The Squatters Last Stand

One day in the distant past when fourteen or maybe thirteen, on school holidays when we were let out of the coup and allowed to go down to our huts and dive and surf and fish and smoke and play as wild kids do. We noticed many boats around the bombora. It was a calm day and we all had various things to float us on the water such as rubber-duckies and impossible rafts made from flotsam and jetsam which we used to stick our heads under the wonderful sea and observe the aquatic world, caves and all. We all sat up suddenly and saw the spout of a whale near the boats. We were off. Down to the rocks in a flash like crabs. Doily launched his impossible raft with a long stick, the others grabbed the rubber-duckies which they propelled sitting backwards with flippers. Churning the water they all raced out to the boats which quickly dissipated as the whale had sounded. I was nursing a gruesomely stubbed toe and feared the algal-bloom the salt water would have given it. Meanwhile Doily had propelled himself along the shallow rocks with his giant shark- prodder before pushing off into deeper water. The guys in the paddle-steamers were blindly powering out to sea! 

Then surprisingly close to them perhaps fifteen metres a huge fluke rose metres above their heads, and Brett yelled, "Oh no, its Moby Dick!" Which made them turn circles screaming! It must have been ten meters long and only ten metres from them! It thrashed the water maybe three of four times before disappearing in the foam. The waves from it nearly swamped the rubber-duckies which were still spinning cartwheels not knowing which way to go! All hell broke loose, white water everywhere! Suddenly they stopped spinning around and began thrashing the water like giant paddle-steamers and verily flew above the waves as they sped for home. Meanwhile Doily ran round and around his flotsam raft like an ant on a burning stick before leaping off and churning the water for shore. I could not control my laughter and stood up and bashed my toe really badly before sitting back down. 

Exhausted and breathing heavily they collapsed on the lawn. Unable to speak fluently and goggle eyed like puffer fish still squealing! Then Brett gasped that the tail had a rope on it. Me thinking out loud said it must have been a lobster pot! And sure enough, half an hour later two fat lobsters came back in a rubber-ducky. That was the first and last time we ever stole lobsters from the lobster man. And we had lobsters for lunch! I got Brett to take a pic of me holding them up and I remember thinking, "The lobster man will never believe this!"