The Investigators by Anthony Hill

Author:Anthony Hill [Hill, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760896720
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

It took them over three weeks to find their way into the Pacific Ocean through the maze of reefs that guarded this northern coast, funnelling ever inwards from the widest part near Sandy Cape to the tip of Cape York. ‘The Labyrinth’ Captain Cook called it – ‘threading the needle’, as Matthew Flinders described it, through an embroidery of shimmering sea, bejewelled coral reef, and islands green and fringed with gold, that was as beautiful to the eye as it was treacherous for any ship sailing its tapestried surface.

For the first few days they explored the Percy Isles, first seen by Flinders from a lookout he named Mount Westall after their painter. Flinders landed in a cove at one of the islands to cut wood and fill the water casks: ‘one of the prettiest places imaginable,’ Matthew told his journal, especially at high tide when ‘the tiresome mangroves’ were submerged. So lovely, that any lingering ill tempers over the timekeepers could not long be sustained. The fishing was good, with several hauls of the seine. Turtle, too, going by the signs of fireplaces, shells and bones found on some other islands – clear evidence the coastal people came out here.

For a fortnight after leaving the Percys on 4 October they ventured forth: Matthew at the masthead, threading his needle between shoal and shadow; recognising the lumps of dead coral, like black heads protruding above the reefs; the whaleboat built in Sydney leading the way and the leadsman calling the depths. They anchored every night, to avoid Cook’s mistake of running aground on a reef in the darkness (a lesson they ignored later in the voyage). And the evening discussions at the captain’s table frequently revolved around the beauty of the corals they saw and the natural history that enabled these tiny, colourful creatures to build such a diverse and massive formation as this extraordinary chain of reefs.

‘So brilliant!’ Mr Bauer exclaimed after a day ashore. ‘It was as if I had spilt my paint box into the water and all the colours had run.’

‘And the shapes!’ added William Westall. ‘Staghorns . . . mushrooms . . . wheat sheaves . . .’

‘All imitating, beneath the surface, forms that we find on land,’ Matthew observed.

‘Though however rich the scene,’ said Lieutenant Fowler, ever the seaman, ‘I can never forget how pregnant with disaster they are for any vessel unlucky enough to strike one.’

‘Quite so.’ The captain spoke hurriedly, to remove any anxiety that might linger in the candlelight. ‘And yet I find it as interesting to contemplate how the live corals create their own habitations here in the warm seas. Do you not find it so, Mr Brown?’

The naturalist was happy to agree.

‘Indeed. As each generation dies, their bodies compress and solidify to form the white coral rock on which their heirs and successors live their own splendid lives, only to add to the growth of the reef in their turn . . .’

‘Inch by inch over the millennia,’ Matthew went

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