Chapter 5

As the afternoon passed, the elders spoke of the Dreamtime. Thinking of the places along the Ord, the tawny frogmouth recited a story.

“Once a man was making a dillybag [traditionally woven from the fibres of plant species of the Pandanus genus], called a bulbbe. The bulbbe was for carrying food when he went for his bush tucker. While he was making it, he saw a group of men coming. They were his enemies. They were going to spear him and kill him. He was scared, so he formed himself into a blue-tongue lizard, called kurrih. He crawled inside the bulbbe to hide from his enemies.

“Now that bulbbe was made out of string from the kurrajong tree. The string was really hard and tightly woven. It stuck on his back while he was inside the bulbbe. That’s why the skin on the kurrih is so hard that other animals, like the king brown snake, can’t bite him. His skin is strong and hard like a tightly twined bulbbe.”

“That is a good story,” said the wallaby. “North of my country, in the homeland communities of Northeast Arnhem Land, they tell of sugarbags. For people living on the country, the relationship with local stingless bees is quite different from the ‘domestication’ of the honeybee by whitefellas. Each year the people await sugarbag season where men, women and children go into the bush to search of these tiny bees so they can extract honey from their hives. Clans are connected to different sugarbag totems, with different Dhuwa and Yirritja kinds of bee. One kind of bee bites in defence of its hive and the other does not.”

“That informs us,” said boobook. “We must weave our bulbbe strong so the whitefellas can’t eat us up, yet we must bite only in defence. The bees were going to find themselves a home, which became the stringy bark tree. In the hollow interior of these trees they started producing honey: first they flew to the flowers of the bush -- especially the flowers of the stringy bark trees -- to collect the nectar and then returned to their ‘homes’ where they made the honey. Mewal (the honey spirit), who was always looking for wild honey, followed the bees when they returned to their stringy bark trees and learnt where to find the sugarbag honey.”

“Those who were, put the sacred lizard places near the river wisely,” added frogmouth. “The blue-tongued lizard regrows his tail and the totems have the power to regenerate anything they feel that they have lost. It is possible, perhaps likely, that with the dam gone, the lizards will restore the shrubs and grasslands that were drowned.”

“We can but hope,” said the nungungi. “I will be not-here again soon. You will have to help Josiah and Ezekiel.”

“How?”

“That has not been shown me. Frogmouth spoke well earlier. You and Josiah must make what is to come.”

The next morning, Patrick received a message to phone Ken Wyatt. [Wyatt was the first Aboriginal elected to Parliament (2010), from a district just east of Perth. He was re-elected and, in 2019, was named Minister for Indigenous Australians.] The code was 08 – Western Australia,, so Patrick knew that he should wait a few hours prior to calling back. He looked and found that Wyatt’s constituency office was in Forrestfield. He waited till noon.

“Good morning, minister.”

“Mornin’ – what have you heard?”

“About what?”

“Sorry. About 36 or so hours ago, the dam at Lake Argyle gave way. There’s word out that it was helped.”

“A terrorist attack? In the northeast of Western Australia?”

“No. Not that.”

“Then whom? Or what group?”

“That’s the problem. The word got to me, because some group is blaming the Aborigines.”

“And how would this group of Indigenous Australians have effected that?”

“Unspecified. But I’m worried. You know as well as I that there are many anti-Aboriginal groups and individuals out there.”

“So you think a yobbo or a group of yobbos want to attack the local group?”

“Possibly. Or merely make trouble. There’s a band in a park near Kununurra, another settlement in Kununurra, and a camp on the river near the airport on my list.”

“If the dam went, that camp in the river may be gone.”

“True.”

“But then they’re in no danger.”

“Not funny, Mr. Hollister.”

“Sorry, Mr. Minister. But the group in the park. That’s at Molly Springs?”

“Yes.”

“The dam would have nothing to do with swimming in the Springs.”

“Also true. But not everyone is guided by logic. Anyway, I know that you have solved a problem in this state. And other conflicts in Queensland and New South.”