Where Cuckoos Call Page 9

  Now, it looked as if his chances of becoming an All Black were zero. Instead, it was more likely he would never play top rugby again.

  I felt sick watching the rest of the game. I couldn’t stop thinking about the image of Cole walking off in disgrace. The booing was still ringing in my ears. To make it worse, the Australians scored two tries and won the game.

  The following few days were horrible. Cole was blamed for everything. The only thing he said was at a news conference soon after the game. ‘I did not do anything in that ruck. My hands did not go anywhere near a player’s eyes, either accidentally or intentionally. I did nothing wrong.’ From then on he wouldn’t speak to reporters, and that just made things worse because they took that as a sign of guilt.

  When things started to cool down, I sent him a long email telling him about Vanuatu: about Sarah-Lee and our first meeting, the snorkelling in amongst the dugong do, Bigmouth and the volcano—everything. I figured he probably needed something to divert his thoughts for a while. I did start to tell him about the bikers, but deleted it as I thought it might be too gloomy. At the end I told him I believed he didn’t do it and he shouldn’t give up his Goal.

  His reply came almost immediately.

  Kia ora Ben,

  Thanks for your email. It was good to hear that you’ve been enjoying yourself.

  As you know, things haven’t been too good with me. Yet I’m sure I’ll get over it eventually. No matter what the media might say, I know I did nothing wrong, and that’s the important thing. Plus the other team members have been very supportive. They all know that the same thing could happen to them at any time.

  No, I have not given up on The Goal, though reaching it may now be a lot further into the future than I had hoped.

  Thanks again for your support.

  Cole

  This email told me much more than what was said in words. It was the first he had ever sent without a joke, and that showed how much he was hurting. Just as well I hadn’t included the stuff about the bikers. He had enough to worry about without hearing my problems.

  I wanted to show Sarah-Lee everything that Mansfield Bay had to offer. Unfortunately, with the bikers around, that was not possible. Several times I thought of taking her up to Table Rock, except it would have been too dangerous. We couldn’t take the dogs or the tractor, and the thought of being on top of the rock when Yamaha and the gang arrived scared me to death.

  However, I was determined to show her the tuatara on Lizard Island, and we finally managed it on her last full day. I don’t know who named Lizard Island, but they didn’t know much about reptiles. The reptiles are tuatara, which are nothing like lizards. Tuatara were around on this planet for a hundred million years before lizards evolved.

  Before Coromandel became a big holiday place, most of the small islands had tuatara. Now, very few of them do. The combination of dogs, rats, and wildlife smugglers has removed most of them. Lizard Island is different. It is too small to show on most maps and is difficult to reach. The tide and sea have to be just right. Although I was unhappy with the conditions, we still decided to go—Sarah-Lee was so excited about seeing them.

  I took the aluminium dinghy down to the spit in the calf pen. The trick to getting onto the island is to row across the mouth of the estuary and then approach the island from the north. It’s no good heading straight for it, as that side of the island is all rocks covered with a tangle of driftwood. It seems that anything that washes into the estuary ends up on Lizard Island.

  On the north side there is a small beach about two metres wide, just enough for the dinghy to land—that’s if the sea is gentle. There was quite a swell coming in on that day. Rowing into it was easy, but when we turned to get to the beach the boat rocked wildly. If Sarah-Lee hadn’t been with me, I would have abandoned the trip. As it turned out, I managed to get onto the little beach with only a few scrapes with the rocks. None of them caused any great damage.

  A sunny winter’s morning is a good time to view tuatara, as they like to sit in the sun, raising their temperature from the cold of the night. As we climbed to the top we heard them scampering back to their burrows. At the summit we sat and waited. Five, ten minutes passed before the first one reappeared to take its position on a small rock. One by one the others followed until there were about thirty of various sizes soaking up the solar energy. There were more than I had ever seen before. They seemed to be thriving. Yet, it made me think of what might happen after the development. Lots of people would want to come to see them, and that was sure to cause problems.

  The return trip was uneventful. When we were back in Treetops, Sarah-Lee went all serious on me. ‘Ben,’ she said sternly, ‘you have got to do something about all of this.’

  ‘What?’ I said in surprise. ‘Treetops? We’ve tidied it all and it looks great. What else is there to do?’

  ‘Not this,’ she said crossly. ‘The bay and the development. You have to do something about it.’

  I shrugged and sighed. It was not a discussion I wanted to have on our last whole day together.

  When Sarah-Lee saw my reaction, she got mad. ‘What is it with you New Zealanders? You have the most beautiful country in the world—all these wonderful creatures—and you don’t seem to care about what happens to it.’

  ‘I care,’ I said, starting to get angry.

  ‘Then why don’t you show it?’

  ‘I’m trying to. It’s just not easy with Dad being sick and all that.’

  ‘Then forget about trying to convince him. Do something else. Do something that will shock people. Do something that will make people listen.’

  ‘What?’

  She thought for a while, choosing her words: ‘Have you heard of ecoterrorism?’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Ecoterrorism: committing a crime to save the environment.’

  ‘I know what it is,’ I said, angrily. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  She saw my anger and softened her words. ‘I don’t know, but there must be something we can do. It doesn’t have to be a crime.’

  I thought for a moment before replying. ‘The problem is that anything I do will hurt my parents. Would you want me to do that?’

  She turned and stared out the window. ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘But there has to be some way to stop it.’ Even though her voice was controlled, I could sense the anger beneath and her eyes glistened with tears. ‘They cannot wreck this place. It is too special.’ Then she turned and climbed from the tree. A while later I saw her striding along the beach, as if she had something to do. I stayed in Treetops, feeling annoyed and dejected. In my dreaming I had planned for quite a different ending to our holiday, but now…

  I didn’t see her again until dinnertime and had no idea what she’d got up to in the meantime. The next day we parted, much the same as we had met: two kids with the same age and interests, and little else. Yet throughout it all, I had always hoped there might be something more.

  Chapter 15

  A weather bomb is like a tropical cyclone except it develops faster and outside the tropics. This one formed just north of New Zealand and aimed itself at Mansfield Bay. We had some warning: just enough to tie down the dog cage and anything else that might fly around.

  We’re used to storms on the Coromandel Peninsula. We get them every winter, and in summer we often get the remnants of tropical cyclones. But weather bombs are something else. This one was horrible. The rainfall was the most frightening. It was like somebody was pouring a huge bucket of water over the house. From my bedroom I couldn’t see the trees that were ten metres away.

  It continued into the night, with rain pounding so loudly on the roof that it was impossible to sleep. Sometime in the early morning the rain stopped and the wind dropped. When I looked out my window in the morning, I found a stream running past my window. There should be no streams near our house, yet the rain had been so heavy that the water had found new ways to flow downhill, and one of those was through our garden. The hills we
re scarred with slips and mud slides. It would take years for nature to repair what the storm had done in only eight hours.

  Down at the beach the damage could have been worse. The winds had been mainly offshore, which kept the waves away. While there was a big swell coming in now, the sand spit looked like it would be OK. The worst damage was at the other end of the beach. Two huge kauri logs had washed down from the hills. These were leftovers from the earlier logging days. I knew of at least five up in the bush. Each had been trimmed ready for shipping out, yet somehow had been forgotten. A hundred years later they were all rotten, and two were blocking our stream, forming a lake.

  Dad came down while I was wondering what to do.

  ‘This is just what I thought might happen,’ he said grimly. ‘The others will come down sometime too.’

  ‘What are we going to do with them?’

  ‘Get them out of the stream to begin with.’

  I went to get the tractor while Dad searched for chains. The tractor shed had taken a battering. The centre pole had shifted some more and the roof was just clear of the roll bar. If it slipped much more, the whole roof would come down.

  It took the rest of the morning to shift those logs. We dragged each of them up the track and rolled them onto the grass edge. Dad took a hammer out of the tractor toolbox and started attacking the rot. He found some good timber, but most of it was a black mess. They were rubbish, and sometime we had to find a way of getting rid of them.

  We returned to the stream. The new ‘lake’ had almost drained away, and we could see the damage that had been done by the raging water. The clay bank had been eaten away, exposing more of the roots of the kahikatea. Looking closer, I saw that the brown stain had gone, leaving freshly exposed clay. The Taupo ash layer was even more obvious. Below it a brown piece of rock was poking out. I moved forward to remove it.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Dad urgently. ‘Have a look at this.’ He was pointing to a similar piece lying in the stream. He bent down and picked it up. After looking at it for a moment he handed it to me. ‘It looks like a piece off a clay plant pot.’

  I studied it with growing excitement. I had seen a piece like this in Vanuatu. The pattern was not the same, yet there was no mistaking what it was.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.

  Dad shook his head.

  ‘It’s Lapita pottery. The Lapita people lived in the Pacific a couple of thousand years back.’

  ‘Is it? Then what’s it doing here?’

  ‘Maybe the Lapita people were here?’

  He looked at me. ‘That’s a big step to take, Ben.’

  We then studied the bank more closely. The other piece was not exposed enough to see any pattern, though it looked to be the same. Nearby was a hole that matched the piece we had. That was where it had fallen from.

  ‘Right,’ said Dad. ‘I’m going to give Bill a call. If this is for real, then there could be a problem with our deal.’

  Bill Wiltshire arrived by helicopter mid-afternoon. With him was a Professor Waghorn. We walked them down to the stream and the professor went to work. Dad, Bill, Peg and I watched as the bank was photographed from every possible angle. Waghorn gave us a running commentary of what he was doing. He sounded so much like the TV image of a professor that I had trouble not laughing.

  Basically he repeated what Sarah-Lee had said about the Taupo ash layer. His excitement was not only about discovering the Lapita, but about its location below the ash layer. I had the feeling he was already anticipating the fame this discovery might bring.

  After everything had been measured and probed, the part of the bank with the artefacts was removed and placed in a box. The loose piece of pottery had already been sealed in a jar.

  When that was finished, Professor Waghorn turned to us and beamed. ‘Now if I can just have a photo of the boy who discovered the find, I’ll be on my way.’ So, I was photographed many times from different angles and with different backgrounds.

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve got everything I’ll need. We’ll soon get to the bottom of this.’

  After the helicopter had left, Dad and I made our way slowly up to the house. ‘You didn’t have anything to do with this, did you, Ben?’ asked Dad.

  The question took me by surprise. ‘What? No! I never did anything.’

  ‘Mmm. I hope you’re telling the truth. Because if you’re not… well, it could be big trouble.’

  I didn’t speak, but I sure was thinking. I certainly hadn’t done anything, yet I knew somebody who might have. Sarah- Lee’d had the opportunity, the means and the desire. Was this the ecoterrorism she had suggested? Oh, how I hoped it wasn’t, for both our sakes. I hoped it was what I wanted it to be: an exciting find about the discovery of New Zealand. With all my being I wanted it to be the miracle that would save Mansfield Bay and its birds.

  I was amazed to see that the find was the main item on the news that night.

  ‘A recent discovery on the Coromandel Peninsula is likely to shed new light on the original settlement of New Zealand’ was the opening line. ‘A twelve-year-old boy has discovered the remains of an ancient settlement in Mansfield Bay on the northeastern side of the peninsula. However, a major coastal development is planned for the bay. Now, it is a race against time for the archaeologist investigating the find. Tim Bourke has more details.’

  The screen switched to the reporter and then to Professor Waghorn, who outlined the basic parts of the story. Then my picture was on the screen and Tim Bourke was speaking. ‘The boy who made the discovery is Ben Mansfield, son of the owner of the property. Ben has concerns about the effect of the development on the birds of the bay and has always opposed the development.’ Where had they got that from? The only people who knew that were Wiltshire, Mum, Dad and Cole.

  Then the answer came on the screen: we got a picture of Bill Wiltshire sitting in his office with a magnificent view of Auckland harbour in the background. Tim Bourke was saying, ‘Bill Wiltshire says that the development will be designed to accommodate the birds, but the Lapita was not something they had planned for.’

  ‘If this find is authenticated,’ said Bill, ‘and I repeat “if”, then we would certainly need to look at what we will do with the Pacific Keys development. However, it would be premature to speculate until we have Professor Waghorn’s final report.’

  Tim Bourke was back in person: ‘And Professor Waghorn is saying his report should be available within a week. We will await its release with interest.’

  ‘Indeed we shall, Tim,’ added the studio presenter. ‘And there will be a full discussion on this matter in Behind the News at seven.’

  The discussion was between the professor and two other scientists. One was an expert on dating bones, especially rat bones. The other was a Lapita specialist. It was all friendly enough. Waghorn put his point that it was very likely that people may have visited much earlier than the permanent settlement dates. The rat man supported this, saying there was no other way that rats could have got here except by hitching a ride in a canoe, and there was lots of evidence that rats had been here for a long time. The Lapita woman wasn’t sure. The pattern she had seen on the artefact was different from that found on the Lapita islands closest to New Zealand. They were each very careful to point out that nothing had yet been proved.

  The next morning was chaos. The telephone never stopped ringing. Everyone wanted to talk to me, but I wasn’t talking. Dad’s comment of the previous day had made me wary. In the end Mum took the telephone off the hook. Some reporters made the long trip up to our farm. I hid in Treetops and left Mum and Dad to deal with them.

  It was on the front page of the paper, along with several photos of the bay, Waghorn, Wiltshire and me. The headline read: Have we been here longer than we think? The piece was well written and reported events fairly. Inside the front page was a whole article on the movement of people into the Pacific. It had arrows on a map and a dotted arrow coming
from New Caledonia down to New Zealand. It certainly looked as if it could have happened.

  After three days it was over. The news media had got bored with the story and moved on to other things. However, for those three days Mansfield Bay had been mentioned thousands of times in all sorts of ways. Now most of the country knew there was a debate over a development in a small bay on the Coromandel Peninsula.

  Chapter 16

  While we waited for Professor Waghorn to hand down his words of wisdom, the first obvious signs of development arrived. I’d been told we had until December the fifteenth to make up our minds, yet Bill Wiltshire seemed to have forgotten that.

  The first I knew about it was a truck arriving, loaded with eight huge boulders. It came down to the stream, where the driver hopped out of the cab and started wandering around the place. After he saw me running along the beach he leaned against the cab, waiting.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Is this where they’re meant to go?’

  ‘I know nothing about them. What are they for?’

  ‘I was told a breakwater was going in here somewhere.’

  ‘Not yet, it isn’t.’ I was starting to get annoyed.

  He dived into the cab, returning with a piece of pink paper. ‘This is an order for four loads of large rocks. This is the first. Here, have a look.’

  I looked, and he was right. It was signed by Bill Wiltshire. There was also an instruction to drive through the stream and dump them above the high-tide mark.

  ‘Where are they coming from?’ I was thinking of sending him back.

  ‘We’re widening the three-oh-nine road. These are all blasted out of the cuttings. They’ve got to go somewhere and this is the place.’

  I thought of several things I could do: tell Dad and let him sort it out—yet he probably knew already; politely tell the driver to go away—that wasn’t going to happen; let him dump them, and then hope that Wiltshire would have to pay for them all to be carted away again.