Story for performance #10
webcast from Paris at 09:58PM, 30 Jun 05

For many years the inhabitants of the little township of Manta in South Australia (yes, as in Manta Ray…used to be called Manta Ray Bay, but who can be bothered with that?) have built themselves jinkas, to get out to the water; and it was only due to the jinkas that, on that fateful day in February 1976, Jessie Hyde managed to save the town from ruin.

Manta is way, way south, in flat lands, where the tide is such that when it’s low, the fishermen have to travel as far as four kilometres across wet sand to reach the ocean. No-one knows when it really started happening, but a tradition has developed in Manta where each family builds themselves a jinka, to carry them and their boats along this long path to the water. You see, if you take your boat out across the sand, along the four kilometres to the water on a regular trailer, with some kind of motor; when you get back, after a day of fishing, the tide will have come in, if not all the way, then at least part of the way, and your motor will be flooded with sea water and useless. So what they do in Manta is get bits of old cars, trucks, trailers, buildings, all sorts of things, and weld them into a sort of elevated trailer, a chariot with a suspended engine, to take them and their boat safely in and out of the sea.

They are amazing things: rusty, prehistoric beasts from the deep…each one different. Robbo’s has all these diagonal struts, he reckons they make it stronger. It looks like a snowflake or something. Kind of poofy. Colby’s has a couple of side bits, which are like wings, apparently they give it stability. And Doreen’s Bill, well he built one which has a letterbox on one of the corner struts. He said he just found it like that, but everyone reckons he’s waiting for an invitation from a mermaid, although Doreen makes a mean lemon delicious pudding, and a man’d have to think twice about letting that go, even for a mermaid.

Anyway, on this day, Thursday, February 17th, 1976, the whole town was topsy turvy. It had been an amazing week. On the Tuesday night, there’d been a king tide, you know, where the tide’s really high, and then really low, and in the evening a whole load of Nautilus shells had floated in. I’ll never forget it. You see, I come from Nanty, half an hour inland, and Dad’s cousin, who lives in Manta, called up and said ‘Get down here quick and bring Dezzie, you won’t see the likes of this again.’ And he was right. Those Nautilus were amazing, they floated gently in the bay, like a huge necklace of pearls had busted right there, and they glowed so bright in the moonlight; and then gently, so gently the tide set them down on the beach. And there were enough to go round. No fights, not even between the Cohens and the McGiverns, not that night.

And then on the Wednesday, Jacko’s house caught fire, and burnt down. Not right to the ground, but far enough. Electrical fault in the kettle they said, when they finally got there…and sure enough you could see the remains of the kettle splattered all over the kitchen. He was lucky to be alive. Kind of.

And then on the Thursday night there was this mega catch of whiting. Everyone went out, filled up their boats, and then filled them up again. The town was packed with fish. Stuffed to the gunnels. Exploding with it. But then Doreen’s Bill, who was cleaning his catch, slipped with the knife and cut through a main artery in his upper thigh. And the town went crazy. He was a popular bloke, and everyone, but everyone, went to the hall to see what they could do. It was pandemonium.

So everyone was there, except Jessie Hyde, who’d see the smallest speck of blood and straight away vomit, and then after that, faint. So he was skulking, on the beach, keeping out of the way. After skipping a couple of hundred stones across the water, he sat down on a rock and looked at the shapes of the jinkas scattered over the sand, trying to choose which one he liked best. He’d almost chosen Maxo’s, which was a strange thing, because only a few weeks before he’d definitely been gunning for Colby’s, with its wings, when he heard the throb of a motor out to sea. And then not just one motor, but many. He looked out, and there, still quite far away, but getting closer, was a fleet of fishermen. And something told him that they were nasty.

Jessie thought quickly, and rather than run all the way back to the hall and risk vomiting and fainting and wasting time, he sped over to the nearest jinka, started it up, got it moving, and lined it up against the sea and the approaching fishermen. He leapt down, started up the second and did the same. As he got the third and fourth into position he could see who was coming. It was those bastards from Hoy, down the coast, come to steal fish, for sure. As Jessie climbed up on the fifth jinka, Steve Howell’s, he noticed that there was a little horn near the steering wheel, and so as he got it into place he started blaring that horn, blaring it and blaring it, so much so that eventually the sound filtered through the chaos of Bill’s accident, and someone came out to investigate.

Well, the rest is history. The townspeople of Manta used the jinkas, set up perfectly by Jessie, as a fortress, to defend their fish and their town. They defeated the lads from Hoy, not losing a single whiting; Jessie Hyde became a hero, notwithstanding the thing about the blood; and all jinkas from that day forth have carried a horn.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Caroline Lee