Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [38]
Finding a boat and a captain willing to forgo usual business to take off for a month’s expedition up what many would consider to be the most dangerous coast in Australia, a place that boasts the second highest tidal shifts in the world after Canada’s Bay of Fundy, had proven a difficult challenge even for Rodney. Normally employed for fishing charters, the Nordon left many things to be desired, most notable of which was a complete lack of internal climate control. In the fierce Australian sun, the only relief from the boat’s stifling interior was to be had out on deck while the boat was in motion. And at times, various members of the expedition found the only way they could get any rest was to move outside and sleep on deck.
Brent’s footage of visiting whale sharks at Ningaloo was stunning (Eugenie Clark and a formal National Geographic crew arrived there several weeks after us), and the conditions on board notwithstanding, everyone was in good spirits as we set a course northward along the coast. We paused to visit the Montebello Islands where the British had carried out nuclear weapons’ testing in the 1950s. Rodney and I were the only ones willing to dive there. As I recall, this had something to do with a proprietary concern among the younger members of the expedition regarding the future viability of eggs and sperm. Those who didn’t dive missed little. Rodney and I encountered virtually no life on the bomb-blasted seafloor save for the occasional enormous and isolated oyster. All through the following week, these gargantuan shellfish provided excellent fodder for innumerable jokes focusing on radioactive mutant oysters. Also for a pot of Rodney’s fresh oyster stew, which—I regret to say—came out awful. At least, no one glowed following consumption.
Continuing on up the coast, we stopped at isolated towns and outposts to take on fresh water and fuel. I remember a bikini-clad Robbie and her friend, a distance runner from Virginia, pausing on an industrial dock to take an extended outdoor freshwater shower. This unassuming girlish interlude succeeded in bringing a sizable commercial operation to a complete halt as every goggle-eyed employee within eyeball range (and a couple who hurriedly managed to locate binoculars) stopped everything they were doing to watch.
Eventually, we reached Broome, the only community of any size on the entire Kimberley coast, where we laid over for a couple of days to rest and reprovision for the remainder of the journey north.
Here, I must beg your indulgence for a moment as I find myself compelled to relate an anecdote involving ice cream.
Old-town Broome was largely deserted on the morning I decided to take a sightseeing stroll. Every other member of the expedition was at a local hotel, luxuriating in the presence of air-conditioned rooms and ice and other modern amenities. I found myself wandering alone among the single-story buildings, passed the closed Paspaley pearl showroom, and in the simmering heat eventually found myself confronting a mirage. It had to be a mirage.
But this mirage was open for business.
It was a small establishment, nothing fancy, with a windowless entrance opening directly onto the street. An ice cream shop. Had it been the hottest Hollywood starlet-of-the-moment half-closing her eyes and beckoning to me with pursed lips, I could not have made a more determined beeline for it.
As the owner, a short but stout sunburned Aussie, waited patiently, I forced myself to take time enough to thoroughly peruse the neatly printed menu board that hung from the ceiling just inside the unshuttered opening.
“You’ve got coffee ice cream?”
“Yes,” he replied, gracefully forbearing from chiding me for vocalizing the obvious.
“Could I get a coffee milk shake? Double-thick,” I remembered to add. In Australia, if you ask for a milk shake, you get a drink made only