‘You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength’. Marcus Aurelius
The other evildoers advanced, and one picked up a stick and started lifting up my shirt. ‘Let’s see what’s underneath,’ he purred, in a way that caused a shiver to run through me like a sword. I said to myself, ‘Dismiss fear: it kills the mind.’
The gang were all upon me now, when suddenly, I felt an intense burning in my nose, eyes, and body and difficulty breathing. A gunshot echoed. I tried to look around, but I could not see.
I felt hands lift me, and I was being carried away at speed. I tried to think but found that my mind and body were frozen, like those bodies from Pompeii. All I could think about was the searing pain. I did think I heard someone say, ‘Such is life,’ but I might have been mistaken.
‘I can’t carry you any more,’ panted Tom’s voice. He dropped me down and grabbed my hand, and we continued running and tripping. I was beginning to see things a bit and saw that we were going through the bush upward. Fred was not with us.
Tom was looking above the trees, and then he pulled me to the left, and we scrambled up an incline, pushed through mounds of scratchy lantana, and burrowed through a hanging carpet of grasses to find ourselves in a small, dry cave.
Tom was panting, and he flopped down like a belly-flopping fish. ‘That just took a few years off my life.’
‘But what….’ I didn’t know how to continue. Where was Fred? How did Tom know how to find this hiding place?
Light flashed in as Fred dove through the grass covering of the cave’s entrance.
‘That was a close one,’ he panted. ‘That pepper spray gets ‘em every time.’
I looked at one, then the other. Tom answered my questioning face.
‘Fred could only tell one of us where to find the safe places if we were to get into bother. It’s a rule they have…. Sorry. He looked at me closely, like I might explode. I wouldn’t, though; Tom exudes rational good sense. He was the obvious choice.
‘I told the lad to look for tall poles that rise above the trees. They are painted, disguised to look like an extension of the tree. You wouldn’t notice them unless you knew what to look for. But they lead you to our various safe houses; a cave in this case.’
I felt a soft grey blanket being thrown over me. I was shaking. Tom asked if it would be alright if he sprayed water into my smarting eyes. I nodded, and as water hit my optical equipment, my brain began to sluggishly work again.
I had deployed the pepper spray at the foot pirates. Nan had made sure we always carried it. Then Tom had picked me up and scarpered off. Who fired the gun? There was no answer. Fred and Tom shook their heads.
‘They make my blood boil, those young, porn-brained chumps! And their dehumanising of women. I’d like to see some suffragettes kick them in the road’s end,’ stormed Fred. ‘I know that these blokes are wild and unschooled, but still….My sons were brought up to respect and love women. Women want relationships. They want to be wooed and charmed and respected. What to do? What to do?
Tom had that thinking-cap look on his face. ‘It seems, Fred, that one minute we are a baby being spoon-fed, and our nappies changed. Then we suddenly think we know it all overnight and can do whatever we want. But it is also true that when people are demonised and told they are toxic constantly, without good role models, they can radicalise, I think.’
I was still shaking, but I also realised that during this journey I had stopped being terrified of my own shadow. I dug a small book out of my bag on self-defence that Helen had given me. I was going to read this, now, and learn.
Fred shuffled around in the small space and reached for a lemonade bottle on a shelf where there was a collection of canned food and other items.
‘It’s too much freedom, in my opinion. That’s the problem. Too much freedom and too many culture wars. It’s always a battle and a tug-of-war. We have to decide what we value, and our society has to endorse it: love, marriage, and respect.’ Fred said.
‘It’s never the end of history,’ said Tom. ‘It’s always a battle for culture, values, and freedom. And issues have to be fought out.’
‘At my age, when I am moving closer to looking annihilation in the eye, I see young people wasting their moment in time….’
‘I don’t want to get married or have any kids,’ I blurted, but Fred and Tom took no notice. ‘Too many men,’ Helen told me, ‘are babies when they are ill but are absent when you are sick. They only seem interested in you when they think they can’t have you, but if you love them, they just take what they want and vamoose. The ticket price is too high, and you get nothing back.’ Tom, Ardent, and Fred might not be like this, but many were.
‘We lost faith in ourselves, that’s for sure. It was a strength we had to criticise ourselves, but it was also our weakness when it goes too far.’ Fred then added, ’Do you know we are related?’
We shook our heads, and Fred chuckled. ‘Your grandfather and my dad were cousins. Their grandfather originally came from the old country. He said that he didn’t want his daughters to be like the women in his family: locked in the house until marriage and unable to read or write.’ He chuckled again. ‘He didn’t have any daughters, as it happened. I knew your grandfather. We all used to get together a few times a year. That’s what I miss about my family; we were there for each other through thick and thin. Those were good times. Good times.’
‘Nan said that her other grandmother was a teacher ’ I said.
‘I knew your Nan too. Went through a lot, she did.’
‘What do you mean?’ Tom said, sitting up.
‘When she was a young’un the family were up north somewhere when a flash flood ripped away the caravan they were staying in, and she lost her brother. After that, the family was a victim of a home invasion. Apparently there was some rumour that there was an insurance payout. I remember too, that her daughter Sylvia was taken by some woman who couldn’t have children of her own. That was a big police case, at the time. Yeah. Oh, and I remember she had a much older sister that fell into drugs and a bad crowd. She used to come back home occasionally, all tatted up with a chain from boob to nose. In those days, only outlaws used to get tats, ‘ya know?…….That’s the hard part about living in a small community; everyone knows your business. That had a big effect on ‘ya nan. The sister was later found buried in the bones of a building. And her kids were just another few whose father was the state. So it was hard when Sylvia went astray.’
‘Astray?’ I questioned.
Tom looked down sadly. ‘Nan told me once that it was a shock, finding out that Sylvia was a different person than she had thought. It was like someone had died, she said. But, did Sylvia change, or did Nan’s version of her only exist in her own mind?’
I thought that I knew Nan too, but I never knew any of this.
‘Yeah, nah, from what I know, your Nan didn’t want to go through life as a victim. She didn’t want to spend life blaming others and feeling helpless. She didn’t want to make her problems a problem for other people.’ Pausing, Fred continued, ‘’Ya Nan said that her sister was convinced that she was cursed after her teacher at school, sick of her shenanigans, wished her farewell and said “May you live in interesting times.”’
When Nan told us this story, Tom was puzzled about why you would take any notice of someone who didn’t like you. This is something I think about when someone says something mean to me about my hand: ‘Are they ignorant or malicious?’ If ignorance is in play, I try to explain things and help them to learn. If the person is nasty, then I get away from them. Simple.
‘But it makes me feel that I didn’t really know Nan in a way,’ I said. ‘Isn’t empathy and understanding developed between people when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes? And isn’t it good to get help for your problems?’
‘People belong to themselves, and you must accept what they choose to share with you. But even so, anyone who met your grandmother knew that she was worth getting to know.’ Fred added.
It was cool in the cave, and we took the opportunity to rest and have something to eat. As I ate from a can of peaches, I wondered, as I often do, what we would do for food without all these cans and other foods from the days before. Many of these cans were imported too, as manufacturing had been virtually non-existent; we had been reliant on offshore slavery.
Tom had told me about how precarious farming was back in history. We had no horses to pull a plough, the weather was like a wild beast and many of the seed packets from the old days were no longer viable.
In Springwood, if we did get anything growing, the insects devoured them overnight. Panda said that they’d collected seeds from wild-growing old vegetable gardens, and so far, the Centrepoint garden was going well.
Nan showed us how to collect wild greens from the bush, but Tom read that they contained high levels of oxalic acid, which could give you kidney stones. We had no doctors, so we thought that we shouldn’t eat so much after that. Though, Tom pointed out that the ultra-processed food from the time before was probably even worse for us.
I lifted a book from the shelf called The Muddle Headed Wombat. I was soon deep into the exploits of Tabby Cat, second-best friend to Mouse and Wombat, who was building a tree house of his own, which they wanted to share, by any means.
Later in the night when all was quiet and still, we departed. The moon, like a silver disc, seemed to follow us, like a distant friend, as we continued our journey. I was relieved when we finally left the winding steep road through the bush behind us. Though, the empty, trashed and collapsed houses made me feel downhearted and discouraged.
As the new day began to emerge, Fred said that it was time to sleep and recover. He led us down a road of houses with his sure-footed step, until we came to a decrepit structure backing on a steep cliff. I looked up just before walking through the front door and saw an owl soaring overhead. Then, down a dark and smelly hallway flanked by empty, dusty rooms.
We intruded into the remains of a kitchen where exposed electric wires hung from the ceiling. Fred opened the door of what must have been a food pantry that was now completely empty. Fred reached up on top of a shelf and moved a timber lever. The shelf flipped open like a door, and I could see a staircase going down which was lit by sunlight coming through high vents.
Down the stairs we went, until we reached a small room which had been dug out of the cliff, under the house.
‘My sons have made a series of safe houses throughout the mountains. It has taken a number of years to set them up and disguise the hiding places adequately. ‘There are still those kinds of people around who delight in destruction and who don’t care about the rights of other people,’ Fred yawned.
We unfolded some camp beds and grabbed a cushion from a cedar box. Fred said, ‘We’ve got to get up at sparrow fart and get an early start.’ I promptly fell asleep.
I woke in the night to the sound of howling winds and cracks of thunder in the distance. But in the morning, the wind had moved away, and the day was clear and dry.
We set out again, reaching Springwood later in the morning. Fred decided that we should keep moving rather than stay in our cave, and Tom and I agreed, as we both didn’t want to go back there without Nan.
Fred led us through the deserted village, with its shattered and plundered shops. We detoured into a ravaged supermarket and managed to find a few cans of beans and stewed fruit sitting on the conveyor belt.
An old woman materialised with snow white hair and a faded dress.
‘Greetings. Are you allies or adversaries?’
‘Allies we are,’ said Fred, as Tom and I nodded.
‘Come and join me for breakfast,’ she said, adding, ‘I never use my name and have almost forgotten it, but call me Deb. Long ago in my former life I was a scientist working on infectious and parasitic diseases.’
‘Well, Deb, I’m sorry to say that you failed in that job,’ Fred said bluntly.
Tom jumped in, anxious to mitigate the offence. ‘The virus was novel and highly pathogenic, Fred. And the replication crisis damaged trust.’
‘We had some immunomodulatory vaccines,’ Deb said flatly. ‘But we were struggling and could not provide durability of protection at that time. But we were still working. Look! People just expect vaccines to be perfect, but nothing is. We were trying to save people by limiting transmission. We tried to communicate this….’
Deb continued, ‘Scientists tried to explain how the poliovirus killed or paralysed over half a million people every year all over the world until the 1950s, when vaccines were invented. And that smallpox had been eradicated. But the fact was, no really effective vaccine had been found this time.’
Tom cut in, ‘The whole vaccine scepticism can be traced back to James Gillray’s cartoon of 1802, “The Cowpock: Or, the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation,” which depicted just-vaccinated men and women developing cow features.‘
Deb nodded. ‘A pandemic is a chaos system in a way, seemingly unpredictable and random with interconnected and interdependent parts to make sense of…..Anyway, the self-appointed experts turned large sectors of the population against us with false claims. Then another lot expected the vaccine to be a panacea and were stampeding to get it. The thing is there is no certainty; nothing can absolutely be proven to be true. We work with statistical data and what the tool of science tells us; some people can’t understand this. Science has got to go where the evidence is, oblivious to sacred beliefs or political correctness.’
‘It doesn’t matter now, does it? I lost my wife and my daughter and so many friends and……’ Fred started to cry. ‘I thought that I had no more tears, but here I am weeping like a youngling. I try to keep my feelings buried deep down, but one mention of that time and I’m undone.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Deb’s voice quivered. ‘I shouldn’t have told you all that straight away, all at once, but I’m out of practice with talking to people. There are only a few of us oldies left around here. Any remaining young ones are down in Penrith and other places.’
We followed Deb into a small open room out the back where a BBQ was set up with coals. We sat down at a scrubbed timber table, moving a pair of shoes to a chair. Deb bustled about lighting the coals, boiling water, peeling potatoes and cooking.
When the potatoes were cooked, Deb scooped them onto plates and poured baked beans on top. We were all pretty hungry and tore into the portion set before each of us.
After this, Deb made us a drink with canned milk and cocoa, which was out of date but tasted fine.
‘I eat a lot of potatoes,’ Deb said as she sipped her cocoa. ‘I found some spuds in a few vegetable gardens some years ago, and now, I have systems in place so that I can eat them most of the year round. Luckily, I have Irish ancestry…though potatoes didn’t work out too well….And were the reason that my ancestors came here.’
‘Who do you talk to, though?’ I asked.
Before she could answer, a very large man with an arrogantly tilted chin and face like a landslide shuffled through the door.
‘Hi, Drongo. How’s things?’ Deb said dryly.
‘Same as they always are. Unpleasant.’
‘We went to school together, back in the day,’ Deb added.
‘Yep, she hasn’t improved since I met her,’ Drongo sneered. I was amazed; Drongo wasn’t even joking. I glanced around at Tom and Fred, and they both looked like they had been slapped with a wet fish.
‘There’s some spuds in the basket behind the door,’ Deb said through tight lips.
‘I hope they’re not sour like last time,’ Drongo plaintively pronounced.
Drongo bent down, picked up the bag, and without a backwards look, walked away.
‘A pleasant fellow! What’s the deal?’ Fred asked, with eyebrows almost on top of his head in amazement.
‘Ah, Drongo is a champion of personal freedom. He repudiates any sort of collectivism and told me that being in a tribe (his words) means that you are owned by others and you can be sacrificed for others. He says that any type of altruism has sinister self-serving motivations. And everyone should be responsible for themselves. That’s why he’s so rude about taking my potatoes. It makes him a hypocrite. But sometimes he can’t find enough food, and once he broke his leg, and I had to look after him for weeks. He was like a bear with a sore head, believe me!’
I couldn’t believe the way that Drongo acted and how he didn’t even try to be pleasant or interested in us at all. Couldn’t he see himself how others saw him? Also, I was sick of these people who thought that what they happened to believe was true was true for everyone.
Tom said that it was harmful to believe things that are not true, as our beliefs are reflected in our actions and behaviour and may have damaging effects.
‘He’s just a self-entitled bully who fell out of the ugly tree and hit his head,’Fred said dismissively.
‘He thinks I’m weak and that he is the top dog,’ Deb added, sadly. ‘Anyway, that’s who I talk to sometimes.’
Fred asked Deb if she wanted to accompany him to the community in Emu Plains when he returned from Medlow Bath. He said that the people of the community would really appreciate Deb’s potato-growing systems.
‘I’ll think about it,’ Deb said noncommittally. ‘But I’m not keen to tell the truth. See, I had a daughter, Birdie, when I was a young woman, and I’d just graduated and started my first job when it became apparent that Birdie was neurodivergent, hyperactive and non-verbal. There was no real help, and no childcare places would take her so that I could just get some sleep occasionally.’
Deb took a breath. ‘Anyway, I found, after much searching, some hope in a homeschooling system, where I would intensively teach Birdie the things that others learnt naturally. And she started to really improve and learn. It was so hard but beautiful to see. But the problem was other people. Some said that my teaching her was a crime that was changing who she really was. Others said that I could have another child, like she was a household appliance that I could change. Some thought that I was a bludger staying at home because I was lazy. Or, making things up to get money. I really can’t remember much generosity towards Birdie and me in those days. So, I’m not that fond of people, to be honest. Though, I always try to be generous towards others where I can be.’
The only sound came from a screeching cockatoo in the distance.
I blurted, overwhelmed, ‘Deb, how do you stand it?’
After a silence, Deb looked out the window. ‘Tests showed that Birdie had a rare gene mutation; it was de novo, meaning she didn’t inherit it. It didn’t matter either way; there was no choice……. I realised that there are things in life that we can’t control and can’t change. There are plenty of things that can be altered with work, knowledge and understanding. You just have to twig which things you can change and things you can’t, and accept that.’
‘Your experience sounds very overwhelming and isolating, Deb,’ said Tom.
Deb nodded, and a tear slid down her cheek. She put her hand on Tom’s arm and smiled. ‘I needed to hear that, young man. ‘Thank you.’
It was time for us to get going, and we thanked Deb and bid her goodbye. Fred, I thought, looked wistful when he looked back, though I noticed that Fred’s eyes generally seemed to be focused on the distance. Then, we rounded a corner, and she was lost to sight.
Before long, our journey took us through a park of oak trees and a falling monument. I could just make out the words ‘Henry Parkes,’ but I didn’t know who that was or why he was buried here. Tom looked deep in thought, so I didn’t ask if he knew. We continued on.
Tom’s voice drifted back to me as we walked in single file along a rough track, ‘Car-sized tortoises and wombats and other native megafauna became extinct about 45,000 years ago. Imagine coming face-to-face with a giant terrestrial crocodile!’
I shivered and asked Tom to change the subject.
That night, we made our camp at Wilson’s Glen Creek.
There was fresh water, and a couple of steps led to a clean cave.
‘It’s pretty basic, I’m afraid,’ Fred said, as he pushed back some ferns and bent down and rustled inside a small hole in the rock. He pulled out some plastic pillows which had been shoved in there.
We placed the pillows on the rock floor, and that was our bed. Fred passed around a packet of roasted chickpeas, and we chewed on them glumly. It took me a long time to get to sleep that night.
It was raining like a maniac in the morning, but Fred said we had to push on, ‘a bit of rain won’t hurt you.’
The older generation, I noticed, generally goes on about being brave and just dealing with or doing something hard whether you like it or not. Nan would say, ‘When you’re going through tough times, just keep going.’ I knew Fred would have no sympathy if I complained, so off we went. But I wondered: what about if you really couldn’t go on?’
There’s not much interesting to say about that day's walk, other than that we continued travelling upward, concentrating not to stumble or fall into holes or great pits in the road.
In the late afternoon, Fred said that he wanted to check on our proposed camping spot for the night. So, we followed him up to the top of an incline and he took out a tiny pair of binoculars that had been hanging around his neck. ‘Let’s have a bit of a Captain Cook.’
‘No good. No good at all.’ Fred said as he handed the spyglasses to me.
‘Cripes!’ I spluttered, ‘There are a lot of them! I wonder what people see in such groups? How do they attract so many followers?’ I handed the binoculars to Tom.
‘I’d say that’s the Brotherhood or the Commune.’
‘Yep, I’d say so. There goes our nice camping spot next to the lake.’
‘Some people like to belong to these big powerful groups so that they have ready-made opinions and lives to replicate. Their speech and ideas are mostly derived from the ideas and speech of others,’ Tom said. ‘They don’t have to think for themselves or do any work to find out their own beliefs.’
‘Spot on, kiddo. You have got to get out there and think for yourself. When you fail, then you’ve got to reanalyse your assumptions and form a new hypothesis,’ Fred declared.
This was, of course, music to Tom’s ears. ‘Darwin was all about revising or abandoning his ideas if facts contradicted them,’ Tom said happily. ‘The tool of science is impersonal, and there is no last experiment; you are always testing and challenging.’
‘Maybe humans can only stand so much reality,’ I mused.
Fred squinted, ’You’ve got to remember, though, that you need to be humble, too. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and scientific progress is a collective pursuit. I’ve been told that the Commune are completely ignorant about elementary knowledge and about plants. genetics and physiology. They loathe bourgeois Western science. I see some problems ahead with food production.’
‘Like the famines that happened in the Soviet Union? And that time the crackpots were in charge of the vaccines….?’ Tom asked.
‘Precisely.’
‘But of course, the whole idea of progress that was supposed to bring an upward trajectory and greater leisure and happiness for humans fell apart when chemical weapons, machines of war, splitting of the atom and AI were turned against humanity, who were lonelier, feeling hopeless and working harder than ever,’ Tom looked into the distance.
I groaned, and Fred and Tom turned to look at me. ‘Your science sounds like a religion to me, the way you go on,’ I said, addressing both of them. ‘You just tell me that you have all this knowledge about things I can’t see. How do I know what you say is true, is actually true?’
‘Firstly, kiddo, a religion is generally part of a social system, which includes a supernatural being and sacred things,’ replied Fred, still looking through the binoculars. ‘Science only deals with things that can be tested. Like, if you want to test how temperature changes the sprouting of seeds, you just change that one thing, keeping the seeds the same, to see what happens. You can’t test whether a supernatural being exists, because you can’t test invisible things that you can’t see.’
‘Funny that’, said Tom, ‘the invisible and non-existent look much the same.’
‘There might be secret knowledge that only special people can access,’ I ranted. ‘There might be different layers of reality or certain vibrations or energy vibes or something.’
They both ignored me, and Tom took the binoculars.
I wasn’t giving up, though.
‘Our neighbour in Springwood used to have all these healing crystals which helped her energy fields and chakras.’
‘Sorry,’ responded Fred, ‘but the crystal “energy” promoted by such sham-fakers has no resemblance to the scientific understanding of energy. It’s the same word, that’s all.’
I took the binoculars and noticed that the members of the Commune were all wearing a plain, rough tunic of a beige colour. Their hair was very short and clipped close to the skull. There was an area of tents, a struggling vegetable garden with two sheep nearby, all surrounded by a spiked fence and moat.
‘Why do religions and Sovereigns often have funny hairdos or hats to identify them?’ I asked.
‘It’s tribal. It’s so they recognise each other and assert their distinctiveness from others….. Their minds are enslaved by a mind virus,’ Fred said bluntly. ‘And, they claim to provide the panacea for the oppressed creature in this heartless world,’ Fred muttered as he turned away.
‘Fred,’ said Tom. ‘Being part of the Sovereign movements and religions can provide people with hope, motivation and direction in all this craziness. Some religions have a lot to say about how to act in a forgiving and charitable way. There is also a sense of community, a belief in serving others and humility. Besides, I like Thomas Jefferson’s Bible.’
‘You are right, kiddo, but some of those people expect to be rewarded in the afterlife, and what people wish to be true, they generally believe to be true.’
‘Tom,’ I said, ‘you regard Aristotle as a reasonable and clever thinker?’
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Well, he argued that “…. there must be an immortal, unchanging being, ultimately responsible for all wholeness and orderliness in the sensible world.’”
‘Touché, kiddo,’ Fred said. But I thought he really wanted this conversation over with.
‘I just remembered something that you’d like,’ Fred pointed. ‘Charles Darwin was here in 1836, and he walked along Jamison Creek. We can go there and take a shower at Weeping Rock, a ‘beaut little waterfall on the creek.’
‘That sounds wonderful!’ I exclaimed. Tom looked super pleased.
We descended into the valley via the Grand Stairway, which was in a pitiful state.
‘The staircase was built in the early 1900s by hand and a bit of dynamite,’ Fred called back to us from the lead.
While the plunging descent was hair-raising, the views were drop-dead dazzling. The gusts of wind were sometimes alarming, and there was a strange iciness in the air, but when we reached the falls, where the curtain of water thundered and hissed and water boiled in a pool, I felt the trip was worth it. I was actually feeling exhilarated.
It was an ancient landscape with the clear water cascading over the rock overhang. And so enticing was the view that I immediately ran to plunge my body under the spilling waters. It was pure heaven.
Some time later, when I seemed to return to the world, I noticed that Fred had managed to catch some fish and Tom was busy gathering tinder to make a fire.
Feeling ashamed for enjoying myself while the others worked, I began collecting wood and sticks to start the fire by the methods of Ancient Australia, which made me think about Nan, and I somehow felt she was with me in this place.
Later, when we had eaten and Tom and Fred were bathing under the waterfall, I was lying back on a rock and thinking about the last time we cooked fish over the fire at Parramatta. So much had happened since then that I wondered if I was still the same person. I decided that I had gained clarity about some things, but I was more confused than ever about other matters. My brain was still like a pogo stick and became scrambled by all the choices.
The sky was darkening, when Fred said that he wanted to show us something. I got up, but glanced back at the darkening waters and fancied for a moment that I saw Nan there, reflected, smiling at me. A gentle whiff of her personal fragrance of eucalyptus, earth and sunshine also seemed to float about me.
We began walking off the track around a great mound of rock. We came to a small sort of courtyard between rocks where Fred showed us some trees loaded with pink berries.
‘We planted these lilli pilli trees all around the place some years ago and most are doing well. Tuck in.’
The fruit was a bit sour but enjoyable and we stood eating in companionable silence. Fred then walked away to some flat rock near a narrow stream of running water.
‘This is an axe grinding groove, where your Nan’s ancestors sharpened their tools long ago. We are also going to spend the night in a rock overhang nearby, which provided shelter for the clan as they moved around according to the seasons and available food sources,’ said Fred.
We pushed through shrubs and climbed a bit of an incline and saw a nice dry area of smooth sandstone protected by overhanging rock.
‘Here it is kiddos, get comfortable,’
Again, Fred pulled some pillows out from a hidden place and we tried to find a cozy spot to lie down, but there wasn’t one.
Tom, who had been very quiet for a long while, suddenly spoke.
‘Nan told me a story about a rock formation near here and how the Ancient Australians had various stories about how they were formed. One blamed a malevolent bunyip for three sisters being turned to stone.’
Fred said snarkily, ’Personally, I’m sceptical about the idea of the oldies passing on stories for thousands of years. When I say the words “when I was young,” my grandchildren take off running like their pants are on fire.’
‘In a gerontocracy, the government is based on rule by elders, so the kids had to listen,’ Tom added.
I was shocked. ‘You would not have been popular in the old times, Fred.’
‘Popularity does not equal virtue. I assert my right to ask any question and raise doubts and correct errors where I see them. There’s a difference between what people know and what people think they know.’
‘But people thought and lived differently before,’ I said.
‘Yep, that’s what I’ve said all along,’ Fred replied.
‘I wonder how Bunyip is getting along?’ I added, changing the subject. ‘And the others.’
Just the sound of the buzzing and chirping insects answered, as we all knew that Bunyip and Candy’s chance of producing healthy puppies was a fragile thing. The hours of life fly past. But the hope for many is that we can leave something of value and, in a way, go into the future.
© Copyright 2025 Democritus Jones