Tears of the Moon Read online

  Lily stirred, feeling the plane begin its descent into Darwin. Stepping from the cool interior of the plane, the blanket of wet warm air enveloped her body and made her think of Asia. The straggly palms, the blindingly bright sunshine, and the smiling man in shorts, long socks and crisp short-sleeved white shirt told her she was in the north. She smiled back at him. ‘You’ll find your bags over on the left,’ he told her.

  ‘I hope not,’ grinned Lily. ‘They’re supposed to go on to Broome.’

  ‘Never know your luck, luv. They might too.’

  She rechecked her flight departure time then picked up a taxi and asked for the museum.

  ‘Great exhibition there. Nice building too. You’ll like it. The bureaucrats got it right this time. For a change,’ the driver commented with some cynicism.

  He dropped her at a building embraced by shrubs and greenery on a headland near Mindil Beach. As soon as she walked through the glass doors a big display of Aboriginal wood carvings from islands north of Darwin and Arnhem Land attracted her attention and she found herself instantly captivated by the mysterious yet exciting cultural experience. There was something very spiritual about the carvings and the ochre-coloured designs.

  Nearby was a huge exhibition of Aboriginal art from many parts of north Australia, works on bark and canvas in styles that owed nothing to Western art but much to an ancient culture and an almost incomprehensible spiritual world called the Dreamtime. As she wandered through the gallery, she felt a curious and exciting empathy with the work, although she didn’t actually understand it.

  An arrow and a sign reading ‘Maritime Museum’ caught her eye and broke the trance-like state that she found herself in as she wandered through the Aboriginal display. She quickened her step and soon found herself in a gallery overlooking a collection of sailing craft unlike any she had seen in her life. There were the dugout and bark canoes of the Aborigines, tiny boats with odd-shaped sails and huge trading praus from the islands of Indonesia, a Vietnamese refugee boat, and outrigger canoes from Papua New Guinea. But what dominated the exhibition took her breath away.

  It was a sparkling white pearling lugger with all sails rigged. Beside it was a display of an old pearl-diver’s suit with bulbous metal helmet. Suddenly she found herself thinking of the dashing seafarer whose photo she’d brought with her from her mother’s bag. She could just see him beside the helm of the lugger and the imagery brought a soft smile to her face. For several minutes she took in every detail of the boat and ran her hands along the curving lines of the hull.

  ‘Beautiful,’ she whispered, ‘just beautiful.’

  From other exhibitions she learned that for centuries foreign ships had been visiting the northern waters and shores of Australia, long before Englishman, Captain James Cook, had laid eyes on the east coast of Australia. Golden-skinned men from Macassar had made this journey each December, sailing their praus on the north-west monsoon to trade cloth, metal tools, tobacco and rice for trepang and turtle shell. The dried trepang, sometimes called bêche-de-mer or sea slugs, were sold for a great profit to Chinese merchants for use in medicines as well as being a delicacy.

  For several months these archipelago men lived, laboured and traded with the local tribes before returning when the south-east winds began.

  The traders and seafarers who sailed with the monsoon winds were not settlers or imperialists. They were simple traders from the Spice Islands of the archipelago across the Timor Sea. So long as they observed the long-established cultural and trading customs, they were welcome visitors. Less welcome were the occasional off-course Portuguese and Dutch mariners cursing their navigational error of coming too far east from the Cape of Good Hope before turning north to their fortressed trading posts throughout the Malay world. If, through misfortune or need for fresh water and food they did go ashore, they usually fought with the local tribes and there was much loss of life on both sides.

  Lily looked at her watch, took one last look at the lugger, then strode quickly to the reception desk to ask where she could find out more about pearling. An obliging young woman telephoned for a taxi after explaining Lily should visit the pearling museum in the wharf precinct in the centre of the city.

  This time the taxi deposited her outside an old shed on the harbour below the steep bluff on which the city heart of Darwin had been built. She paid her five dollars and walked into what seemed to be a small dark cinema.

  Fluorescent blue fights shone through large aquariums, the hissing and gushing of air inhaled and expelled with a gurgle of bubbles through an air hose came over the PA system. A small walk-in cave shaped like a half section of a diving helmet housed more exhibits and the glass viewing panel looked into a video screen showing underwater scenes of old-style pearl diving. A video played on a large screen telling the story of modern pearl farming. Panels of spotlit coloured photos showed needles being slipped into the muscle of oysters, followed by open shells exposing their wet and glistening pearls and finally, the fabulous pieces of princely priced pearl jewellery which could be seen in international jewellery stores.

  Lily was more interested in the early pearling days and stared at the sepia photos, the newspaper cuttings and the bits of diving equipment, the tools of the pearl ‘peeler’ and a selection of graded pearls displayed in a glass case. Then, in a dim corner, she saw part of the hull of a small lugger. Though it had no rigging, it showed the neat construction.

  Photos of this and similar luggers showed decks heaped with mother-of-pearl shell, dark-skinned crews and the Japanese divers, smiling over the brass-ringed neck of their bulky canvas diving suits and cradling their big metal helmets. Lily could almost smell the coir rope, tar and saltiness of the sea.

  A voice beside her and a strong smell of tobacco caused her to turn and confront a burly man in a navy shirt with a badge on the pocket which read ‘Dave’.

  ‘You interested in all this?’ he asked genially.

  ‘Yes, I am. Do you work here?’

  ‘Yep. Ask me anything you want.’

  Lily smiled and wondered what he’d say if she asked, ‘Tell me who my family are,’ but instead she said, ‘I’m on my way to Broome, so thought I’d do a bit of homework.’

  ‘You on the three o’clock flight, eh? Well, this is a good place to pass the time. So you’re off to Broome? I lived there for a bit, worked for a shipwright, did a bit of this and that, then went to one of the big pearl farms. All different now compared to the old days.’ He paused to reflect on some of the photographs. ‘Tough life then. A lot of the romance has gone out of pearling now, it’s just another business. Mind you, there’s still some intrigue and in-fighting. Someone gets a new process and then they’re all on to it. Gangs raid the remote pearl farms at night. Those big Broome pearls fetch unbelievable prices overseas. Hundred thousand dollars a strand, some of them. So, who’s your family? Small place, Broome, I might know them.’

  ‘I doubt it, they’re all gone now. Dead and gone.’ Lily changed the subject. ‘Is there much history of the old days still left in Broome?’

  ‘Thanks to Lord McAlpine, some of the old buildings—Chinatown, the open air cinema—have been saved. Too bad other developers and outsiders who move in on a small town don’t have the same attitude. If you want to find old Broome, all you got to do is smell the mangroves, walk on broken shells and look at the wrecks of the old flying boats when the tide is out. Wander round the shore and you’re right back in the old days. But take a good look at this lugger . . . none of them around any more.’

  Lily was starting to feel claustrophobic in the small dark museum where the amplified sound of air bubbles was making her feel light-headed.

  ‘Thanks for your help, Dave, I think I’ll go down to a hotel and have a sandwich before heading back to the airport.’

  ‘Try the Hotel Darwin,’ he suggested with enthusiasm. ‘My favourite watering hole and, like this old boat, a blast from the past.’

  Lily laughed. ‘Thanks for the tip,’ and she turned to leave.

  Dave escorted her to the door gushing with advice all the way. It was with relief that she stepped out into the glare and heat of the midday sun. She put on her sunglasses and walked slowly to the steps that wound up the bluff to the business district, all the way longing for a cold lager and a sandwich in the coolness of the old-style hotel.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was dusk when the plane landed at Broome, and as she walked across the tarmac, Lily felt the last of the day’s warmth beginning to fade into the tropical evening coolness.

  The little courtesy bus was driven by an affable young man who doubled as bartender and receptionist at the Continental Hotel. In the brief research she’d done on Broome she recalled photographs of the grand old ‘Conti’ in its heyday in the early 1900s. But as they turned into the entrance, Lily thought that the long, low buildings looked more sixties motel than colonial splendour. The Raffles it wasn’t, but what it lacked in grandness it made up for with friendly smiles and immediate chatty intimacy. Her room was plain but comfortable, and she turned on the fan rather than the air-conditioning. Lily was glad the room opened on to a private bougainvillea screened garden with a small table and chair.

  Lily let down her long, thick dark hair, brushed it, touched up her lipstick and headed for the Lugger Bar. Another blast from the past, she thought with a grin.

  But there was no Long Bar and not a Gin Sling in sight here. It was RSL decor, practical and familiar to every drinker in Australia. However it was quiet, with few customers, and she felt no qualms at being the only woman in the room. She ordered a glass of wine and wandered around looking at the large framed photographs on the walls. This was old Broome—luggers lined up alongside the long jetty, lying on their side in the low tide mud; Japanese divers in ball
oon-like suits, metal helmet held under an arm; Asian labourers sitting beside great mounds of mother-of-pearl, shelling and sorting.

  Lily had an overwhelming longing to be a part of that romantic era. How she wished the Ansett flight had whisked her to the Broome of the early 1900s. Even though she’d seen nothing of the place, Lily felt a tug at her emotions simply by being here and hoped she wasn’t going to be disappointed by finding the past had been erased and that her private quest would reach a dead end.

  A sun-shrivelled, grey-headed, nuggetty little man in a faded T-shirt commemorating a decade past ‘Fun Run’, swung around on his bar stool and addressed her. ‘Them were the days, girlie. This was a wild town in the twenties.’

  Lily smiled slightly at being called ‘girlie’. Political correctness obviously didn’t have much currency in Broome. ‘I bet you’re a local,’ she said sweetly.

  ‘Yeah, I guess I sorta qualify now.’ His face fractured into a hundred wrinkles as he smiled at her.

  ‘Have you been here a long time?’ Lily walked to the bar past the empty mock Tudor-style tables and joined the old man.

  ‘Too long. Everyone comes to Broome for a season or two, they say, then never leave. I always planned to move on after I’d made enough moolah. Never did. Ended up retiring to a home in Perth a few years back. Couldn’t hack it. Rather live in a shack here. So, you on holidays?’

  ‘In a way. I’m doing a bit of research, looking back at the old days, the old families.’

  ‘Go on!’ he said with genuine surprise. ‘What for?’

  Lily sipped her wine while she thought of an answer. ‘I might write something. Or uncover a family tree.’

  ‘More likely find a skeleton or two in the closet round these parts,’ winked the old-timer. ‘So where’re you going to start?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Where would you suggest?’

  ‘You’d be best going to the hysterical society. It’s just down the road. Never been there meself.’

  Lily laughed. ‘Is it a big historical society?’

  ‘It’s in the old Customs House. Only a small joint, but they might have stuff you’re after. There ain’t anywhere else,’ said the man finishing his drink and looking expectantly at Lily.

  She took the hint and ordered a round. ‘I’m Lily Barton.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘Clancy. Well, me real name is Howard. But I like poetry, hence the moniker.’

  ‘You read poetry?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he shrugged, then added with obvious enthusiasm, ‘The stuff I make up is better.’

  Lily spoke quickly to divert an offer to quote his original works. ‘So tell me, are there any old-timers around I could talk to, divers or some of the old families?’

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ grinned Clancy. ‘Listen, there are some old-time families around, most of them are gettin’ on and they keep to themselves. They’re a mixed bunch. Mrs Fong might yarn to you, her old man was a diver. She used ta clean houses for the rich white ladies when she was young. The Fongs are pretty successful business folk now. The working pearl people here are fairly new. I mean it depends a lot on what you’re lookin’ for.’

  Lily fished in her shoulder bag for the old photograph of the man in white and showed it to Clancy. The barman and the other drinkers gathered around. ‘He’s part of my past but I don’t know anything about him.’

  They studied the picture.

  ‘Well it’s not the Prime Minister,’ said Clancy with a grin. ‘Dunno who it could be. Before my time.’

  The others nodded agreement and Lily put the photograph back in her bag.

  The conversation rambled on with the other barflies joining in, entertaining Lily with some highly improbable stories of the past which she enjoyed immensely. Hunger and tiredness eventually forced her to bid them goodnight.

  ‘My day has been three hours longer than yours, thanks to time zones,’ she explained to stop yet another round of drinks being ordered. ‘You’ve all been great company. I’m sure we’ll have a chance to chat again.’

  ‘Yeah, that’d be great. Can always find us around the bar here most evenings,’ said Clancy warmly.

  The men watched appreciatively as the slim figure disappeared across the darkened lawns.

  ‘Good lookin’ bird. What do you ’spose she’s after?’ pondered Clancy aloud.

  ‘Hard to say,’ replied the barman. ‘She’s booked in for a couple of weeks, though.’

  The next morning, Lily ate breakfast on her little patio hung with brilliant bougainvillea. A note apologised that there were no croissants, so muffins were substituted and the Australian newspaper wouldn’t arrive until the late morning flight. An array of brochures of ‘Things To Do in Broome and the Kimberleys’ had been provided instead. She fiddled with the bedside radio to find a news bulletin but gave up and drank her tea before it got cold.

  Later, dressed in jeans and a shirt, Lily asked at the front desk for directions to the Historical Society, but the girl looked blank.

  ‘It’s in the old Customs House, I think,’ said Lily.

  ‘Oh, that’s in the Seaview Shopping Centre, two blocks down the road,’ she pointed.

  Lily stepped into warm air and a caressing breeze. She stopped and caught her breath as she gazed across the road at the expanse of Roebuck Bay. The water lapped at the edge of stubby mangroves where a few rusty rocks jutted from the extraordinary turquoise sea. She stood, transfixed, wondering how long it would take to get used to this amazing colour. Milky patches gave the water a solid appearance and in contrast the clearness of the blue sky appeared translucent.

  She walked on and found herself stopping and staring once again as she looked at a remnant of the past. This time she couldn’t immediately understand what had so grabbed her attention. It was merely a closed small store that faced the sea. Its rusting tin was the blood red of the rocks, its walls were thin and full of holes and through gaps and windows could be seen piles of rotting oyster baskets, nets and ropes. She walked around the small lonely building and took a photo, unsure of why the place intrigued her so.

  The little white wooden building that now housed the Historical Society bore a neat little plaque which gave details of its past life as the Customs House. Diving gear, pumps from luggers and pioneer household items were scattered in the small front garden. Along the small verandah were glass-topped display cases, locked, but trustingly left to public view.

  Lily went to the front door with its large sign, AIR-CONDITIONED, ENTER, then she saw a smaller handwritten note, CLOSED, RE-OPEN IN A COUPLE OF DAYS. Lily was faintly bemused, wondering how long the sign had been there and how she could get access to the museum despite the sign. She walked back to the Continental and rang the car rental place they had recommended.

  In a short time a cheerful woman arrived in a small light four-wheel drive. They drove back to the tin shed that served as an office, the woman telling Lily her life story and how her marriage had improved immeasurably since moving from the east coast to Broome. Lily pondered on the possible influence of geography on marriage.

  Soon after a waving of her credit card, Lily found herself driving out on a dusty road, cruising past small bungalows shrouded in tropical plants. She stopped at the Tourist Information Centre. Inside, she asked about other sources of information on the old days, pointing out that the Historical Society was closed.

  ‘Oh yes, the woman who runs it has family problems and the other volunteer lady is away. What sort of stuff do you want to know about?’ asked the helpful girl behind the desk.

  Lily had her story down pat. When she threw in a reference to the intriguing history of the first traders to the coast and her fascination with the very early days, the tourism director snapped her fingers. ‘Hey. If you can get up the coast, you might find this place interesting. Your team’ll need a four-wheel drive, but it’s dry and a quiet time of year—you shouldn’t have any trouble.’ She fished around for a map.

  ‘Where’s that?’ asked Lily.