Outside vs Inside: A Memoir—Magnetic Island

Abstract

At an age when other children were learning about 'stranger danger', I was standing with my classmates in soggy shoes at the edge of the water, peering down at a large and beautiful shell.
"See this?" demanded the teacher. Her face was severe. "This is a cone shell. Don't you ever pick one of these up because it will bite you and you'll be dead in five minutes."
Large and bright and glistening, it was patterned with black and white zigzagging stripes. It was a pride-of-place item in any child's bower and I had never wanted to touch anything more in my life. We bunched up in the sand, mouths gaping, rubber soled shoes squelching from the morning of reef walking, terrified of confusing a stone fish with a lump of dead, standable coral. A kid in a floppy sun hat crouched down.
"Don't touch it," screamed the teacher, lunging into the circle, putting herself between us and agonising death.