3

Bonny stands on the shores of the new country where the wind is cool and the sky is grey like the skin of a yuangan, a dugong. He is dressed in his loincloth, his bar’gan tucked into the band across his hip, and his spear in his hand. His back is as straight as the trunk of a satinay. Jurano steps off the gangplank to stand beside him, brandishing his shield and spear for effect, as if protecting Dorondera, who appears uncomfortable now in front of these people in her possum-skin dress and new wallaby cape. The wallaby tail trails down her side.

The crowd gasps and steps backwards. Jurano chuckles, seemingly amused by his sudden power.

There is a gust of wind, and I understand it to be Can-o-bie passing on a message from Beeral: ‘Go carefully.’

Bonny regards the gathered horde with disbelief, as if amazed that men and women who, moments before, stood beside them and let their children tug at Dorondera’s dress could now gaze upon them fearfully.

‘They pretend to be fooled?’ he asks, and Louis confirms that they do.

Jurano lowers his shield and gives his high-pitched laugh.

Dorondera gathers her wallaby-skin cloak more tightly around her chest, timid in the face of the pointing fingers. Bonny puffs out his chest as he turns to face the water and casts his boomerang high over Hamburg’s vast harbour. The bar’gan cuts a giant arc above the rows of tall masts and the chimneys of two shining steamships before returning to his hand. The crowd erupts into applause and Bonny nods at his friends, smiling broadly for the first time since arriving.

Never has he seen a gathering so large. He looks up at the sky and whispers in his own tongue, ‘Beeral, are you watching?’ He tells the spirit the people here are in awe of something that he has done a thousand times, throwing a bar’gan.

But the joy is short-lived. A boy pushes his way to the front of the pack and hurls a rock at Jurano, hitting him. Several of the crowd cheer again, but in a different way to the admiring applause that Bonny received. This time the shouts are triumphant and cruel. Blood beads on the bare skin of Jurano’s side. Angry, he brandishes his shield and spear again, but this time it is not an act.

Bonny looks at the crowd. He appears stoic but bewildered. In Badtjala, he shouts at the masses to move back. When they do not, he reaches into his pocket for his Jun Jaree and asks it for guidance. A seagull swoops overhead.

‘Cast your bar’gan low over the crowd,’ it cries. ‘Use it to push them back.’

‘What?’

‘Your bar’gan. Throw it low.’

Bonny throws the boomerang in a small arc, just above the first row of onlookers.

‘You should not throw rocks at your elders,’ Bonny says in German to the boy who struck Jurano.

The crowd moves back. Bonny casts the bar’gan again, a slightly wider arc, then a third time, driving the whites further and further away.

Back on K’gari, the man the settlers call Old Jack is walking towards Little Bonny, talking calmly to him. The boy is crying. I can see this, for I can travel far, and quickly.

‘Do not worry about what the government men said,’ the old man tells the boy. ‘This land is ours. We will not be moving from here, not for a long time.’