Us Baskervilles always knew it as 2nd Cylinder. See, in the 60s no one had bothered to give this beach its own name yet because it was mostly desolate and unvisited. It seemed as though we were the only family to ever made the effort to go there. I think that it had something to do with the fact that to get to this beach one had to walk pass the pub and on a hot day at Straddie, that was something only a complete tea-totaling family like ours could possibly do. Still, the fact that we had the beach totally to ourselves with lots of shade trees and a landform that gave protection from the prevailing south-east blow, made the long walk there so worthwhile. Now once the campsite of shade-cloth, campfire and blanket was properly established and mum was propped up with her knitting and dad with his book, the kids took off to create some fun. An oft played family game was called “no return”. This involved carving out in the sand, lots of well-defined circular and crisscrossing tracts with quite a few intersecting points. The game was a Baskerville adaptation of the game “tiggy”. Basically, someone was “up” and they had to tag someone else in order to lose their demeaning label. The trick was to try and trap an opponent on one of the long marked out routes. See you could only change direction at an intersection and also you were not allowed to stop moving at any time in the game. So you tried to trap someone by getting them to commit to a particular route and then beating them to the inevitable intersection by taking a different course. They had to continue their movement towards the intersection where you were hopefully waiting and now they were “It” as there was “no return” once you committed to a route. I remember us littlens being “up” on too many occasions. Come to think of it, I don’t remember “make your own tracks when it suits David” ever having to carry that degrading title. Well, we weren’t always alone on 2nd Cylinder. There was always the wreck of the “Rufus King” to keep us company. Dad told us that it was an American Liberty ship that had mistaken the South Passage Bar for the North West Channel located at the northern end of Moreton Island and had run aground on a shallow sandbank. Sadly, it met its end on the 7 July 1942 only 6 weeks after it was built and commissioned in the USA. A lot more of that fateful ship would have been visible today had it not presented such a good target practice to dad’s WWII mates in the RAAF. There were two other visitors that I remember with vigour coming on to 2nd Cylinder in the most unusual way. Now, apart from the constant reminder of the Rufus King war was as far from our thinking as it possibly could be in this secluded and isolated island paradise and beach. Still, there we were playing at the waters edge when coming through the breakers we heard the roar of an approaching instrument of war. Up onto our beach emerged a huge Army Duck and with just a smiling wave to us stunned kids, it disappeared along the beach and out of site to obviously fight a war some place else. The second encounter with visitors on 2nd Cylinder I am sure rates up there in intensity with “Where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated?”. On this occasion David was the only one capable of running ahead and make it to the protection of the clump of trees on the beach uyp front. The rest of us just stood motionless, huddled in a group as dad had commanded us. The pounding hoofs of the 30 plus stampeding wild horses that galloped either side of our statue like and petrified group that day will stay in my memory long after it was replayed by permission 40 years later in full Technicolor in the movie “Fellowship of the Rings”.
