The Adventures of Billy Boiglebird and his Small Automatic Wind Powered Galactic Space-Shrink Transporter Gizmo
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ntures of Billy Boiglebird and his Small Automatic
Wind Powered Galactic Space-Shrink Transporter Gizmo
Copyright Lindsay Johannsen 2014
Thank you.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication Data:
Author: Johannsen, Lindsay Andrew
Title: The Adventures of Billy Boiglebird and his Small Automatic
Wind Powered Galactic Space-Shrink Transporter Gizmo
Cover art and design bungled by the author.
A novel: “McCullock’s Gold”
Three Short stories: “Uncle Jasper and the Eighty Acres”
“A Bushman’s Tail” and,
“The Curious Affair of Scuppers Bilgewater and the Lesser Speckled Dunk Island Scrub Hen”
...Oh yes. And a short poem: “My Lying Bathroom Mirror” – (Two versions: M & F.)
To order the paperback version of McCullock’s Gold or contact the author please visit
www.vividpublishing.com.au/lajohannsen
The Adventures of Billy Boiglebird and his Small Automatic
Wind Powered Galactic Space-Shrink Transporter Gizmo
Once upon a time, on a world far, far away, there lived a little boiglebird!
Now boiglebirds actually come from the planet Earth, though you probably wouldn’t know that because no one here even seems to have heard of them!
Nevertheless, there it was, about a gazillion billion jillion kilometres from Earth on a different planet entirely! I mean like, half way across the Galaxy! House and all!
The house didn’t look much like a house, though. In fact it looked more like a watermelon with a door and some windows cut into it. This is not very surprising because that is exactly what it had been before the boiglebird hollowed out its insides: A Very Large Watermelon. And this very large watermelon house was perched high up in what was probably just about almost the tallest bubblegum tree in the whole of The Known Universe! …in its very topmost-est branches! …high up in the forests on the highest of the planet’s mighty mountains!
The planet’s name was Urgle Wurgledoof, and this is the story of how the boiglebird came to be so far from home, of some of the adventures it had there and how its house came to be up in the giant tree. …Oh yes – and also how the little fellow managed to get back to Earth again. Firstly, though, it might be best if I explain a few things about boiglebirds, because I seem to be the only person in the world that knows anything about them…
Firstly, every boiglebird has a name, just like we do. But being boiglebirds their names are a sort of whistly-warbling sound, which is quite impossible to say if you’re not a boiglebird. And the name of the little fellow on Urgle Wurgledoof was a short whistly-warbling sound which meant, “Billy Featherfoot Mightywing” – except that at home everyone called him “Dynamite Billy”, because of something his father used to say.
You see, Dynamite Billy’s father was very proud of little Billy, because he was so clever. Billy always came top of his class at school, while at home he spent his spare time making the most amazing gizmos and gadgets. And whenever he’d finished making something he would take it to show his parents, and his father would smile proudly and say, “There’s no doubt about it, Billy. You are just dynamite!” …exactly like that.
Something else you should know about boiglebirds is this: they are actually very good at talking – exactly as we do. This is kept secret, however, because they enjoy playing tricks on people. Boiglebirds like to hide in the branches of a tree, somewhere near a footpath where people might stop for a rest or to have a picnic, and what they do is this.
Let’s say you’re in a park somewhere, walking along a path with your friends and family, looking for a playground or a nice place to have a picnic. All of a sudden you might hear someone say something very rude or bad-mannered. No one will know who said it, of course. Everybody will think it was somebody else.
This will be a boiglebird. They like to stay out of sight and start arguments.
Boiglebirds live on cabbage moths, mainly, though they’d much prefer to have chocolate ice cream, fairy floss, vanilla nougat … and those funny little pie-things with the chopped-up dried fruit inside them instead of meat.
Cabbage moths eat cabbage leaves, of course, which is why we call them, “cabbage moths”. And the cabbage moths don’t like boiglebirds at all, because the boiglebirds keep eating them. To help prevent this, the cabbage moths go looking for cabbages at night, when the boiglebirds can’t see them. The problem is they can’t see very well in the dark and crash into things a lot.
And because the cabbage moths go out for cabbages at night and crash into things the Boiglebirds chasing them crash into things as well. This makes the boiglebirds’ feathers all raggedy and stick-out higgledy-piggeldy this way and that in a very untidy fashion, and this plus their funny faces and weird different coloured feathers make them look like flying circus-clowns – so much so that when the other birds see them they all fall about laughing – especially the kookaburras. In fact, whenever you hear a kookaburra laughing, you can be sure it has seen a boiglebird.
Being laughed at is embarrassing to the MAX for boiglebirds, of course. As a result they generally go hunting at night.
Now … as it happens, Boiglebird families make their homes in big, roundish-looking, hollowed-out rocks. Some live in big roundish hollowed-out rocks in the city and some live in big roundish hollowed-out rocks in the country, but mostly they live in big roundish hollowed-out rocks where people grow cabbages.
Dynamite Billy’s family lived in a really big roundish rock. This was because his family was a very big family. And their big, roundish-looking, hollowed-out rock was in the very best cabbage growing country of all – on the other side of the Misty Mountains on old Jack MacKackney’s rabbit farm, down behind the shed in the middle of his watermelon patch, not too far from where Rickety Bridge goes over the Rippling River.
And there, one hot summer’s day, when it was so hot that the rabbits were all asleep in their burrows and old Mr MacKackney was snoozing in a bathtub full of cool water, Dynamite Billy decided he would do something he’d been thinking about doing for a long, long time. …Weeks even!
You see, Dynamite Billy Boiglebird wanted to be a scientist and do experiments and invent stuff and make things. But he’d come to realise that if he was ever going to become a scientist he would first have to move out of his family’s big hollowed-out-rock home so he could get some peace and quiet away from all his rowdy brothers and sisters.
And what Billy had decided to do was this: he would hollow-out one of Mr MacKackney’s big watermelons growing in the watermelon patch. That way he could make himself the perfect experimental laboratory, one where he could do all the experimenting he wanted and make all the things he wanted – in peace and quiet. And because he liked eating watermelon so much and because he needed plenty of room the one Billy chose to hollow-out was the biggest watermelon that was there. This one would be big enough to do all his experiments in and still leave room to have a bed – for when he’d been working late.
And this was how everything worked out. After hollowing-out the watermelon skin to make his bedroom and experimental laboratory, Dynamite Billy was able to work there in peace and quiet for as long as he liked … well, except for when he had to get ready for school or when dinner was ready or it was bath time. He also picked up the two empty lemonade cans whi
ch had fallen from Mr MacKackney’s recycling bin, because he needed things like that to help with his experiments.
…And that is exactly where Dynamite Billy Featherfoot Mightywing Boiglebird aged nine and a half years was when the giant tornado came: in his hollowed-out watermelon-skin bedroom and two empty-lemonade-cans experimental laboratory, checking out the small automatic wind-powered transporter gizmo he’d made to whiz him off to school of a morning and then home again when lessons were finished … all in the blink of an eye, so he’d have more time to do