CHAPTER VII

DROPPING ACID

Acropora millepora

Half a world away from Castello Aragonese, One Tree Island sits at the
southernmost tip of the Great Barrier Reef, about fifty miles off the coast
of Australia. It has more than one tree, which surprised me when I got
there, expecting—cartoonishly, I suppose—a single palm sticking up out
of white sand. As it turned out, there wasn’t any sand, either. The whole
island consists of pieces of coral rubble, ranging in size from small
marbles to huge boulders. Like the living corals they once were part of,
the rubble chunks come in dozens of forms. Some are stubby and finger-
shaped, others branching, like a candelabra. Still others resemble antlers
or dinner plates or bits of brain. It is believed that One Tree Island was
created during a particularly vicious storm that occurred some four
thousand years ago. (As one geologist who has studied the place put it to
me, “You wouldn’t have wanted to be there when that happened.”) The
island is still in the process of changing shape; a storm that passed
through in March 2009—Cyclone Hamish—added a ridge that runs along
the island’s eastern shore.
One Tree would qualify as deserted except for a tiny research station
operated by the University of Sydney. I traveled to the island, as just
about everyone does, from another, slightly larger island about twelve
miles away. (That island is known as Heron Island, also a misnomer, since
at Heron there are no herons.) When we docked—or really moored, since
One Tree has no dock—a loggerhead turtle was heaving herself out of the
water onto the shore. She was nearly four feet long, with a large welt on
her shell, which was encrusted with ancient-looking barnacles. News
travels fast on a nearly deserted island, and soon the entire human
population of One Tree—twelve people, including me—had come out to
watch. Sea turtles usually lay their eggs at night, on sandy beaches; this