The Stranding (37 page)

As the crowd swelled, things got worse. Soon there were more than two hundred people on the beach. Cordons had to be set up, and Taylor had to call in more staff to handle the crowd. Another tent was pitched even further back along the beach to greet new arrivals and organise them into groups. Volunteers were briefed and trained and a roster was established so they could assist the vet. But the number of people continued to burgeon and there was insufficient work to occupy them all. Yet it was difficult to turn them away. Even if they couldn’t help, people wanted to watch. The mood was anxious. Many people had strong opinions, which they believed were important and deserved to be heard. And as they arrived with all their emotions in their pockets, most of them expected to be allowed to approach the whale, to touch it. Taylor and Jimmy had to explain over and over that it was stressful for the whale to have too many people around.

In the back of her mind, Callista could hear Lex telling her that the public would expect a rescue, that they wouldn’t want the whale euthanased. And now, with all these people milling around and the media hovering with cameras and the tents that had popped up all over the beach, she wasn’t so sure about balance and objectivity anymore. How would this crowd respond if the vet said the rescue had to be abandoned? Would they all just pack up meekly and wander off home?

From outside the control tent where she was waiting to see her father, Callista could see the vet down by the whale, overseeing support operations. The tide had receded from the whale’s tail now, and its flukes lay flat and limp and half-buried in the wet sand. This morning, when she and Lex had first found the whale with the sea still washing around it, it had appeared helpless. But now it was completely marooned, like a washed-up sailing boat left high on the beach after a storm surge.

Around the whale, several people were scooping out trenches in the sticky sand. It was hard work and a good way to keep volunteers occupied, bent over, digging with their hands and piling sand up a couple of metres away from the whale to form the beginnings of a seawall. Other helpers were dousing the whale with sea water. Each time a volunteer approached with a bucket, the whale tensed and lifted its flipper to slash at the cascade of water.

Callista struggled with tears. There were too many people around being too busy. Surely the vet was aware of it. Why was he letting them go on with this?

Jimmy joined her at the back of the tent.

‘Can’t they just leave the poor thing alone?’ she said.

‘The vet would prefer it that way,’ Jimmy said. ‘But the volunteers want to help. And we’d have a riot on our hands if we kept them away. They haven’t just come to stand around.’

The whale dashed its flipper again at a volunteer. As the flipper fell, the whale emitted a deep groan.

‘Did you hear that?’ the volunteer yelled, waving excitedly. ‘It’s talking to me.’

Callista clenched her hands. ‘People have no idea, do they? Has the vet said anything about how it’s going?’

Jimmy’s clear blue eyes met hers and he smiled kindly but sadly. ‘Chances aren’t great, kiddo. You can hear it all for yourself soon. He’s giving a public address in ten minutes. Down by the volunteer tent.’

‘Should we have walked away?’

‘It doesn’t matter now.’ Jimmy gave her a hug. ‘I’d better head back. The machinery will be here soon. Probably in the middle of the vet’s address. You know how it is.’

Callista joined a cluster of people congregating at the volunteer tent where Peter Taylor was standing on a milk crate holding a loudspeaker. She felt someone reaching for her hand and turned, startled, to find Jen beside her with tears in her eyes.

‘I’m so frustrated.’ The girl’s face was wrought with tension. ‘What happened to everything today? It was going fine until all these people arrived. Now none of us can do anything and I’m going mad just hanging around watching.’

Callista nodded, gripping the girl’s hand in sympathy.

‘My dad’s on the rescue team. It’s tricky for them—juggling everyone’s need to be involved and all their emotions.’

Jen glared around at the crowd. ‘I just wish they’d all go away.’

They were interrupted by a short blare of static and then Peter Taylor’s voice over the loudspeaker.

‘Can I have your attention, everyone, please. I’m Peter Taylor from National Parks. And I’m in charge of getting this whale back in the water.’

He looked so cool and calm standing up there. But Callista knew it must be a nightmare overseeing an event like this with everybody wanting to tell you how it should be done and everyone wanting a piece of the action.

‘I have to say how impressed I am to see such a large and enthusiastic public response,’ Taylor said. ‘But I must ask for your cooperation while you’re waiting to help, otherwise our rescue won’t be successful. This is a large whale and operations are going to be difficult and risky. I know things are slow, but our biggest hold-up has been waiting for the machinery. Access to this place isn’t easy and mobilising heavy equipment on a weekend isn’t something that happens quickly. But you’ll be pleased to hear that the bulldozer is nearly through to the beach and the excavator’s just behind it. Once they arrive, we can start getting the whale in position for a return to the water when the tide comes in.’

‘When the tide comes in?’ someone yelled. ‘But isn’t that hours away?’

‘Yes,’ Taylor said. ‘And we have hours of work to do. We have to try to shift the whale onto its chest so it can breathe easier and then we need to get the excavator to work building a seawall around the whale. The idea is to build up quite a large wall. And then, when the tide comes in, we can breach it and the sea water will flood around the whale and float it off the sand.’

Questioning hands went up everywhere in the crowd, and for the briefest of moments Taylor looked harassed by the barrage of people calling out. He held up a hand to stop them.

‘Questions afterwards. The vet is going to speak to you first.’

He introduced Tim Lawton and outlined his experience. Then he passed the loudspeaker to the vet and directed him up onto the milk crate. Tim looked small and hesitant as he faced the crowd and Callista found herself hoping he’d be convincing. Everyone needed an injection of confidence at this time. Not more doubt.

Tim Lawton jiggled the loudspeaker then spoke into it tentatively, his voice quavering slightly. But the crowd waited patiently for him to clear his throat and the general mood seemed supportive.

‘Folks,’ he said, ‘it’s not a pleasant task I’ve been invited along to here today. And I’m sorry it’s going to be a long day for you all. But unfortunately nothing happens fast at whale strandings. It’s hard, because we all know that the faster we get this whale back in the water, the better his chances of swimming away. But first we have to stop and look at where this animal has come ashore. Amazing place, isn’t it? Wild and remote. The locals tell me days can go by without anyone coming here. And so we have the access problem that Peter Taylor mentioned. That’s our first obstacle.’

He switched the loudspeaker into his other hand.

‘The second problem we have to consider is our patient—a stunningly beautiful animal. Enormous, isn’t he? He’s a humpback. Subadult. He’s just nine metres, whereas a mature male should make it out to twelve or more.’ He paused. ‘Unfortunately, there’s still a lot we don’t know about strandings. We have a few theories, but most of them apply to social species, like sperm whales and pilot whales and false killers, for instance. But single stranders like this one we see less commonly. Around here, humpbacks head south with their young somewhere between September and November. That’s when they’re heading down to Antarctica where there’s lots of food available over the summer. Come this time of year, the humpbacks head back up north again to breed. But we don’t tend to see them as much when they’re going north. They tend to swim quickly and further out to sea.

‘The thing about humpbacks is that they rarely strand. They’re good coastal navigators and they’re used to moving in shallow waters close to shore. I’ve been to quite a few strandings, but I’ve never seen a live humpback strand before—although I have heard of one, more than a decade ago, up at Peregian Beach in Queensland. What you have to remember is that these events are few and far between. And so we have to be quite worried about this young humpback, and we have to ask ourselves why he’s here when he shouldn’t be.

‘There are a few possible explanations. Apparently the beach here is pretty unstable with lots of rips and gutters. So he might have screwed up his navigation and got himself into trouble in shallow water. But as I said, that’s less likely for a humpback than some other species. It’s also possible he might have been separated from his pod for some reason and got lost. Or maybe he’s sick. Unfortunately, there’s not much a vet like me can use to assess a large whale like this. I look at responsiveness, muscle tone, the condition of the skin and blowhole, that kind of thing. And I can get a few hints from blood samples. But I can’t tell much about what’s going on internally, such as what sort of condition his lungs are in, or whether he has a significant parasite load or some other serious underlying disease. I don’t even know how long he’s been stranded or how he was when he first beached. And remember, just being out of water compromises a large animal like this. So that means I’m second-guessing. It’s not a precise science in any way.’

As she listened, Callista tried to suppress the sinking feeling in her chest. If the vet didn’t know what was going on, what chance was there?

‘What I can tell you about our whale is this,’ Tim continued. ‘From what I see, he’s still in reasonable condition, even though he’s somewhat depressed. Apparently he was vocalising more frequently this morning, and we’re not hearing much from him now. So that’s not a good sign. But his skin is still in good condition, there’s no bleeding from any orifices, he’s still making attempts to move, and we’re still getting reasonable respirations from him. So, for the time being, I’m feeling cautiously optimistic.

‘We’re lucky to have such a grey day out here. That means he hasn’t overheated, and we’ve been working hard to make sure he stays nice and cool and that the sand doesn’t abrade his skin. Our trench-diggers have been doing a good job, trying to free up some space around his chest so he can breathe easier, and we’ll continue with that until release time. So now I want to thank you all for your hard work. And I hope that’s all, because I need to get back to some monitoring.’

Tim handed the loudspeaker back to Taylor, and for a long moment the crowd stood quiet, watching him walk back down the beach towards the whale. His dark head was bowed and there was weariness in his stride. Callista had never seen anybody look so lonely.

Twenty-nine

Lex was tired from lugging gear for hours. He and Jack Coffey had slipped into an easy camaraderie, mixing humorous stories and joke-telling with long comfortable silences as they slogged up and down the beach with endless loads of gear. Pack-horsing, they called it. Over the past hour they had been ferrying night-lighting equipment. They had shifted the gear without question, but they knew then that the whale might not be released by nightfall, and with increasing length of time there was a decreasing chance of success. They agreed that few of the volunteers understood the magnitude of the event they were involved in.

When Coffey was off helping with other tasks, Lex had walked a few laps of the beach with Jordi. It felt strange striding along the sand with Callista’s brother. Beside him, Lex felt like a bear hulked into his Gore-Tex. Jordi was all fly-away bones, his scrawny bare legs poking out from beneath his battered oilskin and his beard puffing over his shoulder in the wind. But he had been affable enough, and it was obvious he wasn’t happy with events on the beach and the way the rescue was full steam ahead without discussing the option of euthanasia.

Jordi had chewed the fat as they walked, gauging Lex’s opinions and then letting his own ideas slip. The whale shouldn’t be here, Jordi said. And they shouldn’t be interfering with it. Nature had already taken her course bringing the whale ashore. They should let it be, or finish it off quickly— although he understood there were complications with that. Killing whales wasn’t a straightforward task. All these people shouldn’t be here either. It annoyed him having to pussyfoot around them. The job belonged to National Parks and they should be allowed to get on with it.

He also commented on the split in the town over the whale. Plenty wanted to see it rescued, like bitch Beryl and Helen Beck. But there were some surprises in the negative camp, including Mrs Jensen. Jordi had thought she’d be a right-to-lifer, for sure. But he’d heard rumours that Beryl and Mrs Jensen were clashing head-on in the coffee tent. Sue and John Watson were a bit ambivalent, but he reckoned Sue wouldn’t want to see the whale suffering, and once she got a break out of the sausage tent she’d be a dead-set convert to the negative camp. Watson, he said, was a bit of a cold fish and wouldn’t really be fussed which way it went. It’d be better for everyone, Jordi admitted, when the bulldozer got here and a bit of action could get under way. Everyone was going stir-crazy with standing around.

It was the most Lex had ever heard Jordi say. He asked what Jimmy thought about it all, but Jordi clammed up then. All he’d say was that it was Jimmy’s job to appear neutral. Even if he wasn’t.

Lex had just dumped another load beyond the cordon when he saw Darren Beck slipping around the back of the control tent. The kid must have dodged the Parks staff and was probably trying to get a better view of the whale.

‘Oi, Darren,’ he called. ‘Over here.’

The boy looked back guiltily and slunk up like a naughty dog. Lex was surprised to see him on his own. Helen was usually so over-protective. In fact, it was surprising that she would have come here at all, especially on a Sunday. Lex hadn’t seen her among the crowd, so perhaps the kid had come along with Mrs Jensen. He put a hand on Darren’s head and wiggled his beanie.

‘How are you going?’ he asked.