T. A. G. Hungerford (1915–2011)

I thought about it for a moment, and decided what I’d do. I pulled my canoe around to the steps and promised another kid thrippence, when I got paid, to steady it for me while I put the crabs in – onw bag at each end to balance it. Then I got in myself, very carefully, and settled myself in the middle, between them. Then I paddled away from the jetty.
‘Gawd!’ someone yelled out after me. ‘You gone barmy, or something? Paddling to Perth!’
I didn’t think it was all that much to shout about. We used to run canoe races out to the second and third channel posts, and it was nothing. I reckoned to paddle to Perth would be just like doing maybe five or six races out to the third post. I looked around me. The water was as smooth and shiny as our dining room lino, and when I looked over the side of my canoe it was so clear I could see the bottom as plainly as if I was looking at it through a pane of glass.
It would have been different if it had been like the floods last winter when the waves had been as high as the sea, and the current in the middle of the river was like the rapids in Canada, and the water was dark brown with mud… (p.118)
It takes him an hour to paddle to Perth, and his shoulders were aching and he had pins-and-needles in his leg by the time he got there. The Fremantle Doctor came in on the return journey – which made the water choppy and he had to bail with a jam tin. But the real danger was waiting for him at home, when he had to explain about the money he’d flourished on the kitchen table!