Heritage (60 page)

 

As Mike swam, a slow energy-conserving freestyle, his powerful flippers barely moving, he relished the sensation of the water and his sense of oneness with it. He always did. It wasn't something he analysed, but neither was it something he took for granted. He was always aware that in the water he felt as if he were in his element, as if he and the sea shared something special.

Through the surface swirl he could see the reef below, and he made a shallow dive, just about seven or eight feet, to get a clearer view.

Then that exhilarating moment when sound ceased to exist and everything stopped, even time itself. It was what he loved most about free diving. There was no echo of laboured breathing through scuba equipment, there was just him and the world under the sea. A world where colour and action abounded and drama unfolded all in breathtaking silence.

Beneath the dappled silver canopy of sun and sea, the visibility was perfect and the colours vivid. The blues and greens of the corals, the fiery reds of the sponges, the delicately wavering mauves of the anemones, all were as riotously colourful as a spring garden in full blossom. He pressurised and swam a little deeper, following the reef's terrain, through castle-like turrets where gaudily painted fish disappeared like magic, past ledges from which crayfish watched, their protruding feelers the only giveaway of their presence, down canyons where silver schools of skipjack and kingfish maintained their restless patrol.

He'd be around twenty feet now, he guessed, but no sign of the wreck. Time to go up. He stopped swimming and allowed himself to slowly drift upwards, just a gentle flick of the flippers now and then, depressurising as he went, watching the dappled silver above grow closer and closer.

When he broke surface, he heaved in a lungful of air and looked back at the
Maria Nina.
She was a good two hundred yards or so away. He must have drifted with the current. He circled back with slow, easy strokes, regaining his breath, studying the reef beneath him, conserving his energy. Perhaps, even from the surface, he'd be able to see the wreck. Given the calm conditions and the fact that she was lying at only twenty feet, surely it was possible. But try as he might, he could see no sign. Perhaps the brothers had got it wrong, he thought. He dived again, allowing himself more distance this time, he'd go with the flow of the current.

He was down about fifteen feet, once again lost in a world of silence and colour, and his attention was so focused on a vivid blue cluster of staghorn coral that he failed to notice the sinister grey shape that had appeared out of nowhere. It was the disturbed reaction of a school of silver bream that caught his attention, and he turned to see the shark gliding towards him effortlessly with no apparent movement of its body, like a robot on automatic pilot, majestic and omnipotent.

He anchored himself against the reef and watched, prepared to lunge forward in attack should the creature show any interest in him – attack was always the best form of defence. The shark was around ten feet in length. Barrel-shaped, yellow-eyed, with long gill slits and a high tail fin, it was a whaler, a dangerous species. But it paid him no attention as it passed by barely four feet away; he could have reached out and touched it.

He watched as the shark cruised a little deeper, gliding through a shallow valley in the rocks below. Perhaps it was unaware of his presence, or perhaps it was merely uninterested. He continued to admire its shadowy form as it cleared the valley and disappeared into the misty beyond.

Then the glint of something caught his eye, drawing his attention to a shape resting amongst the valley's coral growth. It was a long, cylindrical shape at odds with its surrounds, far too regular to be fashioned by nature. And, as the sun's light played teasingly through the ocean's surface above, it glinted again.

His lungs told him he needed to resurface. He had no time to examine the shape, but he knew what it was. A cannon. He'd found the site. The wreck itself must be nearby.

When he broke surface, heaving in air, he looked towards the
Maria Nina
. In his excitement he wanted to shout to the brothers, ‘It's here! I've found it!', but they were paying him no attention. Tubby was heaving a dhufish over the side and Fats, having also struck lucky, was hauling in his line.

He trod water for a minute or so, keeping himself stationary against the current, careful not to drift over the spot while he prepared himself. And when he was fully recovered, he dived again.

The moment he was beneath the surface, he spotted the telltale glint and saw the cannon nestled in its rocky valley below. But as he swam downwards, he realised that the valley wasn't a valley at all. It was the encrusted wreck of the
Batavia.

There she was, a flattened-out skeleton moulded into her grave. The rocks had hollowed out a tomb over the years, protecting her in part from the destructive forces of tide and surf, and the stern and ribs of the vessel were in an extraordinary state of preservation. He was lost in awe, it was beyond his wildest expectations. He wasn't sure what his expectations had been, but certainly not this.

Briefly, he examined the cannon. It was covered in sea growth, and he assumed it to be bronze but couldn't be certain. It was the refraction of sunlight through relatively shallow water that had lent it the deceptively metallic glint. The giant anchor nestled nearby also seemed to glint from behind its thick encrustation of barnacles. It appeared to signal a life that belonged to its past glory.

But it was the skeletal remains of the
Batavia
that he found truly overwhelming. For centuries, the Abrolhos had kept her hidden, storing her here, preserving her like a trophy, as if in her amazingly recognisable condition she was proof of their own indestructibility.

He swam over what had been the belly of the ship, aware that he must resurface, that he must maintain enough breath in order to breathe out continuously on the way up and release the air pressure in his lungs. But he wanted to remain a part of it all for just one moment longer, to savour the image. It would never be the same on a second dive.

He locked himself between two of the mighty beams that formed the skeleton of the hull and stayed motionless, feeling himself a part of the vessel. Part of a vessel that was four hundred and thirty-six years old! The thought was staggering. And even more so as he recalled the tales the crew aboard the
Pelsaert
had told him. Names flashed through his brain. Pelsaert, the commander; Jacobsz, the skipper; Cornelisz, the wealthy merchant, the leader of the mutineers who'd tortured and murdered at random. And hundreds of nameless others, soldiers, sailors, passengers – over three hundred had been on board when she'd foundered. He pictured them as he looked about the wrecked hulk that was the
Batavia.
He felt their panic and heard their screams.

He must go up, he told himself, this was foolish. His lungs were now bursting, and he was asking for problems shooting to the surface from twenty feet without depressurising. But what the hell, it wouldn't kill him, he'd wait just a moment longer.

He could see them now, their faces tormented, their screams ringing in his ears. Which voice, which face, he wondered, belonged to Jeronimus Cornelisz? Which one amongst them was the torturer, murderer, killer of children?

He stared at the faces that now came at him from every gloomy corner of the wreck. Men, women, children, terrified and tortured every one of them. He searched amongst them for the face of evil.

It was strange, his lungs were no longer at bursting point. In fact, he felt peculiarly at ease, as if he could stay for as long as he wished. As if he could breathe underwater.

It was then that the last vestige of common sense told him he was hallucinating. He was on the verge of drowning. He kicked away from the wreck and made for the surface, the voices behind him screaming for him to come back, screaming for him to save them. But the silvery glint of the sun was now screaming at him to save himself.

Closer and closer he came to the light. The sun was his life, but it was teasing him. It was so close and yet he was unable to reach it, his lungs once again bursting, panic setting in, a fist of iron clamping around his heart telling him he wasn't going to make it.

 

Tubby was keeping a watch out for the kid. He hadn't seen him for a while and he was wondering whether he should start to worry. Then he saw him break surface and breathed a sigh of relief. Silly of him to worry, the kid could swim like a fish. But his relief was short-lived. Something was wrong. The kid was clutching at his chest, gasping, his face contorted.

‘Einstein!' Tubby yelled. And, sharks or no sharks, he hurled himself into the sea.

After fulfilling her dream of performing on the London stage, Australian actress Samantha Lindsay is thrilled when she scores her first Hollywood movie role. She's to play Sarah Blackston, a character loosely based on World War II heroine Mamma Tack, an English nurse who was invaluable to the US forces and native population of the New Hebrides during the conflict in the Pacific. It's the role of a lifetime.

 

On location in Vanuatu, uncanny parallels between history and fiction emerge and Sam begins a quest for the truth. Just who was the real Mamma Tack? And what was the tragic secret that threatens to destroy people in the present day? The answers reveal not only secrets of the past but Sam's own destiny.

 

A masterful interweaving of the lives of two passionate women and two worlds,
Pacific
is Judy Nunn at her enthralling best.

Territory
is a story of the Top End and the people who dare to dwell there. Of a family who carved an empire from the escarpments of Kakadu to the Indian Ocean and defied God or Man to take it from them. Of Spitfire pilot Terence Galloway, who brings his English bride, Henrietta, home from the Battle of Britain to Bullalalla cattle station, only to be faced with the desperate defence of Darwin against the Imperial Japanese Air Force.

 

It is also a story of their sons, Malcolm and Kit, two brothers who grow up in the harsh but beautiful environment of the Northern Territory, and share a baptism of fire as young men in the jungles of war-torn Vietnam.

 

And what of the Dutch East Indies treasure ship which foundered off Western Australia in 1629? How does the
Batavia
's horrific tale of mutiny and murder touch the lives of the Galloways and other Territorians – like Foong Lee, the patriarch of the Darwin Chinese community, and Jackie Yoorunga, the famous Aboriginal stockman? What is the connection between the infamous ‘ship of death' and the Aborigines that compels a young anthropologist to discover the truth?

 

From the blazing inferno that was Darwin on 19 February 1942 to the devastation of Cyclone Tracy, from the red desert to the tropical shore,
Territory
is a mile-a-minute read from one of Australia's best loved writers.

‘A night of debauchery it was …'

Thomas Kendall stood with his grandsons beside the massive sandstone walls of Fort Macquarie. He smiled as he looked out across Sydney Cove, ‘… that night they brought the women convicts ashore …'

 

In 1783, Thomas Kendall, a naive nineteen-year-old sentenced to transportation for burglary, finds himself in Sydney Town and a new life in the wild and lawless land beneath the Southern Cross.

 

Thomas fathers a dynasty that will last beyond two hundred years. His descendants play their part in the forging of a nation, but greed and prejudice see an irreparable rift in the family which will echo through the generations. It is only when a young man reaches far into the past and rights a grievous wrong that the Kendall family can reclaim its honour.

 

Beneath the Southern Cross
is as much a story of a city as it is a family chronicle. With her uncanny ability to bring history to life in technicolour, Judy Nunn traces the fortunes of Thomas Kendall's descendants through good times and bad, two devastating wars and several social revolutions to the present day, vividly drawing the events, the ideas and issues that have made the city of Sydney and the nation of Australia what they are today.

Kalgoorlie. It grew out of the red dust of the desert over the world's richest vein of gold. Like the gold it guarded, Kalgoorlie was a magnet to anyone with a sense of adventure, anyone who could dream. People were drawn there from all over the world, settling to start afresh or to seek their fortunes. They called it
Kal;
it was a place where dreams came true or were lost forever in the dust. It could reward you or it could destroy you, but it would never let you go. You staked your claim in Kal and Kal staked its claim in you.

 

In a story as breathtaking and as sweeping as the land itself, Judy Nunn brings Kal magically to life through the lives of two families, one Australian and one Italian. From the heady early days of the gold rush to the horrors of the First World War in Gallipoli and France, to the shame and confrontation of the post-war riots,
Kal
tells the story of Australia itself and the people who forged a nation out of a harsh and unforgiving land.

 

‘A huge and sumptuous novel … absolutely unputdownable. Nunn is mistress of the old-fashioned story we beg to hear.'

Herald Sun

From the South Australian vineyards of the 1850s to mega-budget movie-making in modern-day New York,
Araluen
tells the story of one man's quest for wealth and position, and its shattering effect on succeeding generations.

 

Turn-of-the-century Sydney gaming houses … the opulence and corruption of Hollywood's golden age … the colour and excitement of the America's Cup … the relentless loneliness of the outback … Judy Nunn weaves an intricate web of characters and locations in this spellbinding saga of the Ross family and its inescapable legacy of greed and power.