Skins Read Free

Land.’
    â€˜What? There ain’t nothing at the Sound?’
    Jem shook his head slowly and his hair fell over his forehead. He flicked it back.
    â€˜Me dad … we done a bit of thatching and that. But it ain’t enough to feed us.’
    â€˜I heard they was paying good money in the west.’
    â€˜When there’s work,’ said Jem. ‘But it ain’t often and people stopped coming. Me dad he was mad when we got here. It ain’t how it’s supposed to be.’
    Small waves rolled over the point, swirled onto the sand in front of them and then retreated, leaving behind little bracelets of foam. Manning spat a lump of tobacco-stained phlegm onto the rock where it lay glistening. He wondered what they had expected.
    â€˜What about the women?’
    â€˜They’re me sisters.’
    Manning turned to him and pursed his lips. They were black at the corners.
    â€˜They taken?’
    â€˜Jansen’s got one of them.’
    â€˜And the other one?’
    â€˜She’s married.’

January 1886
    I want to speak to you. To tell you what happened after you left. I had a daughter. Called Mary, after you. I heard you died somewhere in Sydney. I had lost you before then though. I wish we could go back to the island. We didn’t know that it would change everything. Since then the years have stretched thinly like a rubber band pulled tight. The days are shorter and harder. I want to spring back to the beginning.
    I am alone. Except for George. He is my fourth husband. He never comes into my room. He listens on the landing. There is no one left. Our sisters, Henrietta and Caroline, married and left with their husbands. I have not heard of them for many years now. And our parents and our brothers are dead.
    Do you remember the day we sailed? When I close my eyes I hear the swell of the sea slapping the side of the boat as the breeze pushes us along. I see too the long dark tentacles of cloud stretching across the sky and smothering our sun.
    Middle Island 1835, Dorothea Newell
    Dorothea knew it would be safer on the mainland than on some island in the middle of nowhere. Not that it made any difference. She and her sister Mary would have to do what everyone else did.
    She saw how every time the swell rolled around the point and broke over the wreck of the Mountaineer , the sea claimed a little more of the damaged vessel. She felt heavy with dread at the thought of leaving the narrow beach, defined by smooth, steep rock on either side, in a small whaleboat. The natives had been friendly, showing them the freshwater lake behind the sandhill and how to dig for the root of an edible reed. But Captain Jansen wanted to leave. He said there were too many of them for the whaleboat to make it to the Sound. They would leave for an island where there was a sealer’s camp. It was to the east not far from the coast. Jansen said the sealer had a large whaleboat and supplies and he could help them return to the Sound. Dorothea watched his mouth open and close as he spoke. She felt like a wooden doll that was being worked by an unseen hand. Her sister too was stultified by fear. They watched the men load the whaleboat with casks of water and what was left of the hard biscuit. The kegs of flour and brandy that had been taken from the wreck before the tide came in were placed in the middle and slightly to the front of the boat for balance. Two men went back up the beach for the sail, which had been their shelter in the corner of the bay. She and her sister were told to get in. They helped each other. The sail was pulled up the mast and they rowed past the steep headland and out into the open sea where the canvas caught the wind.

    The boat slid into the deep troughs of the swell. It was like being in a valley of the sea where at the bottom there was no horizon. Dorothea’s stomach felt as though it was full of foam. She wondered if the whaleboat would come up the other side before a wave