The Opium Smugglers

Idriess calls it in his Author's Note, where he states in his first sentence that “This boy's book is for your dad as well as you...” and “so I thought I'd write of my adventures with my old mate, Dick.”
In my (admittedly extensive) experience with Ion Idriess's books they fall into three categories - Biographies which cover one or a group of people with something in common, often pioneers, explorers or Aboriginal heroes; Instructional or scientific books about mining and minerals; and my most favourite of his genres - autobiographical stories. What a life this man lived, and in such varied adventures he had.

In this story, from his youth, he and mate Dick Welch a native of Cook Town, North Queenstown sees the boys set out from Cook Town as junior crew on a the Nancy Bell, a schooner owned and captained by Cross-Eyed Joe, the Filipino. Their intent - to harvest trochus shell - worth eighty pounds a ton at the time they left (and more when they returned).

So they joined the crew of Joe, two Malay divers and two Aboriginal divers, as well as Dick's protege, Little Paddy, the son of one of the Aboriginal divers, Big Paddy. As the story plays out they find an excellent patch of trochus, and harvest like mad, thrilled with their success. Other ships, keen to pull alongside and share in the patch were a risk, as were sharks, and tactics need to be carefully considered to protect a good patch. Trochus must also be boiled to remove the shellfish before they become flyblown, which effects the welcome a boat has at port - and the price obtained, so after little more than a day of harvesting the crew needed to set up a shore base, and Lizard Island proved ideal.

Lizard Island is the location of the infamous murder of a pioneering family by Aboriginals, a ruined hut still being evident while they are there, so Idriess is able to weave the local history into his story. At shore they deal with the boiling of the trochus and packing of the shell for storing on shore - the small boat can hold only around 50 ton, and their intent is to harvest more than double that from the patch, all going well.

They continue to work, with Dick and Idriess (Jack as he was known most of his life) generally remaining on the island to process the catch and to maintain a lookout for other ships from the top of the hill, at which time they could signal the Nancy Bell to warn them to pull out of the patch and make a tactical withdrawal. There are various adventures, including a nasty shark attack and some nautical surgery, before a suspicious black schooner arrives at the island with a Japanese crew.

Idriess makes Jack the hero of this story, making him the cleverer of the two, the one who figures things out first, and has the best ideas. It is hard to know if this was the case, or if this was a nod to his friendship; but either way Jack becomes suspicious of Cross-Eyed Joe and the black schooner, and it turns out that Joe has bigger ambitions than just trochus shell, as made obvious by the book title.

I wouldn't have thought that opium smuggling was a big thing in Australia, but I guess with the opportunity to make big money fast, there will be people prepared to take the risk. The way the story weaves is simple enough, but Idriess reveals it well, as alluded to above, with Dick putting things together well before Jack has it explained to him! It is too good to ruin with a spoiler, but suffice to say there is plenty of excitement as the two boys and Little Paddy are left alone on the island for a longer period than expected as the two boats disappear to play cat and mouse with the opium drop.

Turns out though, that the three boys are not alone on the island and they have their own cat and mouse encounter with a Japanese sailor.

This was a quick read, and without doubt falls into the category of old skool boys adventure, but there is more than enough in it for adult readers (I am not a reader of YA, yet this was a great nostalgia read), and above all it still contains Idriess's skillful story telling.

4.5 stars, rounded up.