Winddance

By Anne Winckel

ABOUT THE NOVEL WINDDANCE:

“Captivating. Had me hooked right to the end. An ageless, timeless adventure for one and all.” Vicki Hatton, Journalist.  The back cover of the book summarises the story:

IT'S 1943 AND WORLD WAR II IS RAGING - THE GERMANS ARE IN EUROPE - THE JAPANESE IN THE PACIFIC - AT H

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anne Winckel
• Release date: Apr 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9780648276623

Anne Winckel

Anne Winckel grew up on a farm near the Coorong in South Australia, and she attended Meningie Area School from grade one to year twelve. Anne's father was a farmer who also loved to sail, and Anne regularly went fishing and sailing with her dad - often off Yorke Peninsula. Anne went to university to study Arts (because she loved literature and history) and Law (because her teachers said she talked so much!). Anne then became a high school teacher (teaching English, History and Legal Studies). Anne subsequently became a university lecturer, and despite qualifying to practise law, she later became a legal recruitment consultant. She eventually established her own legal and executive search firm, Delta Partners, in Melbourne. Prior to her career in recruitment, Anne lectured at various universities in South Australia and subsequently at the University of Melbourne. During her time within the Law Faculty at the University of Melbourne, Anne completed her Masters thesis by research in Constitutional Law. Throughout her academic career, Anne was involved in the Australian Republic Debate where she assisted in organising two Women's Constitutional Conventions. Anne was previously on the Board of Australian Women Lawyers.

Book preview

For my father Jim Winckel

who was four years old

when he lived on Wedge Island

with my grandparents in 1937.

Chapters

Map of Wedge Island

One Shark Cave

Two The Gate

Three AWOL

Four The Gunpit

Five Flight Paths

Six The Rockpool

Seven Gili Gili

Eight Saturday Social

Nine The Yandra

Ten Winddance

Eleven Pondalowie Bay

Twelve Gypsy Mist

Thirteen Campbell Farm

Fourteen Investigations

Fifteen Loveday

Sixteen The Minnipa

Seventeen Arrests

Measurement Key (of feet and yards)

Glossary (of sailing terms)

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Map of Wedge Island

Chapter One

Shark Cave

Wedge Island, South Australia, Friday 10 September, 1943

Paul flinched and stepped backwards. He groaned as he realised his boot had landed in the pool of blood.

So… it’s Aircraftsman Bolton is it? The deceptively casual tone of voice was coming from further up the ridge where a rifle was aimed directly at Paul’s chest.

Paul had faced a slaughter in New Guinea, and only just survived. The war wasn’t over, but he had not expected to be killed on this quiet little island off the coast of South Australia. Nothing was making sense.

Two Hours Earlier:

Paul was getting good at tying a proper knot in the dark. He secured the end of his rope to another piece of undergrowth and crawled back to the cliff edge. The rope pulled tight around his stomach and he winced. It was biting into his skin through his blue overalls – but he didn’t care. He would rather be sore from the chafing, than dead if the ground collapsed. The cliffs below were riddled with eroded caverns – and they made a perfect garrison for the large birds that lived on the island.

He pressed his chest firmly onto the flat rock and stretched his head out to look again for the massive bird’s nest. He had seen this nest from the boat a couple of months earlier on the day he arrived. There had been two huge solitary birds enthroned high up inside the cliff face. Right now, he felt as if he were on the battlements of the eagles’ castle trying to peer through the window of their highest tower.

The predawn whisper of a breeze was stirring, and moonlight was shining into all the crevices. So far there were no signs of any birds or their nest. Paul had always been fascinated by birds, and he loved watching them soar. He had desperately wanted to fly himself, but the air force had grounded him because of his poor coordination, and instead he was working with the highly secret radar equipment. Thinking back, Paul supposed he was lucky. Otherwise he too might have been killed over Milne Bay like his mates, Ben and Charlie.

Paul shivered and looked down the 100 foot drop to the ocean. He had come out in the dark to escape his nightmares, not to dwell on the war with the Japanese. He would soon have to return to his bunk at the base station to wait for his early morning shift to start, so he forced himself to refocus. Paul listened to the quiet slapping of the tide at the base of the tall cliffs, and he watched as the waves twinkled and reflected thousands of stars. In the moonlight, he could see the sails of a fishing cutter being pushed by a gentle wind across from the mainland. He could even see the flashing lighthouses on the horizon from Cape Spencer and Althorpe Island.

Paul was lying on top of the cliff face that bordered most of Shark Bay. Opposite him was a descending rocky ridge that jutted out from the cliffs like a protective arm trying to separate the small semi-circular cove from the sea. Halfway along the side of the ridge he could see the large black gaping mouth of a cave. He knew that the locals called it Shark Cave.

Paul wished he had the guts to visit that cave. You could only enter it from the sea, and apparently years earlier a daring fisherman had managed to nail two shark jaws to the cave’s rock ceiling. A couple of the air force men had climbed down the goat tracks to sea level, and swum back along the base of the rocks to have a look. They said that the jaws were definitely there – quite weathered now, but still attached. It sounded like a great adventure, but even so, it was the live sharks in the water that Paul feared.

Squinting through the dark, Paul was startled to see a man in a long coat appear on the ridge above the cave. Paul could just distinguish the shape of a rifle slung over his right shoulder. The men from the base station didn’t usually carry guns around the island, although one of the guards might – and if this were one of the guards, Paul did not want to be caught. It was against air force regulations to leave the station at night. He stayed very still. If that man were to look up at the cliff top opposite, he might actually see Paul’s silhouette in the moonlight.

Paul realised he was holding his breath and he slowly exhaled. He didn’t think he had been seen. The man opposite was busy moving back and forth from behind the ridge line, and doing a lot of crouching. Paul wasn’t sure what the man was up to, and he was frustrated that he couldn’t see his face.

Paul was so distracted watching the man on top of the ridge, he hadn’t noticed the progress of the boat below. It had not turned, but was maintaining a steady course directly towards the vertical cliffs of Shark Bay. Paul watched in disbelief. Why was there no one on deck? The fishing cutter was like any other, with the mast forward on the boat, above a cabin that was below the deck. There was also a wheelhouse at the back of the cutter, where he hoped the skipper was not asleep.

Paul was itching to scream out a warning to the boat, but he didn’t want to be heard by the man on the ridge. And anyway, that man himself could warn the boat, as he was now standing motionless, staring at the approaching vessel. Paul strained again to see the man’s face, but it was still just a smudge in the dark.

He couldn’t believe that the man was staying silent – doing nothing. Paul’s tension was becoming unbearable when finally a stooping figure appeared from the fishing cutter’s wheelhouse. He lowered the sails and guided the boat to a standstill, directly outside Shark Cave.

Paul was now engrossed.

The sailor dropped a heavy anchor over the bow at the front of the cutter and then allowed the boat to drift on around the anchor rope until the stern had backed into the cave. Once the cutter was halfway inside the cave, the sailor secured the forward anchor rope and moved out of sight to the back of the boat. Paul heard the splash of another anchor, and soon the boat was held fast.

The sailor was now standing on the deck, staring at the ridge overhead. Paul’s gaze followed. He gasped as he saw the man on the ridge lowering a crate down to the waiting sailor. He wasn’t sure, but Paul thought the crate looked like one of the sturdy wooden air force supply boxes that filled the base station’s storeroom. It was about the width of a bale of hay, but a lot longer. It swung above the cabin, and the sailor quickly released it as he stowed it below mid-deck through a hatch into what looked to be the fish-well. The same process was repeated with a number of different loads, the majority of which looked like wheat sacks. Paul remained completely still. He sensed that the two men would not want a witness to this nocturnal transaction involving sacks and air force supply boxes.

When there was no more cargo to load, the sailor fetched something like a small tin can from behind the wheelhouse and attached it to the line for the man to pull back up. Once the man had retrieved the full line, he disappeared from view. Meanwhile the sailor released the boat and manoeuvred the vessel out of the cave using the front anchor-line as a guide rope. He reset the sails to catch the soft breeze, and soon the boat was heading back towards Pondalowie Bay on the mainland – straight into the red dawn that was beginning to glow above the eastern horizon.

Paul felt paralysed. Suddenly he was very cold, but he dared not move.

Lying still until the cutter had sailed some way from the island, Paul tried to think. The man on the ridge had long gone, but Paul had no desire to be caught returning to the station by him or any of the guards on duty. Usually when he ventured out, Paul would be back in his bunk well before dawn. He could not go straight to the doover because his shift did not start for more than half an hour. It was at the doover that the radar operators did their work. Perhaps he could just stay where he was, and go to his shift later as though it were a normal changeover?

Finally Paul kicked himself into action. As he rolled onto his back, he glimpsed one of the large wedge-tailed eagles circling overhead like a sentinel of the island. He would have to keep looking for that nest another day, because now he had a different plan. He carefully untied his safety rope, and crept across the cliff top to where the rocky ridge dropped away below him. He had decided to climb down and have a look at the place where that man had been standing.

Paul was surprised by the sudden noise of the tractor. Damn! What a fool. He quickly lowered himself over the ledge, swearing again as the sandy limestone came away in his hand. He landed sprawled on his side on the crumbly bed of debris just below the overhanging rock. If he remained below the ledge, the guards on the tractor would definitely not see him.

Paul was annoyed with himself as he dusted the grit from his overalls and grazed arm. He had thought he heard the sound of a tractor much earlier, but when it had not appeared, he had forgotten about the toilet tip. During night duty, the guards had the nasty job of emptying the large toilet drums.

Pressing further against the undercut rock, he grimaced as the murky combination of urine and more solid matter was poured from the eagles’ rampart into the moat below. The effect was of a turbid waterfall not even touching the cliff face as it splashed down into the sea. When the last drum had been emptied, Paul couldn’t help a fleeting smile. It was hard to believe that forty men could generate such a mass of waste within one twenty-four hour period! After a few shouted commands, the sound of the tractor began to recede, combined raucously with a verse of Lou, Lou, Skip to my Lou and lots of laughter.

Paul examined his refuge. The rocky ridge stretched out below him with Shark Cave hidden deep inside. From this new vantage point he was also able to see back into the eroded cliff face, and he could now see a massive nest of sticks. So there it was. He was sure it was the eagles’ castle.

Paul stashed his rope amongst some rubble and began a careful descent down the goat track along the rocky ridge. It was precarious at times, but at least these jagged rocks were not crumbly like the rocks beneath the overhanging cliff top.

The sun was just above the sea by now, so the crimson stain on the ground caught his eye. Tentatively Paul touched the rock. There was a thin smear of blood across the smooth surface of the granite. The blood was dry already, but it certainly looked fresh. Paul watched the rocks more closely as he continued. He noticed a number of other smears of blood before arriving at a larger section of flat rock that extended all the way to the cliff edge of Shark Bay. He was sure this was where the man would have been standing earlier. On the far side of this flat rock there was a whole pool of blood. Paul felt nauseous. The pool was drying around the edges, but was still quite moist in the centre. What could that man have been doing?

Paul’s desire to explore was quickly disappearing. This whole situation was getting more complicated, and returning to the base station now seemed like the more attractive option. His instinct was to find the Commanding Officer and report what he had seen. The fact that he was away from his bunk without permission now seemed irrelevant.

The large flat rock where he was standing was right on the brink of the ridge, and peering over into the bay Paul was pretty sure he was directly above Shark Cave. It was only about thirty feet to the dark green swirls of water below. Paul searched the ground for any evidence that a cable or rope had recently been attached. It was just as he discovered the metal ring fastened to a nearby rock, that a voice brought him upright with a jolt.

So… it’s Aircraftsman Bolton is it?

Standing further up the ridge, with a rifle aimed directly at Paul, was Flying Officer Turlen – the CO of the base station. Just stay nice and still Bolton, until I decide what I’m going to do with you. The voice became cold and authoritative. I know exactly what you’ve been doing, and believe me – you’re not going to get away with it. Paul was confused. What did he mean? Had he seen Paul spying from the cliff top in the dark? Had he been watching the whole time that Paul had been climbing down the ridge?

Paul stiffened. Sweat was pouring from his body, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the rifle. So, it hadn’t been one of the guards at all. The morning’s secretive and bloody business had apparently been performed by the Commanding Officer himself. There wasn’t any point in reporting anything now – at least not to the CO. Paul was trying not to panic. His mind flooded with fear of Japanese snipers in the trees around him… in the rocks… No, he was on Wedge Island – there couldn’t be Japanese soldiers here. He tried to stay calm.

The CO seemed to be taking very seriously Paul’s discovery of the blood and the metal ring, and he was now making his way slowly and deliberately down the rocks towards Paul. He looked menacing and Paul took an involuntary step backwards, landing in the pool of blood. The red stain immediately started seeping across his boots.

I said ‘stay still’, and I meant it! I’m not shy about pulling this trigger. You’re certainly not in the right place this morning… are you Bolton? The voice was increasingly ominous.

There’s no need to use the gun Sir. Paul tried to sound at ease, but his mind was chaotic. The sight of the rifle and the blood at his feet had sent images of bloody corpses and gunfire whirling through his head. Paul gritted his teeth. He had to stay calm.

Everything depends on whether or not you cooperate Bolton. The CO was holding the rifle steady, but Paul could see that his knuckles were white and taut against the gun’s dark stock. A familiar knot of dread tugged at Paul’s stomach. It was the same sick feeling he’d first felt when the Japanese descended on Gili Gili.

Dear God! The irony struck Paul with chilling clarity. So many of his air force friends had been killed in New Guinea, but he had survived. Was he now to die at the hands of his own Commanding Officer back here at home?