To Kill a Bunyip

by A R Dent

  ~~~~~

  Penny continued to walk every afternoon to places she suspected Eloise was likely to be. Penny was getting more pressure put on her at school to get a storyline intact and add more characters to the plot.

  ‘Penny, I can’t answer any of those questions. It’s your story and your baby. I can’t say anything about people for characters in your book. Look inward and find your answers. Within your world is the world you know. It’s the only world in existence. Outside of your own world, life is but a fantasy or an interpretation. Whatever you read or hear of things outside your world, remain only as an interpretation of someone else’s world. What about you just write about your world, or any world you create in your mind. Read a newspaper. Newspapers are simply another interpretation of non existence. Non existence is also energy. Your world is what you resonate with. That’s what you need to learn today. Tomorrow you might have to discount it as a lie. Sometimes a truth of one day is different to a truth of another day,’ Eloise said.

  As Eloise Buchanan walked away toward her favourite place to sit and meditate, Penny sat on the ground writing down everything she could remember of what Eloise said. As Penny looked up in the direction of the trees blowing hard by the wind, the wind got hold of her notebook and swept it up into the air and across the land towards the middle of Snapper Creek and disappeared.

  Alone, except for the dogs with her, Penny slowly shivered and vibrated. Her thoughts of galaxies far away. In a dissonance of disbelief, Penny recognised she had become a different person but not one person she knew would know her innermost thoughts. Penny sat for three hours observing the wind’s effect on the world around her. Mental notes of the sounds of wind. Different harmonies for different trees. The wind over water. Wind slowly passed through her body. From the front of her body, Penny could feel the wind inside her, and then exit from her back. Penny returned to a seat where she and her father once sat discussing the different things like dugongs that were once in the waterways in abundance. Sea turtles remained but not in the numbers as before. White man’s presence in the waters around Null was identical to many coastal towns along the seaboard of Australia. Most species were vulnerable to the presence of white man. Penny often thought what life would be like if she was all white or all black. Life for Penny was now becoming as living as non white and non black. Whatever her heritage, Penny was simply becoming part of nature. Penny arose and left for home. As she was walking along the bike track, Eloise appeared alongside, riding a bicycle, heading in the same direction.

  ‘Have a nice day,’ Eloise said.

  Eloise continued, on her bicycle, and disappeared behind trees further down the track.

  ~~~~~

  ‘The whereabouts of Greg Cunningham remains a mystery. Snapper Creek has been searched and nothing has been found of his body. Divers have returned to Brisbane and all professional and recreational fishermen are asked to keep a look out for anything which can be linked to his disappearance,’ a police spokesperson announced over the radio.