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The Feast of the Bunya

Prologue

1970

THE boy guides his wiry pony along the bank of an eroded creek in a large paddock near a dark mountain. It is near dusk, and the boy and the land are at peace in the long shadows. He listens to the last calls of the kookaburras and warbling magpies and the occasional bellow of the red cattle moving through belly-high grass.

A dark object in a crevice on the opposite creek bank catches his eye. He slides from the saddle and down the broken clay to look more closely. A pair of slippers, woven from feathers and bark and glued with blood, sits neatly on the ledge.

A chill of fear envelopes the boy. He knows little of the deeper history of his country. But he vaguely recognizes the slippers of the Kadaitja, dark assassins who wear them to erase their footprints from the ground.

He scrambles back up the bank and canters back to the welcoming lights of the homestead. He tells no one of his discovery. Generations of white sweat have created this prosperous farming country while broken fragments of humanity subsist down unpassable dirt tracks or behind the tips, hardly seen and rarely heard, a faint echo of a mysterious past.

But the boy has touched that past and sensed its power. He never forgets the slippers.

Part I – THE JOURNEY

- 1 -

Circa 1770

WAUNG ARRIVES WITH NEWS OF THE BLOODWOOD TREE - THE MEN WAIT IN THEIR CANOES - ULLOOLA SPEARS A SHARK - A BIG FEAST AND DANCING - A SECRET LIAISON.

IT WAS the season of Mayaltha and the people of the Sea Eagle clan of the great Jangara tribe were glad the fierce heat and brutal summer storms had passed. Now the air was clear and cool, the morning sky bright over the blue-green sea that gently hissed onto the sand of their sheltered bay.

Behind the beach several Sea Eagle men sat near a smouldering fire under spreading fig and bangalow palms. They had been hunting since first light, and having returned to camp, spoke quietly as they mended spears and nets, or rolled thin twine on which to tie their bone hooks for the evening’s fishing. A bark canoe lay nearby waiting for repairs.

A sudden movement caught the eye of an older hunter. A girl, her long black limbs flying, raced up a sandy path from the fish traps in a corner of the bay. She stopped some way from the men, squatted down and signalled the hunter with a slight motion of her hand.

‘What is it child,’ he said.

‘The bloodwood tree has flowers, pabun.’

The other men looked up.

‘The bloodwood, eh’ said the hunter fondly, as much at the delight in the girl’s face as the good news she brought. ‘Then we must mend our canoes and dig the ground ovens. We will need to carry wood to the headland for the signal fires.’

He turned to a younger hunter near the fire, the girl’s half-brother, who was gently heating and moulding resin around the bindings of his fishing spear. The young man worked with graceful movements, his dark eyes alert and slightly drawn at the outer, as though some ancient northern blood suffused his line. Like the others, he wore a thin leather thong around his waist; his dark hair held high on his head by a woven strap and tightly skewered top-knot. A broad mouth was visible through a young-man’s beard, and the simple raised markings of a marrawin, a second-degree man, were prominent on the deep black skin of his chest.

‘Go and tell your father the ngondaiya fish are coming, Ulloola Yaluma,’ said the older hunter. ‘He will need to prepare for the traders.’

Ulloola put his spear aside and rose from the fire. He was medium tall and strongly built, but his gait was sullen as he walked to the gunyas where his father, Murrambool, the brown snake, lived with his wives and younger children.

The girl, called Waung, felt a sadness rise in her chest. As a baby, Ulloola had laughed and tossed her in his arms. When she grew older, he was always the first to play and joke with her and the other children. Waung had loved the second son of Murrambool as her favourite half-brother. Now she rarely saw him smile. Ulloola seemed confused and often angry. Waung did not know why; the ways of her elders were still strange to her.

She made a small pattern in the sand with her fingers then glanced up at the older hunter. His face was inscrutable, but when he lifted his chin towards Waung’s mother, who sat nearby with other women gossiping at the grinding stones, she wondered if his thoughts were the same as hers.

She ran to tell her mother about the bloodwood flowers. The big nets of pandanus fibre would need repairing and new stones carried to the salt-washed walls of the fish-traps. The season of the ngondaiya had arrived, and the fish camp would soon be busy.

‘Nnnnnnnggggoooonnnnnnddddaaaaaiiiiiyyyyyaaaaa, nnnnnn

gggooooooooooonnnnnnddddaaaaaiiiiiyyyyyaaaaa.’ The slow, rolling chant floated across the gently heaving sea. The fishermen, their supply of gossip and jokes exhausted after days of sitting in their canoes under the hot sun, were glad of the reprieve. Ulloola Yaluma drew a deep breath and joined the call for the fat sea-mullet to come with their salty roe. Watching, watching, watching, the sun hurts our eyes, come ngondaiya, come and feed us, now that the first cold winds have driven you from the rivers ….

‘Yaiiii!’ One of the fishermen shot his arm into the air. A neat pall of dark smoke drifted skyward from the headland. The men grew silent, reeling in their lines and swinging their canoes into position, carefully judging their leeway from the reef that jutted from the sheltering headland.

Ulloola’s eyes also darted upward. A longer, vertical puff of smoke now followed the first. ‘Tinobah! Tinobah!’ he shouted.

The fishermen looked up with wide eyes. Their families on the beach waved frantically. A voice carried across the water from another canoe. ‘We must go back to the beach. We are wasting our time. The ngondaiya will come another day.’ It was Ulloola’s elder brother, Meriam, the first son of Murrambool. Meriam hated the sea.

Ulloola swallowed hard then shouted, ‘No! It is a good omen. Look!’ He pointed high above the signal smoke to a slowly spiralling sea eagle. The fishermen looked up and saw their murang watching them. Ulloola bent his paddle deep into the water. ‘We have waited days already and soon the traders will be here.’

There were calls of agreement. An abundance of fish in the traps would give them reprieve from the relentless need to hunt. They were also warriors of the sea, and the new signal from the headland offered a greater challenge. They forced their canoes into line again and watched the pearly surface of the water. Some touched the heavy harpoon spears at their sides, and whispered to their ancestors to watch over them. The waiting seemed interminable to Ulloola, yet he welcomed the new danger. On some days he thought death would be preferable to the burden he carried in his heart.

Then he heard shouting and saw a wild rippling in the surface of the sea. The men beat their paddles on the water, driving the sea-mullet towards the traps. Suddenly the large pointed head of Tinobah the shark surged from the water, a fat mullet impaled between her fantastically serrated teeth. She sank down, swished her great tail and scattered the ngondaiya fish in all directions.

The fishermen paddled frantically to re-gather the school. Ulloola’s canoe shot down a small wave and veered towards the fish, nearly tumbling him into the surf. Tinobah’s shimmering dark mass rushed towards him as he regained his balance. Ulloola grabbed blindly for his harpoon. Again the shark surged from the water, jaws agape, seeking more ngondaiya. Ulloola used all his strength to throw his harpoon. The sharp hardwood barbs stuck fast in Tinobah’s gullet, and for an instant Ulloola looked into one of her small eyes. A swirl of blood erupted in the water, the monster thrashed her great black body and dived for the safety of the deep.