Chapter 1
Shane Dalton and Mitch Darcy sat on the outcrop of rock and stared into the deep pool of Boodicuttup Creek. Tree branches cast shadows over the water’s surface, their growth so dense, the sunlight only shone on the pool during the middle of the day.
“There’s the cormorant,” Mitch said.
Shane watched the cormorant emerge from an overhang of low bush forming a hidey-hole at the edge of the water.
The bird glided across the pool to the road crossing a few metres away and clambered over the rocks where it sat, basking in the afternoon sunshine.
Shane peered at it through the binoculars that he’d sneaked from the top of his mother’s kitchen cupboard.
“What’s the cormorant doing?” Mitch pushed his curly hair back from his forehead.
“Nothing. It’s just sitting there.” Shane put the binoculars on his knee.
“Let me have a look.” Mitch held out his hand.
Shane passed him the binoculars.
Mitch stared through them. “Gee! It looks like one of those vultures you see on T.V.”
“That’s because it’s black. It doesn’t have a hooked beak like a vulture.”
“There’s someone coming down the hill on a bike.” Mitch followed the rider with the binoculars. The rider dipped down the rise and vanished out of sight before coming into view again. “It’s Leanna Browning.”
“What’s she doing here?” Shane said.
Mitch followed Leanna’s progress. “She’s stopped. She’s leaned her bike against a tree. She’s creeping towards the cormorant.” He stood to get a better view.
His sudden movement startled the bird. It dived into the pool and paddled downstream to vanish among a patch of thick bush growing along the bank.
Leanna rode across the creek and stopped at the side of the road below Shane and Mitch. She looked neat, dressed in jeans and a blue checked blouse and her fair hair tied back in a ponytail by a matching ribbon.
Shane realized how untidy he was in his grubby tee shirt.
Mitch remembered the rip in the back of his shorts that he’d caught on a twig and sat down hurriedly on a slab of rock.
“You’ve frightened the cormorant.” Leanna’s voice sounded accusing.
Mitch looked sheepish. “It’ll be back.”
“How long have you known about the cormorant living here?” Leanna asked.
“We saw it ten days ago,” Shane said.
“Dad and I found it two weeks ago.”
Shane and Mitch glanced at each other. They had thought of the cormorant as belonging to them and were shocked to discover Leanna had known about it before they did.
“Have you seen it fly?” Leanna asked.
“No,” Shane and Mitch said together.
“We haven’t either. Dad thinks it’s hurt. That’s why it’s living here by itself. It’s a Great Cormorant. I read about it in the bird book that I borrowed from the school library. Its other names are Black Cormorant and Black Shag.”
Shane and Mitch stared in dislike at Leanna. Neither of them had thought to look in the library at school to discover more about cormorants.
“Dad and I are going to search for the cormorant’s nesting place,” Leanna said.
Shane and Mitch knew where there was an old cormorant-nesting colony, but they weren’t going to tell Leanna. Her father was the police sergeant. Sergeant Browning had blasted them last week when they rode two abreast down the main street without their hands on the handlebars of their bikes.
In the distance came a cloud of moving dust and with it the rumbling of a truck.
“You’d better get off the road if you don’t want to get flattened,” Shane told Leanna.
Leanna pushed her bike onto the road verge just before the truck flew past, enveloping her in dust.
Shane and Mitch waited in anticipation for the dust to settle. When it had, they were disappointed Leanna wasn’t as dusty looking as they had hoped.
“It’s Jem Gasper’s truck and bulldozer,” Mitch said when the truck stopped halfway up the hill. “He’s turned into Charlie Buckle’s paddock.”
Jem Gasper drove across the small paddock and parked by the creek. He climbed out of the truck and started the bulldozer, then drove it off the low loader.
“What’s he doing with his bulldozer in old Charlie Buckle’s paddock?” Shane said.
Mitch pulled a face. “Perhaps old Charlie will use it to run over us the next time he catches us stealing his mushrooms.”
Shane grinned. “I thought he was going to string us up by the heels when he caught us in his paddock last year.”
“He’ll do that too, but he’ll flatten us first. We’ll look like pieces of cardboard. He’ll string us up under the munji over there.” Mitch pointed across the road to a Christmas tree. “We’ll blow in the wind. Backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards.” He rocked in motion. “We’ll terrify everyone who travels the road of a night.” He let out a ghostly howl.
“Look.” Leanna pointed to the rock above the two boys. “There’s a huge racehorse goanna behind you.”
Shane and Mitch turned to see a monitor lizard, nearly a metre long, perched on the rock behind them. Mottled grey with flecks of yellow, the lizard sat motionless as if carved from stone.
“Gee! It’s a big one,” Mitch said.
“I’d hate that to run up me in mistake for a tree,” Shane said.
“So would I,” Mitch agreed.
The goanna with a swish of its tail, turned and vanished behind the rock.
Leanna pushed her bike onto the road. “It’s getting late. I’m off home.”
Mitch and Shane picked up their bikes and rode behind her in single file on the gravel road.
“I want to call in on Uncle Rolly,” Mitch said to Shane as they neared the town. “Do you want to come?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“We’ll see you at school tomorrow,” Mitch and Shane called to Leanna as they reached the turn off to Mitch’s Great Uncle Rolly’s place.
Chapter 2
When Mitch and Shane arrived at Uncle Rolly’s hut, Uncle Rolly was outside washing his face in an enamel basin set on a wooden box by the door.
“You boys are out late,” Uncle Rolly said as he lifted the towel off the hook above the basin to dry his face and hands.
“We’ve been to the creek to see the cormorant,” Mitch said as he and Shane leaned their bikes against a dead tree stump.
“He’s still there, is he?” Uncle Rolly hung the towel on the hook. “I thought a fox might have got him by now.”
“He’s too smart for a fox,” Mitch said. “He lives in the deep pool near where you said the boodie rats used to live.”
“What’s a boodie rat?” Shane asked.
“They are called bettongs now, aren’t they, Uncle Rolly?” Mitch said.
Uncle Rolly nodded. “That’s what the scientist man said when he came to came to talk to me about them. Those boodie rats used to burrow deep under those big old christmas trees that grow along the creek. They congregated in mobs and made their nests under them.”
“I’ve never seen a boodie rat,” Shane said.
“There’s none of those old boodie rats left now,” Uncle Rolly said. “Those devil foxes got them all.”
“Gee, that’s terrible,” Shane said.
“While we were at the creek, we saw Jem Gasper’s low loader and bulldozer drive into old Charlie Buckle’s paddock,” Mitch said.
“What’s he doing there?” Uncle Rolly asked.
“We don’t know,” Shane said. “We’re going to have a look tomorrow.”
“We’ll let you know what he’s up to,” Mitch said.
Uncle Rolly swished the water around in the basin and emptied it on a bunch of silver beet growing in a drum near the door. “Are you coming in?” he asked as he opened the screen door to the hut.
Shane and Mitch followed him into the hut, which was one large room with the sleeping quarters at one end partitioned off from the living area by two tall cupboards.
Shane thought he’d like a place like this. There would be no one to nag him to keep it tidy though Uncle Rolly kept it pretty neat. Things like pots and pans, a serving ladle, two spanners and a large wrench, hung on nails against the wall.
Shane liked his things out in view too, instead of stuck in drawers and cupboards like his mother insisted. You could see where everything was. Nothing was lost like his pocketknife he found in the bottom drawer of the dressing table after his mother made him tidy his room.
“Your mother was here today, Mitch,” Uncle Rolly said. “She brought some of her homemade biscuits.” He took a tin from a shelf above the sink and lifted the lid off. “Would you boys like one?” He handed the tin to Mitch and Shane. “Take a couple.”
Mitch took two and so did Shane.
“What did mum come out here for?” By the tone of Uncle Rolly’s voice, Mitch knew it wasn’t one of his mother’s usual visits.
Uncle Rolly replaced the lid on the tin and put it back on the shelf. “She says I should leave here.”
“Why does she?”
“She thinks I’m too old to live by myself. She said I could fall over and break my hip or something and no one would know.”
“Where would you live if you moved from here?” Mitch couldn’t imagine Uncle Rolly living anywhere else.
“Your mother says there’s a pensioner flat available in town. She says I should put in for it and have Meals on Wheels delivered and things like that.”
“Are you going to?” Mitch tried to see Uncle Rolly living in one of those little pensioner flats across the road from the school and couldn’t.
Uncle Rolly glanced around the hut. “I wouldn’t like to leave here but it looks like I’ll have to.”
“The Gaspers wouldn’t give you any trouble in town,” Mitch said.
Uncle Rolly agreed. “How are you two getting on with the Gasper boys?”
“They chase us around a bit but we can run faster than them. Are you still having trouble with them?”
“Someone raided my apricot tree last night.”
“Was it Dick and Ted Gasper?” Mitch asked.
“I didn’t see them but who else would it be?”
“Did they take all the apricots?” Last week when Mitch was here, the tree was loaded with apricots nearly as big as oranges and full of juice.
“The young devils took most of them. They left some mashed into the ground and broke a lot of branches. Jem Gasper doesn’t care what his kids do. But I don’t worry about the Gaspers. My totem ancestor, the Great Goanna, will sort them out. Every Aborigine has the spirit of his totem ancestor in him.” Uncle Rolly thumped his chest. “I have the spirit of the Great Goanna in me.”
An image of the Tyrannosaurus Rex he saw on TV last week, flashed into Shane’s mind. Wow! The Tyrannosaurus would sure scare Ted and Dick. Shane imagined it flattening them in their old wreck of a house and devouring Jem Gasper and his bulldozer. He glanced through the open doorway of the hut. The sun had set and the hilltops were bathed in its departing light. One hill looked like a goanna’s head. It was real spooky. Shane turned to Mitch. “We better get going. I’ve got homework to do.”
“So have I,” Mitch said. “We better go,” he said to Uncle Rolly. “It’ll be dark soon.”
Uncle Rolly stood in the doorway of the hut, watching Mitch and Shane stand their bikes up from against the dead tree stump. “Ride safely.”
“We will. We’ll be back to see you soon,” Mitch and Shane called as they rode off.
When they reached the Gasper’s, Shane and Mitch did a few wheelies on the gravel road outside their house. “That’s for Uncle Rolly’s apricot tree and for stealing his apricots,” Mitch yelled as he and Shane pedalled away as fast as they could.
“Do you think they saw us?” Shane asked when they were far enough from the Gaspers to slow down.
“I didn’t see any lights on in the house. Perhaps old Jem hasn’t paid the bill. But who cares if they did see us?” Mitch rode with no hands on the handlebars.
“They’ll probably try to bash us up,” Shane said.
“I don’t care.”
“I don’t either. I’ll bash their heads in.”
“I’ll knock their heads off.”
“How old is your Uncle Rolly, Mitch?” Shane asked as they reached the outskirts of the town.
“He doesn’t know when he was born. He thinks he’s about eighty.”
“Gee! Fancy him not knowing when his birthday is. Is he really serious about what he said about his Great Goanna?”
“Yeah. You want to see his bullroarer.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a piece of wood with a hole bored in one end and some string tied through it.”
“What do you do with it?”
“You swing it around and it makes a whirring noise. The faster you go the louder it gets. Uncle Rolly can make a real loud noise. I’ll ask him to show it to you. He might give you a go. He uses it to call up his Great Goanna.”
A chill went through Shane. The light on his bike sent out a thin beam ahead of him, hi-lighting the trees at the side of the road. He pedalled faster. “I’ll race you,” he called over his shoulder to Mitch.
“Cheat,” Mitch yelled from behind Shane.
Shane laughed so much he could hardly pedal.
They reached the town and rode along the cycle path. When they arrived at Mitch’s house, Mitch called as he skidded through his front gate, “See you tomorrow.”
The beam from Shane’s bike found dark shapes at the side of the path. He tried to blot out the threatening shadows but as he wheeled into the driveway of his home, a black shape sprang in front of him.
He skidded as he tried to avoid it and fell off his bike, landing in a heap on the lawn.
“You could have killed me, Rocky,” he said to the black cocker spaniel who enthusiastically licked his face. “But I’m glad it’s you and not the Great Goanna.”
Shane Dalton and Mitch Darcy sat on the outcrop of rock and stared into the deep pool of Boodicuttup Creek. Tree branches cast shadows over the water’s surface, their growth so dense, the sunlight only shone on the pool during the middle of the day.
“There’s the cormorant,” Mitch said.
Shane watched the cormorant emerge from an overhang of low bush forming a hidey-hole at the edge of the water.
The bird glided across the pool to the road crossing a few metres away and clambered over the rocks where it sat, basking in the afternoon sunshine.
Shane peered at it through the binoculars that he’d sneaked from the top of his mother’s kitchen cupboard.
“What’s the cormorant doing?” Mitch pushed his curly hair back from his forehead.
“Nothing. It’s just sitting there.” Shane put the binoculars on his knee.
“Let me have a look.” Mitch held out his hand.
Shane passed him the binoculars.
Mitch stared through them. “Gee! It looks like one of those vultures you see on T.V.”
“That’s because it’s black. It doesn’t have a hooked beak like a vulture.”
“There’s someone coming down the hill on a bike.” Mitch followed the rider with the binoculars. The rider dipped down the rise and vanished out of sight before coming into view again. “It’s Leanna Browning.”
“What’s she doing here?” Shane said.
Mitch followed Leanna’s progress. “She’s stopped. She’s leaned her bike against a tree. She’s creeping towards the cormorant.” He stood to get a better view.
His sudden movement startled the bird. It dived into the pool and paddled downstream to vanish among a patch of thick bush growing along the bank.
Leanna rode across the creek and stopped at the side of the road below Shane and Mitch. She looked neat, dressed in jeans and a blue checked blouse and her fair hair tied back in a ponytail by a matching ribbon.
Shane realized how untidy he was in his grubby tee shirt.
Mitch remembered the rip in the back of his shorts that he’d caught on a twig and sat down hurriedly on a slab of rock.
“You’ve frightened the cormorant.” Leanna’s voice sounded accusing.
Mitch looked sheepish. “It’ll be back.”
“How long have you known about the cormorant living here?” Leanna asked.
“We saw it ten days ago,” Shane said.
“Dad and I found it two weeks ago.”
Shane and Mitch glanced at each other. They had thought of the cormorant as belonging to them and were shocked to discover Leanna had known about it before they did.
“Have you seen it fly?” Leanna asked.
“No,” Shane and Mitch said together.
“We haven’t either. Dad thinks it’s hurt. That’s why it’s living here by itself. It’s a Great Cormorant. I read about it in the bird book that I borrowed from the school library. Its other names are Black Cormorant and Black Shag.”
Shane and Mitch stared in dislike at Leanna. Neither of them had thought to look in the library at school to discover more about cormorants.
“Dad and I are going to search for the cormorant’s nesting place,” Leanna said.
Shane and Mitch knew where there was an old cormorant-nesting colony, but they weren’t going to tell Leanna. Her father was the police sergeant. Sergeant Browning had blasted them last week when they rode two abreast down the main street without their hands on the handlebars of their bikes.
In the distance came a cloud of moving dust and with it the rumbling of a truck.
“You’d better get off the road if you don’t want to get flattened,” Shane told Leanna.
Leanna pushed her bike onto the road verge just before the truck flew past, enveloping her in dust.
Shane and Mitch waited in anticipation for the dust to settle. When it had, they were disappointed Leanna wasn’t as dusty looking as they had hoped.
“It’s Jem Gasper’s truck and bulldozer,” Mitch said when the truck stopped halfway up the hill. “He’s turned into Charlie Buckle’s paddock.”
Jem Gasper drove across the small paddock and parked by the creek. He climbed out of the truck and started the bulldozer, then drove it off the low loader.
“What’s he doing with his bulldozer in old Charlie Buckle’s paddock?” Shane said.
Mitch pulled a face. “Perhaps old Charlie will use it to run over us the next time he catches us stealing his mushrooms.”
Shane grinned. “I thought he was going to string us up by the heels when he caught us in his paddock last year.”
“He’ll do that too, but he’ll flatten us first. We’ll look like pieces of cardboard. He’ll string us up under the munji over there.” Mitch pointed across the road to a Christmas tree. “We’ll blow in the wind. Backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards.” He rocked in motion. “We’ll terrify everyone who travels the road of a night.” He let out a ghostly howl.
“Look.” Leanna pointed to the rock above the two boys. “There’s a huge racehorse goanna behind you.”
Shane and Mitch turned to see a monitor lizard, nearly a metre long, perched on the rock behind them. Mottled grey with flecks of yellow, the lizard sat motionless as if carved from stone.
“Gee! It’s a big one,” Mitch said.
“I’d hate that to run up me in mistake for a tree,” Shane said.
“So would I,” Mitch agreed.
The goanna with a swish of its tail, turned and vanished behind the rock.
Leanna pushed her bike onto the road. “It’s getting late. I’m off home.”
Mitch and Shane picked up their bikes and rode behind her in single file on the gravel road.
“I want to call in on Uncle Rolly,” Mitch said to Shane as they neared the town. “Do you want to come?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“We’ll see you at school tomorrow,” Mitch and Shane called to Leanna as they reached the turn off to Mitch’s Great Uncle Rolly’s place.
Chapter 2
When Mitch and Shane arrived at Uncle Rolly’s hut, Uncle Rolly was outside washing his face in an enamel basin set on a wooden box by the door.
“You boys are out late,” Uncle Rolly said as he lifted the towel off the hook above the basin to dry his face and hands.
“We’ve been to the creek to see the cormorant,” Mitch said as he and Shane leaned their bikes against a dead tree stump.
“He’s still there, is he?” Uncle Rolly hung the towel on the hook. “I thought a fox might have got him by now.”
“He’s too smart for a fox,” Mitch said. “He lives in the deep pool near where you said the boodie rats used to live.”
“What’s a boodie rat?” Shane asked.
“They are called bettongs now, aren’t they, Uncle Rolly?” Mitch said.
Uncle Rolly nodded. “That’s what the scientist man said when he came to came to talk to me about them. Those boodie rats used to burrow deep under those big old christmas trees that grow along the creek. They congregated in mobs and made their nests under them.”
“I’ve never seen a boodie rat,” Shane said.
“There’s none of those old boodie rats left now,” Uncle Rolly said. “Those devil foxes got them all.”
“Gee, that’s terrible,” Shane said.
“While we were at the creek, we saw Jem Gasper’s low loader and bulldozer drive into old Charlie Buckle’s paddock,” Mitch said.
“What’s he doing there?” Uncle Rolly asked.
“We don’t know,” Shane said. “We’re going to have a look tomorrow.”
“We’ll let you know what he’s up to,” Mitch said.
Uncle Rolly swished the water around in the basin and emptied it on a bunch of silver beet growing in a drum near the door. “Are you coming in?” he asked as he opened the screen door to the hut.
Shane and Mitch followed him into the hut, which was one large room with the sleeping quarters at one end partitioned off from the living area by two tall cupboards.
Shane thought he’d like a place like this. There would be no one to nag him to keep it tidy though Uncle Rolly kept it pretty neat. Things like pots and pans, a serving ladle, two spanners and a large wrench, hung on nails against the wall.
Shane liked his things out in view too, instead of stuck in drawers and cupboards like his mother insisted. You could see where everything was. Nothing was lost like his pocketknife he found in the bottom drawer of the dressing table after his mother made him tidy his room.
“Your mother was here today, Mitch,” Uncle Rolly said. “She brought some of her homemade biscuits.” He took a tin from a shelf above the sink and lifted the lid off. “Would you boys like one?” He handed the tin to Mitch and Shane. “Take a couple.”
Mitch took two and so did Shane.
“What did mum come out here for?” By the tone of Uncle Rolly’s voice, Mitch knew it wasn’t one of his mother’s usual visits.
Uncle Rolly replaced the lid on the tin and put it back on the shelf. “She says I should leave here.”
“Why does she?”
“She thinks I’m too old to live by myself. She said I could fall over and break my hip or something and no one would know.”
“Where would you live if you moved from here?” Mitch couldn’t imagine Uncle Rolly living anywhere else.
“Your mother says there’s a pensioner flat available in town. She says I should put in for it and have Meals on Wheels delivered and things like that.”
“Are you going to?” Mitch tried to see Uncle Rolly living in one of those little pensioner flats across the road from the school and couldn’t.
Uncle Rolly glanced around the hut. “I wouldn’t like to leave here but it looks like I’ll have to.”
“The Gaspers wouldn’t give you any trouble in town,” Mitch said.
Uncle Rolly agreed. “How are you two getting on with the Gasper boys?”
“They chase us around a bit but we can run faster than them. Are you still having trouble with them?”
“Someone raided my apricot tree last night.”
“Was it Dick and Ted Gasper?” Mitch asked.
“I didn’t see them but who else would it be?”
“Did they take all the apricots?” Last week when Mitch was here, the tree was loaded with apricots nearly as big as oranges and full of juice.
“The young devils took most of them. They left some mashed into the ground and broke a lot of branches. Jem Gasper doesn’t care what his kids do. But I don’t worry about the Gaspers. My totem ancestor, the Great Goanna, will sort them out. Every Aborigine has the spirit of his totem ancestor in him.” Uncle Rolly thumped his chest. “I have the spirit of the Great Goanna in me.”
An image of the Tyrannosaurus Rex he saw on TV last week, flashed into Shane’s mind. Wow! The Tyrannosaurus would sure scare Ted and Dick. Shane imagined it flattening them in their old wreck of a house and devouring Jem Gasper and his bulldozer. He glanced through the open doorway of the hut. The sun had set and the hilltops were bathed in its departing light. One hill looked like a goanna’s head. It was real spooky. Shane turned to Mitch. “We better get going. I’ve got homework to do.”
“So have I,” Mitch said. “We better go,” he said to Uncle Rolly. “It’ll be dark soon.”
Uncle Rolly stood in the doorway of the hut, watching Mitch and Shane stand their bikes up from against the dead tree stump. “Ride safely.”
“We will. We’ll be back to see you soon,” Mitch and Shane called as they rode off.
When they reached the Gasper’s, Shane and Mitch did a few wheelies on the gravel road outside their house. “That’s for Uncle Rolly’s apricot tree and for stealing his apricots,” Mitch yelled as he and Shane pedalled away as fast as they could.
“Do you think they saw us?” Shane asked when they were far enough from the Gaspers to slow down.
“I didn’t see any lights on in the house. Perhaps old Jem hasn’t paid the bill. But who cares if they did see us?” Mitch rode with no hands on the handlebars.
“They’ll probably try to bash us up,” Shane said.
“I don’t care.”
“I don’t either. I’ll bash their heads in.”
“I’ll knock their heads off.”
“How old is your Uncle Rolly, Mitch?” Shane asked as they reached the outskirts of the town.
“He doesn’t know when he was born. He thinks he’s about eighty.”
“Gee! Fancy him not knowing when his birthday is. Is he really serious about what he said about his Great Goanna?”
“Yeah. You want to see his bullroarer.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a piece of wood with a hole bored in one end and some string tied through it.”
“What do you do with it?”
“You swing it around and it makes a whirring noise. The faster you go the louder it gets. Uncle Rolly can make a real loud noise. I’ll ask him to show it to you. He might give you a go. He uses it to call up his Great Goanna.”
A chill went through Shane. The light on his bike sent out a thin beam ahead of him, hi-lighting the trees at the side of the road. He pedalled faster. “I’ll race you,” he called over his shoulder to Mitch.
“Cheat,” Mitch yelled from behind Shane.
Shane laughed so much he could hardly pedal.
They reached the town and rode along the cycle path. When they arrived at Mitch’s house, Mitch called as he skidded through his front gate, “See you tomorrow.”
The beam from Shane’s bike found dark shapes at the side of the path. He tried to blot out the threatening shadows but as he wheeled into the driveway of his home, a black shape sprang in front of him.
He skidded as he tried to avoid it and fell off his bike, landing in a heap on the lawn.
“You could have killed me, Rocky,” he said to the black cocker spaniel who enthusiastically licked his face. “But I’m glad it’s you and not the Great Goanna.”