from the shore. They saw the black sticks by which Ria Warrawah had held it as he pulled it along. Then a piece of the island broke away and came crawling across the sea towards them. Our hidden grandfathers watched on. The creature touched the land. It carried pale souls which Ria Warrawah had captured. They could not bear being away from the sea and had to protect their bodies with strange skins. They spoke and the sounds were unlike any that had been heard. Our grandfathers remained hidden and after a time the creatures mounted their strange sea thing and went back to the dark island.’
This account explained the ships sailing past to form the first European settlement on the Derwent River, but it did not explain Wooreddy’s enlightenment which he now endured. Nothing from this time on could ever be the same – and why? Because the world was ending! This truth entered his brain and the boy, the youth and finally the man would hold onto it, modifying it into harshness or softness as the occasion demanded. His truth was to be his shield and protection, his shelter from the storm. The absolute reality of his enlightenment took care of everything. One day, sooner rather than later, the land would begin to fragment into smaller and smaller pieces. Clouds of fog would rise from the sea to hide what was taking place from Great Ancestor. Then the pieces holding the last survivors of the human race would be towed out to sea where they would either drown or starve.
The boy stood in a trance and learnt that he would live on to witness the end. He had been chosen and would endure through the power of his Truth. It was a charm of awful power. He received it in this initiation and then it retreated to live on in a corner of his mind. He awakened with his back to the sea. The sun dissipated the fog, the breeze turned to flow from the land, bringing the scent of humankind. The smoke of the campfires awakened his hunger. His lithe, brown body charged off to the nurturing warmth of his mother. She sat mending a basket. He begged her for food and she gave him the tail of a large crayfish. He loved her for it.
II
Wooreddy waddled his way towards adulthood in an awful world that became less and less familiar. Before, uneventful time had stretched back towards the known beginning. Now, it seemed that something had torn the present away from that past. Many people died mysteriously; others disappeared without trace, and once-friendly families became bitter enemies. Night after night the piercing whistles of Ria Warrawah shrieked from the hidden recesses of the forest. No one could understand what was happening. Still the people endured and tried to live as they always had lived.
Wooreddy grew and reached puberty. Jokes were made about his sprouting pubic hair and the sudden uncontrolled erections which showed his manhood. Then, in the dead of night, the older men grabbed him and hustled him through just a few short metres of darkness to where a campfire gleamed. Once it would have been further away and hidden, but times had changed. His uncles held him down while a stranger thrust a firebrand into his face. Another man chanted the origin of fire and why it was sacred for him. Fire was life; fire was the continuation of life – fire endured to the end. He came from fire and would return to fire. One day it would take his spirit to the Islands of the Dead where he could live happily stuffed with plenty of wallaby, kangaroo, possum and seafood brought by his loving mate. But this was not all, for on those islands grew the cider trees exuding litres of sweet intoxicating sap which could fly his soul to where Great Ancestor’s campfire flamed the sky with light. There he could live on with Great Ancestor in bliss. Fire was a gift from Great Ancestor and Wooreddy had been selected as one descended from that gift. Now while he lived he had to ensure that fire lived. They whispered his secret name, Poimatapunna (Phoenix), then detailed the coming of fire:
‘Fire was sent to us by Great Ancestor. He gave it to two birdmen to bring to us. Long ago, the grandfathers of our grandfathers saw them standing on top of a high hill. They stared up at the strangers. They saw them raise their hands. Burning brands fell from them and among our people. The very earth began to burn and our ancestors fled across a river to escape. Much later they returned to their land and walked over the burnt and blackened earth. Many burnt animals lay here and there. They tasted some and found that they were good to eat. Then they knew that fire was good and from that day we have used it. And when we move over our land we burn it off in remembrance of that time. Never forget that your own campfire is descended from that first fire. It is a living sign of our connection to Great Ancestor and his many fires flickering in the sky...’
The recitation hesitated and the youth felt the burning brand pressed to his breast. It hurt, it hurt like – what else? – the touch of fire. He wanted to shout out his pain. Instead he gritted his teeth against it and endured the fire eating into his flesh. At long last the brand was withdrawn. His throbbing flesh throbbed in time to the continuing chant. Would the searing pain ever go away!
‘Those two birdmen, those two messengers from Great Ancestor, did not fly off into the sky. They stayed on in our country and you will see the marks of their camping places. Near the Lungannaga river two women dived into the water for mussels. They did not know that below the surface lurked Ria Warrawah in the shape of a giant stingray. From his hiding place in a dark hole among the rocks, he watched those women. They swam down. They were very near. He dashed out. He lashed out with his spear. He stabbed and stabbed; he cut and cut; he thrust and thrust; he pierced those women through and through...
Wooreddy, thoroughly miserable from the aching of the burn, now had to endure a series of parallel slashes across his chest. It was little consolation that the cuts from the sharp shell piece did provide a contrast to the dull throbbing. He wished to be anywhere but where he was. In an effort to see the blood trickling down his ribs, he rolled his eyes as the myth continued to unfold.
‘The two birdmen came to the shore. They saw the great stingray basking in the shallows, gloating over his deed. He did not enjoy his triumph for long. They crept to him; they fought with him; they wounded him; they killed that evil thing!’
The miserable youth had to undergo further torments as the stingray was disposed of. To add to the burnt patch in the centre of his chest and the seven cuts on the right side, three more were engraved on the left. Later on in life he could earn four more, but now this was all that he had to endure – or at least he hoped so, for perhaps his knowledge of the ceremony was faulty, or a variant had been used. He eased out a sigh of relief as the myth flowed on.
‘From the water, they took those two dead women. They were messengers from the Great Ancestor and had no fear of it. They lay the two women upon the ground and built a fire between them. Then they opened their chests and put into the chest-cavity some blue ants.’
Wooreddy shuddered as someone gently touched his wounds. He relaxed knowing that an ointment of fat and ash was being smeared over them.
‘The ants stung those two women into life. They moved, and moved again as the ants stung them again, as the birdmen sung life into them. Then the two strangers filled the holes in the women’s chests with mud and pressed the flesh together. The holes were no more. They fixed the women’s wounds in the same way, and they were whole.’
The youth gave a slight smile as soothing river mud was put over his own wounds. The ceremony was almost at an end.
Ria Warrawah raged at being deprived of two victims. He rose, he rose as a vast fog, to race in from the sea and towards the two birdmen. It might have been fast, but those two were faster. Ria Warrawah extended almost to them. Up they flew with those two women. Up they flew, and you can see them in the sky to this day.’
The ceremony ended at dawn and Wooreddy retreated into the bush to stay by himself while his wounds healed. He accepted the solitude as he had accepted the burning and slashing. In these days of tribulation and when the world was ending, tradition and custom were comforts.
When Wooreddy returned to the camp, he came as a man permitted to express the feelings of a man. Sex awareness often hit him like a blow from a club and he had, at times, to command
