Hogg's Bottom

“Check out those floaties,“ I nudged Jimmy, pointing. The floaties – bright yellow inflatable arm sleeves designed to stop toddlers from drowning - hung on the back wall of the kiosk. On the dangling price tag was a photo of a standard toddler, a blonde kid in a suburban paddle pool barely a foot deep. But the kid wasn’t smiling. “The kid in that picture’s freakin out.”

Jimmy sniggered. “Smile kid, or we’ll drown ya.”

Everyone in the little kiosk could hear him. There were more kids in the line behind us, waiting their turn to order hot chips or cold ice cream or tepid sandwiches, towels draped over their shoulders, swimsuits dripping onto the floor. At the back of the line towards the kiosk door waited Vanessa Bayer, Golden Goddess of the Cataract Gorge, with some of her gossiping friends.

“Somebody oughta drown both of you two,” Micky muttered, not looking at either of us. He was tucking a strand of chin-length blonde hair behind his ear and eyeing off the kiosk attendant. She would have been eight or nine years younger than him, at least. “What are you even talkin about?”

“Danny reckons you need those floaties,” Jimmy laughed, unwrapping his Golden Gaytime. “He said he’ll buy em for ya.”

“Is that right, Danny boy?” Micky glared up at me. He was at least a foot shorter than me, but he was a lot older and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. “Goes scuba-diving twice and thinks he invented swimming. Daddy didn’t buy you a brain to match that four wheel drive?”

That pissed me off. “Better get two pairs of floaties,” I heard myself say, wondering if Vanessa Bayer was listening. “He’ll need them for his little legs too.”

Jimmy laughed. Micky didn’t.

Great. Micky had been friendly enough the few times I’d met him, but I thought I saw a pretty bad temper underneath those earnest smiles and laboured jokes. I didn’t want him pissed at me, so I punched Jimmy in the arm, half hoping he would drop the ice cream. He didn’t.

“Can we have some vasoline too for that sick burn,” Jimmy whispered to the girl behind the counter, again loud enough for everybody in line to hear.

The girl behind the counter rolled her eyes. “Will that be all?” Her tone made it clear that it would be all, so they gave her thank you grins of and walked out of the little kiosk. I tried to catch the eye of the Goddess but she had her head down, counting the coins in her damp white palm.

The day was bright and hot and loud. We strutted our way down the cement path from the kiosk to the softly grassed picnic area.

The picnic area was large enough to hold over a thousand people and had once been used for concerts and recitals, but today it was dotted with groups - families, friends, tourists and teenagers. Kids ran through the sunshine down to the shallow side of the public swimming pool, whilst their parents cooked sausages on the barbeques dotted around the side of the lawn. Grandparents and couples on their first date basked together in the shade of the huge central oak tree. Some swimmers followed the pebbled paths down the river where they would jump of rocks into the cold, clean, deep waters of the First Basin.

The First Basin, a natural waterhole one hundred and fifty metres wide and supposedly bottomless, was teeming with swimmers. They emerged from the scrub around the water’s edge, or from under the high swinging bridge on the Western side, or from the boulders lining the strip of lawn between the river and the pool. Laughter and splashed screams drifted through the summer heat.

We walked back over to the group we’d been sitting with since we arrived, just after lunchtime. Skaters, guitarists, stoners and artists, some folk we knew from college, others we had met here on the lawns.

“Legends,” nodded Paddy as we sat down. Paddy was the best skater in town and he liked Jimmy, who had gone to high school with Jade, Paddy’s girlfriend. “Any you boys got a smoke?”

Micky gave him one and pulled another for himself. They shared Micky’s lighter, Paddy taking a deep drag then passing the cigarette to Jade.

“Look at these fuckin guys,” Micky nodded, trying to hide his need to cough. We followed his gaze to a trio of men in black leather jackets and jeans, surveying the scene like soldiers in the shade of the big oak tree. One of them turned momentarily to look back up the hill towards the car park, and we saw the big bright patch on his back. “Bikers.”

“They’re lookin for someone,” Paddy said quietly.

“Pervin on all the girls, more like,” said Jade.

“Not pervin on you,” Jimmy shrugged and she slapped him in the arm. Jimmy got that a lot.

“I reckon they’re keepin an eye on the cave,” Micky said. “Makin sure nobody’s pokin around in there.”

“What cave?” Jimmy asked.

“The underwater cave.”

“See?” said Jade, shaking Paddy’s arm. A couple of the others looked over. “There is a cave!”

“Yep,” Micky grinned at Jade, that earnest, friendly grin that looked rehearsed.

“What underwater cave?” Jimmy and I asked at the same time.

Jade giggled, but Micky rolled his eyes. “Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dumber. Haven’t you heard about the cave? Just near Hogg’s Bottom?”

Hogg’s Bottom was a high ledge that kids jumped off into the river, a flat rock with the remains of an old timber diving board strewn around it. But there was no underwater cave and I said as much.

“But there is,” Micky insisted. “There’s like an opening and it leads into a little cave, like an air pocket. They stash shit in there because they know nobody knows about it.”

“You know about it,” Paddy pointed out.

“Yeah, but I know people who run with the bikers mate,” Micky puffed out his chest. “And Jade knows about it, don’t you?”

“We were talkin about it just before, weren’t we?” She said to the girl on her other side.

“Yeah but that’s not what you said about it Tammy,” Paddy said to the other girl. “What did you say again? That there are bones?”

“That’s what I was told.” Tammy said, eyeing Jimmy and I coolly. “In the seventies these two men trapped a girl down there.”

“They left her in the dark?” Jimmy asked, eyes wide.

“Yep. Bought her food and kept her high… and when they were sick of her, they killed her.”

“No bullshit?” Micky said, tapping his cigarette. “Bloody hell.

“What about the rest?” Paddy had a sly grin. “The bones? Taaaammy?”

Tammy smirked at him, an involuntary pull of the lips. All the girls liked Paddy. “Yeah, well. It’s bullshit obviously. But my cousin told me that once a year, on the day she died, the girl’s bones float up to the surface.”

We all laughed, except Tammy who kept shrugging and telling us that her cousin was a lawyer now.

“This place does feel haunted sometimes,” Jimmy shielded his eyes and looked over the river, as if he might see the girl’s bones there and then.

“Maybe her ghost’s guarding all the bikie heroin,” Paddy laughed.

“If the cave’s there, then they’ve gotta be using it,” Micky insisted.

“My arse,” Paddy shook his head and Jade tittered. “There’s no cave, It’s bull…. shit.”’

“Why do we all know about it then?”

“Because we’ve got nothin better to do than to make this shit up.”

“Nup.” Micky looked back over at the bikies. “It’s brilliant. Why wouldn’t you use it as a stash? It’s not at anyone’s house, accessible whenever, safe as because nobody could find it.”

“Accessible,” I laughed.

Micky scowled at me. “What, you’re King Doggy Paddle aren’t you? It’s not gonna be that hard to swim down and into a cave, is it. Not if you know where it is.”

“And if you had the right gear,” said Paddy.

“Wait,” Jimmy was looking at me and my stomach sank. I knew exactly what he was about to say. “Your new rig would do it, wouldn’t it Danny?”

“What new rig?” Micky asked, frowning.

I didn’t like where this was leading and I would have shaken my head at Jimmy, but Paddy and Jade and even Tammy and the others were all listening.

“He got a diving rig for his birthday a couple of weeks back, a little oxygen tank and a mask, proper light and everything. Right Danny?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Have you got it here?” Micky’s eyes were bright. I could see that he was imagining himself rolling around in a pile of bikie coke and hundred-dollar bills.

“No,” I shook my head. “It’s back at…”

“It’s in his car!” Jimmy announced. I could have throttled him on the spot. “I was checkin out the flippers before we drove up.”

“No shit!” Micky was grinning.

Paddy snorted derisively, but Jade leaned forward, her big eyes on me. “Are you gonna try and find the cave?”

“I…”

“Yeah fuckin oath!” Micky said. “Go and grab your gear!”

“Are you gonna swim down and look for it?” Paddy asked Micky, who crossed his arms defensively.

“Yeah, yeah I’ll do it if he’s too much of a pussy.” He nodded at me. “What size are your flippers? Can I use the oxy?”

I shook my head. “No, it all has to be properly fitted.”

“So only you can use it.” His voice was flat, but I could see he was relieved. “Go and grab it anyway.”

“I…”

“Look, they’re leavin,” Micky pointed at the bikers across the lawn. They were making their way up the steep path towards the carpark. “Perfect timing.”

“There’s no bloody cave down there,” I muttered.

“Prove it then,” Micky sneered. They were all looking at me now. “Or didn’t Daddy buy you any balls either?”

“Listen, why don’t you…” … go fuck yourself, is what I meant to say, but before I could I noticed somebody else walking across the grass; Vanessa and her friends, walking towards the path down to Hog’s Bottom, towels slung over their pretty shoulders. “Why don’t you meet us down there.”

“You’re gonna do it?” Jade asked, a grin blooming on her features.

“Might as well have a look,” I mumbled.

“Come on,” Jimmy sprung to his feet. “I’ll walk up to the car with you.”

I trudged up the hill behind Jimmy, who was nattering away as he weaved amongst the foot traffic, dodging tourists and their wayward kids with a vacant gracefulness. On the way up, he said the cave definitely didn’t exist (Micky’s full of shit). By the time we pulled the gear off of my car’s back seat, he had figured out how we would sell a metric ton of cocaine (Tony at the skate park). By the time we came back to the lawn and the path down to Hogg’s Bottom, Jimmy had divvied up the takings from their haul and was deciding which suburb to buy his mansion in (Blackstone Heights or St Leonards).

The concrete path led through dense scrub until it reached a dilapidated stone and cement shelter that reeked of piss and boasted fifty years worth of graffiti. The path and scrub both ended here and we scrambled across the dull boulders that framed the water’s reedy edge, climbing up the short embankment to the field-sized plateau of rock that overlooked the river.

There were people dotted around the entire plateau, making their way to and from the walkway that curled around the cliffs or sitting on towels on the lower boulders that eased into the water. There were only so many spots where it was easy to access the water, and they were all occupied.

Hogg’s Bottom itself jutted out at the Eastern end of the plateau, a high point maybe four metres above the water. On the tip of the boulder was an ancient cement block with rust-stained bolt holes in the top; decades ago there had been a diving board installed here, but it was long gone. Now kids just jumped off the block itself into the deep, cool river water, where there were several convenient places to climb out, scramble back up the rocky path and jump off again.

“Look who’s come over,” Jimmy whispered, elbowing me. I didn’t look, but I knew who he was talking about.

Vanessa and her friends were sitting on some of the boulders near Hogg’s, laughing and putting on sunscreen. All of Paddy and Jade’s crew had come over from the lawn as well and Tammy was talking to one of Vanessa’s friends. Everyone knows everyone in Launceston.

“Let’s fuckin go!” Micky clapped his hands as Jimmy and I stood on Hogg’s. Paddy came over and stood next to us, peering down into the water.

“Where’s it supposed to be?” I said, fiddling with my gear to hide my nervousness. The little oxy tank attached directly to a mask that strapped over my face. When it was full, it held about twenty minutes worth of oxygen.

“It doesn’t exist,” Paddy scoffed, but he kept looking.

“It must be a few metres down at least,” Micky called out. He had stepped onto one of the larger boulders so that everyone could see him. “Otherwise everyone would know about it.“

“Hey Paddy!” It was Tammy. She waved when we all looked over and the girl she had been talking to called out to us.

“Are you gonna look for the cave?”

Micky whooped and punched the air. Jade and Paddy were laughing and spinning out.

“No shit, you’ve heard of it too?” Jimmy asked the girl, who nodded. “Christ. Maybe there is a cave.”

“What do you know about it?” I asked her. “Can people swim into it?”

“I guess so.” She shrugged. “My aunty told me that the Aborigines had an underwater cave up here. They used it as a burial place.”

Jimmy’s mouth was hanging wide open while Micky scoffed and shook his head.

“There are caves up here everywhere,” Jade pointed out.

“But not underwater ones,” Tammy said.

“How would you even get a body down there?” Jimmy said.

“Bikies, bones or burials,” Paddy said, almost to himself. “Got a real positive vibe, this cave.”

“Come on, you goin in or what?” Micky was clearly enjoying himself.

Vanessa hadn’t looked over, but she and her friends must have been able to hear him. I looked at Jimmy, who was grinning his dumb grin. He shrugged.

“Finder’s keepers, arsehole.” I muttered. His grin slipped a little.

Paddy was still looking over the edge of Hogg’s. I handed him the mask and stepped onto the concrete block.

“Drop this down to me?”

He nodded and took it. I held the oxy tank and the underwater torch against my chest to brace against the impact of the water.

“Danny,” Paddy’s voice was low, too low for the rest to hear. “Don’t do it man.”

I smirked at him, waiting for a punchline. None came.

“He won’t go,” Micky scoffed. “He hasn’t got the balls.”

Vanessa and her friends were looking now. They all were. Jade and Tammy, all their crew.

“If there’s gold down there,” I told Paddy, “I’ll buy you a new skateboard.” My grin felt weak.

“Go Danny boy, go!” Micky was clapping and capering. “Get that loot!”

Squeezing the oxygen tank against my armpit, I nodded at Paddy and Jimmy. Vanessa was talking to the girl next to her, no longer looking my way. Damn.

I turned and looked off Hogg’s. From there I could see all the way across the basin; there were kids swimming under the swinging bridge, some metalheads resting on the submerged rocks near the walkway. A group of teenagers had pulled a driftwood log out into the middle of the river and were wrestling to see who could stand on it the longest.

I had jumped from this spot dozens of times, but never with an oxy tank or a torch. The sun was in my eyes. Jimmy and Jade were clapping and hooting encouragingly while Micky cheered with glee. I took a deep breath and jumped.

A rushing drop through the sunshine then cold, cold, water engulfed me. The shock was only momentary - the river was always cold – and it dissipated completely when I broke the surface, shaking water from my eyes and hair. The sun was warm on my face, glaring in my eyes. I squinted up at Paddy, high above me on the rock.

“Yep.” I waved my hand and the mask fell into the water right next to me. Kicking my flippers slowly kept me upright in the water easily while I pulled on the mask and attached the little oxygen bottle.

“Look out, frogman!” Jimmy called from above. He had stripped off his t-shirt and was standing on the concrete block.

I pushed backwards through the water and watched him leap into the air, pulling his knees to his chest, splashing down a few feet in front of me. The resulting wave almost made me drop the torch, so I wrapped it’s strap around my wrist and swore at him.

Paddy followed him a moment later, then Jade gracefully pin-dropped in as well. Micky was gingerly making his way to the edge of the boulder, still a decent jump but a good four feet lower than the concrete block.

“You gotta be kiddin,” I snorted.

Jimmy followed my gaze and whooped laughter. “He’s gonna do the kid’s one! You fuckin pussy Micky!”

“Piss off,” Micky muttered.

Jimmy chortled scornfully and duck-dived below the surface. Paddy and Jade were smiling into each other’s shoulders. I turned away, adjusting my mask, as Micky splashed into the river.

The mask had a rubber mouthpiece that you could bite down on to control the flow of air. I had only used it a couple of times before but it was simple and intuitive. The torch flicked on and off easily enough. I was ready to go, so I gave Paddy the thumbs up and as I put my head down to duck dive, I saw Jimmy and Paddy do the same.

It was a different world underwater. The river was cool and clean, but it’s edges were murky with weed and moss and slime, all stirred up by dozens of kicking feet. Beyond the first few feet below the surface it was nearly impossible to see anything, even with the goggles.

I flicked on the torch and the river edges sprung to life in sudden clarity. I could see the boulders rising up out of the water and continuing down into the darkness below, weeds that clung to every rock waving from side to side, chunks of moss and twig and mud drifting through the torchbeam, even the black flick of a freshwater eel darting away from the light. Gross.

The torchlight pushed against the murky water but couldn’t penetrate far – just enough for me to notice Jimmy and Paddy’s legs kicking back up towards the surface. They wouldn’t get anywhere near as deep as I could with the flippers and oxygen, so I watched them go, then swam deeper.

I followed the uneven wall of boulders below directly below Hogg’s, swimming down away from the sunlight, following the edge of the biggest rocks. There were small ledges and crevices, but my torch showed most of them to be shallow breaks in the mossy rock. I went deeper, scanning from side to side. The underwater terrain appeared seamless.

The light was being suffocated by the increasingly silty water, so I pulled myself closer to the boulders and focused on what was right in front of me. I was looking for a needle in a haystack and I started to feel relieved; if there was a cave I would never find it but I could surface with a clear conscious, having looked for it in earnest.

So I prodded at the edges of the boulders, pushing aside some weeds here, scraping some mud there. At my knees was a big, smooth boulders, almost perfectly round and apparently the size of a small car. I gripped it as best as I could with one hand and pushed myself down along it’s smooth surface. I figured I was between five and six metres deep. Almost deep enough to call it done.

There was an enormous crashing sound directly above me, loud enough that I was startled and slipped down the boulder a little. I saw something far above me in the murk – a pair of white feet, kicking frantically like startled fish, gone in a flash. Somebody had jumped off Hogg’s, right on top of me. Jimmy, probably.

I gripped onto the boulder and pushed at it with my feet. At least I would have, but my feet found no purchase. The smooth boulder wasn’t as big as I thought apparently and must have had a space beneath it.

A space?

I pushed back off the boulder into the open water, kicking my feet to spin around, then swam down to the bottom of the boulder I’d been scaling. There was a gap underneath it and when I shone my torch into it my stomach flipped.

The gap receded into the rocks, making an opening about three feet wide. The torchlight was disappearing into the opening, which meant there was nothing for it to hit – there was an even bigger gap behind the opening.

I had found the cave.

Heart thudding with excitement, I swam closer to the opening, shining my torchlight into it. It still didn’t hit anything else, not until I had gripped onto the rocks and pulled my face right up to the gap in the rocks. When I reached into opening with my torch hand, I could see more weeds and more silt – the water behind the boulders was even murkier than in the river.

But I still couldn’t see the far side or a ceiling. The cave was big, the size of a room at least. With my head and shoulders still in the opening, I debated going back to the surface to gloat. I had found the cave, after all. That was enough.

But it wouldn’t be enough. And I had been down here almost ten minutes already so there wouldn’t be enough oxygen for a return trip. And… I don’t think I would want to come back down here again, bikie treasure or no. This was a once off deal. It was now or never.

So I pulled myself into the cave, gripping my torch in one fist and using it to grapple along. The water felt dirtier in here. If there was an air pocket at the top with an actual cave, it would be a dank mess.

They left her in the dark? Jimmy’s words came back to me with a shiver and I pushed them away. I was almost completely in the cave when my left flipper caught on the opening, pinching my foot painfully and throwing me off balance. I bit down on the rubber mouthpiece in place of cursing. The flipper was stuck.

I pulled at it, fighting down the sharp panic blooming in my spine. For a moment the rubber wouldn’t give, so I put my other foot on another boulder nearby. To my relief, the flipper tore free and I pushed back off the rocks, the pain in my foot immediately numb in the cold water.

It was time to go, treasure be damned. I reached down, turning upside down, and felt my way along the rocks, looking for the entrance.

It wasn’t there. My hands were met with solid rock in every direction. When I pushed back to free my flipper I must have become disoriented. I was sure I knew where the entrance was, but my hands disagreed with me.

I backed up, swinging the torch from side to side, but the water had become so thick with disturbed silt that I could barely see a foot in front of my face.

Panic returned and this time it was much harder to contain. My heart thudded and my breathing was fast and out of control. The torchlight showed me unbroken rock and weed through thick clouds of freezing, muddy water. I wondered how much oxygen I had left. I tried to stay calm. I felt my way along the rocks, looking for the entrance. It had to be here.

It had to be here.

But it wasn’t.

I pushed aside rocks in desperation, looking for any kind of gap, wondering how long it would be before Jimmy and Paddy and Jade came down looking for me. Before help came. Because I needed help, needed help now.

My oxygen was running out. The sweet, clean air I was sucking through the mouthpiece grew thinner with every breath and I was panicking, hyperventilating, scrabbling at the rocks and weeds and mud with numb hands. The boulders were unyielding. I was trapped. I shone the torch. There was no opening.

The air pocket. It was my only chance. I could stay there until the searchers came, until the divers found the cave. I had found it, they would find it. I repeated the thought over and over as I pushed off the bottom of the cave and kicked up towards where I hope – where I prayed – the air pocket might be. If there was a cave, they would find me. My oxygen was out.

I swam upwards, hoping it was upwards, my torch weaving through brown floating much and darkness, I kicked, kicked again, praying that my hands would break the surface, praying that the cave was real, that the air pocket was real, that I would…

My torch hand thumped into something soft and something else brushed my shoulder and drifted towards my face.

It was a hand.

I screamed. The last of my air bubbled away into the dark. I swung the torch, sucking uselessly at the mouthpiece, wanting to scream, needing to scream and finding no air to scream with.

There was a body floating in front of me, skeletal and mossy, its scraps of white flesh coated in brown silt. It might have been woman once.

I pushed away from it, lungs burning, legs kicking, reaching for the surface… but my hands crashed into hard rock, painful and unyielding. Air. I need air. I don’t want to die here.

There are other bodies, other white scraps drifting through the cold. I can see pieces of them – a ripped and emaciated torso, an arm and a shoulder in the distance, a pair of slowly spinning feet below. A child’s feet.

The cave’s ceiling is just as slippery and mossy as the floor. It might be the floor for all I know. I’m waving the torch from side to side, looking for a darker patch, looking for the surface, knowing that there is no surface.

I don’t want to die down here. There is no air. The torchlight is fading.

They’re drifting all around me, rotting in the dark. They don’t need floaties. I don’t need floaties.

Jimmy will find me. They’re coming.

The bodies turn in the water, floating towards me, twisting in the silt.

I wish I could breathe again. Just one more time.

The torchlight fades to smothered black and they take me in their cold, cold arms.