Chapter 1: Setting Out

“You want what?” Rachel cried. “You want what?”

“I want to do a ‘gap year’,” Sam repeated. He’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. “In a few months I’ll be done with Barker. I’m nearly done with my paper for modern history. They won’t like it. But I know I must pursue it. I don’t want to go to University. I want to visit more people.”

“I thought students went abroad on ‘Gap Year’,” Patrick said.

“Usually, they do.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I’ve been to several bands in Queensland [Nockatunga and Kulilla] and NSW [Armidale and Tibooburra]. I thought I’d take the train past Broken Hill into South Australia. I’d visit the Pitjantjatjara and then go on to the Spinifex and the Wangai. Then, perhaps north ... wherever my eagle takes me.”

The Pitjantjatjara people are an Aboriginal people of the Central Australian desert. The Pila Nguru, often referred to in English as the ‘Spinifex people’, ... were the last Australian tribe to have dropped the complete trappings of their traditional aboriginal lifestyle ... They maintain in large part their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle within the territory, over which their claims to Native Title ... were recognized by a 28 November 2000 Federal Court decision. [Wikipedia]

“You should talk to your grandfather about this. He was in the Great Victoria Desert forty years ago. And to Uluru more recently.”

“I cannot go to Uluru. I am not yet ready. As I was not ready to visit the Mutitjulu. But the Wallaby said that my namesake was vital in an older transition, and is mentioned in the Old Testament, the New and in the Quran.”

“Patrick! Are you going to encourage him?”

“What can I do? I followed my snake, he follows Bunjil. Gordy can help somewhat. He’s retired, but not inactive. And I am not unknown. I was warned when he was in elementary school. We kept him home and now he’s boarded at Barker. Once an eagle has fledged it finds its own way.”

Sam let his father explain. What could he say? He had seen his future in his dreams. He would learn about a different world in the deserts. He knew the animals there – the real ones and the Dream-beasts.

In the Australian Central and Western Deserts there are roaming Ogres, Bogeymen and Bogey women, Cannibal Babies, Giant Baby-Guzzlers, Sorcerers, and spinifex and feather-slippered Spirit Beings able to dispatch victims with a single fatal garrote. There are lustful old men who, wishing to satiate their unbridled sexual appetites, relentlessly pursue beautiful nubile young girls through the night sky and on land – and other monstrous beings, too.

Importantly, in Aboriginal Australia, these figures and their attendant narratives provide a valuable source of knowledge about the hazards of specific places and environments. Most important of all is their social function in terms of engendering fear and caution in young children, commensurate with the very real environmental perils that they inevitably encounter.

“Is this a private fight or can anyone club their way in?” asked 11-year-old Weena.

“Hi, runt,” Sam said. “Mum’s giving me a hard time?”

“What about?”

“Gap year.”

“Oh, mum. Don’t resist! The longer and harder you resist, the worse you’ll feel when you give in.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because that’s how it works: Sam knows how it’ll work out so he just sits there and when the right time comes, he pounces. Anyway, it’s time for him to go on his quest.”

“Quest?”

“Like Galahad or Aeneas. Galahad had to seek the holy Grail – he didn’t need to bring it back. It was that bloke in Wagner who had to fetch the spear. And Sam’s older than Holden Caulfield, anyway.”

“What’s he hunting for, sis?”

“Oh, for a sense of purpose or reason, I’d guess. You’re going to search for knowledge, just not in a lab or a library.”

“The deserts of Australia are my lab and the environment’s my library.”

“See, Rachel, they’re your kids. Both of them.”

“You had something to do with it, too.”

“Yes. OK, kids. We succumb. Sam, try to think through what you’ll need.”

“It won’t be much. Some dosh, a credit card, though it might be useless. Boots, socks, underwear, a good knife, and my hat.”

“You’ll take a small first-aid kit, too,” said Patrick.

“If you insist.”

“And a compass,” added Rachel.

“The stars are more reliable, mum.”

That discussion ended, for a while. But in October Gordy asked “When’s school over?”

“First of December?”

“Will you stay around for Christmas and the New Year?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll tell some people to let others know that you will be travelling.”

“That will be good.”

“Be careful that though you come from Sydney and New South, you are not seen as heralding Wati Nyiru.”

“No. They needn’t fear that. I will go first to the Murray.”

Among sorcery figures that feature in “Dreaming” is Wati Nyiru (“The Man Nyiru”, the Morning Star). Wati Nyiru chases the Kungkarangkalpa, the celestial star sisters comprising the constellation known to the ancient Greeks as the Pleiades, through the night sky, with sexual conquest (among other things) on his mind.

Such narratives are first and foremost about social control with respect to the specific dangers of the desert where, in the summer months, people can die horribly tormented deaths from thirst within a matter of hours. Such monstrous beings and their attendant narratives exist to impress upon and to inculcate into young children the need for obedience to older members of the family, and especially not to wander off into the desert alone, lest they meet a fate perhaps worse than that of encountering a ravenous Pangkarlangu.

Sam left Sydney on the 0618 (the Outback Xplorer) for Broken Hill on Monday, the 8^th of January, arriving at 1740. He was heading for Ngaut Ngaut on the Murray River. He was sure he could thumb a ride on the A32, the Barrier Highway, running from Sydney to Adelaide. So he had booked a night at the Hilltop Motel and walked there from the station. It took under a half hour. He had a pleasant dinner, but learned that there’d be no breakfast yet at six or six thirty. He could get a cuppa, though. He purchased two Cadbury bars from a vending machine, showered and went to bed.

He was up by six, dressed and at the desk. He had a cup of rather weak tea, ate a “Dairy Milk,” and walked to the highway. Several utes and passenger cars passed, but he waited for a big rig. The first whizzed past, but the second pulled over.

“Where to?” Sam asked.

“Central Market.”

“Can you drop me in Burra?”

“No problem, matey. I’ll fuel up there, anyways. Where ya headin’?”

Sam climbed in. “Around. I’m not certain. I thought I’d look at the Murray.”

“D’ya know the history of the Murray?”

“You mean Ngurunderi?”

“Yep.”

Sam began: “In the Dreamtime

Ngurunderi travelled down the Murray River in a bark canoe, in search of his two wives who had run away from him. At that time the river was only a small stream, below the junction with the Darling River.

A giant cod fish, Ponde, swam ahead of Ngurunderi, widening the river with sweeps of its tail. Ngurunderi chased the fish, trying to spear it from his canoe. Near Murray Bridge he threw a spear, but missed and it was changed into Long Island (Lenteilin). At Tagalang he threw another; the giant fish surged ahead and created a long straight stretch in the river.

At last, with the help of Nepele (the brother of Ngurunderi’s wives), Ponde was speared after it had left the Murray River and had swum into Lake Alexandrina. Ngurunderi divided the fish with his stone knife and created a new species of fish from each piece.

“That’s a good beginning, lad.”

“Thank you. I am Samuel.”

“Call me Wheels.”

“OK, Wheels. You’re drivin’ – want to hear more?”

“‘Course.”