On a summer morning in January 1931, an ancient mystery gave up the first of its secrets.
Sly old fox was skulking around the camp again. Fred saw it in the flush of dawn light, silhouetted against the white sand. He tugged the blankets off the shoulders of his brothers, Don and Dan. ‘Wake up,’ he whispered.
Their sister, Madge, yawned. ‘Where are you going?’
Four bleary-eyed kids were soon on a fox hunt. They reached the tideline as the sun rose over the dunes, spreading its golden glow over a long stretch of beach. Eight-year-old Fred led the others as they tracked the pawprints heading north.
Fred was one of fourteen children born into the pioneering Edwards family. His grandparents were some of the earliest European settlers in the area and his grandfather had built the first mud cottage on the Moore River flats. Later, the family had acquired more land and established a business, breeding cattle and sheep and driving them along an isolated coastal stock route.
Woodlands, the family homestead, was built beside a brook on the floodplains of the Moore River, sixteen kilometres inland from the sea. But closer to the coast, along a track not well travelled, Fred’s father had constructed a summer holiday camp for his family. The rough hut, set behind the dunes, was made from timber that had washed up along the coast. All the children had helped their father collect Oregon beams, planks of oak, teak and pine, and other debris from the beach.
Fred’s mum cooked in a makeshift camp oven and served meals on a driftwood bench. A cow supplied the camp with fresh milk. Drinking water came from a natural well. An old-timer, Levi Jones, had found the water source after watching bees and swallows flying in and out of the bush. ‘There are hidden wells all along the coast,’ he told Mr Edwards, ‘if you know where to look.’…
Leave a Reply