Chapter 5

“I received your email yesterday,” Simone Lyons began. “Can you explain what you want to do?”

“Well,” Sam responded, sitting down, “I’m not sure I can. Do you have time?”

“UNE pays me to have time for students.”

“OK. I’ve been taking courses for a few months and am unhappy with them.”

“Shouldn’t you talk to someone in the advisement office?”

Sam sighed. “This will be longer than you may want.”

“Let me be the judge of that. I’m not an ogre.”

“I went to Counseling Services several weeks ago. The interviewer I met with there seemed to think I had schizophrenic tendencies and offered me a prescription! As far as I could tell he thought having a totem was lycanthropy!”

“Have you a totem?”

“Yes. I am Bunjil, the wedge tail. But you must know that my grandfather is known among many bands, that one of my grandmothers was nungungi, as is my father. My father is Dayah Minyah, a Carpet Python. My wife is Waa, the Crow or Raven.”

“Oh my! Can you tell me more?”

“I could tell you much more. But I need to know that I’m not going to be branded as a psychotic of some sort. Nor as a religious fanatic.”

“You needn’t fear those. I’m quite interested. In my work on dog-man relations, I’ve heard many stories. And I met Deborah Bird Rose some years ago.”

“I’ve read two of her books. Dingo and Wild Dog Dreaming.”

“She was a fine field anthropologist. We should talk about your writing. But what you sent me is clearly bound up with you. Tell me about your family.”

“Well, the Hollisters came to Australia over a century ago. But my grandfather was born on a small station in Queensland. There was a group on the land, and my grandfather went to school with abos as well as whitefellas. His father was ‘known’ as ‘Holli-man’ and had good relations with the band, employing men to work stock and women in the house, and on occasion giving the group a calf or a lamb.”

Sam mentioned that his grandfather had gone to Brisbane and to UNSW and worked in Canberra and in Perth. “My father was born in Perth, but it was a kangaroo in Queensland who declared my grandmother and my infant father nungungi. My mother is half Japanese, her mother went to UWA to study and got married to an Aussie. My wife’s family is from South Australia. Her grandfather says they came to the Flinders soon after the time of the Arkaroo.”

“This is fascinating. But it really doesn’t further your purposes. Can you tell me what you want?”

“Not really. But can you comment at all on what I sent you?”

“Yes. You’ve a talent for narrative. But it’s not your narrative. You retell the happenings of the Dreamtime, but there’s no ‘you’ in the telling. The same was true of what you just said about your grandfather and greatgrandfather: you expressed the situation in a solid narrative, but you weren’t in it.”

Sam was silent for a minute. “So, wanting to write is hopeless?”

“No. Not at all. But you have to put yourself into what you write.”

“You mean I should write autobiography?”

“No. But you can’t just narrate at a remove. Why don’t you think about it. Perhaps talk to your wife. Come back and talk to me next Tuesday. Same Bat-channel.”

“What?”

“Sorry. Bad attempt at a joke.”

*

Later, Sam related his “appointment” to Tessa.

“Actually, she’s right,” Tessa said.

“Huh?”

“She just doesn’t really understand well enough. Your writing reveals you. You are Bunjil. You are Aquila audax. You are the wedge-tailed eagle. You fly high and observe all below. You can soar for hours on end without wingbeat and seemingly without effort, regularly reaching 1,800m and sometimes considerably higher. I read that the purpose of soaring is unknown. Your eyesight extends into the ultraviolet.”

“So my writing reflects what I see?”

“Or what you have seen. If Bunjil was here in the Dreamtime, then you, today’s bunjil can recall the happenings of the Dreamtime.”

“Do you think that’s right?”

“Do you remember our night in the cave?”

“Of course.”

“And you related that you flew high and that you observed events from centuries ago.”

“So I did. I was taken high to get my view. I saw the HMS Sulphur and the Parmelia land 400 colonists and military at the mouth of the Swan in 1829. I watched the Pinjarra massacre in 1834. I saw Western Australia through time.”

“There you are.”

“Very well. So my view is from on high, from ago to now. What must I do?”

“I don’t know. Recall what potoroo told us: We are not one, but two. We may be together, but we are separate.”

“It makes some sort of sense. But it doesn’t help me to find my niche. I’m fairly sure that I’m not into carrion or small reptiles or even carrying a lamb off every so often.”

“Well that’s good. I’m not interested in carrion or rodents, either. Might you take vocational tests?”

“I suppose so. A decade ago Craig Ardler said I’d be a problem. I guess I am.”

“You know, I’ve an idea.”

“Not your first.”

“Ho, ho. No, I’m serious. You’re bunjil. You soar high. You observe all below. Right?”

“I guess so.”

“Photography.”

“Elaborate, please.”

“You should take up photography. A photograph freezes a moment. I’ve seen Gordy’s DuPain, and your mother wrote about his photography. Have you ever had a camera?”

“No.”

“I think you should try.”

“I don’t know. Nothing called out when you spoke just now. And I certainly didn’t feel any excitement. Maybe I should talk to your grandfather, not mine.”

“There aren’t any holidays until Christmas/New Year’s.”