Jacky Lizard

JACKY LIZARD By Phillip Layton

This is the story of how I nearly lost my life.

I was booked on a scouting trip to Lake Eyre when I was 13, our scoutmaster Bob insisting that we had to see the ten year filling of the lake for ourselves, as by next summer the water would have evaporated. He had arranged with the Lake Eyre Sailing Club, a unique crew of adventurers, to have a guide come with us to give us an understanding of the dangers of sailing the lake.

“Sailing the lake is no picnic.” He started his safety talk with a typical Aussie understatement – “No picnic” usually meant somewhere between treacherous and suicidal.

He continued. “The two most important things you need to protect yourself from are the sun and the salt. Cover yourself with a hat, shirt and sunscreen, and if you need to go in the water cover your skin with plastic where necessary.” Lake or not, it was still the middle of the desert. The sun was merciless out here, like sticking your head in an oven you can’t escape from. The salt was also unbearable, from the overpowering smell of it, to the perpetual salty taste in your mouth. You constantly felt like drinking, but you couldn’t use too much of your water just in case you got lost.

“The last thing is to not stray too far from the shoreline. The strong southerlies that blow across the lake could take you up to a hundred kilometres away from our position here. Even with the GPS tracker and UHF transceiver we have given you, you would still be dead when we reached you.” I had heard of the prevailing winds across the lake – the dunes in the surrounding desert ran in a north-south direction, so that the wind came mostly from the south due to wind tunnelling between the dunes. Although I was a little scared, I expected that the guide was making it sound a lot more dangerous than it actually was – seriously, would anyone take a group of thirteen year olds on such a mortally dangerous expedition?

With the talk completed, the boys were ready to take off on their sailing trip. We had been set up with small wooden dinghys that had a detachable mast and sail. The dinghys had been moored 20 metres off the beach in 50 centimetres of water. To get out there we had to put a pair of waterproof pants over our trousers and boots, and trudge through the shallow water. Our guide Gerry had set up a catamaran so that he could chase after us if we strayed, which was sturdier and faster than the cumbersome dinghies we were sailing.

My boating partner was my best mate in scouts, a kid named Joel who I also went to school with in Adelaide. He was the gung ho type and although I enjoyed the outdoors, he made me look bookish in comparison. His favourite pastime was picking up huntsman spiders and throwing them at his unsuspecting friends.

As we trudged out to the boat, we decided to play paper scissors rock to determine who would row the boat out. The boat had to be rowed to around 30 or 40 metres out to pick up the wind required to sail. Thinking that my mate looked a bit on the tired side and that he would go for the easiest option, I chose paper.

The bastard chose scissors.

We had arrived at the boat without incident, although we had seen one of kids in the scout crew fall in a sinkhole to be covered in mud and salty water. He returned to the shore with his boating partner in tears, their hopes of sailing dashed. I climbed into the boat and pulled my waterproof pants off. The salt was already encrusting on the pants as I pulled them over my feet, the white residue falling onto the floor of the boat. I placed them next to me on the boat to dry for a minute, by which time they were absolutely dry and completely encrusted with salt.
I looked over the horizon as far as I could see, unable to see the line where the deep azure sky met the water of the lake due to the effects of mirage, which would have looked like an approaching tidal wave to the unwary eye.

“Get going, oar boy.” Joel never cared for my ego – I would never put up with a true friend who did.

“Who made you captain?” I replied. “Hoist the anchor and get to putting that mast up, landlubber.”

We both attended to our separate duties and within minutes were rowing towards the middle of the lake.
We hit the wind about 40 metres out to shore, the feeling of a hair dryer laced with salt blowing over our tender young faces. We both tied handkerchiefs around our mouths to stop salt from getting in our mouths, our sunglasses and hats covering most of our heads from the onslaught.

As we quickly protected ourselves from the wind, it gradually turned its attention to our sail. It filled with the hot wind, gradually pushing our boat along the brackish water of the lake.

“Here we go, Eric!” Cried Joel. He quickly grabbed the boom of the sail so that he could steer the boat. I pulled the oars into the boat and manned the rudder.

I assessed our position compared to the shoreline. To the east was our camp, and we were allowed to go a couple of hundred metres away from the shore without getting in to too much trouble with the prevailing wind.

“Move to port Joel!” I shouted. “Let’s see how far we can go out.”

We turned the little dinghy towards the west and began cruising away from the shoreline. We occasionally glanced back at the disappearing shoreline, becoming less defined in the mirage. The others didn’t seem to be following us, preferring to keep their dinghies close to shore for fear of something going awry.

After ten or so minutes of cruising I could barely see the shoreline – even though the lake and the landscape was completely flat, the mirage obscured everything more than a few hundred metres away.

“How far do you think we have gone out, Joel?”

“No more than half a click.”

I turned on the transceiver to make sure we could hear of any emergencies. The radio sprung into action with the voice of their scoutmaster Bob.

“Joel! Eric! Can you hear me? Over.”

“We hear you sir. Over.”

“You boys have gone too far out. We have had to pull in the rest of the boys due to a gale force wind hitting the area. Has it hit you yet? Over.”

“Not yet sir. Over.”

As soon as I said the words, I felt the wind getting significantly stronger. The only thing I heard was Joel shouting “Watch out mate!” before I was overcome with darkness.

I woke up to Joel’s voice shouting over the transceiver. “When will I be able to see him sir? Over.”

As I woke to the static over the transceiver, I was overcome with tremendous stinging pain over my entire body. I made a weakened yelp in surprise as the stinging took over my ability to move.

Joel heard me and moved over to my side. “Stay still, mate.”

The voice of our scoutmaster replied, “Gerry is bringing the four wheel drive around to you boys. He left twenty minutes ago, so he wouldn’t be more than half an hour away.”

We were fifty minutes drive away from the main camp – even in rough terrain, it became clear that we had strayed over twenty kilometres away from our camp.

I tried to open my mouth to talk, but the stinging sensation of salt kept it closed.
Joel poured fresh water in my eyes and down my throat. I opened my eyes, still stinging with salt.

We had beached ourselves near a section of shrubland. A group of galahs were sitting on a salt poisoned acacia tree nearby, watching our pathetic scene below.

Joel hovered over me, a concerned look on his face. “How do you feel mate? Can you talk?”

“What happened?” I asked, barely able to put the words together with my salty tongue.

“A gust hit us, the boom hit you, and you fell in. I would have laughed in any normal situation.”

I tried to move my head to look at my body, still stinging from the salt and being punished by the sun.

“I’ve covered most of your body from the sun mate.” Joel said, carefully pushing my head back down. “You don’t want to see it anyway, believe me.”

“Why not?”

“You’re covered in sea ulcers.” These were massive lacerations that built up around wounds in the skin when it came in contact with Lake Eyre’s water. The hot salty water allowed various bacteria to survive which had frightening consequences for a person’s skin.

“You’re right.” I said, defeated. “I don’t want to see those.”

Joel gave me a little more water for my throat. “Rest easy mate, the cavalry will be here soon.”

This was the last thing I could do. My body was still stinging from the salt and the ulcers – I tried not to imagine the ulcers growing as I lay there. Meanwhile, the ever brutal sun continued to cook my body, even while it was covered. Every minute out there brought me closer to heatstroke and possibly death. I could feel a dull pain on my head where the boom had hit me, intermingled with a constant sting – the boom had obviously opened up a wound in my scalp, which was now infected by the bacteria of the lake.

As every minute passed I became slowly more defeatist. I remembered a scene from my backyard as a younger kid, where our cat Tiger had cornered a Jacky lizard near the back steps of our house. Over the space of a few minutes, the cat cut off every escape route for the lizard with its paws, often taking a part of its tail or a leg in the process. After this scenario went on for a while, the lizard refused to move. It sat there motionless as the cat moved in slowly to eat it. I felt a chill when I saw it, an animal that was so intent on its own survival could just sit there and accept its fate.

I felt like the lizard now, so racked with pain that terror had left me, and death was the only solution. The morbid thoughts were interrupted by Joel suddenly moving beside me.

“I see a dust cloud mate!” He cried. “That’s Gerry for sure. We’ve made it mate, we’ve made it!” He jumped up and down with glee.

I heard the four wheel drive pull up and Gerry make his way over to where we were lying.

“Well, you boys have learned your lesson the hard way, haven’t you?” He scolded.

“I’m sorry Gerry.” Joel replied humbly. “We pushed the envelope and got punished for it big time.”

“Sorry would have been a pretty hard word to say to this bloke’s parents, mate.” Gerry replied. “Hopefully you can think of that the next time you want to push that envelope.”

Gerry and Joel lifted me into the back of the four wheel drive and back to safety. It took me weeks of treatment for the sea ulcers and my other problems to clear up, but unfortunately I was healthy enough to go back to school at the end of the summer.

Joel continued to push the envelope. Today he works as a stockbroker in Sydney, anything to keep the adrenalin pumping that keeps him alive.

Myself, I plan to be the Jacky lizard as long as it takes for me to be eaten.

1,987 Words ©Phillip Layton