What You Should Take To A Deserted Island

The pilot is tapping the fuel gauge. Never, in the history of air travel, whether actual or fictionalised in film, has that achieved anything other than to confirm the fuel tanks are, in fact, empty.

“Does that ever work?” I ask Peter, the pilot charged with providing me with my 50th birthday present — a joy flight over the islands.

“Say again?”

“I said does that ever work?” I’m yelling into the headset mic, pointing at the instrument panel. “Have you ever tapped an empty fuel gauge and it sprang back up?”

The pilot laughs nervously. “You never know.”

“So on a scale of 1 to completely, how fucked are we, Peter?” I've always liked how my voice sounds through the headset. Like a fighter pilot.

He doesn’t answer, the grey bulbs covering his ears twisting left and right. Searching for, I’m guessing, a place to ditch the stricken Cessna.

“Peter?” I ask with as little panic as I can.

“JK565 to base, do you read?” he says. “JK565 to base. Mayday, mayday. Over.” The sound of his voice is more urgent now. And unnervingly close in my headset so I rip it off. I get claustrophobic when I’m stressed. 

With the weight off my head, I feel unburdened. I take three deep breaths and smell Peter’s perspiration.

The plane is suddenly very loud. The roaring engine sounds angry. It’s pissed at Peter for taking off without checking the mechanic reattached the fuel line, or something equally obvious. It’s angry we took it so far from home and that it’s going to meet its end out here in the ocean.

“Planes float, right?” I yell above the drone. Peter can’t hear me. “Pretty sure they float,” I reassure myself.

I see Peter’s mouth moving, so I put my headset back on halfway through him saying, “–on water. Understand?”

“What was that?”

“I said, your life vest is under the seat and you’ll want your seatbelt fastened extra tight for a landing on water.”

I nod.

“Do you copy, Max?” Peter asks, his voice tinged with anger.

“Sorry, yes, Peter. Copy that.”

“I need you to follow my instructions, and that includes confirmation of you receiving those instructions. Just like we talked about in the safety briefing.”

“Copy that.”

I’ve flown, conservatively, a thousand times. My job as a grain trader means I’m all over the country every week. Often in similar planes to this one to get the lay of the land over some of the bigger properties in the agricultural belt. The law of averages suggests I should have had at least one incident. Especially in these light planes. If you watch the news, they seem to drop out of the sky more often than land safely. 

Like most people, I stopped listening to the safety briefings before takeoff on commercial flights; offering a cynical smirk as they describe the emergency brace position. 

I’m a huge fan of the show, Air Crash Investigations. People can’t believe someone that flies as much as I do could watch that show. I find it reassuring.

“What could possibly be reassuring about watching your primary form of transportation crashing?” they typically ask.

“Because every time a plane crashes, they find out why, fix it, and remove another potential danger. I feel safer in a plane than in my car.” Especially when my son, Daniel’s driving.

But in all the episodes I’ve watched, never once did they interview those who walked away from the burning carnage to credit their miraculous survival to the emergency brace position.

Just like they never blame a crash on someone neglecting to switch their phone to flight mode.

The engine sputters, coughs, and gives out. It’s now deathly quiet but for an unnerving whistling sound. I feel the plane lurch like when Dan would hit the brakes too hard learning to drive. 

The second of static signalling an incoming transmission hisses in my ear, before Peter says, “We’re out, Max. I’m going to put her down as close to that island as I can. We should be down in about two minutes. Copy?” His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. Through the cockpit window, the horizon is vacant save for three small dots. I imagine them as pristine islands, rich with coconut palms, white sand, materials for making camp. I’ve watched Bear Grylls. Survivor. Castaway. I’m coming around to the idea of an adventure for my 50th. Maybe this will be the story for the book I’m always telling myself I should write.

“Copy,” I say.

“I’ll trim off as much airspeed as I can but it’s still going to be a big hit.”

“Emergency brace position?” I say, actually smiling now.

“I mean it, Max. We’ll go from 80 to zero in no seconds. Buckle up.”

I think about what my body can handle. I’m in pretty good shape for my age. Only stopped playing football a couple of years ago. I can take a hit. I take the life jacket from under my seat and tuck it under the straps of my harness. That should cushion some of the impact at least.

I check my pockets as I have always done coming into land: wallet; keys; phone. Just in case I leave something in the seat pocket.

My camera.

Dan got me a proper camera for my birthday and I haven’t taken a single photo with it yet.

The Canon 6D’s weight is intimidating. Must have cost a fortune. Dan’s app is obviously selling well. I love taking photos but have never owned a camera besides the one on my phone. Dan’s always paying me out about my shots of sunsets, the obligatory plane wing in the foreground.

It's so done, Dad.

He made me promise I’ll never take another plane window sunset with this camera.

My eyes had glazed as he explained aperture, depth of field, exposure, film speed. Film speed? I thought this was digital?

I set the camera to the green A for Auto mode and take a look through the viewfinder. Everything’s blurry until I half-press the shutter button. Now the horizon’s gone and the ocean is racing down the cockpit window. I point the lens out my side window and take a shot over the wing. The preview shows on the screen. The first photo on my camera is of my impending crash-landing.

“Here we go, Max,” Peter says.

“This is 80 Ks?” I ask as the white caps rush past like tiny mountain tops reaching up to rip open the fuselage of our plane. 

My body is tensed up way too early. This is the first time I’ve felt fear on a plane. I’m expecting the crunch that doesn’t come. The water is right there, I could touch it if my window was open. Maybe this is one of those dreams where you wake up at the moment of impact, sheets soaked, heart pounding.

Then, boom.

* * * 

The water is so salty I choke and dry wretch. The sound of my hacking is close and stifled as if I’m in a confined space—my least favourite place to be. I think, Open your eyes, but they are open.

It’s pitch black in here.

Water taps at my lips, trying to get in. I crane my neck. The water is mercifully mild. Though the dark, stale air is suffocating and my neck is practically immobile, I can still see the positives: I didn’t die in a plane crash.

My headset has slipped off, the cord I can feel wrapped around my neck. I correct the earpieces and it’s predictably silent.

“Peter?” I say, but it’s only the sound of my voice. Nothing’s transmitting through the cans.

My eyes are adjusting and there’s a green hue to the darkness. I unclip my belt and duck my head below the surface of the water. Through my window, tiny fish are investigating this alien craft. Shards of sunlight pierce the rippling surface and I’m thankful I haven’t been unconscious for too long.

I’m also thankful Apple finally made a water-resistant phone. Though my wet thumb is unable to unlock the touchscreen, pressing the power button illuminates the screen to work as a torch.

I wade to the cockpit where Peter’s face is submerged. The back of his head has a nasty gash; a depression the shape of a half-circle. Something loose in the cabin must have flown forward on impact. Something heavy and cylindrical. 

Something like the lens on my camera.

Fuck. Sorry, Peter.

Though it looks like a spiderweb, I can see through the splintered cockpit window that the nose of the plane is on the sandy ocean floor. Peter saved my life by landing in shallow water.

It’s not like in the movies, the door opens without too much effort and I’m free of the wreckage. The air is clean after the stuffy plane and I inhale deeply. There’s a small stretch of sand and rocks with dense green vegetation less than 50 metres away. 

I’m a terrible swimmer but the life vest and a persistent current make the journey a breeze. It’s only as I reach shore, my full weight materialising as I emerge from the gentle rolling waves, that I register I should have checked the plane for anything useful. Now the current and my aching neck make the 50 metres back to the plane seem an unachievable feat of stamina.

I assume Peter activated some type of distress signal. Or is that only on boats?

We lost radio contact at almost the exact moment we began flying over the water. Peter had insisted we were required to turn back, but I’d persuaded him to keep going. It was my birthday after all. I can be very persuasive when I put my mind to it.

Sorry, Peter.

How far had we travelled before Peter noticed we were losing gas? The low fuel alarm had sounded moments after we made that gut-churning turn for home. We still couldn’t see the mainland on the horizon as we made preparations to ditch.

I’m missing a shoe and the sand at the waterline is mostly smashed shells that are cutting my foot. 

I huff a chuckle to myself as I think of all the times I looked at photos of plane crashes; the powerful images of a single shoe among the debris, how I always wondered why people always lost a shoe. It’s sad how much time I spend on the internet looking up morbid things like plane crashes. The effects of radiation on the human body. Crime scene photos. How long you can survive without water. 

Bear Grylls tells me, Max, the biggest mistake people make when finding themselves on a deserted island is they expend too much energy trying to make a fire. Your first priority should be to find drinking water. The easiest way to do that is to find the low-point of the terrain.

A quick survey of my island tells me it’s less than 100 metres at its widest point and half that across its belly. It’s no more than six feet above sea level at its highest point and is more or less impenetrably covered in scrubby mangroves. I think that’s what they are, anyway. No fresh water. Not a single coconut.

What now, Bear?

You can drink your urine, he tells me.

In Castaway, Tom Hanks opens all the packages that wash ashore from his cargo plane.

I scan the beach for anything of use, but there is only sand, and smashed shells that cut my foot, and endless ocean. I can’t remember if you can eat mangroves for hydration.

Now that my shirt’s almost dry, the sun is hot on my shoulders. I look at the white tail section of the plane, jutting out of the ocean like a cross. It’s blinding in this light. It probably holds water and other emergency supplies in it.

Moments ago, seemingly, I was climbing aboard that plane thinking, I spend half my life on planes and for my 50th, you get me a joy flight?

I love you, Deb. But we need to have a chat about your presents.

Speaking of which, the watch she got me for my 40th has stopped. I still can’t believe she managed to find a watch that isn’t waterproof. They’re like a car with manual window winders. Apparently, you can still get them if you try hard enough.

The watch says we hit the water at ten past two; the hands at the angle they use for all advertising shots because it looks like a smile. Another thing I found on the Internet.

From the sun’s elevation, I’ve got four hours, tops, to salvage what I can from the plane before it gets sketchy. Even if I didn’t suffer claustrophobia, the thought of entering a submerged plane in the dark makes my guts tighten. Now that I think about it, there’s definitely water and some food aboard, and a life raft, but I’m more concerned about finding something I can use to create a fire. I can’t remember if you can use a signal flare to start a fire or if that was something I saw in a movie.

They banned flares at soccer stadiums. Maybe because they start fires?

I test the current by wading out as far as I can before the life vest’s buoyancy sets me adrift, dragging me back to shore. Swimming against the current, I think it’s actually going to hamper my progress and I toss it back to the sand next to my phone. The vibrant orange fabric and sleek black technology look so alien against the bleached sand and tropical hues of the teal ocean. Like some contrived stock photograph.

On the life vest, a plastic rectangle on a rope hangs from the shoulder strap. A cynical smile thins my dry lips. I’m saved. A whistle for attracting attention.

Taking a deep breath, I plunge headlong into the water and strike out with all my might toward the plane. After six strokes I lift my head for a breath and pain shoots down my neck all the way into my feet. For a moment I think I might be paralysed and roll onto my back. The current pulls me back to shore. The Internet told me a black hole’s gravitational force is so strong, not even light escapes it. I’m attempting to swim away from a black hole.

Lying in the water, light shore-breakers nudge me, rock me, comfort me. They tell me it’s OK, Max. You can stay here with us. The ebbing and flowing ssshhh sounds like the white noise I use to get to sleep when I can’t switch off.

Maybe I should get a nap in, then have another shot at reaching the plane.

I test my neck by looking left but I can barely move it without sending lightning into my skull. Lifting my arm sends a bolt into my feet. I rule out swimming to the plane.

Thankful there’s no one here to witness my undignified exit from the water, I roll onto the sand. I think about the farmers who’ve done damage falling off their tractors then make the injury immeasurably worse by trying to walk or crawl back home. I position the life vest under my head to support my neck and stare into the sky. 70,000 feet above, a microscopic Boeing something or other traces a line across the cyan expanse. I watch it fade into the atmosphere and its trail eventually dissipate, all evidence of the plane gone along with its passengers.

Stranded on a deserted island. I’ve fantasised about it. Who hasn’t? Deb loved hypotheticals at dinner parties.

If you could only take one thing on a deserted island, what would it be? 

“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” Geoff would ask, drunkenly. Regardless of the answer, he’d always nominate the latest movie starlet. Lecherous creep.

Daniel had, per the Gen Y memorandum, stated he would take his phone.

Me? My fishing rod. Boring, but practical. Probably how Dan would describe me.

I sigh as I so often do when considering the utter hopelessness of my son and his peers. So wedded to technology. While Dan rolls his eyes at my luddite’s approach to picking up new gadgets, I thoroughly despair at his inability to tolerate anything remotely analog.

We started out on rocky ground, Daniel and I, but as I took more of an interest in his hobbies—anything computers—and less of an interest in my work, things mended. Still plenty of work to do when I get back. Jesus, if I get back. 

I’m glad, at least, what might have been our last words were not spoken in anger.

A vibration near my hand startles me as I picture a crustacean protruding through the sand to test the latest offering from the ocean. There was a guy hiking in the woods who got his leg caught under a boulder in a creek. Two days later he noticed blood running down the stream from behind the rock. He managed to maneuver himself to look around the rock and saw crabs eating his foot. That’s what’s going to happen to me lying here.

But nothing bursts through the sand. It’s just my phone vibrating from an alert.

Puzzled, I reach for it and the screen tells me David Sterling and five other friends have posted on my Facebook wall.

I have two bars of 3G.

I hurriedly type out a message to Deb, but my thumb hovers above the send button.

I open the camera app and click the button Daniel showed me to take a selfie. Grimacing against the neck pain, I reach above my head to get the scene in frame: my sunburned face forcing a smile, a bare foot cut and bleeding, in the background, the tail of my downed plane.

“Hey, Dan. Tks for camera. Sorry it got wet. Here’s a photo of my trip. Not my best shot, but at least it’s not a sunset. Love, Dad.”