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This edition published by ETT Imprint, Exile Bay in 2019
First published in 1983 by Hyland House Publishing Pty Limited
First paperback edition 1987 Reprinted 1989, 1992, 1994, 2000
Copyright © Estate of Mudrooroo 1983, 2019
Afterword © Paul Spickard 2019
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher
The poster on page 169 is from the collection of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston
Afterword by Paul Spickard originally published as an obituary in Ethnic and Racial Studies (UK)
ISBN 978-1-925706-82-6 (paper)
ISBN 978-1-925706-42-0 (ebook)
Cover picture: ‘Morning Star Ceremony’ by Terry Yumbulul by kind permission of the artist
CONTENTS
1. The Omen
2. Seek Allies
3. Flight from the Ill-omened Land
4. Into Occupied Territory
5. They Put Them in Captivity
6. The Ending of the World
Afterword by Paul Spickard
DEDICATED TO THE
MEMORY OF BOB MARLEY
JAH RASTAFARI!
1
The Omen
I
Wooreddy as a child and a young man belonged to Bruny Island: two craggy fists of land connected by a thin brown wrist. It was separated from the mainland by a narrow twisting of murky water. His island home abounded with wallaby and each tree held a possum. All along the rocky female coast-line, clinging in mute desperation to the last vestiges of the land, shell- and crayfish hung waiting to be gathered. Wooreddy belonged to a rich island, but the surrounding sea was dangerous and filled with dangerous scale fish. Not even women were allowed to gather these creatures. It was evil luck to see one. They were taboo, for unlike the denizens of the real world, they swam in a different medium and never needed to feel or touch the earth. To them the land was death, just as to the Bruny Islanders the sea was death. This belief lay in Wooreddy’s mind as he wandered by himself in the direction of a beach.
Around him lay the summer, peaceful and sun warm on his skin, A breeze touched his nostrils with the different smells from the open and closed bush. With it came the slight smell of humankind. His tiny feet drifted him along towards a narrow bay arcing between two long fingers of points. Living on an island, he was never very far from the sea and a favourite spot was the beach toward which he was moving. Suddenly the breeze switched direction to blow in strongly from the ocean. The salt-smell caused him to think, of that thing, neither male nor female, which heaved a chaos threatening the steadiness of the earth. It heaved like some huge wombat, and unlike the flowing darkness beyond the campfires, could never be penetrated. It stood away from humankind. Wooreddy was only a ten-year-old boy, but he thought such thoughts. Born between the day and night. He had a fascination for things that lurked and threatened. He walked onto the beach thinking of charms and omens, mysteries and things hidden in the dark cave of the mind.
Though only a small boy, Wooreddy already had wriggled many times to the side of the few irascible old men as they sat theorising on life and its mysteries. On these occasions he had to pretend to make himself as tiny as an ant so as not to be noticed and chased away. Somehow he almost always managed to stay, intently listening with a child’s mind which missed concepts but caught mysteries. They fell into his ears like raindrops and filled his head with things beyond his years. One such drop was Ria Warrawah which, or who, seemed to infest and affect all existing things. It, or he, or she lurked ready to strike down the unwary and on rare occasions hand power to the wary. This thing or creature was held at bay by the Great Ancestor who lived in the sky as a star. When Ria Warrawah became too strong and threatening, he subdued it with long flaming spears.
Sometimes the old men sat talking far into the night and Wooreddy stayed with them either sleeping or listening. Most times he missed much of the conversation as it meandered towards the dawn. It drifted in the darkest part of the night and became murky with Ria Warrawah. They discussed the taboo placed on its manifestation as a fish. To touch one meant death; to see one meant the itching sickness. Only powerful spells and charms could stop any harm. They detailed the forms and powers of this ‘thing’. He, or she, or it was the sea and lived in the sea from which it sent manifestations as well as tidal waves to harm the land and those who lived on the land. But try as it might, it was held at bay by Great Ancestor. He had sent himself (or part of himself) crashing into the sea just off the eastern coast of Bruny. There he stood protecting the island. He also had sent them fire so that they could see in the darkness.
Wooreddy listened or slept while the information built into the foundations on which the adult character of the future Doctor Wooreddy would be erected. The child had already learnt that the ocean must be confronted side-on and not directly. One had to be always alert for attack. But this day the boy felt so overwhelmed by the delightful charm of the weather that he began leaping and bounding along the beach like a kangaroo. He gave an extra-long bound and landed on something slimy, something eerily cold and not of the earth. Desperately he sprang away as his eyes clenched shut to keep out the horrible sight. He marched seven steps chanting a spell, then gave a yelp of despair. The last step had brought his big toe against something slimy, something eerily cold and not of this earth – and worse, it was spiky and wriggled. It was alive! He began to tremble violently. Ria Warrawah wrapped him in a transparent mist. He was lost! His hands shut out the world as his mind desperately searched through remembered snatches of half-understood conversations in an effort to find a potent protection spell. He tried a string of words. As the last one left his lips, there came a strange moaning from the sea, then gruff voices speaking in strange tongues which were followed by a sharp crack that made the water heave and lap at his feet. By magic his eyes clicked open to focus in a fixed stare on what had come from the sea. It was an omen, an omen, he knew – but what came from the ocean was evil, and so it was an evil omen. His eyes remained fixed on it. Shapes of thick fog had congealed over dark rocks, or a small island which floated a travesty of the firm earth.
Another boy would have turned tail or collapsed in a quivering heap of shock, but Wooreddy had been born for such sights. He watched the fog patches shift as they tugged the tiny dark island along. Such visions were rare and set a person apart. He had been selected and set apart. The future doctor felt the strangeness fill him. It became a part of him. Now remembered voices of the old men began murmuring in an effort to explain the unexplainable:
‘Once in the time of our grandfathers and before the birth of our fathers, a small piece of darkness, fashioned by the very thought of Ria Warrawah, came floating along on the sea. Ria Warrawah manifested himself as a cloud and pulled the island along. He pulled to Adventure
