The Godfather: Peter Corris on an island #2

Tags: Coochiemudlo

The name Coochiemudlo refers to the red rock that outcrops on the island and provided ochre for the mainland Indigenous people who visited for fishing and ceremonies. The island has no permanent water and water is now piped from a vast Stradbroke Island aquifer.

The sandy soil will grow a great variety of things and Jean planted flowers, vegetables and fruit trees. I accompanied the man-of-all work we’d befriended to a turf farm on the mainland and returned with a big load that we installed in front of and behind the house.

The house was by far the largest we’d ever occupied, with workrooms for us both and spare bedrooms for guests. It had a sitting room and porch in the front on the upper level, and a veranda at the back. It was set sufficiently high for there to be storage space and room for a car underneath.

We had a large kitchen and bathroom and living/dining room on the lower level. A good third of the block remained uncleared of trees and scrub. It was an idyllic place, not the biggest house or block on the island but imposing enough and, being all timber, in harmony with the ‘look’ of the island.

Island life throws you into close contact with other residents much more than life in the city or suburbs. We became friendly with the woman who ran the real estate agency, the storekeeper couple, the ferry workers and characters like ‘Croc’, who made deliveries from the mainland and went about with a cockatoo on his shoulder.

I joined the golf club, which put me on close terms with a number of people, men and women, on the island. With an amiable Scotsman, formerly a policeman in Botswana, I went three times a week  to a gym in Victoria Point. We kept our car by arrangement on the mainland at Victoria Point. Jean taught part-time at the University of the Sunshine Coast and was absent for a night and two days each week during semester. I tapped away at my Cliff Hardy books and wrote a collection of stories: A Round of Golf: Tales from around the greens (1998) which drew, in part, on golfing characters and events on the island.

I like to think we were quite popular, which was demonstrated by the small beach party held for us when we left.  As writers and academics from the south we were exotic but accepted as apparently more or less normal – liking a drink, casual in dress and manner. We played croquet, attended parties and joined in some of the island festivals. Jean was a scrutineer of ballots in the 1998 Queensland state election. On Melbourne Cup day I won the ‘best dressed man’ prize at the restaurant party  – not hard to do in a linen jacket with a flower in the buttonhole and a Panama hat when most of the men were in shorts and thongs.

The kids and various friends visited and enjoyed the attractions of the island – the climate, the beaches, the absence of traffic (cars were few), the walking tracks and the views across the water to adjacent islands. The dog Pancho loved it all, swam at the beaches, chased seagulls eternally without success and apparently relished the safe, secure environment as we did (even if we sometimes found it conservative and complacent). Unhappily, Toby the cat took to spending time in drainage ditches and pipes where a snake bit him and he could not be saved.

Although Coochie had provided many of the pleasures I’d anticipated – year-long warmth, getting about in shorts and a singlet and a kind of timelessness – after a couple of years I began to feel the disadvantages. I made fairly frequent visits to Brisbane, mainly for medical reasons, and started to become aware once more of the attractions of a wider world. Rugby League, fishing and the parochial affairs of the island formed the bulk of the discourse there. Through radio, television and the internet I had a sense that the one-kilometre gap between the island and the mainland was wider than I liked. I missed a larger, more diverse community and began to envy visitors departing for a richer cultural, social and political setting.

When an advertisement appeared for a lecturer in creative writing at Southern Cross University in Lismore, I was glad that Jean evinced a strong interest. It would be professionally and financially advantageous if she got it. We’d visited the university and Byron Bay, where it would be possible to live while working in Lismore, and felt ourselves drawn south to a vibrant setting – the Blues and Roots Festival, the alternative lifestyle, the annual Writers Festival.

 Jean got the job and we left our island in the sun.