St Francis Island: Chapter 3

We’re now two days into our four day tour which means there’s three days to go and that makes absolutely no sense and neither does anything else that’s about to happen. By now the only ‘shower’ I’ve had is the snorkel in the ocean the day before but I’m about to get a very comprehensive shower courtesy of mother nature. That’s still to come though, and for now I’m just desperately trying to remember that whole “red sky at night, shepherd’s delight” saying but I can’t remember what’s supposed to rhyme with “we’re all going to die”.

Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight… but we’re still all going to die…

The plan for the day is to hike out to some old ruins. They’re possibly old ruins because they’ve been hit by lightning and although we don’t know it yet, we’re about to have every chance of ending up the same way as that fucking house. And backing up a bit, what the fuck are old ruins even doing out here? A sheep farm? On this island? Seriously? Dumbest. Idea. Ever. Also, do sheep swim? Because it’s a pretty bloody long boat ride out there. Sheep. I have no words. Except I do, and here’s a bunch more of them.

So anyhow, we head out on our hike. The captain/tour guide stays behind because the weather has gotten so wild he’s worried about the boat breaking its mooring offshore and blowing away from the island. Or maybe the island blowing away from the mainland. We don’t know this at the time and it’s probably just as well. We’re not far from camp on our way out when he calls us to tell us to turn back because of the massive storm he can see on the horizon that’s about to hit. But we don’t because he can’t actually reach us as the mobile signal has apparently blown away so instead, we just go along our merry, blissfully ignorant way, walking towards something that starts to resemble that scene in Independence Day.

We walk through the shearwater nesting ground. Their nests are up to 6 feet below the ground and it’s not unlike when I lived in Cambodia and you had to pick your way through a mine field where one wrong step and you can end up six feet under. Except this time it’s just literally one foot in the grave, or a nest, not figuratively actually dead. We pick our way across the field dodging nests and did I mention there’s a massive fucking lightning storm coming our way? No? That’s because we still don’t know.

By the time we make it to the cottage we realise we’re about to get hit by one massive shit storm and decide to take cover in the ruins which involves an Australian Ninja style obstacle course to get inside over collapsed rock walls and fallen iron roofing and possibly some snakes that I can’t see but I know they’re fucking there. We all get inside, only to find a bunch of dead birds, a massive shit storm in the form of piles of bird shit about a foot high, and a mural of a man’s face that looks suspiciously like a dick and balls and it turns out Australian contemporary art is alive and well on St Francis Island. Tasmania may have MONA, but we’ve got… ah… this. It’s only now I’m pissed off I didn’t take some photos of the interior defecation decoration, but at the time, I’m more worried about shitting in my own pants than taking photos of bird shit and corpses. Rookie mistake.

Weirdly enough, we decide to quickly eat our lunch outside and that we’d rather take our chances being hit by lightning on a picturesque beach than die knee deep in bird shit. This time instead of tip toeing through the shearwater breeding ground we bee-line for the beach and back to camp where we can at least shelter from the storm under a flimsy sheet of canvas and I’m pretty sure we’re all definitely going to die.

It’s seriously the longest, loudest thunder I’ve ever heard and six hours later it’s still going strong and I’m still hiding in my swag and there’s literally no fucking way we’re leaving the next day as scheduled and I start thinking about who we’re gonna eat first. At 17, Jai, the captain’s sidekick, is the youngest so will be the most tender, but he’s skinny as fuck and hardly worth the effort. Then there’s a genuine conversation about whether we’d catch a cape barren goose or try for some fish, and Shirley, in her infinite wisdom after more years on earth than the rest of us combined, tells us the goose will take forever to cook so fish it is. It also becomes increasingly clear that in her lifetime, Shirley has in fact eaten a Noah’s Ark Buffet because every time we mention an animal, Shirley is able to tell us what it tastes like – she confirms the shearwaters, also known as ‘mutton birds’, do actually taste like mutton and if anyone’s gonna be down with eating human flesh to stay alive it’s definitely her. I start to worry every time she looks at me.

What is Shirley thinking…? Whether I’d be worth throwing on the camp fire?

Only now Ranger Shelley is getting picky about what fish we can and can’t catch and eat because we’re in a marine sanctuary and some of the fish are 100 years old and I’m back to eyeing off one of Jai’s legs before Ranger Shelley tells us there is in fact an exemption to fish in a marine sanctuary if it’s an emergency and hello, me being hungry is a fucking emergency.

For now though we have enough to eat and we’ll worry about that tomorrow so we all sit around staring at each other under what little shelter we have. Shirley tries to recall some old rhyme about the sound of thunder being God in a horse and cart (because she’s been around since before motor vehicles were invented) or something or other and I’m pretty sure it’s him drinking that stuff you have before a colonoscopy because I had one of those just a week earlier, and the hours of thunder and lightning that follow are frighteningly familiar. Despite all this I’m still stupidly vaguely optimistic that the weather is going to break and we’ll be able to leave as planned the next day and it turns out that as with most things, I am a fucking idiot and have no idea what I’m talking about and there is literally no way we’re leaving the next day.

I ask Ranger Shelley what the worst case scenario is if the weather doesn’t break for a few days thinking the coast guard will come and get us which seems quite a reasonable assumption until she just laughs and advises me there is no coast guard. So they won’t be coming and… Jai. So young and tender.

In an effort to calm my nerves because I am morbidly afraid of the ocean which may or may not have something to do with the fact my uncle went missing at sea in a storm, I say to Ranger Shelley that I know it’s not like we’re going to die trying to get back to the mainland and that I’m just afraid of how rough it will be and instead of consoling me she confirms that we could in fact die and what. the actual. fuck. Ranger Shelley?! It also explains why she is Ranger Shelley and not Social Worker Shelley or Nurse Shelley because honestly, her bedside manner fucking sucks.

I go to sleep and it rains and lightnings and thunders pretty much all night and even when morning comes up I stay in my swag because I’m so tired and honestly, where the fuck am I gonna go if I get out? I figure I’ll just stay in there til the rain breaks then make a run for the main tent where I can hear people starting to have breakfast. The howling gale must be blowing in exactly the right direction because I manage to get enough signal to text the captain and tell him I’ll come out of my sarcophagus when it stops raining and he may be great at driving boats but it turns out some discussion is required to work out what a sarcophagus is and thankfully my joke isn’t entirely wasted because some of the others know.

I run a few laps in my swag to keep myself amused, and by ‘run a few laps’ I literally mean just lay there like a mummy because I’m cuddled up with four cameras, two Gopros, a tripod, laptop, and a packet of cashews I’ve secretly been hoarding and hiding from the others, hoping everything’s stayed dry after what seems like 22 consecutive days of rain. I’m praying my electronics have survived the night but I’m mostly worried about the cashews.

Thankfully, the rain stops, we have some breakfast, and I take some photos of the various spiders that might kill us since we’ve now survived the snakes and lightning.

It’s decided we’re going to go look at a sea cave which I could not give less of a shit about at this point because really now I just want to go home as planned (but in a helicopter) even though when I look out across the ocean the waves are wild and there’s white caps everywhere and I’ve always wanted to go look at that sea cave so off we go.

We get there, and it is, in fact, a cave, by the sea. And it’s pretty cool. And I start to imagine which corner will be my ‘room’ when we’re forced to live there for the next few months and am pissed off no-one thought to bring a volleyball we could call Wilson.

After two days of trauma, that evening the weather finally starts to die down, and something miraculous happens.

YOU CAN READ CHAPTER FOUR NOW