Spontoon Island
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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
29 Janurary, 1936 to 2 February, 1936

Tuesday 29th January, 1936

I wondered how our Tutors were going to do it. Every dorm has been given a budget and forty-eight hours to put together a complete plan for a scratch expedition. We are scheduled to head out to Orpington Island, not I think a coincidence. Prudence’s bunch are taking a major trip as far as the Skookum Isles, which has the rest of us green with envy. For the first time we are really heading out on our own, our Tutors merely being there for emergency backup. If Prudence misses and carries on another fifty miles she will end up at another island we do know rather too well.

There would be quite enough to think about if this was just a regular field trip, and Miss Devinski warns us that we will have a report to write on our trip like all the other dorms, whatever else happens. It is that “whatever else” that worries me. Still, today we spent drawing up lists of equipment and such for a week’s stay – I doubt we will exactly be checking into a hotel, Orpington Island is not really on the tourist route and we may have to camp out. This time of year, given the choice we do not want to be plaiting palm leaves to keep the rain off, if we are allowed to carry proper tents and such.

I have heard Missy K mention she has often been there, but she is walking around in a large-sized huff at our getting the “easy” Orpington Island trip, and is pointedly telling us nothing about the place. Or as she describes it, she is “actively encouraging our research.”

Molly grumbles she will research itching-powder after we get back and actively encourage its transfer to Missy K’s big “Coco de Mer” shell native costume brassiere. She cheered up briefly when told we could carry firearms, until told we have to properly register them with Customs and the local Police – which (she says) takes all the fun out of things. Despite her pleading, we are most definitely NOT taking my 13 mm “T-Gew”rifle, even if she volunteers to carry it.

Wednesday 30 th January, 1936

A frantic day of packing knapsacks and arranging transport – we have booked on a “general cargo” vessel that is heading out tomorrow. I would call it a tramp steamer (which it is) but after her experiences last September Molly freezes up at the phrase, and we had better get her on board before she makes the connection.

I fear I have rather put Molly’s back fur up by flat-out refusing to take our firearms. It is an Executive Decision, as they say these days, despite the fact our Tutors were willing for us to “tool up”. Remembering our Vostok expedition, I reminded her that there is always someone around with heavier artillery – we have been training to use our wits, and those should be enough, especially if we are simply on a fact-finding mission. I let her pack her Vostok knout, there is no point risking outright rebellion before we have even got out there. She sold her fishing spear gun last term to Jasbir, and is trying hard to borrow it back for the trip. I must have a word with Jasbir and try and to persuade her not to let it go.

In the Songmark library there is a shelf of field notes and guides written by previous years, and I managed to find a rather thorough Orpington Island survey from the 1933 senior class by a dorm led by Victoria Chow. That is a famous name here – she left the year before we arrived, but she is the “Number One Daughter” of the even more famous international canine detective Charlie Chow. Molly commented that she must have been a sneaky sort, as unlike the other Chinese we know she has her family name written last to confuse people’s inscrutable oriental card indexes.

Happily, Orpington is politically in the Spontoon Islands Dependencies, so there will be no worries about passports. Which is just as well, as I am trying to save my other fur pattern for emergencies, and possibly a party or two? As we are openly going there as Songmark students, whatever local authorities exist have been wired to expect us, and arriving under a different name would be nothing but trouble.

It was a vast relief to finish packing by teatime and head out with Molly to Casino Island to Madame Maxine’s for some more social tuition. I really do not think our Tutors like us going there, but it is all perfectly respectable. By repute, Madame Maxine can teach a girl just about anything she needs to know, including some skills that I rather doubt my chum Mabel is learning at her finishing school. (I received a postcard from her just last week, all snow-capped mountains and jolly winter sports. As the current leader of Germany keeps having everyone shout at the least excuse, “Schi Heil!” He was in the Alpenkorps in the Great War and is much into “Strength Through Joy” and other healthy outdoors notions.)

Whatever else we do on the trip, I doubt there will be any deep steam baths and luxurious massages, or Tango lessons on Orpington Island. Impromptu cold mud baths are more likely – so we might as well at least start off clean, as long as it lasts. Definitely we will be in canvas gaiters and puttees rather than fashion heels, so we practiced our stylish costumes as well. In all the films the heroine has a tendency to fall over and twist an ankle whenever running away from danger – I can certainly understand that, without sensible footwear.

We started learning another very lively South American dance, the “Carioca” which is jolly fun and extremely energetic. As always, we begin wearing sensible gym shoes and move onto “fashions” later – much as in Songmark they sent us up the rock faces on a dry, clear day first and piled on the problems later. Our instructress is Miss Gonzales, the ovine lady who taught us to tango. One can see she loves her job, having seen her dancing it most energetically at The Double Lotus – being paid for teaching one’s hobby must be quite a bonus.

Friday 1 st February, 1936
(Transcribed from field notebooks.)

Dear Diary. The first thing I can say about Orpington Island is that it is decidedly not Spontoon. I had read up on it yesterday, the basic facts such as its lack of hills and mountains stop it getting anything like the rainfall Spontoon Main Island generates – the interior is dry and scrubby rather than jungles.

What I had not realised, is it has a continuous native History, the sort that the Spontoonies have had to invent almost from scratch – its inhabitants are still mostly in their original tribes, just as their first ancestors arrived centuries before. For obvious reasons, Polynesian exploration was by family groups, of the same or at least compatible species – and the ones who settled Orpington were mostly avians.

It is a good thing none of us four are allergic to feathers – Madelene X would have sneezed her snout off by now, as we arrived at a dock and marketplace mostly run by ducks. Most of them are short, coming hardly up to my shoulders, but highly energetic types who are dashing around the markets non-stop (“Like their tails were afire” as Helen says. I hope that does not give Molly Ideas.)

Just getting here was far more of a problem than I had hoped – I had assumed last Summer that when we stopped for Orpington Island passengers at to change in the middle of the night, we had actually docked. Not so – the regular boat ties up at a buoy outside the reef and we all changed onto a fast, narrow craft not unlike what Molly has described as a “Cigarette boat”. The reason was explained in the next fur-raising five minutes as we shot through tidal races and convoluted gaps in the reef – and that is the main commercial route in. I don’t really want to see the “tricky” routes the smugglers presumably use. Helen was quite record-breakingly unwell as the boat bounced off the swells and turned sharp corners between coral stacks and indeed some of the crew cheered in genuine astonishment and admiration; rarely can they have seen anyone being so explosively seasick in just a few minutes.

Maria had rather a surprise looking around the place, as she had expected something like one of the Spontoon Islands just a bit further out. It was not unlike Mildendo Island, in that the main buildings were not hotels but industrial concerns (one of them a feather pillow factory, an obvious money-spinner for the natives in moulting season.) We did find a hotel in Popokolo Bay, though obviously it was mostly for commercial travellers and the like; the brochures lying around the foyer were all for telegraph and shipping services rather than beach attractions and tourist entertainment.

We have a rough map, and discover Namoeta’s village is on the far side of the island. Of course there are jitneys that would take us there around the coast road, but we are supposed to be on an expedition and going across the heart of the island on foot is far more the done thing. A day or so at the hotel getting supplies and gathering data hardly counts, as all expeditions start somewhere at least semi-civilised. Our packs included camping kit but very little food, as we has planned to supply locally. As it happened, the only grocers open by the time we dropped our packs off at the hotel was catering entirely for avians. The only food they had was millet (three kinds), that or whole maize on the cob – I had scarcely hoped for a delicatessen such as the one next to Lingenthal’s on Casino Island, but this was more of a “Crude-Essen.”

Our hotel rooms were cramped, but there was space to all squeeze in with the maps laid out on my bed and hold a “Chinese Parliament” as we hammered out just what we would try and do. Of course, we could head straight over to see Namoeta and then try and shadow her – always a possibility. Our second idea was to head into the area and see if there was any suspicious behaviour that looked as if it might be smuggling, and then see if we could see her involved. The trouble is, there could be half a dozen smuggling gangs at work and we end up watching all but the one Namoeta is involved in – assuming she is involved at all. We put it to a vote, and the second idea won (I was outvoted). At least it should make for a better expedition report, and please our Tutors if nobody else. So we took a quiet evening walk around the streets of Popokolo Bay, and retired early. I might not really like the plan, but perhaps it is just as well - “No plan survives contact with the enemy”, as Father always says – and there is no point in getting too attached to one.

Saturday 2 nd February, 1936

A day of hard work – we wasted an hour trying to find some better food, but drew a blank. As Helen grumbled, the local rations may only cost chickenfeed, but that is what you get. By ten we were grimly stuffing our packs with dried manioc flakes and instant millet porridge (the best lightweight camping food we could find) and heading into the interior, notebooks and cameras ready. At least this makes a good cover story – we really are sent out by Songmark to practice our solo expedition skills, and report on what we see. Bird watching would be the obvious nature project around here.

The island is barely a day’s march across, even allowing for its rather rugged interior. There is a coastal flat belt with all the settlements, then most of the inner section is a plateau, the vegetation mostly plants such as aloes, acacia and other thorny inhabitants. There are no lakes and not many streams on the high plateau even at this time of year; in August it must be baked like an oven. Helen said she felt quite at home. In fact, our water only just held out before we descended into the damper coastal strip on the far side, where some very welcome springs gush out of the base of the cliff. In future I will make sure we take two water bottles apiece.

“Base Camp” was set up two hundred yards from the track, next to a minor spring that drops down in a loud waterfall that should mask any sound of our camp. Really a very pleasant spot to put the tents – we are well hidden except from the air, and even then an aviator would have to look hard to see our green tents on the grassy little shelf. And looking through the scrub we can see the smoke of the village Namoeta lives in, next to a narrow bay that our binoculars show is well used by small craft. It all looks very promising.

Of course, the trouble with doing it this way round is spotting which if any of these boats count as suspicious. We could shadow a boat for a week because of its odd night-time trips, only to discover it is a moonlight squid-fishing boat such as featured in “International Geographic” last month. But then, if we strolled into the village and introduced ourselves, Namoeta might smell something unusually fishy and keep her paws clean till we are off the island. Problems, problems.

By the time we had made a decent camp and gathered enough wood, it was quite dark and getting decidedly chilly, rather like a September evening back home. Molly does love lighting fires, it is a real treat for her to have us approving it for once. She had been itching to use one of those large-calibre matches I bought her for her birthday, and marvels she could set light to a wooden building using one even without using any kindling.

Alas, the meal was hardly inspiring, dried Manioc flakes made up with boiling water and a tin of Spontoon’s own brand of canned Pacific Saury in brine, the fish just possibly ones caught by us last Easter! The idea added some interest otherwise sadly lacking. I suppose it is nutritious enough, and we were definitely hungry enough to eat it. Hunger is the best sauce, as our Tutors keep telling us cheerfully as they serve out the Poi – but I quite agree with Helen, we can afford the weight next time for a bottle of Tabasco.

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