It was the summer I turned thirteen. Dad put the rifle in my hands. He patted me on the back and said nothing. It was Mick who smiled as he tossed his bag in the back. Ready to go?
Mum crossed her arms on the porch. She had heard the same stories told by firelight on warm summer nights. Sat on the low benches of rough hewn timber down by the river. Big, flat rocks circling the camp fire. An ever growing pile of crushed beer cans between Dad and Mick. Stories of tracks in the mud. Of noises in the night. Of a creature unseen, but named. Bunyip.
A fat man named Korrel owned the shack by the river. Dad did some work for him years ago. For as long as I can remember we spent two weeks of the summer here. It had become so familiar it felt like home.
After the middle weekend, Dad and Mick would pack up the truck and head inland. They would be gone two nights, sometimes three. They took their rifles and hunted kangaroos and wild boar. It was tough country, no place for a boy. But I had turned thirteen.
In my imagination the river red gums extended inland for miles. Away from the floodplain the land was dry and open and featureless. Tufts of saltbush and spinifex lined the rough dirt tracks.
After two hours we turned off the track and onto the hard red earth. The truck jumped and slid as Dad weaved a path through the shrubs.
“Don’t worry,” Mick said, “we know where we’re going.”
If it is true that God creates with a purpose, the interior is meant for something other than man. The soil supports nothing but the hardiest vegetation. A blue and cloudless sky is a constant. Swarms of black flies patrol the air searching for any sign of moisture.
Ahead, rings of gum trees huddled around a chain of ponds where a tributary of the river dumped its dregs. It was there Dad and Mick built their shelter. It was the size of a garden shed, with sheets of corrugated iron on three sides nailed to a skeleton of tree branches. The roof was a strip of tarpaulin, frayed at the edges and faded from sun exposure.
Dad dumped the gear in a clearing beside the shelter. Black circles marked the red soil, remnants of old camp fires. We wasted no time. Dad and Mick were as children entering a playground. I watched Dad and adjusted my rifle to match. But my lack of size made it awkward in a way it wasn’t for him.
“Let’s go.”
We stalked through the scrub filling the gaps between the pools of water. The trunks of the gums were bleached by the sun, almost white, like ghosts. We skirted the ponds of stale and stagnant water. I walked in step with Dad and Mick, watching my feet and not my surroundings.
I thumped into the back of Mick. He had stopped and crouched. He flicked at the leaves and twigs lying on the ground.
“What is it?” Dad said.
“Don’t know.”
Dad came back and studied the ground.
“Kangaroo?”
Mick spat. “And something else. Something that came up from the swamp.”
When Dad and Mick moved on I studied the ground. Whatever Mick saw evaded my untrained eyes. It was like searching for something intelligible from a manuscript written in Greek. I skirted around the spot and fell into line.
The hot afternoon air was close and suffocating. Black flies buzzed incessantly. The murky water was still, the surface a dirty brown glass. I couldn’t imagine anything living in there.
Dad and Mick slowed and then stopped. My eyes darted between the trees, searching for movement. But it wasn’t motion that had stopped us. The smell came thin and faint, but unmistakable. The smell of rot and decay, the smell of death.
We found it by the water edge beside a desiccated tree trunk stripped of branches. The corpse of a kangaroo. A big one, at least Dad’s height. The skin of the stomach had been peeled back and the innards were missing. Blotches of red stained the brown and grey fur. Arm and leg bones not just broken, but crushed.
I didn’t need to ask what had done it. There was only one thing out here big enough to mangle bones like that.
We came out of the scrub at sundown. The horizon turned a shade of red that blended with the soil. On a ridge to the west black silhouettes of kangaroos towered above the saltbush.
“Back to camp.”
We huddled around the campfire, mesmerised as it spat and cracked and sent plumes of smoke into the night air. Dad opened a beer and handed it to me. I brought it first to my nose and then to my lips. I did my best to hide a screwed up face that was a reflex to the bitterness.
The relaxed atmosphere of the camp fires back by the river house seemed more than the two hour drive away. It felt like another world. The faces of Dad and Mick and what little talk passed between them was sombre. The sight of the kangaroo had shaken them.
A howl pierced the night. High pitched and sustained and coming from the scrub. I searched the catalogue of animal sounds stored in my memory and found nothing. It sounded almost human, and that made it all the more frightening. Dad and Mick turned to the sound.
“What was that?” My voice faltered and I cursed under my breath.
Dad and Mick were silent. Dad stared unblinking out into the darkness. He slid his hand to his rifle.
“He’s a long way off,” Mick said.
Dad lifted his hand.
“We should put out the fire.”
We suffocated the flames with red dirt. The coals hissed in protest and then were silent. We rolled out our mats and sleeping bags and lay down under the stars.
We had not been down long when the howl sounded again. Short staccato bursts, closer than before. I propped up on my elbow.
Dad said, “There’s nothing we can do. The night belongs to him.”
Mick said, “We’re safest here and together. She won’t stray far from the water.”
He didn’t sound convinced of his own words. I lay down and faced towards the open ground between the shelter and the scrub. Under the pale light of the moon everything was in shadow. Would we even see it coming?
I woke to the sound of Mick yelling. What happened next is stored in my memory as two photos. In the first Dad is standing in the moonlight at the edge of the scrub. He has his back to me, but I can see he is holding his rifle. His head is cocked up and to the left, like he is listening. The second image is the same as the first, except Dad is gone.
I don’t know if it happened so fast that my half asleep brain didn’t process the movement, or if the footage is locked away deep inside my mind where it can’t do me any harm. Either way, Dad was there one moment and gone the next.
Mick jumped up and grabbed his rifle and ran for the trees. I lay there for a moment, paralysed by fear and confusion. Then my brain kicked into gear. I slid out of my sleeping bag and sprinted after Mick, to the scrub and to Dad. I followed Mick into the darkness, listened for his voice and the crunch of the undergrowth beneath his feet.
We came to the expanse of the biggest of the ponds. A silver reflection of moonlight shining up from the water. Mick hissed into the darkness.
“Dad,” I yelled, my voice thin and high pitched. The word came out as a half- sob.
“Shhh.”
We listened. The water and the scrub and the night and the whole world were silent. We waited for the slightest hint to where it had taken him, a rustle in the scrub or a ripple in the water. Nothing.
We kept our vigil until daybreak. At first light Mick scoured the ground and found the tracks. The same he had seen beside the mangled corpse of the kangaroo. He followed it along the water’s edge until the tracks stopped. He stood and looked out over the water.
I shivered in the cold of the morning. I scanned the water and the trees. I expected that at any moment Dad would wander through the scrub, rifle in hand and with a story to tell. When Mick turned back and headed for camp, I knew.
We waited until early afternoon and then we packed up the truck and drove back to the river and to Mum and my sister.
Three months later Mum let go of her hope and we buried an empty casket. It was the first time I had seen Mick since that weekend. He stood apart, his tie loose and askew around his neck. Mum didn’t speak to him.
We never went back to the river. Summer holidays became day trips to the fun park and one year we went to the coast. I came to dread summer, we shared it with the ghost of Dad.
I am the same age now as Dad was when it took him. I see flashes of his face in the mirror. In my dreams I walk that scrub with him, rifles at the ready. But I know the ending. I can’t ever save him.
Mick sent me a letter. He moved up north and swapped his rifle for a fishing rod. He was on the way out, could feel it in his bones. I drove up there, but too late.
I called my wife and told her I would stay a few days. I jumped in my truck and drove south, to the river, back to the place that haunted my dreams.
I wondered if I could find it still. It was more than half my life ago and I only went once. But there was an uncanny familiarity to the rough track inland. I came to the ring of gums and the chain of ponds. The shelter had collapsed, the sheets of corrugated metal lay twisted on the ground, covered in red dirt and eaten by rust. The tarpaulin roof was gone.
The sun sank below the horizon and I rolled out the sleeping mat in the tray of the truck. I propped on an elbow and watched the scrub that Dad ran into the night he disappeared. Twilight gave way to night and shrouded the trees in darkness.
I didn’t know what I hoped to find. When I learned of Mick’s death, I was overcome with a compulsion to be here. The place where, at the age of thirteen, my childhood ended.
I dreamed of him. Dad stood at the edge of the scrub, rifle in hand. I watched it like a movie, knowing that at any moment he would run into the trees and disappear. Except this time, he didn’t. He turned and walked away from the scrub. He leaned down and rested his right hand on my shoulder.
“Wake up.”
I had a sensation of falling and landing on the mat rolled out on the tray of the truck. I sucked in a deep breath. My heart thundered like a cannon. The full moon had risen and was high in the inky black firmament.
“You have to go now.”
It was Dad’s voice, but I was awake. It was impossible.
I got to my knees. Nothing moved. The trees stood silent in the silver light of the moon.
A flicker from deep within the scrub. A subtle and soft light, like headlights obscured by a thick mist. The light took the shape of a man. It moved deeper into the trees and was gone.
“Dad?”
I grabbed my rifle. I crossed the open land and stopped short of the scrub. Pockets of dull light illuminated the ground between the trees. Far off a hint of the reflection from the pond.
I listened. Something waded in the water. Slow and deliberate. I took a step closer to the sound. Soft footfalls and the plop of water droplets hitting the ground.
The weight of all the years from thirteen to now bore down. The moment I had dreamed of. To come face to face with the beast that took my father. I entered the scrub.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness under the trees. Each step was laborious and slow. I hovered my foot above the ground and flicked it clear of twigs and leaves before pressing down my weight. Any sound would give the game away.
The ground fell away down to the pond. The light of the moon reflected off the surface of the water in a long and fat silver streak. Everything so still it could have been a painting.
I dared not venture beyond the last line of barren gums lining the edge of the pond. Beyond was open ground. I moved around the water’s edge, stalking between the dark trunks, watching for the slightest ripple on the water and listening for footfalls.
Ahead was a flickering light. It flourished and then disappeared. I moved through the trees, faster now. I stumbled on a gnarled root and threw out a hand to stop my fall. My boot made a thud on the dirt. I cursed under my breath.
In my periphery something moved. It came from the direction of the water. I flung my head around to catch it. At the same time a whisper in my ear. The voice of my father. Behind you.
I swung around and faced the beast. It was ten paces away, stalking beside the water as a lion in the savannah. Forelegs as thick as tree trunks ended in webbed feet. Its head was flat and wide, a pair of small eyes shining in the moonlight. A row of jagged teeth protruded over the lower jaw, bookended by two enormous tusks. The neck and upper back was covered in stringy hair that resembled seaweed and reflected back the silver of the moon.
It was him. The bunyip.
I stumbled backwards. He froze for a moment and took my measure. A low and guttural growl vibrated through the air. The mouth parted and he let out a howl, the same I had heard at thirteen. You don’t forget a thing like that.
I had my rifle on my shoulder. My hands squeezed tight. It took a step forwards, and then another.
“Get back,” I yelled.
It paused and lowered its head, tiny ear flaps twitching. A rush of air sprayed a shower of tiny droplets from its nose and then it sprang forwards. On the second step it launched into the air. Its mouth swung open like a trap.
I pulled the trigger. The crack exploded next to my ear and the bunyip yelped, a different cry this time, one of pain. The bullet did nothing to halt the momentum of the beast and like a giant wrestler he pinned me to the hard earth. He screamed in my ear and flailed his thick front legs, pressing wet and scaly skin against my neck and head. For a moment I could not breathe, his bulk squeezing my head until I feared my skull might crack like the shell of a peanut.
With my free left hand I tapped the earth in search of the rifle. I strained and screamed, my empty lungs burning and demanding air. My fingers flicked against the butt of the rifle. I stretched and strained every sinew but I could not get a good enough hold.
The bunyip raised itself, freeing my chest and I sucked in a deep breath, the buttons on my shirt pulling tight. The creature growled, it’s mouth a gaping black abyss. Hot and putrid air filled my nostrils and I almost wretched.
The bunyip shifted his weight and closed his jaws around my leg. He first pulled up and then in the direction of the water. I rolled and shot out my arm to where I knew the rifle lay. I had no time to aim for the vitals of the creature. I flipped the weapon and pointed it into the dark mass and shot.
The jaws of the bunyip flung open. A tusk scraped across my thigh and left a deep gash. With a flurry of limbs he dove into the pond. I sat upright and put the rifle back on my shoulder. Ripples washed softly to the shore and then were gone. The water turned flat.
I turned back to where the spectre of my father had been and found only scrub and darkness.
Each day since that I rub my thumb over the scar the bunyip left on my leg. It is Ahab’s leg carved from whale bone. Returning and facing him has become an obsession.
I dream of my father standing watch over the scrub, waiting for me to return and, this time, finish the bunyip.