Things that are great on small islands where there are no police: you can burn things, you can chop things down, you can sledgehammer things into the sand, and you can claim anything that washes up on the beach as your own.
A great thing washed up on a beach once. It wasn’t discovered for quite some time. By this time it had been gradually lifted by the highest of high tides onto a large rock, which none of the successive tides could ever aspire to. The hollowed-out half of the enormous tree was literally beached. Grounded. People eventually discovered the mighty dug-out, and spun wild tales of how it could be floated once more and used to paddle off into the sunset, though they all realised that they would never be able to drag the 40 foot plank from where the mighty sea had tossed it, high upon a rock. It was christened ‘the dug-out’ by the locals.
The island upon which the giant tree had landed was also visited by another magnificent piece of wood. A separate beach, maybe a mile away, was harpooned by what looked like a telegraph pole. When this remote pole was found by an idle beach-comber, out looking for driftwood to make a bench, it was found to be two telegraph pole sized timbers, pinned together by a two foot long iron spike. The fact that someone had wrapped thick iron rope around the join made it seem that this was a deliberate and rugged pairing of poles. The beach-comber soaked in the magnificence of his find. This pole could be used for anything to make his life more entertaining – perhaps it could be driven into the seabed to jump from. Perhaps it could be covered in diesel and burnt. Or maybe it could form the arm of a giant catapault, used to hurl cats far out into the bay….
It took a lot of effort to move the pole back to basecamp. Far too heavy for less than four men to lift, dragging it into the sea and swimming was the only option. It was remarkably easy to propel along its length, but trying to balance astride the log proved taxing – it would spin around and bear some of its rusty iron work into the flesh of any rider. Perhaps the wood still harboured anger at humans, who had probably strapped it together to form the mast of an ill-fated ship. It got back to base eventually, after a good deal of paddling, and it was then that the beachcomber decided to return for what was surely to be the highest achievement of his beachcombing career. The dug-out.
The dug-out had different ideas about being combed from its resting place, but it couldn’t deny the levering and determination of the beachcomber. A six foot pole dug again and again at the base of the monster plank. The beach comber would not be denied, and furiously pushed and pulled at each end of it, trying to rock it off its rock. In spite of gravity, momentum and the David and Goliath sizes of the participants, the beachcomber persisted for 45 minutes with the muscle straining battle. Crabs and lizards had fled their woody home by the time the log finally made in into the foam of the high-tide, and the log was swum round to basecamp.
That beachcomber was me. John must take all of the credit for the design, not of the giant catapault that followed the provision of such fine pieces of timber, but of Greeforce V, the finest raft ever seen on the tiny island upon which it was built. John can be seen here with the beast, which can’t be fitted fully into the camera’s viewfinder. The raft also has mosquito net bundles of empty plastic bottles incorporated, but the bouyancy of these was minimal compared to the logs. But some crazy Brit has extended this idea to make his own island. Which is a pretty good idea.
The worst thing about having an enormous raft with telegraph pole outriggers on a small island, is that you have to ‘make it safe’ when leaving the island. And then a storm comes along and buries it deep in the sand somehow, so that the part of the hollowed out log protruding from the sand has become a kind of dog kennel. Easy come, easy go I suppose, and it stops anyother humans from getting pleasure from our marvellous craft. Especially since the dog who has taken up residence in it is called ‘Knee Gnaw’. Because she gnaws at your knees if you get too close.