[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Brock McCabe s place with some routine administrative request
about DVD supplies and confirmed that he d be at home. Unfor-
tunately his wife and daughters were there too. I d trip head-first
over that hurdle when I came to it. At the time of day I was
planning to hook up with Brock, there shouldn t be any problem
with the family.
I ve got to admit I drove with a bit of a spring in my step.
I wound down the windows and let the sea air pour in, nature s
own air conditioning. I had some cash in my wallet, courtesy of
Phil Barrows, and I had a good plan. I had no idea whether I d be
able to carry it out but sometimes just having the plan is enough.
221
BRIAN WESTLAKE
Early in the afternoon I drove through Coolangatta across the
border into New South Wales, to Tweed Heads. Separated by the
Tweed River, which is the state line, the twin towns are more or
less conjoined suburbs of the same Gold Coast exurban melanoma.
But they hold on proudly to their separate identities, one feature
of which is the weird time differences. Queensland, due to the
cow-milking and cane-cutting lobby, doesn t have daylight saving.
It d fade their curtains. For nearly half the year, from October through
to March, New South Wales time is one hour later than Queensland
time. When daylight saving starts in October the sun rises at about
6 am in Queensland, which becomes 5 am in New South Wales.
On the last Saturday night of October or, more precisely, at 2 am
on the Sunday everyone in New South Wales winds their clock
forwards, so they lose an hour of sleep, to go onto daylight saving
time. And Queensland is unmoved.
On the last Saturday in March it goes the other way. The New
South Wales people wind their clocks back so at 3 am it becomes
2 am again. For one night of the year, there are two 2 ams.
The last Saturday of last March I checked into the hotel of the
Twin Towns RSL and Casino. I wanted somewhere big, but most
importantly it had to have security cameras.
With a few hours to kill, I drove to the beach at Rainbow Bay
to stake it out. Most of the joint was high-rise apartment blocks.
It was more or less a viewing auditorium for the surf at Snapper
Rocks, or the Superbank. Back in 2000 they d dredged out the
Tweed River and started pumping out the sand on the north side of
the river mouth, at Snapper, which had been a popular but incon-
sistent surf break. The tonnes and tonnes of new sand created a
declining sandbank off Snapper and Greenmount so that perfect
right-handed waves would pour along the beach in almost any
222
The ENDANGERED L I ST
conditions. They broke along, rather than against, the beach, so
that boardriders could paddle out easily and pick a number of
different spots to catch their waves. Overnight, one of the world s
best surfing beaches was created. And then, this being the twenty-
first century, overnight it was spoilt. Every holidaying wombat
from America, Germany, Japan, Brazil, France, not to mention from
the rest of Australia, had to surf the Superbank. I d heard Mick
whinge about this until he made my ears bleed. He really hated
the foreigners. For all his image, Mick was a pretty xenophobic
bloke. He said he loved Aussies too much to leave any room for the
rest of the world. He didn t mind dagos and chinks if they stayed
in their own countries, but he didn t want them staying too long in
Australia, and in particular he didn t want them at the Superbank.
It wasn t because he surfed. He didn t, or not at Superbank. It was
because he reckoned any tourist day spent at the beach was one
tourist day lost to the Kangazoo.
Brock McCabe was a real surfer, unlike Mick. The Superbank
sharp in the drop but forgiving, easy, on the shoulders was the
local wave for Brock, and if he d had his way he d have gone surfing
there every day. But he was too frustrated by the crowds. They d cut
him to pieces. And when those surfer boys recognised him, it only
got worse. There s something in the air these days that has turned
people against celebrities. They like to hurt them, to assert them-
selves. It s the idea that celebrities haven t done much to earn the
richest spoils our society has to offer. Grommets slicing Brock up
in the surf were cutting him down to size. I d heard him talk about
some shocking surf-rage episodes. Once a guy followed him all the
way to the car park, pinned him against the ticket machine, and said
if he saw him in the water this side of the border again he d person-
ally send Brock s teeth so far down his throat he d need to stick his
223
BRIAN WESTLAKE
toothbrush up his a. to clean them. And Brock had been surfing there
for twenty years.
I sat on the grassy headland south of the bay at Greenmount,
thinking about Brock, about Mick, and about what I still had to do.
I felt bad about Sharpie, but not too bad. I felt really bad about Brock.
I felt guilty in advance for leaving his daughters fatherless. But what
choice did I have? I was running out of time, I was borrowing money
from my own son s medical kitty. Brock had to go. Brock was so good,
even I d hire him before I d hire me. I couldn t believe Pioneer hadn t
gone for him already. Why Glenn Mellon? Idiots. If they d gone for
Brock instead, we wouldn t have had the shark cage accident and the
whole thing wouldn t have snowballed out of control. We wouldn t
have had Ranger cooking up her plan with Deano Rudd. If they d
just gone for Brock I could have stayed on as his sidekick and life
would ve been just dandy. No real change. Idiots.
I was telling myself I should ve been killing Steam and Rout,
but then, I reminded myself, there were more idiots where they
came from. In America they grew on trees. Smart, clever, educated
children who should have been engineers and doctors but instead
wanted to s. in their own nest by working as television production
executives. This wasn t my world. I hadn t created it. I just had to
find my way within it, adapt to the terrain as an animal adapts.
Defend my family within it. It wasn t a world of my making. That s
for sure.
Having cased out Brock s house he had the best possie on
the Duranbah headland, a three-storey house in sandy Gold Coast
cement render with a bunch of reflective windows like two rows
of perfect teeth I walked around the streets. He was a motoring
enthusiast, Brock McCabe, and had a six-car garage. I d been in
there before with Mick, when Brock was showing off his Ferrari, his
224
The ENDANGERED L I ST
Aston Martin, his MG, his Bentley, his Land Rover, and his prize
possession, a Holden Racing Team Commodore touring car.  I love
the foreign cars, he d said,  but to me there s something special
about Australian. Yeah, particularly if it can go to three-one-five k s
per hour without bits falling off. That s special. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]