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.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crossbone Bay

Long centuries ago, when no one knew where Australia was except the people who lived in it, hapless European would-be colonising world powers would stumble across it by accident. Tall ships would get blown off course, of course, mostly Portuguese and Dutch trading ships trying to find Indonesia and their arses in the bath tub, and they’d end up here.    The big winds would blow them hell west and crooked, till they landed on the coast, if they were lucky, or on rocks and reefs offshore if they weren’t. Those who managed to land in one piece took one look around, found nothing but sand, rocks and flies up their nose, pushed their boats back into the water as fast as they could, if they didn’t have holes in them, and bailed out again while they were still able to. No gold, no spices, nothing here worth killing and enslaving anyone over. Those who didn’t manage to land in one piece lived to bitterly regret it, but usually not for very long. They left a long trail of abandoned c...
Read more

The Shirt

   Bernie was an arsehole.    He was a bully. He was built like a brick shithouse, tall, wide, massive, with bright red hair, fairy skin full of freckles with a predilection to skin cancer, and no neck. In his younger days he had played rugby, and had enjoyed smashing people down, grinding them into the ground and just generically hurting them.    A serious knee injury put an end to his playing days. He'd learned the trade of diesel mechanic, and after a punch-up on a Saturday night at his local that left a bloke in a coma with brain damage, he'd pulled the pin on living in town, or at least anywhere within reach of coppers, and he'd gone bush. He'd poked around for a while here, there and everywhere, plying his trade. The one thing there is always a need for out the back of woop-woop is a diesel mechanic. People didn't ask too many questions, or even none at all, as long as he could get the engines going and fix the gear boxes on the fourwheel drives, ...
Read more

The Mask

  ‘Can you please take your mask off?’      I’m sitting leisurely stretched out on a bench in the afternoon sunshine when this voice comes drifting down from above me. I’m in town getting new tyres for my car, and have got time to waste, so I’m enjoying some rare downtime. Having wandered in and out of a few shops, without stealing hardly very much at all, I’m wearing the regulation Covid-mask required now for entering premises. In spite of the big signs on all the doors and shopfront windows, politely requesting all customers to be considerate, do the right thing and cover their faces, when lining up in the post office, of all places, I hadn’t failed to notice that at least one in every four or five people were not wearing a mask. Judging from the way they were greeted casually by their first names by the staff behind the counter, they appeared to be locals.      Beware the local yokel, because they will always be above the law. Tadati...
Read more

Deja Vu

Sometimes history can repeat itself, in a bizarre case of convergent evolution. On Friday night my partner Kiana had something to celebrate, so we went and had a few quiet drinks. A few quiet ones led to a few more that were far from quiet, and the next day I paddled out with a vicious hangover. No surprise there.    As it so happened the cyclone swell had come in, finally, and the entire beach was wrapped in walls of water standing up to double-overhead high. A powerful sweep was running north to south, and huge amounts of sand had been skulldragged away into The Big Void, never to be seen again. Everywhere the earth was showing its bare bones poking up from underneath the left-over sand: rocks, ridges, ledges, stones, pebbles, shale everywhere where once the golden sand invited people to lay down and chill out.    I paddled out into the surf and got smashed comprehensively around the brains. Mountains of water stood up in front of me and crashed down on my head...
Read more

Remote Solitary

Crowded waves and competition for rides are the bane of the existence of anyone within cooee of a passably decent ride. Drop-ins, snakes and shitfights in the water are par for the course, or so it seems.    It certainly is that way in our home town of Eagle Bay. Proud possessor of an enviable first class longboard break, we habitually get flooded under a never-ending stream of holiday makers from the big city, all out to make the most of their few precious weeks under the sun, and determined, come rain, shine, hell or high water, to score some of these fabulous waves. As a result hostile altercations in the surf abound, and our erstwhile peaceful, quiet and low-profile town is now more commonly referred to as Ego Bay.    With one thing and another things came to a head, and I had decided to take a sabbatical. Time out from the neverending screaming arguments and occasional punch-ons. An interesting job opportunity came up, and so I took it.    I foun...
Read more

Day Of The Kooks

Every kook has its day. Or so they say. The word, and concept, of “kook”, a beginner or inept surfer, is something that is unique to the occupation of surfing. It is derived from the word “kukae”, which, in the Hawaiian language, means “shit”. It is one of a handful words originating from Polynesian languages that have made their way into common usage in the English language. Others are kava, booze made from the roots of a plant, popular and widespread in remote areas of the Northern Territory, and taboo, stuff you’re not allowed to do or talk about, like marrying your cousin, unless of course you’re a member of a European royal family, where incest is the preferred way of having sex and where inbreeding,   mental retardedness and having two heads are considered valuable and worthwhile contributions to humanity’s gene pool. Ubiquitous around the world now, tattoo is the world Polynesians used to describe the designs they had etched under their skins with ink, a practice that h...
Read more

First Day Of Winter

I got out of the car and froze to death instantaneously. My bare feet landed on the cold hard concrete, which immediately sucked all life blood and warmth out of me and straight into the stony uncaring world. To add insult to injury, a gale was blowing so hard the casuarina trees were laying over near-horizontally. Even though it was pitch-black dark, I could tell from the white caps on the water, the sea horses of the mythology of old, that the surf was going to be shithouse, blown hell west and crooked into nothing resembling any surfable shape. I shivered violently. The Chief arrived and bounced out of his van, dressed in a woollen beany pulled over a thermal hat, an overcoat, an under coat, a middle coat, three jumpers, his mum’s woolly vest, long shorts (a contradiction in terms, much like, e.g., military intelligence or political integrity), and, the prize piece of his collection, double-grade Explorer socks in his sandals. Dressed to impress, for sure. Dressed to s...
Read more

Blind

For the past seven days I have not been able to see. Something got stuck in my left eye, some sort of dirt-piece, a bit of dust, or a grain of sand, or a smidgin of stray mitochondrial DNA, or, quite likely, a snippet of random toenail. Either way, the upshot of it was that by nighttime seven days ago my eye was bloodhot, swollen, almost squashed shut, and pissing forth liberally with fluid, presumably tear-water. I couldn’t open the eye, looking at any light source bigger than a lit match was excruciating and impossible, and I was in agony. It was like someone stabbing needles in it. So the day after it happened I spent the whole day inside the house, sitting in the dark,   wearing sunnies on my face and a towel over my head to block out the light. I pulled any and all blinds I could find, squeezed my eyes shut and whiled away seven hours straight playing music with my eyes closed. I played the bagpipes, the whistle, the banjo, the mandolin and the guitar, comprehensively pi...
Read more

The Medewi Four-by-Two

Medewi, west Bali. Far from the insane crowds of Kuta and Uluwatu. The village of Medewi is all of 450 m across, as the crow flies, between two coastal rivers, dividing it from the village before and the village after.    The vibe is low-key. Off the congested road that connects Denpasar and east Bali to the west and, eventually, the ferry across to Java, there is just one little narrow street that slopes down to the beach. Along that, two board-hire places, a surf school, and a cafe, ominously called “The Bombora Cafe”. No prizes for guessing where the mob that set it up came from. “Bombora” is an Australian Aboriginal word that refers to a partially submerged rocky reef in the surf, not far from shore. Usually affectionately known as “the bombie”, they are found in their dozens between Eden in the south and Fingal Head in the north of NSW. It’s a home away from home, straightaway.    The beach is a shelf of dark grey-blackish sand that slopes down steeply to a ...
Read more

A Man Is Not A Camel

  I finished preparing my pack and looked it over. It didn’t appear too bulky. Travelling light, it’s the only way to go, as the old song said, a long time ago. It’s certainly the way I like travelling best. I picked up my water bottle, hefted it in my hand, then put it aside till later: fixing it onto my pack now would make the pack too big and unwieldy, and, especially, too conspicuous. The Number One Rule of Being A Bum is Do Not Attract Attention. So I put it aside till later.    I looked up to the dunes, stretching out black and mysterious in front of me. The track I was going to go down snaked out into the bushes and disappeared beneath the shadows of the overhanging trees.    From behind me came the distant sounds of glasses clinking, voices, laughter, and, especially, music. Live music. Someone singing to the accompaniment of a guitar. Intriguing and attractive. So, on the spur of the moment, I delayed my bush-plans for a bit and wandered off in the ...
Read more