Chapter Six: Wetlands Village

Chapter Six: Wetlands Village  

Forgotten by a river behind a dirt road winding through native forestland, the Australian  Seabird Rescue was once someone’s old fishing cabin, and was converted into a private rescue  center for sea turtles and seabird rehabilitation.  

After three hours on the highway heading south, we depart the gigantic chunk of the  continent known as the State of Queensland, and enter the next gigantic Australian state, known  as New South Wales.  

New South Wales is the state that contains Sydney, but that is another 16 hours south, to give  some reference. Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, is actually located so very far south, it  isn’t outlandish to drive across the next state lines on a day trip.  

As we drive, Cassidy fills me in on some details, “The rescue center is having a cleanup  day. Since they are so generous to give us some birds, I thought I’d have us stay some hours and  help clean up with them. After all, will be nice to hang out anyway after a long drive. Then we  can stop by Byron bay if there’s time before dark, on our way home.” 

Byron bay is a famous beach town of northern New South Wales, and a popular tourist  destination. I had stayed there for a long weekend during my study abroad, and remembered it  fondly. From its trendy culture, rugged, natural coastline, and good whale watching . . . oh boy  do I sound like an ad? Okay, I’ll stop. I just knew I wanted to go back, so I let Cassidy  

know I was happy for that plan.  

Eventually, we exit the highway and onto smaller roads, and soon pull onto a long winded dirt road at a random turnoff into “the bush”, as Cassidy would say, but what I’d call a 

dry eucalyptus forest. Our clunky white car clacks over one dune after another, without any  shock absorbers to prevent violent motions. I hold my chair with both arms to stabilize my  organs against the painful thrashing. 

One twist after the next, we eventually arrive, my intestines now having turned against  me in painful cramping, our cars enter a clearing with a little pond adjacent to some parked cars.  I can’t begin to explain how much I look forward to clawing my way out of this car as soon as it  can stop. 

Cassidy doesn’t stop at the obvious parking spots, though, and continues to bump us  along to the end of the road, where it draws on an endless driveway, until finally ending at a loop  by a couple of buildings. I’m finding myself pretty agitated by now.  

“Cassidy, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for bringing me, but I need to get out of this car!”  I exclaim. 

“Hmm . . . but I don’t know if we are here, is this it?” she eyes the once-hidden buildings. “I assume that means we have arrived, just go back and pull beside the other cars.” With hesitation, as we see nobody around, she complies and dumps us back down the  

unnecessarily long driveway. I am so grateful when she pulls into the dusty lot, though she is still  nervous about where we are. 

The hot sticky day mixes with the long car ride to give me noodle-legs as I bemoan our  exit, and the need to walk back up that driveway again under the hot sun. I dare not say this day  is turning out to be a great first adventure.  

When we arrive back at the buildings, approaching a shabby wooden building. We poke  around cautiously, though don’t see or hear anyone. 

“Hello?” calls Cassidy, nervously.

“Ah, G’Day!” comes an echoing voice, and stomping footsteps, as if coming from inside a  metal room. Indeed, we discover a tin shed around the back of the shabby wooden building, and  follow the sound of the voice, entering to find five people fussing in and around the large tin  storage shed. “Ah, G’day!” calls the coordinator, a woman in her mid-forties, busily delegating  dusty tasks. She stops to shake our hands with her yellow rubber gloves. Her forearm wipe sweat  off her forehead, just missing her bandana. With an outstretched thumb, she points and says,  “head around back to the freezer area, past the indoor quarantine pools.” 

Cassidy thanks her and promises that we will stick around and help clean up for a couple  hours, reminding them how grateful she is about the frozen bird samples.  “Ah, its nothin, they’re just laying around here in the freezer anyway. Good to put some use  into conservation projects.” The manager smiles. 

We follow her instructions and go around back and enter a large warehouse containing  huge vats of water with ladders. I climb the ladder to peek at two green sea turtles swimming and  circling the inside. At first, it’s silent, with only the humming of machinery. Then as we decide  we shouldn’t be here, and turn to go ask for more help, an elderly man, tall and thin, steps out  from behind a vat, as if from a strange movie.  

“Can I help you?” He comes to eye us suspiciously. He has an unusually narrow face, and  bulging eyes. I can tell from his leathery skin that he has spent much of his life outdoors,  probably doing this sort of work, wrangling pelicans, crocodiles, or the like. Maybe we shouldn’t  be here. 

A shiver going up my spine. We’re certainly in the wrong place.  

I look to Cassidy to speak first, though were both nervous. 

“Oh, hello, sir!” she says, “We are, uh, here for the, uh, sea bird specimens . . .?” She trails  off with uncertainty.  

“The what ya’ say?” he comes up close to us, his brows furrowed as his ears struggle for  understanding.  

“The, um. The, seabirds.” 

“What?” 

“Nevermind. Maybe this is the wrong place.” Cassidy repeats, we turn to leave the  warehouse. Wrong place, maybe we’ve seen something we’re not supposed to. A shiver runs up  my spine in suspicion.  

“Ah yes!” His blue eyes light up all at once as he puts his hands on our shoulders. “Yer the  girl about the Seabirds!” his whole disposition changes. 

“Sorry, my ears aren’t what they used to be!” he cackles apologetically, and hobbles further  into the warehouse. We assume we should follow him, and stay close in toe, passing the giant  blue vats. 

He stops by the warehouse wall, where we join him, and he bends by a large white meat  storage freezer. Like those found in garages, often seen in horror movies hiding human corpses.  The white top opens like a beer cooler, except he starts pulling out, one by one, ten black plastic  bags and sets them in an empty, inflated kiddy pool nearby.  

“We don’t have them well organized,” he mumbles through a heavy Aussie bush accent,  which even I can hardly understand. “You’re going to have to open them and make sure they are  the right ones.” 

Cassidy and I open the bags to find specimens. 

“Oh my, what else do you have in here?” I ask, my imagination running away with me.  Maybe there were some marsupials, like the time Cassidy found a koala in one of her bags. Then  again this is a marine rescue facility. 

“Ah, you know, all sorta things. Whatever marine life expires around here. We have heaps of  sea turtles actually . . . do you have any use for those?”  

“Naw, we just work with birds.” 

“Pity, we're probably going to toss them out to make some room in here soon.” He shakes his  head. “Way too many . . .” 

“Ah, well wait . . .” Cassidy suddenly has that spark in her eyes, which I’m learning means  she’s opening up to wilder ideas. “There is another grad student in the department who is  studying those. Maybe we can bring them to her, so she doesn’t have to come down here  herself.” 

“Yay, saving unwanted dead turtles,” I say. I didn’t like the idea of them going to waste, and  was bored by the notion of only hanging around dead birds. Maybe I just need more biodiversity  around me. 

“Thing is, my species transport permit only covers birds. But I think it will be alright if we  take them, as long as we don’t get pulled over on the way up . . .” 

“Ah, it will be fine!” I say with conviction, ready to take on the challenge. Minutes later I almost wish I hadn’t as we lug all the bags back into the musty heat and down  the city-block-long driveway to the car. It takes several trips to get them all in. The birds are  easy, fitting into two discreet styrofoam boxes. I forget how lightweight birds are, even large  birds, since their hollow bones allow them to fly. But the six icy turtles are like bowling balls and 

must each be carried with two hands. I slowly amble with one at a time, nearly dropping a few  onto my foot. 

The old bushman is stronger than he looks, and I am grateful as he lugs them, two at a time,  to the trunk with us. He has no obligation to help us at all, but that’s just the sort of graciousness  people have for each other in Australia. I suppose that's the root of why we stayed to help them  clean up. We stayed because Australia is one large neighborhood, where people help each other  out. 

At the cleanup spot, I am quick to notice the luscious green lawn sporting a couple of  camping chairs and a snack table, around which three of the five volunteers are cavorting and  admiring the view of the swampy coast and scenic mangrove trees. The volunteer’s relaxed  approach to work distinctly humorous. White herons land on the lawn to feed like common hens.  Simply gorgeous, I shake my head and laugh at how normal this splendid scene can seem here.  This place is certainly a kind of heaven for nature lovers. 

Cassidy and I are encouraged to join the other bystanders, sipping tea or coffee and chatting  over the labor at hand. Though it was lax, I should clarify that there is some sort of rotation, so  no person ever did zero percent of the work. By the end of the hour, everyone lent a hand to  some share of the work, and everyone also enjoyed a relaxing day. Turns out the more people  you have for a job, the more relaxing each one can do.  

At half past noon, at the shout of, “time for a barbie!” many of us mosey from the deck into  the kitchen for prep. Again, most of us stand around chatting while every fourth person chops  vegetables or goes out to the deck to set one large bench table.  

The lunch is tasty, but the heated discussion of Australian politics is the highlight. I  understand very little, as but it seems anyhow that everyone hates all the parties and all the 

candidates, especially the villainous Tony Abbott. It seems similar to the U.S. in that regard, many voting mostly for the avoidance of the one we hate the most, for one we hate slightly less.  As I’m with a group of environmentalists, all views are based on the keen perception of how bad  the candidate would be for the environment.  

The group informs me that Australians in general are overall anti-green and  environmentalism, and that to be called a hippie in this country is a great insult. I inform them,  that’s a very striking contrast to what we get in California, where anything “green” is now  synonymous with “good”. Even if it is a shallow trend, and industry doesn’t actually care about  the environment, that is still better than all the social stigma associated with being called “green”  in Australian. Here, the “Green Party” (just like we have in the USA) would actually do much  better if they changed their name away from the ostracized title, because people will not even  vote for them in fear of being called the greatest insult of all, a “Greenie”. 

My mind now blown and my heart heavy for the future of Australian wildlife, the old  bushman taps me on the shoulder and asks if Cassidy and I would like a short tour of the  museum room. We oblige and the leathery bushman explains the history of how the place used to  be used for fishing, but in time came to rescue injured pelicans, often as an ironic result of the  fishing. In a large cage outside, we observe a large furry bird standing in the center of the cage,  as if in a waiting room. The man brings up the same morbid point Cassidy had the other day,  involving that if the animal dies, he would end up as one of our specimens. Har har, this joke has  become overdone. 

He continues to tell an engaging story about a large pelican he had once cared for, named  Gus. At feeding time, he would toss a fish to Gus, who would hold his basket of a mouth open  wide. Gus would gulp it down, then open his maw again, expecting another. So, the old man 

would toss another fish. And Gus would whine for another one. So, he would toss him another  fish. On and on, until the man became curious to see when ol’ Gus would stop begging, and soon  he had tossed Gus the whole bucket.  

“Twenty-eight fish! Crazy as! I couldn’t believe it. He swallowed all he could, then filled up  his entire pouch, and kept begging for more! Half a fish was even coming out of his throat! It  was just too much..." The old man sighs, smiling, shaking his head. His eyes shine, sentimental  for his old friend. 

After the meal, we bid adieus to the volunteers and head back on the road. Our trunk thumps  with the bags of dead animals, making me nervous about their fate. 

“They’ll be ‘right’” waves off Cassidy, as if it’s normal. “They’re frozen, and it’s not like  they’ll fall outa the trunk.” 

She pauses and thinks for a second. “Unless . . .” 

“What?” I look at her. 

“Well, we don’t have permits for those sea turtles. See, I only have permits for the collection  of rare birds.” 

“You mentioned earlier, sorta.” I remind. “Does it really matter?” 

“OH yes!” she huffs matter of factly. “If we get pulled over, we could go to jail for having  those. It’s a big deal!” 

“Uh, okay.” I say nervously, “so, why did you pick them up then?”

“I was doing a favor for the friend!” she sounds frustrated, more at herself, and stares at the  road ahead as we continue to drive over rickety dirt roads in the lush hills. I say nothing and let the thought sink in. “But, like, it’s probably not going to happen.” “Oh, I don’t know!” she wines. Maybe she doesn’t have it all figured out after all, I begin to  worry.  

As we pull off the dirt road, and onto more mainstream asphalt roads, I can’t help but scan  car-sized enclaves in the surrounding bush for police. I know they hide where I’m from, waiting  to give tickets. Cassidy must be feeling it too. She drives quite slow. This makes me even more  nervous. “Cassidy, why are you driving so slowly!?” I say trying to keep calm.  

“In case of cops! I really don’t want to get pulled over and have to explain all this in the  trunk.” 

“That’s all well and good . . . but going too slow could be cause to pull you over! And it  makes you look suspicious!” I begin to sweat. Did it just get much hotter in here? “Just keep an eye out.” 

I voice the next thought which occurs to me, “I don’t even know what police cars in  Queensland look like! I’m assuming they don’t go with black and white like in the states!”  “What!” Cassidy belts out a nervous laugh, “They really look like that in the states? I thought  that black and white thing was just for TV shows!” 

“No, it’s real.” I grumble, “but back to the point!”  

“Here they are mostly white with striped checker patterns of blue, and orange lines around  that. Big sirens on top.” She motions a swish with her hand, then looks at me, puzzled and shakes  her head, “It says ‘Police’ on the front- you will know, it’s pretty obvious when you see one.” “Okay keep your eyes on the road!”

Worst case scenarios go through my head. If the flashing red and blue lights flash behind us,  if we had to stop the car, a blue clad officer tapping the window, Cassidy rolling it down and  giving over all her ID cards. The cop asking Cassidy all kinds of questions about her profession.  The whole thing could be entertaining at first, an exotic deep-down part of me excites, yet not  really, especially when he asks, ‘let’s take a look in your trunk’, to confirm her crazy biologist  story, of perhaps Cassidy would leak information. Or do Australian cops just do routine searches  on trunks? I play out the alternate scenarios for likelihood. He then opens the trunk, rummages  through and finds a bunch of dead birds and turtles, thinks were poachers, or just sick people,  and the lack of permit is all the excuse he needs to arrest us and lock us up.  

But the chances of this must be slim. I assure myself, even still sweating. “Also, it doesn’t matter because we aren’t in Queensland . . . we crossed into New South  Wales, remember?” 

“What?!” I shake my head in frustration. “Then why didn’t you correct me earlier and just  say what cop cars at like in New South Wales!?”  

She shrugs, still watching the road. I am bewildered at how literal she can be at times.  “They are pretty similar here, though. Just mildly different arrangement of the same patterns  and colors.” She said. 

It didn’t take long before I knew what she meant anyway. Although they looked a tad  cartoonish to my eyes, under this situation my heart nearly dropped into my chest as we soon  passed several of them by the roadside. I breathe deeply, trying to regain composure. We speed  by. They are just overseeing roadside construction. 

Our car weaves through country roads of brush and farmland that cover the North of New  South Wales. 

We make it to Byron bay. No police nosing around our trunk, and I can breathe easily for  now, that is, until the 3-hour ride in the dark home later that night.  

We decide to start with the most famous point of all, a lookout from the Byron bay  lighthouse. Many hikes end up here from town, but we are feeling lazy and decide to park at the  top, where we’d see the pinnacle view first, and hike down instead.  

“And you’re sure the trunk full of frozen corpses can wait?” I say jokingly, as I look back at  the car, as we walk away from it. The tourists nearby could never know the contents of the car  packed among them, passing for normal. “They won’t, cause a stink or leak or something . . .?” I  begin to worry about all the things that might cause the police to show up, if we left it  unattended. Maybe someone would see something odd and call them? 

“Naw, they’ll be ‘right in there,” Cassidy assures me, waving off to the trunk. “The birds take  several days left out to defrost! Don’t worry!” I’m still getting more nervous, but try to put it out  of my head as we mosey towards the elegant white lighthouse and away from the sight of the car. 

I gaze at the vast ocean from the lighthouse cliff, and spot a whale and calf breaching there  between specks of rogue white waves breaking in the heavy blue. The golden crescent of Byron  Bay Beach flanks the left side. I came here from the opposite shores of this same ocean. My fears  abate for now. 

We decide to tread down the into the bush path, where the sea-breeze fills our lungs with  salty air. It is easy to overlook the wildlife hiding here among the tangle of scrubby trees. But  being disappointed in nature doesn’t last long around Cassidy, who can always find magical  things, unknown to an untrained eye. 

“See this tree here?” She says, pointing out a thick tropical tree with broad bright green  leaves. “They conceal a kind of gem-beetle that’s only found on this tree!” she turns over a leaf  which reveals a heart-shaped, half-inch long beetle, with glittering marbled blue and orange  shell. “In the dark, they are purple and red.” Cassidy says. They are like a more exotic version of  the June bugs from back home. 

Cassidy, it is also no surprise, has the trained eye of a birdwatcher, and she quickly spots and  begins to point out dozens of native birds galore in the bush on our trek down to the beach. Even  with her pointing directly at one, I have a hard time spotting any birds. I must keep an eye on the  narrow wooden beams that make up the downstairs path. 

I find the beach is refreshing to walk on, with a pleasant breeze to cool us from the muggy  day. We observe a young couple posing for their wedding photos. The wind keeps shoving the  young bride’s hair onto her face, as she works twice as hard as the cameraman to get a good  photo.  

From the beach, we take a stroll into town where we treat ourselves to some ice cream before  heading back on the road to our state of Queensland and our fine city, Brisbane.  

Turtles in the Elevator  

I suppose you’re wondering what happened with the illegal frozen sea turtles we had with  us? The good news was, we did not get pulled over, though I was tired and had forgotten much of  that fear by the time we made it back, long after dark, to Brisbane. 

Cassidy takes the circuitous route around Brisbane river, which lets us go directly to the  bioscience building to deposit our specimens by car (instead of walking so many from home over  the river, thirty-minute walk.) Plus, the sea turtles are very heavy.  

It’s hard to believe it’s still the same day as we open the trunk to deliver our styrofoam bird  boxes and six sea turtles. The turtle species, known as hawksbill, are olive green and weigh in  between thirty and forty pounds each. 

Cassidy balances the bird box on one knee as she stacks the second and then blindly hobbles  up the stairs of the biology building.  

“Can you take my ID card and press it to the sensor?” she asks while I attempt to get six  heavy turtles wrapped in black bags from the trunk onto the ground.  

I hurry over to unlock the door, and then scurry back to my turtles. I avoid picking them up,  instead dragging all six bags at once by their tops from beside the car to the base of the stairs.  Cassidy meanwhile has gone into the building with the birds and doesn’t notice my indiscretion.  Cassidy leaves her bird box stack inside and helps me carry each of the six heavy turtle bags  from the car up the stairs, where we line up the row on the landing.  

“What’s that? Julia!” Cassidy scolds. 

One turtle’s face is protruding from the bag. Its sharp beak had poked a hole through the bag  and let the head come through during my stubborn dragging.  

“We can’t drag them, we have to carry them now, even just one by one, to stop them poking  through.”  

“Aww alright . . .” I bemoan as we take them, one by one, to the elevator and pile them  inside. We take turns lugging and then pressing the elevator button to prevent it from closing on 

them. Once all six turtle bags are in the elevator, Cassidy realizes she has forgotten the lab keys,  and runs to grab them from her car. 

“I’ll take care of the turtles and see you up there soon” I say. But I miscalculate. The doors  close with the unattended turtles still in the elevator. I scramble to press the button but it is too  late, I’m left standing and waiting for them to come back down. I pace in front of the elevator,  sweating as I nervously await the outcome. What if they are taken by someone? What if a  

cleaning crew finds them first? Finally, the elevator dings, and the doors open.  I rush in. The bags are still there, although some bags had been unsealed. It looks as if  someone stepped in with them, stole a peek at the contents, but thankfully left them here. I’m so  glad to see my turtles! Is this how parents feel about losing children in shopping malls?  “Don’t you scare me like that again!” I tell the turtles, as I pull the heavy bags again along  the floor, trying to save time before Cassidy sees what I’m doing. I look back— another turtle  face bursts through, a satisfied grin on its frozen face.