey laughed at the boys hooning but when the car sank below the next rise in the road he felt the chill of the afternoon and a stab of fear and loneliness. He had only known the crew of the EJ for half a day but they were the closest thing he had to mates.

The sun was already low in the north-west as his father’s words crept into his mind. Always make camp before dark if you can… you never know what Huey’s gonna serve up.

Joey looked up at the sign to reassure himself that he was in the right place. Yup, Mooon Creek. He picked up his pack and board and carried them down a narrow track at the side of the bridge and in a couple of minutes he reached the mouth of the creek where he was welcomed by a soft, easterly sea breeze.

He set his things down and stood back to survey the dunes.

He was confident he would be able to find the spot where they had camped four years earlier. He recalled that it was well off the beach, back in the dunes and under trees not too far from the creek. The problem was that the beach looked different now. The creek was wider and the dunes had been cut by recent waves and tides. Tendrils of beach grass hung down from head-high sand cliffs. A lone tree had been uprooted and had slipped down the dune onto the beach.

Joey thought for a moment and went to his pack. He reached into the side pouch and pulled out a small photo of a curly-headed ten year-old standing proudly under the crooked arch of a tall banksia. Next to him a fish hung from the tree. Joey had insisted that a picture be taken of him like he had seen in the Sunday papers. Under the picture his mum had written the words ‘Joey, last of the great game fishermen’.

Memories of that first trip to Mooon Creek came easily.

****

There were six of them sitting around a campfire. His mother was lifting parcels from the coals, peeling back the alfoil and passing the steaming fish and potatoes around the circle to Joey, his dad and three other campers who had brought their own catch to the feast. They ate until they couldn’t eat any more and Joey’s tailor, the biggest of all the fish, was unanimously declared the best.

After dinner his father made tea for everyone and the stories began. Joey sat quietly and his fire-lit eyes darted around the circle as his father and the visitors shared wonderful tales of waves ridden and fish caught, stories of this coast and stories of faraway lands.

Joey laughed when Boney, the skinny one with the big nose and foghorn voice, always had a bigger and better story to tell about ‘his wave’ or ‘his fish’. His friends would call bullshit on him but that would only have the effect of encouraging Boney to concoct an even more unbelievable story of which they would all shout bullshit again and roll back in the sand in fits of hysterical laughter. Joey yelled bullshit along with them.

Later, as the conversation and the fire started to fade, one of the visitors offered up a flask of whiskey. Go a snort, Mick?

No, thanks mate… early surf in the morning.

Won’t be much of a wave tomorrow, the visitor said.

Mick nodded at Joey.

Yeah mate, may be okay for him. We’ll let ya get to sleep.

Soon see yuz, thanks and goodnights drifted into the night with the visitors as they trundled off into the dunes.

As Mick tidied the camp he said to Joey, Wanna sleep by the fire?

Can we?

Sure. Why not?

Mick threw two swags on the ground and held one open for Joey. Jump in.

Joey snuggled in and watched his father place a couple of fresh logs on the fire. At that moment, the first puff of westerly sparked the coals bright. Immediately flames lapped at the wood and smoke rose and arced toward the sea.

Feel that Joey? Westerly’s up… the land is now cooler than the sea. The air over the water is rising and the cooler land air is falling in underneath. Offshore… the sea will be combed to perfection by morning.

Joey recognised this as another of his father’s lessons. On this night though, as the fire jumped again and he looked up through smoke and flying sparks to a million stars dancing in the trees, the world seemed better explained by magic.

His mum came to him. I don’t sleep with snakes so I’ll be off to the tent. Goodnight, mate. Hope you two get some waves.

Joey was pleased she called him mate and not sweetie or bubs. When she knelt down and kissed him on the forehead he promised to catch her bigger fish tomorrow and he remembered how she had given him a wink when he had