Tsunami
by
Robin Stewart
Copyright: 2010 Robin Stewart
Contents
The moonbird legend
Chapter 1 Crying out in alarm
Chapter 2 On top of the roof
Chapter 3 A mountain of water
Chapter 4 Noah's Ark
Chapter 5 "Fly away, Coo!"
Chapter 6 At home in the wilderness
Chapter 7 The fish of all fish
Chapter 8 Hunter gatherers
Chapter 9 Crabbing
Chapter 10 Pelican Man
Chapter 11 Big trouble
Chapter 12 Saying farewell to old man Snow
Chapter 13 Life not the same as before
The Moonbird Legend
Tasmanian mutton birds (also known as short-tailed shearwaters) are sometimes known as moon birds.
Writing in 1933, Professor F. Wood Jones of Melbourne put forward an unusual legend. He suggested that when the moon flew from the face of the Earth -- and up into space -- it left behind the Pacific Ocean, along with these special seabirds.
He went on to explain that the Pacific Ocean is the moon birds’ only playground and the islands their only home. The story suggests that, every year in April, the moon birds leave their Bass Strait breeding islands, to return to the moon, following a pathway of pale silvery light.
The professor said that mutton birds were refugees from the moon, with moon time controlling all their activities. He called them birds of the moon: moon birds.
In 1947, the scientist Dr Serventy began fixing small, silver-coloured bands to the legs of mutton birds on Fisher Island in Bass Strait. 20,000 birds were banded. It was his hope that some of the bands would be returned and so help solve the mystery of where the birds disappeared between the months of May to September.
Dr Serventy waited 12 years for the clue he was looking for.
An Eskimo, fishing in the Bering Sea, was the first person to find a banded mutton bird and return the band to Australia. Other bands followed, and gradually a picture emerged. The mutton birds migrated every year from southern Australia in a remarkable migration flight that swept north across the Pacific Ocean to Alaska and the Bering Sea -- then back south again in September -- an annual return flight of 32,000 kilometres.
At the age of about 35 years, a mutton bird would have flown about 1.05 million kilometres. A trip to the moon and back is not that far!
Chapter 1 Crying out in alarm
The warning floated and flapped around in Noah's mind. Urgent. Demanding he wake from a nightmare he couldn’t quite remember.
"Quick! Get up!" the moon birds screamed.
"Climb onto the roof," they chattered urgently, "before it's too late."
Noah's heart was pounding. His skin sweated. He lay motionless, as if frozen between his dream and the sound of thousands of flapping wings and chuckling cries.
Noah's moon birds were believed by some to fly to the moon and back, along a silvery pathway of light. They swooped, drifted and glided on currents of air; soared to great heights and then skimmed across the surface of the ocean.
Only half awake, Noah staggered out of bed, pulled on jeans and a windcheater, and then forced his feet into sneakers.
As the full moon beamed its silvery light through the window and into his bedroom, Noah thought, There's enough light from the moon, so I won't need a torch.
Leaving his crumpled bed behind, Noah crept out into the hall, tiptoed past his grandmother's room, through the kitchen and out the back door. Pictures were forming in his mind. Of water. Of danger.
He thought of Gran's ladder, and then remembered his cubby-house high up in the branches of an old cypress tree. Noah began to climb the tree, holding onto the rough knobbly branches with his fingers. Climbing like a monkey.
Noah gritted his teeth. Blood thumped in his ears. Up and up he climbed. Past his cubby-house. Towards the roof.
What if I fall, he thought, looking down into the garden. What if I fall and break my neck?
Just then, a moon bird swooped low over his head, chattering and crying out, "You forgot about Gran. Go back and rescue her. But be quick!"
Tsunami Page 1