by John Bodey
“This is where she found her family. They had all been speared in the back in the darkness of night. No one ever saw, no one will ever know who did it, but we all know that they were taken off guard, for Ngala was the greatest hunter this tribe has ever known. They say his eldest son, Mitti, a boy of ten summers, died standing over his father, defending his family, the last to die.”
“Did you know them? Were you alive when they were here? Where were they buried?”
“I vaguely remember Ngala, he was a giant of a man, I was about six summers when it happened.”
“And the birds and the vine?”
“One season we reached the river late in the afternoon, and as we came down to the water, a flock of beautiful light green parrots lifted from the bank, where they had been drinking and flew to where the vines hang in those trees over there. The next day they were still there, eating the fruit off this vine. We had never seen this vine before, nor had we seen the fruit. It was growing in the very spot where the old grandmother had died, and where we had left her body all those years ago. Then we noticed the markings on the birds. The females and the young were all a pale green, but the males had this splotch of crimson, a blood-red patch on their backs. The very spot where both Ngala and Baa-loo received their fatal wounds.”
“They’re very beautiful, aren’t they?”
“Yes, and they stay together year after year. How many families? One? Two? The parents and the children always fly together, feed together.”
And so the old Mother kept her promise to her son and her family when she said, “Of course I’ll be here. I’ll always be here for you and my grandchildren. There will always be food for you and yours in my camp.”
Ningaloo
The story of Ningaloo is based in the area from Secure Bay, just east of the entrance to King Sound, north along the coast to Admiralty Gulf. I’d like to think that Cape Voltaire was the end of the world.
The Watjalum people inhabited the region around Secure Bay and Talbot Bay. There are no living indigenous people inhabiting the land in this area today. They were rounded up by missionaries at the turn of the century and taken to Sunday Island.
You can’t stop progress, you can’t stop human nature and you can’t stop human greed. Spending millions to make billions isn’t greed—it’s called Industry. And the guddias ask, Where are the indigenous people of this land? The people are still there, guddias, they might not have human form, but the spirits of people like Ningaloo and all those gone ahead still live. They live in the land and the trees, the rocks and the reefs, the rivers and the creeks, the beach sands—and my story.
Guddias have established a cultured pearl farm in the beautiful, opaline, clear blue waters of those ancient peoples’ homeland—the people of my now thin bloodline, the Watjalum people.
“Grandad, I think it’s great, you taking me over to cousin Yungaburra’s country for the holidays.”
“Well, it’s about time I spent some time with my other children and grandchildren.”
“I just wish that they’d put a grader over this road to smooth out all the bumps. Whoops! That was a bad one.”
“Spoken like a guddia. Next you’ll be wanting a fridge in the car to make you cool.”
“I’ve got news for you, Grandad. It’s called air-conditioning.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the air-conditioning we have right now, it’s free and there’s plenty of it.”
“It’s just that it doesn’t cool you down.”
“What?”
“Nothing, Grandad.”
“Don’t mumble, boy. It’s hard enough hearing you over the rattles of this old bomb without you mumbling.”
“How come cousin Yungaburra lives on the coast? Why doesn’t he live like us, along the river?”
“Ah, such is love.”
“What has love got to do with it?”
“Well, it’s pretty simple. Back in the days of my youth, the Elders said who was to marry. They arranged the marriages. They kept the blood-lines pure. Now, with white man’s education, comes white man’s thinking. No longer do the Elders have a say in marriage. Marriage today is controlled by love—or by lust or stupidity.”
“What’s lust?”
“You asked about love. People marry for love. It seems that the heart now rules the minds of men. Whoever is the worst struck by love follows the other’s will. The woman wants to stay with her people, and the love-struck male falls over himself to go with her.”
“Didn’t they have love in the old days?”
“Oh, Grandson. Love is eternal. Love has been in this land for as long as man has walked the face of this earth. We know this from the stories told by the Old People, the same sort of stories that I tell you today. They come from the Old Times. Some of these stories describe the making of our tribes. Sometimes they explain why the land is barren or fertile, how rivers are made, how the mountains and hills come to be, where fire came from, where the great animals went to. Sometimes they tell of great hunters, lonely women, desolate children, but nearly always, somewhere in the telling, there is a smattering of love.”
“I suppose love is a pretty important thing in our lives.”
“Maybe the most important thing. But Nimiluk, there are many different types of love. The love you have for your horse, is not the same as the love I hold for you.
“Let’s leave love alone for today, Grandad. Maybe in another year or two ... You mentioned desperate desolate children: I’d love to hear about them.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Please, Grandad. It will make our journey seem shorter and help take my mind off how rough this road is.”
“Well, there was this story I heard as a young fella, but I’m not sure I can remember it. It was long ago.”
“Please, Grandad. Tell me what you can remember.”
“Then again, it might be too long. We mightn’t finish it by the time we get to cousin Yungaburra’s place.”
“Then we can pull up and rest under a Boab tree, and I’ll make you a cuppa, and you can stoke your pipe. We aren’t in any real rush to get to cousin Yungaburra’s are we?”
“No, Grandson. We have the rest of our lives to get there, and I could do with a break. A good cuppa might make the remembering so much easier.”
“Good. Pull up at the next big Boab and have a stretch while I light a fire.”
“Have you got fire-making sticks?”
“Aw, Grandad, we’re modern day blackfellas, we have gas lighters now.”
“When I was a little younger than you are now, my mother took me to visit her mother, your great-grandmother. She lived in the lower part of the great bay the Whiteman calls Secure Bay, but we call it Wotjalum. All that country, that great bay belonged to my grandmother. She was the caretaker of the land, the rivers, the bays, their waters, the reefs. There are many, many islands that stand within the bay, and even some big ones that lie off the coast.
“Once, a great tribe lived in this secluded area. They were of her people, their origins began back before time, when man was akin to the animals they hunted and ate. This is the story of how that tribe came to be, as told to be me by my grandmother all those years ago.
“Some of the people lived along the rivers, some walked the deserts, others lived in the rainforests and the highlands. Many lived along the coast. Most lived amongst the sand dunes and the flood plains. Very few ventured into the harsh, arid, rocky terrain of the hill country that has lain bare and unwanted from the time of its making. Those who did were never heard of again. Passers-by walked the lowlands and looked off into the hills, knowing that death trod there. They felt thankful to be among the rivers and creeks that flowed peacefully, beyond the reaches of despair.
“The people lived a carefree nomadic existence. They multiplied and gradually moved on, discovering new lands, foods and animals. Territorial rights began to evolve, and people gathered together for refuge and the safety of numbers. Slowly tribes came into existence. Power came
with numbers, rules came with domesticity. People learned to live with one another, sharing and bartering for their needs. Those who lived by the sea got to know the fishes and sea-snakes, the reefs and shells, the crabs and the crays, reptiles and mammals, what they ate, where they hunted, the things that they did for pleasure. Strangely, they discovered that the sea-going mammals had a bonding very much like their own, the thing that we call love.”
In those long ago days, the waters that lapped our shores were home to abundant life and alongside then travelled death and destruction in the form of the great white sharks.
Close to the shore, in the tranquil waters of the bays and estuaries lived the mild-mannered mammals that remain today, the dugongs. Then, as now, the dugong gives birth to its young the same way as its distant cousin, man. It suckles its young, as a woman does. The babies cry and mewl as ours; they even shed tears that run down their cheeks. The sound of a dugong infant sobbing is no different to our own children crying. Parents unite as a couple, and remain as a family. They even breath the air as we do.
One young dugong couple, new to married life, were peacefully chomping on the sea-grass, as carefree as any young couple expecting their first child. They were closer to the land than the rest of the dugongs, close to the place where the mother-to-be would deliver her infant. They had chosen the spot carefully. Plenty of overgrown mangroves gave heavy shade in the heat of the day. Natural springs of fresh water bubbled up from the sandy bottom. A barrier of reef at the mouth of the creek would stop the voracious, ever-hungry sharks that lurked in the deeper waters beyond.
Suddenly the vibrations in the water around them changed. Fear came on its pulse and instantly the male was moving. He shepherded his wife along the shoreline making for the break in the reef to get into the haven of the birthing place. Something massive beyond belief was wreaking havoc amongst his kind, killing indiscriminately for sport. A hunter enjoying itself amongst a panic-stricken mob.
But the dugong’s thoughts were only for his wife and his unborn infant. He felt the hunter as it honed in. It was coming for them, its intent was death. He turned to meet the shark. It was over before it even began.
The great white shark powered beyond what was left of the male and sensed the movement of his mate. When she faced him, he dived beneath the grossly disproportionate body, throwing her up and out of the water with one thrust of his gigantic tail. Over the coral barrier she had been racing for she sailed in uncontrolled flight.
Her flukes took the impact, the water helped cushion her fall, but there was not enough depth to free her from all injury. She heard a snap. Pain hit her and she passed out. When she awoke it was night, and only the light of the stars showed her the way. She paddled her flippers, dragging her broken back inch by painful inch until in the earliest hours of the new day she rolled on her back and felt the first pangs of birth.
By the full light of day she blinked her eyes, as her baby gave a lusty wail, crying for its mother’s milk. Through bleary eyes the dugong beheld her son. It didn’t quite seem right this thing that screamed and bellowed and demanded her attention. It was so ugly ... its flippers weren’t as they should be, they wobbled around in all directions. Its tail was rent in two, the flukes torn asunder. This little squealing thing was an abomination. It rolled around, thrusting its tail about until its mouth found the nipple, then it leeched on to the source of warm, life-giving mother’s milk.
From that moment it was accepted. But for the supply of milk to continue the mother had to feed off the grasses and drink from the springs of fresh water nearby. The infant wasn’t equipped to join her in her watery environment, to nestle close to her side as she ventured out into the still waters of the open sea. So with a mother’s love, she dug out the sand beneath the heavy overhanging mangroves, fed the infant until it slept, pushed it into the security of the shallows and covered it with sand to hold it still and warm while it slept.
Her trips to and fro to feed were agonising but she knew by instinct that survival of her young depended on milk. Returning to her haven beneath the mangrove canopy, she eased herself onto the beach beside her offspring. Using her flipper she threw off the sand again and again. Suddenly she realised something was wrong. Alarmed she cocked her head to one side to see the sand cradle. Through her blurry vision she realised that what she sought was not there. She cried in anguish and clumsily manoeuvred her body back into the water, then frantically searched the bottom along the banks of the creek.
She returned time and again to the sand cradle. In her mind she knew that she had lost her baby, yet her heart told her to keep searching. Finally in deep sadness she turned her weary head towards the hollow sound of surf breaking on the coral, and glided out to sea for the little time she had left.
“Grandad, what happened to the infant? Did a croc get it? Did the sea eagles snap it up and carry it off?”
“Infant is the right word alright, Grandson. Maybe it was the heroism of the father turning at the bay to take on something unknown. Maybe the Spirits of our Ancestors looked kindly on the ordeal that both the mother and the father had to go through to make sure the baby was born. Who knows? But the gods of the Universe saw fit that she gave birth to a son, a human son.”
“He was a boy?”
“Yes, Grandson. A baby boy.”
“But that’s impossible! A human child?”
“It is only a story. It is the Old People’s way of explaining the unexplainable. A mysterious orphan found abandoned, lying in a cradle of sand beneath a mangrove in some tidal creek with absolutely no sign of how it got there.”
“But what happened to the boy? Did he have a name?”
He was found by an old couple, who had tired of the nomadic ways of the tribe, following the same routes every year. These two had sought a haven which would give them plenty of fresh water, plenty of food, as well as protection from the cyclones that came in the time of the rains. A place that would last them for the lifetime they had left.
It was while they were searching they happened upon the child. They had come upon the secluded, sheltered bay, full of reefs with clear blue waters. They smiled at the abundance of wild fruit and medicinal plants, and were enthralled by the variety of sea food. They named the place Ningaloo, after their newfound son.
Here they lived and raised the boy for the next fourteen years. The mother taught him skills of medicine. She showed him how to tan the hides of the animals that his father taught him to hunt, and how to make simple garments for warmth and protection. And she gave him an abundance of love. His father gave him the skills of hunting and tracking, and showed him the wisdom of his years. And he, too, gave him an abundance of love.
From the very first time the boy had taken to the water, the old couple were amazed by his lack of fear. As an infant, his need to immerse himself within the sea had frightened them. They looked on in horror as the boy disappeared over the edge of the creek bank and tumbled into the water below. They stood in awe as his head broke the surface, before he disappeared beneath the clear water, snaking for the bottom his small legs kicking. As the child resurfaced, the father grabbed him and lifted him clear, hugging him to his thumping heart, not understanding why the child fought to be free, to return to the water from whence he had come.
When both his parents died, Ningaloo sat in grief. He looked about and wondered what would become of him. Should he look for the people of his parents’ tribe? They had never hidden from him the fact that they had found him in a sand cradle beneath the mangroves in a tidal creek. They had also told him that his skin colour was a lot lighter than any people they had known. To reach the people of his parents, he would have to face many hardships. He knew in what direction he should travel; he had only to make the decision.
He would walk to the top of the small cliff where he used to go with his mother and father, look off into the hazy distance and try to imagine many, many people of all ages and sizes that would look like his parents. All he had to do was close his eyes
and he could see them—standing on the beach waving for him to come in from the lagoons or off the reefs, his father bending over to examine a spoor or to explain a track or a broken twig. He could still hear his mother’s quiet voice as she soothed his pains and calmed his fears. He heard the strength of her voice as she admonished him for his errors. They were the ghosts of his life, they were all about him.
If the other people were anything like his parents ... would they be the same? Thin, emaciated, with thick, curly black hair covering their wiry frames?
Many times he had examined his own body and had reflected on the differences. By the time his manthing had begun to grow, he was already as tall as his father, yet his build belied his height. His frame was solid and muscular. His body was smooth, dark brown and supple, turning a shade of brownish-grey as the winter winds blew from the ice. His body hairs were light and few, giving his skin a shiny texture, especially as he walked out of the water. The hair on his head was dark brown to black, as straight as new-grown grass. His legs and arms were long and supple though well muscled, and the breadth and depth of his chest indicated the power and capacity of his lungs.
All through his childhood, he had romped and swum and dived, learning to control his air supply and lengthen the time he could spend beneath the surface. His watery world was as natural to him as his existence on the land.
When his father was alive he had caught the boy far out in the depths of the open ocean, far beyond the swell of the waves as they rolled on an incoming tide across the shoal. He had forbidden him to venture out beyond the reefs into the perils that lurked beyond the bay. But Father was gone now. Ningaloo was free and old enough to make his own decisions. His life was his to do with as he willed.
He was aware of his limitations when he was wallowing far out in deep water, hovering over the vestiges of submerging reefs as the tide came to its peak. He had no means of rest, other than to float. He spent long periods out in the deep water and it became apparent that there was little to fear from sharks. They came, they looked, and went on with their business. He found that it was only when he lashed about in the water that the sharks closed in, looking for prey that was in difficulty, their radar honing in on the sudden sharp vibrations. If he submerged and actually swam towards them, they would veer off, swimming in ever widening circles. The small, curious sharks of the reef he grew accustomed to, and when curiosity got the better of them and they swam close, he found that a good solid punch on the snout deterred even the biggest of them.
