The Great South Wind

The Great South Wind was blowing gently and listlessly, caressing the stiff leaves of the pandanuses and rubbing them melancholically against one another, making a soft, clunky, scraping rattling noise. In the days of old it was told to naughty little children who refused to eat their kangaroo curry for breakfast that it was the sound of the bunyip, waking up from his midnight slumber with rumbling stomach and insatiable appetite for human flesh. No kids ever believed the story, because they weren’t born yesterday and could see through a lie as easily as the next person, but it made the parents feel good about themselves while carefully and thoughtfully laying the foundations for deep and lasting trauma for their offspring. 


The wind yawned, stretched out on his toes and, indolently and more for the look of the thing than out of any heartfelt conviction or intrinsic motivation, puffed up his cheeks and released a gentle stream of Antarctic air onto the land below it. He watched in satisfaction as the wisps of air, visible only to his own well-trained, professional and critical eye, coated the eucalypts in the country below him in a thin layer of frost and rime, sparkling like icy diamonds in the first light of dawn. Slowly, as the cold penetrated warm living tissue and cooled and pooled blood in veins and organs, koalas let go of their grip on tree branches, and, redundant half-eaten gum leaves poking from their mouths, in slow motion toppled over and fell frozen on the ground. The wind nodded with satisfaction. He never liked those smarmy buggers, looking far too cute and cuddly for their own good. With a bit of luck they’d defrost, wake up and make it back up into their tree before the bunyip found them. Bunyips did not, as a rule, eat koala flesh, being, as they were, committed vegans, but the koalas didn’t know that and the bunyips did enjoy using them as oversized hackey-sacks. Not, altogether, an attractive option for an animal that prizes its peace, quiet and inactivity legendarily highly. The wind shrugged. They’d get over it. Meanwhile he was happy to see that his trip down south to Antarctica hadn’t been a complete waste of time. 

Bending himself a bit closer over the landscape below him, his discerning all-seeing mad evil eye spotted something else. There were shapes stirring in the pre-dawn darkness, milling around by the edge of the salt water. The wind frowned and wiggled his eyebrows, causing three-hundred-and-fifty year old red cedars to split lengthways up high in the rainforest hills behind the sea, tumbling down and causing major landslides and havoc in their wake. Closer by, below him, a spray of sand was whipped up by the sudden gust and blew hard against the shapes he had spotted. He leaned in closer. They appeared to be humans. Hah! The most foolhardy of animals. He recalled fondly the many storms, cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons he had set upon them over the years, whenever he was bored and in need of some light entertainment. There was nothing quite as humorous as the sight of big ships breaking in two and sinking, and pushing the surviving people in their life-rafts around hither and tither had sometimes kept him amused for weeks afterwards. Occasionally some of them actually made it back to land more or less alive. They were hardy and resourceful creatures, he had to give them that. 

Like those few down there right now, for instance. In spite of his recent Antarctic air-stream contribution to their local patch they appeared for all intents and purposes set to go into the water, carrying long stiff things under their arms. He searched his memory. He was sure he had seen them before somewhere. Then it dawned on him, with a light-globe moment akin to the eruption of Krakatau a bit further over that way over there a few years ago, that he knew exactly who and what they were. A dark cloud crossed his aeolian features, and the roofs of fifteen houses took leave and sailed away into the dark starless night over in Fiji. These were the amphibious creatures he had seen before, many times, and usually, inexplicably, when he was either in the middle of or recovering from a good old tantrum, having blown at length and with great gusto over long and wide stretches of ocean. He felt positively befuddled. These creatures appeared to have mastered the art of living in salt water. Not many had, over the years, in the big scheme of things, and most of them usually ended up, sooner or later, inside of the guts of those big fish with pointy triangular fins on their backs. Not the dole-fins, the other kind, the soup-fins. He stopped his train of thought. He wasn’t entirely sure if he had the right word there. 

As he watched the humans waded out into the black water of the sea, lightless and colourless before dawn, and laid down on their long flat things. Then they started shaking their limbs up and down, and moved away, onto the water. He cast his eye further out towards the open ocean. There his gaze came to rest approvingly on some of his finest and latest creations: rolling ridges of water, towering high above the surface of the sea, rolling in towards the land in lines the perfection of which, he thought to himself as he twirled his long moustache, betrayed the expert hand of the real craftsman. He smiled affectionately and indulgently to himself. That storm out on the Coral Sea was a real work of art, and he was sure that the people and other animals of the area would remember it fondly and with deep and profound appreciation for many years to come, at least those that hadn’t been blown away in five different directions, never to be seen again. 

Meanwhile, below him, the handful of humans seemed to be thoroughly aware of the quality of his craftsmanship, and, judging from the elated screams, whoops and squeals emanating from them, appeared to be negotiating the moving walls of water with expertise and enjoyment, not apparently unduly marred by the obvious suicidal nature of their enterprise. The Great South Wind didn’t mind. There’d be something down there on the bottom of the mighty ocean that would find them edible and would be able to use them for something. The Kraken came to mind. 

Having been lost and wrapped up in his contemplation of the world and human folly, he hadn’t noticed that light had started to appear around the edge of his consciousness. He glanced over to the east and sure enough, he thought sourly, there was that show-off The Sun. He sighed. He just knew what was going to happen. Sure enough, within minutes that mongrel thing had gotten his colour box out and was throwing it around like there was no tomorrow. Hoompf. You’d think that of all creatures the sun especially would know very well that there would be a tomorrow, seeing as he himself was responsible for it by coming up all the time, every day. Some creatures just had no idea. Like those people down there. They were just now emerging from the water, still in one piece, apparently. Amazing. Must have gotten lucky, again. He leaned in closer to hear their conversation, and couldn’t fail but notice the big smiles on their faces.

‘That was awesome!’, someone seemed to be exclaiming with unjustified enthusiasm. ‘Did you see the colours on that sunrise!’

‘Yes’, agreed a second one, dripping wet and glowing with ecstasy, ‘it was unreal, out of this world!’

The Great South Wind scowled deeply and darkly. It was always the same. Ungrateful mongrels. Here he was creating magnificent waves for these creatures to ride up and down on with their long pointy stick-things, and all they could do was blabber on about the stupid sunrise.

He’d be buggered if he was going to stick around and provide any more services to this mob anytime soon. He turned his back on them, with a blast that ripped the leaves of trees and turned three cars upside down in the carpark down below. 

That was it. He was shifting up north, where people appreciated a decent blow. He could feel a cyclone coming on.






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