Magnet Inlet

  We met on my doorstep, on a day when storms ripped across the south west. I think it even hailed that day. He stood under the gutterless eaves in camo pants and a rather nice khaki jacket, its hood serving as a kind of veranda for his face.

'I've been told to come and see you,' he said.

I asked him in and made him a cup of tea. He said he'd been camping on the island but the weather got too wild, he'd capsized his canoe and now he was looking for shelter on the 'mainland'. He'd decided to move into the hut two hundred metres inland from my place. It's called Old Smokey, he told me. We burned some incense he'd gifted, in a green lacquered bowl. As the smoke drifted against the window, he began to tell me about how he came to be here.

Something fly in fly out something something a divorce that had cost him five mill. Kids who play for Australia as elite athletes. This could all be true. You know when someone looks you in the eye and tells you a lie? 'I'm nervous around you,' he kept saying, and I was not sure whether or not this was a good thing. My dog sat on his feet and fawned all over him.

Old Smokey is a hut used by fishermen during the commercial netting season. It's an old asbestos shack with a defunct toilet and broken hot water system. The corrugated iron roof is covered in marri leaves and it's a horribly damp place in the winter. A note written in crayon beside the door says - meet me at the beach at sunset.

'I'm moving in!' my new neighbour says. 'I'm gonna grow veges and get some chickens! This inlet has been calling to me for years now.'

During the early days of the pandemic, there was an influx of single men where I live. It was like they'd looked up the most remote place on earth and headed here - to grow veges and raise chickens. It was pretty weird, especially when they asked me to charge their mobile phones with my limited power supply. Me saying 'no' was often seen as an affront.

I did have some respect, though, for this man who'd tried to go it alone on the island. If I ever won lotto, I'd buy that island, I told him. I love that place.

'Struth told me to come and see you,' he said. 'He showed me the hut and said, go and see Sarah first.'

Like all the fishermen do. They all come over to stand on my doorstep and say, 'Hi Sarah, we're camping in Old Smokey. Good to see you. Let us know if you want any fish.' Because they know I live alone and that is exactly what this strange interloper did. But he wasn't there to go fishing. He was moving in.

So that night I walked the bush track over to the village to talk to Struth. I used my head lamp because it was a new moon night. He was sitting in front of the fire, after setting his nets. 'What the fuck Struth?' I asked him. 'This random guy moving into my backyard and you showed him Old Smokey? Is this bloke okay? I don't know him. Do you know him?'

Struth had the dinner his wife had cooked, set on a plate and covered in gladwrap. 'Oh, I dunno Sarah,' he said, 'like I didn't think it would be a problem or anything. He said he'd had a chat to you and it was all good.' He looked really uncomfortable. 'I can talk to him if you like,'

Yesterday I talked to him. He'd got all his gear off the island and now had 'everything he owned' into Old Smokey. I see him walking through the trees on his way to the beach, a flash of camo and khaki, quite often carrying a water container. Tonight as I drove home, I saw a set of footprints either side of a single wheel. For a while, I thought it was someone running beside a bike. No, this was a man pushing a wheelbarrow.

Today was the moment I realised that I've been writing about this man for decades. That man who is tipped off the edge of the world, to heal, to get himself better. In 1929 a man came here. He was under a cloud of legal and social problems and maybe under witness protection. He ran a wheelbarrow out to the highway every month to meet a copper. Then he ran home the wheelbarrow with his supplies.

To tell you the truth, I'm not feeling any better about my new neighbour. But I kind of get him.