by John Bodey
As the days and months of the first part of his journey unfolded, Ningaloo often anchored the wunnaguri in protected coves and bays and spent days exploring the reefs and bays, sometimes even going ashore to explore the islands. When storm clouds gathered on the horizon and lashing squalls developed, he headed his craft back to a favoured bay that he had kept in mind for this purpose, waited for the highest tide, then beached the wunnaguri. He chose the southerly end of the sweeping bay to make his camp where he had moved his belongings up beneath a cliff overhang. He carried rocks as large as he could manage and erected a wall that curved around and across the face of his shelter. He gathered as much dry wood as he could find, stacking it against the stone wall. The overhang, though not as big as the cave he had left, gave him sufficient protection from the elements.
When the storms came and wild winds and driving rain lashed the island that sheltered him, he sat far back in the overhang of rock. Each storm seemed to have a life of differing capacity. There were days when he was tempted to leave the island and make a run for the secure bay that was his homeland, but he remained in the haven he had chosen.
The storm that shook him the most and would remain in his memory for the rest of his days, crept up on him quite unexpectedly, easing over the island, surreptitiously and then unleashed itself in unimaginable fury, clouds covered the whole sky, scudding across the island. Then the rain came, light and soft at first, but as the days of clouds extended, so the rain came heavier and heavier. The steady wind picked up the tempo as well, driving the rain wildly. It lashed and thrashed his island home, tore out trees, ripped off limbs and caused the earth to slip and slide into the sea. Suddenly it stopped, the wind died, the rain ceased, the sun tried to make its presence felt, and Ningaloo crept out from the shelter of the overhang and walked out into the yellow glow of a strange daylight.
For the remainder of the rain season, Ningaloo stayed close to the island, venturing only far enough to find food. When another cyclone passed by the island, out to sea, he sat well-stocked and comfortable beneath the overhang with a new barrier of rock. His supply of dry wood was placed in a sheltered part of his camp, and he kept the fire going during the wildest part of the storms. Food was plentiful, and he had devised a method of rack-drying fish and fruit for the time of his leaving. He remembered too well his previous trip across the ocean, and the sensation of gnawing hunger. He would leave the island as soon as he was able to and make for the mainland.
With the first touch of cold air from the south, the wunnaguri was hauled back into the water. Repairs had been seen to; he awaited the first sign that the new season was on its way. Within a day of the launch, Ningaloo had his provisions stored and lashed. In the interim, he had devised and made blades like short paddles to hang on either side of the craft as a new steering means; he longed to know whether they would work. Then one day with a cool steady breeze building, he towed the wunnaguri out into clear water, and as the breeze caught the craft and it began to overhaul the raft, he climbed into the wunnaguri and steered towards the land mass.
Days passed into weeks, weeks into months. The winter winds had long left. Flowers bloomed, birds sang and Ningaloo began his seventeenth year. He had improved the steerage, found a means to erect a small mast, and designed two loose flapping skins to aid the speed of the craft. In his wanderings he found many harbours that would offer the safety he sought. He saw cascading waterfalls and fast-flowing rivers. He saw whirlpools that dazzled him, but nothing in all he had seen could entice him to stay.
And in all this time he had never seen so much as the smoke of a fire or any semblance of human habitation. In the shallows of the bays, in tidal creeks and river mouths, Ningaloo had often tried to play with the porpoises, but they seemed intent on hunting and feeding. Their idea of play was mainly hide-and-seek in the dark, murky waters of fast-flowing tidal creeks, or butting the school sharks and chasing them to test their turn of speed.
Out in the blue water he encountered the dolphins. He watched for days on end as they ducked and dived and played within easy reach of the wunnaguri. At times he would slip over the side to hang suspended in the water as they cavorted nearby. He began to recognise different creatures by their markings or other peculiarities. He could easily identify the mature ones, and began to distinguish those that were the elders. The young were the easiest to make friends with, but they could not understand that although Ningaloo moved as they did, his speed was limited, as was his air supply. And though in their actions they urged him to join with them, hunting and playing in the ocean deeps, he could not.
One beautiful spring day the wunnaguri drifted with sea anchor in tow through a passage between islands and the mainland. While Ningaloo was idling along in the still waters, a sound invaded his consciousness. There was something disconcerting, yet oddly familiar in these sounds that surrounded him when he was submerged beneath the surface. He tried to locate their source, but failed, and decided that the Spirits were playing with him.
He floated in the neck-depth water and lay back, breathing slowly, watching the rise and fall of his body. The sound of lowing now seemed as if it was within touching range, but he’d had enough of Spirits for the day, so he stayed floating along. Other lowing sounds seemed to congregate near and around him. If he ignored their presence long enough, he thought, they would eventually come right up to him.
As the sounds started to drift away; he rolled over but his action triggered an alarm, and all he saw was the fleeting glimpse of some grey shapes fast disappearing through the paddock of sea grass that waved beneath him.
“So they aren’t Spirits after all,” he thought, “but some sort of animal feeding in the grass.”
Now he knew he was not chasing ghosts, but some intelligent, timid animal.
For the next few days he floated in the paddock of waving grass, seeing passing shapes on the periphery of his watery vision. Days passed to weeks; the shapes became used to him and accepted his presence now and browsed idly beneath him. When he slowly sank to their level in the grass fields, they ignored him and went on with their feeding. Then he went up to them, it was as if he were one of them. He searched amongst the grass roots for rough-backed cockles so that he had something to do when he swam in their midst. With the coming of the early rains, he noticed a change come over the waving fields of grass. New growth began to emerge; spring had come to this underwater field of green.
During the nights he lay at peace with the world. His mind would roam over the highlights of his wanderings, then move into the future and ponder on what might be. That he had not sighted any human habitation didn’t bother him in the least, he was happy with the friends that he had made.
As spring blossomed in the underwater fields, he noticed that some of the young mammals that had been his closest friends were slowly drifting away from him. Some had developed closer friendships with individuals from a group that swum and fed closely together. Yet when he had tried to approach this group they swam off at his approach. There now appeared in the midst of the herds strangers he had never seen before; his friends were girding themselves, grunting in their heat for a fight. In the days that followed the sea-grass paddock turned murky from the raised mud of battle; many times Ningaloo was nearly run down by some fleeing antagonist ... and all the while the new group that swam and fed together seemed oblivious to the activity, the heated grunts and bellows. As the battles raged and waned, the number of the passive group, as he had come to call it, was fast dwindling, until at last only one remained. It was, Ningaloo realised, the smallest of the group, never really accepted by the others.
It never occurred to him that the passive group were females, and that those that had sought his friendship were males. It wasn’t until he witnessed the most intimate of relationships that he began to comprehend the strange behaviour that had been going on around him.
The oppressively hot days and nights had made sleep impossible until the first wisp of a sea breeze came ashore. This evening
he walked down to the beach and sat in the warm water. Sitting quietly, watching the play of light on the water as the sun reached for the horizon, he felt rather than heard the resonance of movement, and slipped deeper into the still, clear water.
He was shocked into stillness; he couldn’t have moved even if he had wanted to. There, no further than the length of his body away was one of his friends. He was belly to belly with the mate of his choosing, her back cradled in the sand, and he was pumping into her belly for all he was worth, with no awareness that an intruder was watching. Ningaloo heard their grunts, her squeals of pleasure, then surfaced to take in more air. He returned to witness the final thrust and watched as his friend slipped sideways, to reveal his manthing slipping out.
Ningaloo surfaced, awed and enlightened at what he had just witnessed. He understood now what his mother had told him long ago, when he had asked where he had come from, and she had answered from the union of his parents. This then was the union, this was what his manthing was really intended for, the act of procreation.
He sat in the shallows and thought on what he had seen. Questions flooded through his mind. What was this thing? How did it come about? What bought it on? Was there no stopping it? Did it have to end? Ningaloo had never heard of the word “love”, but he surely knew the depth of its meaning, and its effect on animal nature.
He remembered the female that had been rejected not only by the other females, but by the males as well. He speculated on the possibility of a union and rejected it; the thought was nauseous. If this was to happen to him, it would have to be with his own kind.
He knew he must find his own kind, and then discover this thing called “love”. It was time to get on with his life...
“And That’ my Grandson is what ‘Love’ is all about!”
“BUT Grandad! What about Ningaloo?”
“What about him?”
“You can’t leave the story hanging in the air like that! What happened to Ningaloo?”
“Ahhh! I see ... Well that is a story for another time. As I recall, we stopped to have a cuppa, and a smoke. What I was trying to tell you was that if mammals in those times long gone, experienced ‘love’, then, it must have started with them.”
“Bother with the beginning of love. “What happened to Ningaloo?”
“Another day Grandson ... The day grows long and we have still many miles to travel, we must be on our way ... I think this is going to be a very quiet ride for me for the rest of the way.”
“Will you make me a promise Grandad? Will you finish the rest of the Ningaloo story for me one day?”
“Yes my Grandson, when the time and place is right, and when we have stacks of time, for the telling is very long.”
“Thanks Grandad, you’re a real sport ... Guess I’ll just have to dream till then.”
First published 2000 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
www.uqp.com.au
© John Bodey, 2000
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Typeset by University of Queensland Press
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Sponsored by the Queensland Office of Arts and Cultural Development.
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
National Library of Australia
Bodey, John, 1941–.
When darkness falls.
I. Title. (Series: UQP black Australian writers).
A823.3
ISBN 978 0 7022 2994 7 (pbk)
978 0 7022 5034 7 (pdf)
978 0 7022 5035 4 (epub)
978 0 7022 5036 1 (kindle)