island life II

This island's quiet alright, but it's not peaceful. There's no commercial activity, but there's wind. No traffic, but there's the creaking of tree limbs and footfall of many and varied critters. There's no noisy neighbours within earshot, but Mildred Ludlow wanders at all hours.



It's a bit creeptastic really. The trees behind our house, which are at the limit of the light cast from our kitchen windows, all lean away from the prevailing south-westerlies. They're jarrah and marri, which I'm used to as the strong and upright inhabitants of this region's predominant forest. The trees behind our house though, are all contorted, wind-wracked effigies of the real thing. Oh, they're impressive enough in the daytime when their synchronised arches mimic some sylvan cathedral, but at night their limbs scribe skeletal shapes against the black velvet sky and are filled with the red glowing eyes of possums.



Neither Bean nor I are particularly superstitious or easily spooked, but sometimes we see movement in this house that just... well... isn't really there. Most of the time getting up in the middle of the night isn't a problem, but sometimes it feels like someone's watching. Waiting in the unused bedrooms off the hall...

The night before last we both woke at about 4.30am for no discernible reason. We lay speculating what it may have been that would wake us simultaneously, when I noticed an unexpected light outside our window. There was no moon and we hadn't left any house lights on, so I got up and parted the curtains... it was the interior light of our car. OK... that's odd. We hadn't used the car in 48 hours and there was no way we'd left that light on and not noticed it after unpacking and locking it after dark on Monday. It certainly wasn't apparent on Tuesday night when I'd been out on the front verandah trying for mobile 'phone reception - there's no chance I'd have missed it if it had been.

Bloody Mildred! She's become a standard joke between us now...



Mildred's known as Kitty and she's been on the island a long time. She's one of the original inhabitants and I think she's not too happy about all us johnny-come-latelies. She wanders around the island, impervious to the elements and uncaring of the hour. The rain falls right through her, the wildlife doesn't seem bothered by her at all and the wind joins her in screaming through these grey sunless days of winter. Kitty does a lot of screaming...

Back in the day, Kitty worked as domestic help for the Molloy family. She arrived on their doorstep at night in a state of high anxiety after her husband had arrived home drunk and burnt their place to the ground. The Molloys took her in and gave her a job. She was with them for a while before her symptoms began to show...

In the dead of winter in these deep, dark forests, the last thing you want is a crazy woman on crutches screaming all day and night. It was hard enough for the Molloys and Turners, Bussells and Laymans, coming to terms with a totally alien environment that spooked them enough already, without Kitty screaming her head off all through the depths of winter.



Eventually, "for her own safety" they piled her into a boat and shipped her up here to the island where her husband was tending cattle and returned to Augusta, safely out of earshot eight miles down the river. They'd bring supplies up every so often, but I doubt they ever stayed very long. Three months after recording Kitty's departure from her house, Georgiana Molloy wrote:

"Kitty died on the island in a most lamentable state, totally deranged and unapproachable saving by her husband, from the disease which the climate made more offensive. Her funeral duties I was necessitated to conduct. She had to be buried by torchlight. Her poor frame was so discomposed that it made two of the bearers ill for some days"



Holy crap! No wonder we find it hard to maintain our composure on some of these quiet, grey days of early winter. We've gotta get off this freaking island...