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 watch...