Penguin Books Australia

People reckon I'm too serious.

'Lighten up, Hunter,' they say. 'You're such a gloomy-boots.'

Such a glum-bum. Such a misery-guts.

Just because I'm not laughing all the time. Cacking my dacks over their pathetic jokes. Saphonia reckons that's why I've pretty much stopped growing.

'Your chakras,' she says, squeezing her hands into fists, 'are blocked by all this negative energy.'

And I know what else she thinks, what everybody thinks – that my chakras are constipated, that I stopped growing, that I'm gloomy-booted, glum-bummed and misery-gutted because Dad went missing off the Murk.

Dad's the best fisherman in Dogleg Bay, the best rock fisherman, anyway. He can't be bothered fishing off the jetty – too many people, not enough fish. Beach fishing doesn't interest him, either. As for boats – 'stinkpots', he calls them. He likes the rocks, slippery with algae, the wind in his teeth, the surge of the swell and water foaming around his legs.

Five years ago, he went rock-hopping in his favourite spot, the Murk. And he didn't come back. There were search parties, of course – all these people dressed in orange overalls, helicopters buzzing along the coast, boats criss-crossing the water.

'Best business I done in years,' said Vera from the pub. 'Them search-and-rescue folk sure get a thirst up.'

She's not exactly famous for her sensitivity.

They didn't find anything, except his tackle box sitting high up on the rocks. So now everybody thinks he's dead. They don't actually say so, but you can tell by the way they talk.

'He was a bloody good bloke, your old man.'

'Crikey, your dad could fish!'

He was. He could. Past tense. Kaput!

I don't listen to them, of course. He's got to be somewhere. Maybe he's done a Robinson Crusoe – ended up on a desert island somewhere. I keep telling Mum that we should go and check out Tasmania, see if he's there. Or maybe he hit his head real bad, got amnesia and just wandered off somewhere. And now he doesn't know he's the manager of the Dogleg Bay Community Caravan Park. That he has a loving wife and an excellent son, probably the best son a dad could want.

The Skullster, this rich geeky kid up the road, reckons Dad's on another planet somewhere.

'Three point seven million Americans believe they've been abducted by extraterrestrials at one time or another,' he goes. 'Three point seven million!'

Sure, that's a lot of people. But then again, they are Americans. Theoretically, it's possible – likely even – that there are other life forms in the universe. Little green men in flying saucers abducting humans to perform unspeakable experiments on them is pretty mental, though. Unless that human is your dad. Then it starts to become plausible. Possible even.