7

Bonny’s legs, although firmly planted on the deck, shake as a fish shakes with fear and nerves on the end of a spear. Over his shoulder he surveys the beach where he learned to walk towards his mother, then run from the white man who stole her away. He looks in the direction of the sun.

‘You see, I am leaving despite your attempts to make me stay,’ he tells Beeral. ‘It is not out of disrespect. I see no other choice.’

A native ant, a stowaway caught under his sleeve, bites his arm.

Bonny stares into the distance, as if all the way to the other side of the island. He mutters something that even I, a ghost storyteller, cannot hear, although I do make out the words Takky Wooroo. Is Bonny thinking of the headland, invisible from the ship, where Aboriginal women, children and old men were once driven up onto the craggy rise by whites and native police on horseback, and there told to jump or be shot? Is he talking to those spirits? Asking them for strength? I look to Louis and Hilda and wish they could climb out of their skins and see things as I now do, for their own sakes if not for their friends.

Bonny glances behind him in the direction of the camp where Old Jack is seated on the sand in the shade of a she-oak, watching the ship depart. Bonny cannot see or hear Old Jack, as I can. He does not know the old man is sharpening the end of a branch with a knife made from a horseshoe that he straightened and fashioned into a blade, a reminder of that terrible day of massacre. Old Jack looks at what must to him appear a winged vessel and says, ‘You are a man now, Bonny. You are ready for great journeys.’

Little Bonny, still unwell but recovering, seats himself on the sand beside Old Jack. The boy points at the disappearing ship and whispers into the shell that houses his personal spirit known as a Jun Jaree, ‘Come back soon, Uncle, and tell me all the new stories.’ He has with him the plaster impression of Bonny’s handprint and again lays his small hand where his uncle’s was. He then holds the plaster imprint to his chest.

I listen hard and think I hear Beeral confide in Can-o-bie that he remains uncertain. If I understand correctly, Beeral is saying he has never known a person to make such a journey and, from what he has witnessed, the promises of the white strangers are not to be trusted.

‘And Little Bonny has been ill and needs his uncle,’ Beeral tells the spirit of the wind, not in words, for he has none, but in the mysterious ways the spirit world has of communicating. Signs of nature that I am trying to read. It is a new way of seeing.

Moments later, a sea eagle crashes into the ocean near the ship, emerging with a flailing fish which it carries back to its roost. Bonny registers the white-breasted bird, a burad, and the growing distance between the ship and his island home – the tall forests shrinking slowly from view, the glint of a creek running into the sea, the white sand and mangrove forests lassoing it all.

Jurano, in his loose shirt and trousers, is focused on the opposite shore, across the vast strait which sailing ships like this one use in bad weather, sometimes stopping to take water from the pure streams of K’gari. Jurano is four years older than Bonny and has already traversed the strait on his own several times in a gom’bar, which Bonny helped him make, holding the bark ends together while Jurano fixed them with wax and plant resin. He shakes his head and tells Bonny that he would never attempt a crossing in these winds. Jurano gazes again at K’gari as if to see how far they have come.

Dorondera follows her uncle’s gaze and, quietly at first, begins to sing. The young woman’s voice is both modest and strong, and carries with it the wisdom of all the elders who sang the story before her. She sings of K’gari’s vibrant cliffs, their red and yellow coloured sands and how they came into being. She sings of the perched lakes and freshwater streams, her voice increasing in volume and range as she describes the island’s teeming inland forests. She sings of the wallabies and goannas, the mangrove swamps and saltwater crocodiles that come infrequently when the water is warmest. Finally, Dorondera sings the story of the female spirit K’gari, who, having created such a beautiful place, did not want to leave.