Occasionally, planes would land on the airstrip, mainly because the absentee sheep farmer flew across from Flinders Island a few times during the year, most frequently during the shearing season. Jack came to recognize the unique drone and regular misfire of the farmer’s plane and was familiar with all the planes that flew amongst the islands, and their schedules. Then one day, five years after he’d moved to the island, Jack identified the engine sound of one of the Cessnas belonging to a Launceston-based charter company. Their chief business was giving overpriced flying lessons to privileged kids. His curiosity sparked, Jack made his way to the airstrip to see his Uncle Donnie walk over the rise, shouldering a khaki duffel bag. His hair had thinned and his features had become more drawn since their last meeting, but he was still fit for his age.

None of Jack’s other family had bothered visiting him, although they all knew where he was. The pretext for Donnie’s visit was time out from work and travel. Donnie was Jack’s great-uncle — his grandmother’s much younger brother. He’d joined the army as a teen and married soon after. Strained from the extended periods Donnie spent abroad and remaining childless, the relationship failed. Donnie spent the rest of his working life traveling South-East Asia in gas and oil jobs. The envy of many, his lifestyle was a continuous cycle of rough and opulent: oil platforms to plush hotels; hard cabin bunks to the soft and inviting beds of the local women.

When Donnie’s stay on the island extended beyond a month, Jack became curious about his uncle’s intentions — and the real reason for his visit. He was very fond of Donnie; had anyone else just shown up like that, Jack would have run them off the island. But as time progressed, Jack began to appreciate the company. The despair that had driven him to Badger Island began to wane.

The two men spent their days improving the hut and tending to Jack’s garden. Donnie was a keen fisherman and many a shadowy evening Jack would watch him from his garden on the cliff’s edge, fishing rod and bucket in hand, crossing the chain of mottled granite boulders that linked to a larger rocky outcrop in the corner of their sapphire cove. There, Donnie had discovered he could catch silver trevally, when the wind was barely a breath on a swollen tide. The two of them lived mostly on what they caught from the sea and could grow in Jack’s garden. Jack had become proficient with a throwing stick and, like his tribal forebears, would take an unlucky wallaby for protein when the relentless westerly winds made fishing impossible.