Corroboree Read Free Page B

carrying the stone, do you think that was the spirit who come back from the world beyond the setting sun?’
    Eyre looked at the boy, and then laid a hand on his shoulder.
    â€˜Do you believe in spirits coming back from the land beyond the setting sun?’
    The boy hesitated, and then said/No sir.’
    â€˜No, sir,’ Eyre repeated. Then, ‘Neither do I.’
    And the time will come when a dead spirit visits the earth from the place beyond the setting sun, so that he may see again how beautiful it was.
    Many will be frightened by the spirit’s white face; but he will be befriended by a simple boy, who will guide him through the world.
    In return for this kindness, the spirit will try to teach the boy the magical ways of those who have passed into the sunset.
    However, he will forget that the boy is only mortal, and in trying to teach the boy how to fly like a spirit, he will cause the boy to drop from the mountain called Wongyarra, and die.
    And the spirit in his grief and remorse will seek out the cleverest of all clever-men, and will give him the magical knowledge of the dead; so that the clever-man may pass the knowledge on to every tribe; and to every tribesman.
    And in this way the grief of the spirit will be assuaged; and the tribes of Australia will be invincible in their magical knowledge against men and devils and anyone who wishes them harm.
    And this will be the beginning of an age that is greater and more heroic than the Dreaming.
    â€” Nyungar myth, first recorded by J.
Morgan in Perth, 1833, from an
account by the Aboriginal Galliput

One
    There was an extraordinary commotion at the Lindsay house when he arrived there on his bicycle. Mrs McMurtry the cook was standing on the front lawn screaming shrilly; while upstairs the sash-windows were banged open and then banged shut again; and angry voices came first from the west bedroom and then from the east; and footsteps cantered up and down stairs; and doors slammed in deafening salvoes. Yanluga the Aborigine groom scampered out of the front porch with his hair in a fright crying, ‘Not me, sir! No, sir! Not me, sir!’ and rushed through the wattle bushes which bordered the garden, like a panicky kangaroo with greyhounds snapping at his tail.
    Eyre propped his bicycle against a hawthorn tree and approached the house cautiously. Mrs McMurtry had stopped screaming now and had flung up her apron over her face, letting out an occasional anguished ‘
moooo
’, as if she were a shorthorn which urgently needed milking. The front door of the house remained ajar, and inside Eyre could just see the bright reflection from the waxed cedar flooring, and the elegant curve of the white-painted banisters. Somewhere upstairs, a gale of a voice bellowed, ‘You’ll do what I tell you, my lady! You’ll do whatever I demand!’
    Then a door banged; and another.
    Eyre walked a little way up the garden path; then took off his Manila straw hat and held it over his chest, partly out of respect and partly as an unconscious gesture of self-protection. He was dressed in his Saturday afternoon best: a white cotton suit, with a sky-blue waistcoat with shiny brass buttons, from the tailoring shop next to Waterloo House. His high starched collar was embellished with a blue silk necktie which had taken him nearly twenty minutes to arrange.
    â€˜Is anything up?’ he asked Mrs McMurtry.
    Mrs McMurtry let out a throat-wrenching sob. Then she flapped down her apron, and her face was as hot and wretched as a bursting pudding.
    The mutton-and-turnip pie!’ she exclaimed.
    Eyre glanced, perplexed, towards the house. The mutton-and-turnip pie?’ he repeated.
    â€˜
Moooo!
’ sobbed Mrs McMurtry. Eyre came over and laid his arm around her shoulders, trying to be comforting. Her candy-striped kitchen-dress was drenched in perspiration, and her scrawny fair ringlets were stuck to the sides of her neck. In midsummer, cooking a family