My husband decided that we'd take a holiday up along the Queensland coast. I was agreeable. I was thinking sun, sand and surf. Nightlife on the Gold Coast, Jupiter's Casino and some shopping sprees. Sounded great to me.
Did I mention that Bob is an arrogant bastard who always knows best and never tells everything about what he intends. Great for business and he coined money hand over fist. Not so great for our personal life when he forgets to tell me a few little details.
Little details like he had the use of a mate's boat for a couple of weeks and we'd be living out of that. (He's also a cheapskate at times.) Little details that as far as he was concerned it was fishing holiday, and I was just along for company and to keep the drink and food coming.
Ah, well. At least I still got to do a lot of sun-baking and swimming. The nice thing about the sun-baking and swimming was that I could go nude, with no-one around to see, bar Bob. He still didn't like me wandering around naked in case another boat came too close. He was convinced that any men on other boats would be checking me out through their binoculars. Good luck to them if they were. They weren't close enough to see much.
Occasionally as we wandered around we'd come across an island. Several times we anchored near one and rowed ashore, casually exploring and having a picnic in an out of the way place. I sometimes wondered if we were the first people to ever set foot on some of these islands. There're quite a few of them scattered around and I'm sure some of them have never been visited. I always insisted that we pack up our rubbish and took it with us, leaving the islands as we found them. Bob didn't care either way, as long as I was the one cleaning up the rubbish.
After about a week we came to an island that was somewhat larger than the normal run of place in the area. Quite a reasonable size, in fact. I could see a lovely beach with white sand in a little cove and suggested to Bob that we might have a picnic there.
We rowed ashore and I fetched our picnic basket along. I could see a little trail leading away from the beach and asked Bob if he wanted to go exploring with me. He looked at me and pointed out that there might be people on the island. I took the hint. I went and put my bikini on. No use scandalising the natives, if any.
We had our lunch and then I packed everything up while Bob lazed back. With the meal out of the way I then wandered over to what appeared to be the start of a path leading inland.
It was a path alright, and as I neared it I could see a couple of rather large signs. I couldn't imagine how I hadn't spotted them earlier. The signs weren't exactly your standard welcome ashore messages. The one on the right of the trail read 'KEEP OUT. PRIVATE PROPERTY.'. The one on the left was simpler. 'NO TRESPASSING'.
"Ah, Bob," I called, "there are a couple of keep out signs here."
Bob came wandering over and looked at the signs.
"And these signs are of interest to me because...?" he said, circling his hand in a coaxing gesture to see if I could supply an answer. Like I said, arrogant at times.
"Ah, we appear to be on private property," I pointed out.
"No, we're not," stated Bob. "These islands are all Crown Property. No-one is allowed to buy them. Just ignore the signs. We're going exploring."
The best way to get Bob to do something is to tell him not to. It's going to get him into trouble one of these days.
We headed off down the path. The island was fairly heavily wooded, which was unusual. Most of the little islands had a few trees scattered about, but this one had quite a respectable covering of vegetation and a lot of tall trees. Quite a bit of bird life, too, and I was eagerly looking around for to see how many types I could spot.
Because I was dragging my feet a bit, Bob was quite a few yards in front of me, so I didn't actually see what happened. I heard a snapping whoosh sort of sound and a startled yell from Bob followed by a furious, "What the fucking hell?" And I could swear I could hear a bell being rung.
I came charging up the path to see what was wrong and came to a screeching halt at the start of a small clearing. Bob was in the middle of the clearing. Not standing. Dangling above it with a rope around his leg. You've seen those sorts of traps in films. I never knew that people not only used them, but that they really worked. The ringing bell I could hear was tied to the rope a few feet higher than Bob's foot. The ringing was caused by his bouncing around.
"Get over here and pull me down," yelled Bob, but I wasn't that much of a fool.
I looked carefully at the ground in the clearing, and it didn't take me long to spot a few other traps. No way was I going out there. I'd try something different.
"Just hold on while I trace the ropes," I told Bob, doing my best not to laugh.
I could see where the rope ran up to a large branch and then went sidewards, finishing up tied to another tree. From what I could see there was a quick release knot on the rope. One hard yank and it would come undone and Bob would drop back to the ground. Undignified, possibly, but it wouldn't hurt him and he'd be free. As long as he didn't step in another trap.
I edged my way around the clearing, walking carefully. I was finally in reach of the rope and took that last step that would allow me to reach the knot. I felt something give as my foot came down. I just had time to say, "Oh, no," when there was that whooshing sound again. A lot closer this time.
It is most disconcerting to find yourself flying through the air, especially when you finish up upside down, swing at the end of a rope while a little bell rings merrily in time to your bouncing and swaying.
"Brilliant, Naomi," snarled Bob. "And now what do you suggest we do?"
"It wasn't my fault. I skirted all the traps in the clearing. I just didn't think that they'd booby trapped the release rope."
"Well they did, and they caught themselves a booby," yelled Bob.
I'd have loved to have just folded my arms and stalked off in a huff. It's a bit hard to show righteous indignation while you're being bounced at the end of a rope with a little bell ring 'come and get it'.
That's it. The bells. They're there to alert someone.
"Try and bounce a bit, Bob," I suggested. "It will ring the bell and the trapper is sure to come and see what he's got."
Bob's sulphurous cursing promptly made the bells redundant. They could probably hear him all over the island. It turned out they could.
It wasn't more than a minute when we could hear someone whistling, then a man in a pair of ragged shorts came wandering down the trail from the other side of the clearing.
"Can't you two idiots read?" he snarled. "There are quite conspicuous signs down on the beach telling people to keep out. What the hell makes you think that it didn't include the pair of you?"
"These are public lands," snapped Bob. "We've as much right here as you have. Now get us the hell down. I'm going to fucking sue over this."
"This particular public land is currently under lease to my firm. That means I have the right to determine who can and who cannot use the land. We have war games starting here very shortly and I've now got to rush down a crew to rebuild these traps that you've gone and ruined. You can consider yourself lucky I'm not suing you or charging you with trespass."
"Just get us down from here. This is illegal imprisonment."