The Mythos Down Under

“And the sun sank again on the grand Australian bush – the nurse and tutor of eccentric minds, the home of the weird, and of much that is different from things in other lands.”

-Henry Lawson, “The Bush Undertaker”, 1896

Australia has three major connexions with the Cthulhu Mythos and the works of H. P. Lovecraft: it is the location of the City of the Great Race (“The Shadow Out Of Time”, 1936); it has strong inferential connexions to the Dreamlands; and it is the location of an idol of the Great Old One, Cthulhu, taken from R’lyeh in 1925 by the crew of the SS Alert (“The Call Of Cthulhu”, 1928). Furthermore it is the gateway to Antarctica and the Elder Thing cities hidden there (“At The Mountains Of Madness”, 1936). The country is also host to a large community of Chinese immigrants and China is the land where the leaders of the worldwide Cthulhu Cult reside (according to the evidence gained from the cultist ‘Castro’ by Inspector Legrasse in “The Call of Cthulhu”). Australia is also the gateway to the South Seas for many Westerners, to Easter Island, to Ponape and the Andaman Islands - places where the Mythos has an ancient grip (as revealed in the Ponape Scriptures, translated by Exekiel Hoag).

Throughout the ‘20s and ‘30s Sydney was the home to many Theosophist cults: Golden Dawn recruit Annie Besant stayed there and, along with Bishop Leadbeater, established the Order of the Star of the East, along with local entrepreneurs Thomas Bakewell and Giordano Bruno. Walter and Marion Burley Griffin, both Theosophist acolytes, came to Australia to design Canberra, the nation’s capital, and stayed to form a schism sect from a base in their residential Castlecrag estate in Sydney, creating an antipodean home for the study of Anthroposophy.

Given these connexions to the Unspeakable, we should take the most likely inroads for horror narratives one by one. They are as follows:

The Dreamlands

The indigenous peoples of Australia have a belief system based on something which they refer to as the ‘Dreaming’. This is a slippery notion, in that the term encompasses a wide range of meanings depending upon its use. In one sense, it means a body of myths and legends associated with a local tribe or language group; in another sense, it refers to a system of laws and regulations which control the conduct of the local people; in yet another sense, it simply means a time long ago, before living memory. An individual tribe has a ‘Dreaming’ in the sense that the community has a history which can be related by the elders of the tribe and which promotes a sense of communal identity; as well, an individual has their own ‘Dreaming’, which refers to their own experiences, especially the course of their spiritual development. The term also has a connexion to the subconscious and the night-time images perceived during sleep, experiences which are equated with journeys of the soul and encounters with magical creatures and events. This is where we come closest to Lovecraft’s notion of Dreaming as an escape from Earthly environments.

A major plank of the “Dreamlands Theory” (if such a term can be coined) is that the Dreamlands of one planet are significantly different from that of another. Thus the Dreamlands of Cykranosh (Saturn) are quite unlike Earth’s Dreamlands. The Dreaming Skill, which allows such adepts as Randolph Carter to re-organise the Dream landscape to suit their own purposes, argues that cultural differences have as much a part to play in the way that the Dreamlands are constructed as anything else. With this in mind, we can start to look at the way the Australian Aborigines might have created their Dreaming, as an adjunct to their own spiritual lives.

In the short story “Through the Gate of the Silver Key”, Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price talk about a mysterious cavern entrance surmounted by the sculpted image of a white hand; the indigenous Australians are not known as a culture which works stone but they have plenty of cavern entrances marked with the painted image of a white hand, usually daubed with white ochre (such as in the image above). Through a Mythos lens, this could easily be seen as their way of marking those locales where penetration through to the Dreamlands is possible for those with the knowledge or skill to do so.

Without resorting to a complete re-writing of the gaming material already available to outline the Dreamlands and its occupants, it is easy to postulate that the Aboriginal Dreaming lands lie some distance from the map familiar to most explorers of Earth’s Dreamlands. After all, following Lovecraft’s literary line of placing unknowable peoples, things and places ‘over there’ in locations unmapped and inaccessible (e.g., Kadath or China), these dreamlands could well be simply an unexplored, inaccessible region, say, to the west of those Dreamlands countries and kingdoms of which we are most familiar.

With this rationale, it becomes possible to reinterpret certain beings of the Dreamlands through the mythology of the Aboriginal people. The strange, vampiric Yara-ma-yha-who, for example, starts to look somewhat like a Haemophore; Tjinimin, the bat-creature who stole fire from the earth in certain tales, could possibly be an incarnation of Nyarlathotep, especially given his ‘Father of all Bats’ avatar; the Rainbow Serpent could possibly have been a dhole. Is Purelko, the afterlife of certain tribes of the Arnhem Land region, a place within the Dreamlands? Are the night-dwelling Nadubi some species of Glaaki-worshipping creature capable of using their god’s spines to steal away the lives of others? Are the Mimi a race of advanced Dreamlands beings who abandoned the Earth millennia ago? There are all sorts of possibilities...

The Great Race of Yith

The distant north-western deserts of the Australian Outback are the location of the city called Pnakotus, occupied by the great Race of Yith upon their arrival on Earth four-hundred million years ago. The exact whereabouts of this city were lost, unrecorded, until the Peaslee Expedition of 1934, which undertook the first mapping and excavations there.

The Yithians occupied the bodies of tall, cone-like creatures which their searching minds discovered already dwelling on Earth. It is largely speculative as to whether these creatures were originally sentient and intelligent, as the Yithian mind transfer is designed to displace the resident intellect and make room for the invading mind. It is known that the Yithians moved on from these forms to occupy the bodies of a beetle race on another world, leaving their massive cone bodies to die off in a mass extinction in the desert sands. Who knows what fate befell the original minds of these mortal husks?

Long-time players of Call of Cthulhu may have come across the campaign series “Masks of Nyarlathotep”; if so, then the antipodean material provided therein is an excellent (although, in several places, inaccurate) rendering of uncanny events in Australia’s north west and could be used in conjunction with the material given here to stage an extended adventure.

The Worldwide Cthulhu Cult

In March of 1925, the stars were almost right: R’lyeh the corpse city rose from the depths of the sea and Great Cthulhu’s slumber was temporarily interrupted. A crew of sailors aboard the SS Alert made their way onto the island and became lost in the corpse city: only two of them made it back to the ship; only one of them returned – however briefly – to civilisation.

On the ship, which made its way, battered and torn, back to Sydney Harbour, was an idol to the Sleeping God. It was taken from the ship and placed within the collections of the Australian Museum where it remains to this day, accompanied by a speculative description as to its cultural origin and the material of its construction, both of which defy analysis. It was on display to the public until a frenzied would-be thief attempted to smash his way into the case and abscond with it; nowadays it resides, tucked away, in the Museum archives.

The issue with this piece of artistic impedimenta is not so much the discernment of what it stands for, but rather, the understanding of what it means to others. The faithful who would worship before this unholy image, or mercenary types who would claim it in order to sell it back to the faithful, are legion, and it is supposed that the defences which keep it locked within Australia’s first museum are wholly insufficient to the task of its maintenance.

The Tcho-tcho Menace

The original, suppressed, version of Kelly’s cartoon from “The Bulletin”

Wherever there has been a discovery of gold and a subsequent rush to unearth it, so to there has been an inrushing of Chinese nationals to join in the spoils. The Chinese term for Canada for instance, translates as “Golden Mountain” and many Chinese journeyed there in search of wealth, many never to return. No less eager were those Chinese who rushed to Australia (the “New Golden Mountain”) when the discovery of gold was announced in New South Wales and Victoria in 1851; and lurking amongst their numbers, like rats accompanying a steam-ship’s travels, were the insidious Tcho-tcho.

These degenerate meddlers are known to sink down solid roots amid the organised crime of whatever culture in which they find themselves. Further, they have a track record of infiltrating secret communities, and Australia, in the first half of the Twentieth Century, was awash with exclusive cabals, from the Communist Leagues to the fascist New Guard and every permutation of political and mystical flavour in between. This was ripe terrain for the Tcho-tcho; something they could really get their nasty, pointy little teeth into.

As well, reading from Guy Boothby’s Dr Nikola novels (A Bid for Fortune etc.), certain mystical regalia from Chinese secret organisations were smuggled into Australia during the late 1800s and various powerful agents – including Dr Nikola himself - were sent to retrieve them. Can we not see the hidden hand of the Tcho-tcho in these incidents?

Metaphysical Research: Spiritualists, Theosophists and other philosophies

Interest in Spiritualism was widespread throughout the English-speaking world from the late Victorian era all the way through to the Second World War. No less than any other country at this time, Australia was also caught up in the fascination. On top of this, the country was also visited by the two great contemporary speakers on the subject – both for and against – Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As well, Madame Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine and its sequel Isis Unveiled were making inroads into the spiritual landscape of the nation, supported by such outspoken proponents as Arthur Deakin, Walter and Marion Burley-Griffin, and Annie Besant. Theosophical communities took root and still exist today, along with the offshoot faith Anthroposophy, developed by Rudolf Steiner during his stay in the country.

The Burley-Griffins designed the new capital city Canberra to be a mystical generator of spiritual energies, an effort which fell short of the mark through political in-fighting and economic reticence; the Sydney Theosophists built a huge auditorium on the waterfront near Kurnell from which to view the impending Apocalypse (which didn’t come about due, no doubt, to some last-minute, behind-the-scenes intervention); and witchcraft had taken root in the Botany Bay colony from the earliest times: how else do you explain all of those staked corpses that were unearthed at the crossroads of Bridge and George Streets during the re-development of the Rocks?

Other Stuff Mankind Was Not Meant to Know About

In the 20s and 30s Australia was still largely a place unknown: the environment was treacherous and deadly; the landscape was as inimical to human life as the creatures that thrived within its ranges. The indigenes that seemed capable of inhabiting the Bush were so far removed from the Invader’s concept of civilisation that they may well have been alien creatures. Add to this that the “civilised” coastal fringes of the country were rapidly filling up with races, cultures and creeds so multifarious and disparate, that, beneath an eggshell-thin facade of social conformity, wild and strange chaos was brewing.

The bringing of “Kanakas” to the canefields of Queensland brought an influx of resentment and revenge: what strange island magicks might it also have brought to enact that vengeance? Wild Afghan tribes were brought to the inland deserts to aid in the construction of railroads and telegraph lines: we know from Alhazred’s foul tome, the weird things that also come out of Middle Eastern deserts. Early anthropologist and missionary Daisy Bates journeyed to the Outback to work with remote aboriginal tribes: her reports told of cannibalism and infanticide, crimes which could never thereafter be substantiated. The Australian Museum offered £5000 for the provision of an actual Bunyip skull or hide: after receiving several sets of remains, they quietly withdrew the offer and never mentioned it again.

German aviators disappearing in the western deserts (although their aircraft and campsite were located intact with no signs of distress); majestic steamships vanishing forever off the west coast of Western Australia with all hands; ruined pyramidal structures unearthed in the southern Queensland forests; ancient African coins discovered in the reef sands north of Cape York.

Wherever you scratch the surface of Australia, you find something uncanny.

Dreamtime Entities...

The Dreamtime for the native Australians is a term with a number of interpretations. For some it is simply a ‘long ago time’, a mythological history explaining the presence or absence of certain geographical features or creatures. The legends and stories of the Dreamtime explain the laws and customs of the many Aboriginal tribes and informs their conduct both in relation to the land and to each other. A particular tribe’s Dreaming, is its store of cultural wisdom; its ethos and morality as well as its collection of myths. Acquiring knowledge of this information is a process of self-development and learning and is referred to as getting one’s own Dreaming. Given the vast distances in Australia and the diversity of languages spoken by the Aboriginal peoples, the legends and myths vary wildly from region to region and a consistent mythological tapestry is difficult to perceive (although it is there nevertheless). Regardless, all Aboriginal tribes believe that the events of the Dreamtime, as well as those of their own personal Dreaming, exist within a single current timeframe, so that what once happened impacts sharply upon that which is happening in the subjective ‘now’.

Gurumukas & Nadubis

These are vampiric spirits endemic to the Dreaming of the tribes that dwell along the Top End of Australia. Mention of these beings occurs whenever tribespeople, especially children, are prone to wander at night, and the stories surrounding them are certainly designed to instil fear in those who would tend to wander off by themselves.

The Gurumuka stories derive from Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria. They are described as tall, incredibly thin people, able to hide amongst the undergrowth. They have sharp projecting teeth and creep up behind their victims in the darkness to bite them on the back of the neck. Unless the victim can reach a medicine man before dawn, they will die in great pain. The only way to foil a Gurumuka’s attack is to travel in groups and avoid the darkness.

The Nadubis of Arnhem Land also operate only in the darkness. They resemble ordinary people but they have sharp spines sprouting from their knees and elbows: when attacking, they try to drive one of these spines into the flesh of their victim, preferably striking from ambush. Once the spine has lodged itself in the victim, their spirit begins to die and their body along with it, suffering terrible agonies. If a medicine man reaches the victim in time they are occasionally able to remove the spine; mostly however, the victim is doomed. As with the Gurumukas, light repels a Nadubi.

The medicine men of these Dreamings are able to see these creatures clearly in the darkness and are able to recognise their tracks and other signs of their local occupancy, thus warning their people of the imminent danger. Most of the time they are able to hunt them away from the tribe’s territory, but occasionally the creatures sneak through...

Kulpunya & Mamu

These are two different types of spirit dingo. Kulpunya is spoken of by the tribes around Uluru in the centre of Australia. In order to avenge an insult against them by another tribe, the medicine men of the wattle-seed tribe created Kulpunya from mulga roots, twigs and the teeth of a marsupial mole. They sung many evil songs and filled Kulpunya up with their hatred and desire for vengeance. After a corroboree lasting several days, the spirit dingo came to life and attacked the ill-fated tribe which suffered terrible losses.

While Kulpunya is a magical construct, the Mamu is a nearly-invisible night-dwelling beast that preys on the young of the aboriginal tribes of Central Australia. If a Mamu finds a child wandering outside the circle of the tribe’s firelight, it attacks and savages the victim, before bounding off into the darkness. Thereafter, the child’s spirit begins to die over the next few days, leaving the body and flying off to the Mamu, who eats it at its leisure. Without the intervention of a medicine man, the attacks are usually fatal.

Malingees

The Malingee is a malignant nocturnal spirit with eyes that smoulder like coals and knees made of stone which scrape loudly together as it walks. It chooses to avoid human beings but if confronted or angered, it will try to kill and eat those who do so. It attacks with a stone knife that is horrendously sharp and capable of cutting through most substances. Given its glowing eyes and the sound that it makes as it walks, it is relatively easy to detect and avoid and Aboriginals in its Dreaming know to keep a wary eye out for its approach.

Mimis

Mimi spirits are part of the Dreaming of the Gunbalanya peoples of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. They are represented as tall thin spirits of a mischievous disposition. They are said to have been the original inhabitants of the country and, when the Aboriginal tribes appeared, they taught them language, dancing and tribal law, as well as how to hunt. Mimis are said to be grotesquely thin and elongated, to the point where high winds are able to cause them damage. They are also said to be sexually promiscuous and legends often turn about them seducing villagers away from their campfires.

The following statistics are available for those Keepers who wish their parties to encounter an average Mimi:

STR: 50

CON: n/a

SIZ: 19

POW: 30

DEX: 20

Move: 20

HP: n/a

Av Damage Bonus: +3D6

Weapon: Enchanted Spear: 100%, Special: POW vs. POW roll – failure equals death; success equals a 6-month comatose state

Armour: Invulnerable to physical weapons

Habitat: Remote fastnesses in the Arnhem Land, Northern Territory

SAN Loss: It costs 0/1D6 SAN to see a Mimi

Mokoi & Mopaditis

In the Dreaming of the Yirrkala tribal territories known as Arnhem Land the spirits of the dead are called Mokoi and must wait until the ghostly canoe paddled by the spirit Wuluwait, comes to take them away to Purelko, an Aboriginal ‘heaven’. The Mokoi are generally considered to be inoffensive but can become angered if they overhear bad things being said about them.

Further to the West on Melville Island, part of the Tiwi tribal lands, this notion is further elaborated upon. Here the spirits of the dead depart but sometimes choose to stay, form their own camps and carry on their old lives. They do this in order to perform burial rites for members of their old living tribe, to ensure that they ‘pass over’ safely. These spirits are called ‘Mopaditi’ and they can often be heard in the night time, singing and chanting the burial rituals. The Mopaditis cannot be seen as they are invisible in the day, dark in the shadows and pale in the moonlight. Occasionally, these spirits become morose and will waylay a solitary traveller, capturing their soul in order to keep them company in their exile between life and death. The affected traveller gradually weakens and dies over the course of a few days, unless a medicine man can intervene to halt the process. When the Mopaditi decide to move to Purelko, they are often accompanied by flocks of black cockatoos which raucously announce their arrival.

Muldjewangks

It is unclear whether there are many of these creatures or if there is only one. It haunts the Murray River between New South Wales and Victoria and, like the Bunyip, attacks those who wander foolishly into its range. Sometimes it is depicted as a type of merman; other times it is said to be a large bovine monster although, again, this could just be confusion with the Bunyip.

There is a white legend recording an encounter between a Muldjewangk and a steamboat captain from Echuca on the Murray River. It is said that the Muldjewangk grabbed the boat and stopped it from moving. Despite warnings from several Aboriginal elders on board, the captain fired several pistol shots into the enormous hands which gripped the bow of the craft: although freed, the elders warned the captain that his doom was assured and indeed, he died six months later from weeping red sores that erupted all over his body.

Nargun

The Nargun is an ogre creature from the Gunai and Kurnai tribal Dreaming. It is a monstrous half stone, half woman creature that steals children and drags them off to her lair on the Mitchell River in Southern Victoria to be eaten. According to legend the creature is made entirely of stone except for her arms, hands and breasts. Attacking the creature is said to be pointless as all weapons used against it are turned back upon their user.

Ningauis

The Ningauis are a miniature people who dwell among the mangrove swamps of the Top End. It is said that they do not know the secret of making fire and so they eat all of their food raw; paradoxically, they are able to control the amount of light that surrounds them, illuminating dark corners of the sunken forests and instantly causing darkness if their discovery by outsiders is threatened.

Tjinimin

This is possibly another insidious mask of Nyarlathotep and links directly to his incarnation as the Father of all Bats.

According to the Dreaming of the Murinbata people of the Northern Territory, Tjinimin developed a great lust for the attendants of the Rainbow Snake, the Green Parrot sisters. In various attempts to dissuade his lustful advances, they struck him with swarms of bees, diverted the courses of rivers and finally threw him off a cliff. He was able to use magic to reassemble himself, however.

In retaliation, he struck the Rainbow Snake with his spear and caused it to writhe horribly upon the ground, re-aligning the landscape. It fled into the sea to escape, but took all of the fire in the world with it, leaving the Aborigines without this useful resource. In time Kilirin the Kestrel taught people how to make more fire with sticks and overcome this issue.

Tjinimin in the meantime, went insane and began to sleep upside-down in the trees. Fire and its resumption within the world terrified him and he fled from light wherever it occurred. As a final indignity, the magic which held him together after his great fall partially failed and his nose dropped off – this explains, according to Aboriginal legend, why bats have snub noses.

But so much for the Dreamtime legends.

In the 1920s a white explorer named Huston went to the Northwestern deserts of Australia and set in motion certain procedures that would see Nyarlathotep released into the world. To this end he instigated worship of the Outer God in a form that had great resonance for the Indigenous population. This Avatar is known more widely as the ‘Haunter of the Dark’, but amongst certain tribes it is referred to as ‘Sand Bat’.

Huston’s tampering with the legends surrounding this manifestation created a cult dedicated to maintaining the secrecy of its activities and to furthering Huston’s efforts for his grand plan. Huston tattooed his faithful with a secret mark that would identify them to their brethren; this symbol was developed from desert depictions referring to Sand Bat and were modified by him for his own twisted ends. The Aboriginal peoples do not have an artistic tradition that lends itself to symbolic representations; painted depictions have a strictly functional purpose and do not serve to convey information in the way that Western written traditions do. Rather, the paintings and images created by the Aborigines serve as mnemonic devices for their oral tradition. Huston’s sign of the Sand Bat is his adaptation of one of these devices and has little relevance for the indigenous community. For this reason, the symbol is normally only found tattooed on the skins of white devotees of the cult.

Wandjina Spirits and the Gyorn Gyorn

These spirit entities are peculiar to the Mowanjum peoples in the Kimberlys region of northeast Western Australia. The Mowanjum are comprised of three distinct language groups – the Worora, the Ngarinyin and the Wunumbal. Within these tribes’ Dreaming, the Wandjina is the supreme creator spirit and codified the laws which govern their lives. The Wandjina also brings rain to the region in return for which the tribes paint images of the spirit upon rock walls. These figures are pale and large-eyed with elaborate headdresses representing different types of storms or rain. The Wandjinas are never depicted with mouths as this would make them too powerful and they might drown the world with their rains.

There are other figures painted on the rock walls too. These are often called ‘Bradshaws’ after Joseph Bradshaw who first discovered them in 1891, but are more correctly called Gyorn Gyorn. These figures are tall with attenuated limbs and represent the Mowanjum ancestors before the Wandjinas brought the law. They are often found painted over by Wandjinas and other imagery. Joseph Bradshaw described them thus in the Transactions of the Royal Geographical Society of Victoria in 1892:

“We saw numerous caves and recesses in the rocks, the walls of which were adorned with native drawings, coloured in red, black, brown, yellow, white and a pale blue. Some of the human figures were life size, the bodies and limbs were attenuated and represented as having numerous tassel-shaped adornments appended to their hair, neck, waist, arms and legs; but the most remarkable fact in connection with these drawings is that whenever a profile face is shown the features are of a most pronounced aquiline type, quite different from the native we encountered. Indeed, looking at some of the groups one might think himself viewing the painted walls of an Egyptian temple. These sketches seemed to be a great age...”

Together, The Wandjinas and the Gyorn Gyorn represent the oldest continuous sacred painting movement on the planet.

Yara-ma-yha-who

The Yara-ma-yha-who is described as a small red man with smooth skin, a large head, no teeth and octopoid suckers on its hands and feet. In many ways it resembles the Dreamlands creature the Haemophore. The Yara-ma-yha-who usually waits in the foliage of large fig trees and drops down upon those foolish enough to rest in the tree’s shade. The creature drains the blood of its victim through the suckers on its hands and feet and then, devours its victim whole. Legend has it that the Yara-ma-yha-who then regurgitates its victim whole and alive but noticeably shorter and with a more ruddy skin. After several repeats of this process, the victim then becomes a Yara-ma-yha-who himself and leaves their tribe for the solitary vampiric life.

Yuuris (or Yowris)

The Aboriginal Yuuri should not be confused with the creature of white Australian Folklore known as the Yowie. The Aboriginal Yuuri is a nebulous creature that lurks in waterholes and billabongs and originates from tales of the New South Wales and Queensland tribes. It is said to be single-eyed and shaped much like a gigantic ant or similar insect with limbs of an eel-like mobility. This compelling image by a white traveller remains in the collection of the Australian National Library:

Dead Man Walking - Part 2

II.

Several days later, I was leaning against my shop counter staring at Josh’s face, looking back at me from the front page of the Blue Mountains Chronicle, the local newspaper that Tom works for. It was the very same picture that I had displayed in the front window; that I had, and practically everybody else in the village had, including Huynh, now that he understood what was going on. I was vaguely musing whether this was the only decent photo that had been taken of Josh in recent times and what he might think about its applicability in summing him up for the rest of the world. I started to think about the last time I’d had a photo taken of myself and whether or not – were I to suddenly go missing – they’d choose to use that blurry, vampire-eyed photo of a long-haired me gleefully miming pouring a bottle of wine over a much hairier Tom, passed out on a violently-coloured couch. Most likely people would just give up searching immediately...

The front door jangled and halted my cogitations. An elderly woman in a smart dress suit tricked out with a large diamanté brooch, stood looking about my sun-drenched merchandise. She sniffed, then turned to face me.

‘I’m led to believe that you sell books,’ she stated.

‘Whenever I can,’ I said, keeping my poker face intact.

‘...And these books,’ she said, flicking a gloved hand at my shelves, ‘are they new or...used?’ there was a distinct tang of distaste stressing this last word.

‘My stock is second-hand and antiquarian,’ I said, ‘but I can order in new books if you have something specific in mind?’

Her hand had flown up to hover in front of her mouth as I said this; she nodded, checked quickly around herself to make sure that she had everything and stepped towards the door. I moved to open it for her; or rather, to hold it closed until I could fathom what was going on here.

‘Perhaps there’s a particular title you’re after...?’

‘I do not read other people’s books,’ she said with emphasis; she looked around conspiratorially then leaned in close, ‘some people read,’ her voice dropped an octave or two and I had a sudden “Exorcist” flashback, ‘on the convenience.’

‘Okay,’ I said and opened the door wide. As she fled my septic premises, Tom swerved around her and slipped into the closing gap.

‘I hope you’re wearing your Hazmat suit; it’s pretty toxic in here,’ I said to him over my shoulder while I walked back to the counter.

‘Sorry?’ he said, freezing and looking around nervously.

I waved a hand to indicate that it was of no consequence. ‘Howard Hughes’s grandma just dropped in for a spot health check. What’s up?’

‘I just thought I’d let you know that they’re going to be door-knocking your part of town this evening. The State Emergency Service has joined the search for our missing tourist and they think he might be hiding in someone’s property without them knowing.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Not that I mind, or that I have anything to hide, but doesn’t that breach some privacy issues?’

Tom waved his hand. ‘It’s not a search-and-seize operation: they’re just going to ask if you’ve seen anyone about your place and to think of places on your property where someone – especially someone hurt or suffering from hypothermia – might have access to if they crawled onto your premises.’

I nodded. ‘Okay. You know this guy is really making a nuisance of himself, isn’t he? I mean everyone seems to be focussed on his whereabouts. I was getting a coffee from Michaela this morning and she said that she heard he’s trying to avoid some industry heavies and is just laying low, ‘til the heat cools off.’

Tom snorted disdainfully. ‘A junior manager in an insurance company? That’s right up there with the one I heard about how he’s just doing a runner on his girlfriend because she’s trying to pressure him into Popping The Question. No: he’s in trouble out there, wherever he is; that is, if he’s still alive. No-one stays out in this weather on a whim.’

I nodded again. ‘Is everything being done to find him? I mean, is what they’re doing enough?’

Tom tapped the newspaper on the countertop. ‘Like it says, they’ve got sniffer dogs out – although the rain last night has made that option less effective; they’ve got helicopters in the air with infrared scopes checking the valley walls and floor; they’ve got a command post set up in the grounds of the Ridgemont Hotel – where he disappeared from – to co-ordinate efforts. It’s full on. They’re even tracking the GPS system on his mobile phone – at least they were before it went dead’

‘Sounds pretty intense.’

‘Sure. Remember about four years ago when that Canadian guy went missing? They searched for ten days straight, without half the technology they have nowadays, and, after giving him up for dead, he staggered out of the jungle on Day Twelve, a little worse for wear but still alive.’ Tom shook his head: ‘They don’t want a repeat performance of that fiasco.’

‘You don’t think this new guy is going for the record?’

Tom sniffed. ‘He’d better not be, that’s all I’m saying. There’d be some pretty pissed-off people around here...’

Again, I nodded. ‘Oh! That reminds me,’ I said, ‘Louise’s book came in.’ I ferreted the parcel out from under the counter.

Tom’s hand dove into his pocket, looking for his wallet. ‘What is it this time?’ he asked, ‘Dion Fortune’s guide to candle magic? Sybil Leek’s secrets of the witch’s kitchen?’

I held up a warning finger. ‘You might want to let Louise foot the bill for this one,’ I said, ‘it’s not exactly inexpensive...’

Tom froze, eyeing the parcel suspiciously. ‘How “not exactly”?’

‘Well it’s a 1932 edition of the Society for Psychical Research’s Blue Book; their operational procedure manual for when one investigates a haunted premises, as compiled and edited by Harry Price.’ I named the three-figure price tag.

‘Okay,’ said Tom wincing, ‘I can run to that. But it’ll be baked beans on toast ‘til next pay day.’ We concluded our business in silence.

‘Well, I’m off,’ said Tom tucking Louise’s book away in his backpack. ‘I want to get home before the cold front moves through. They say we’ll have frost tonight.’ He waved as he jostled through the door and into the fading sunshine.

I pushed shut the till and remembered reading in the news report that the lost guy had last been seen wearing a short-sleeved shirt over jeans with a leather jacket. I hoped, for his sake, that it would be warm enough.

*****

 

At this stage I need to tell you about Wallace Henderson. He’s no great mover and shaker; just a local retiree, my neighbour in fact, who had the bad luck to have a hip replacement go bad.

Wal (as he’s known) is an avid reader of what I refer to as “blokey fiction”. He used to work for the railways and, since there was plenty of standing-around in his daily routine, waiting for trains to show up, he spent much of that time reading. His tastes run to things by Alistair MacLean, Wilbur Smith, Jack Higgins and the like, with a bit of Leon Uris and Bryce Courtenay laid by for when he’s feeling a bit “intellectual”. We met the day he came into the shop looking for something to graze on and was appalled when he discovered I had nothing in the way of his reading spectrum. Accordingly, he showed up the following week with a box of “finished withs”, stuff he’d read into the dirt and was happy to pass along, to make my place more like a “real bookshop”. Every couple of months another boxload would arrive: I would normally offer to pay for these contributions, but Wal would insist that they were a donation, with the full sense of improving my stock and my readership.

Of course, the reason that these authors don’t appear on my shelves is that they take up valuable space which I need for “real” writers (and yes, I know that my snobbery is showing); still, nothing ever stopped me from dropping his books onto my ‘specials’ table out the front and selling them off like hotcakes for five or six dollars apiece: I still need to eat, you know.

(And I’m not completely mercenary: the times when he dumps collections of Arthur Upfield, or Vince Kelly, or Ion Idriess on me, I most definitely insist on paying him for the privilege of selling-on these increasingly collectable titles.)

What I’m wending my way towards is the fact that, when Wal went in for his hip-replacement replacement, he left me in charge of his dog, a black Labrador named Patsy. She is a standard type of her species and, if you know anything about them they are companionable, generally lazy, and impossible to feed to the point of satiation. My job, as I figured it, was to keep her from starving while at the same time preventing her from turning into a velour-covered balloon.

The Marquis, of course, disapproves entirely of dogs; but the good thing about the arrangement was that, living next-door, Patsy didn’t have to intrude upon my cat’s territory: feedings and walkies were all administered from Wal’s place, so neither of them had to meet face-to-face. Still, The Marquis was suspicious that something was Going On, and he kept a close eye on my comings and goings; it was a relief, therefore, that he had decided to spend his nights at the shop of late, rather than come home.

Patsy’s fearsome bark welcomed me as I walked through the gate and around the side of Wal’s house. Like many people on my street, his faith in solar-powered lights was extensive and many tiny and muted patches of dim fluorescence served in no way to guide me through the darkness in which his house was enveloped: I relied mainly on memory and Patsy’s woof-beacon.

Her bark being far worse than her bite, I found her quickly, the motion-sensitive light above the rear patio revealing me to her in a blinding flash. I’m aware that some of our other neighbours are far less accommodating of Patsy’s noise than I am so I always try to hush her up as soon as possible. As I reached for the lead, she started her play-bow greeting, accompanied by much whiney-growling and a scatter of claws on the hardwood decking.

Once we were tethered together, we headed out into the fast-falling evening. We strolled at a good pace to the top end of the street, then headed south towards the valley. This road was the main one that ran along the top of the cliffs then back towards the village: the further out you went, the larger the houses and their blocks of land before petering out entirely; as you headed back towards town, the grand houses appeared again and gradually reduced in size and value as you neared the highway once more. At its furthest extent, this loop of road enclosed nothing but dense bush; just past the last property, a short trail led at right angles to the tarmac down to a steel gate, beyond which stretched a fire trail, a cleared bulwark against a potential bushfire incursion into the exclusive holiday-homes of the Sydneysiders.

This trail is about 50 metres wide and runs the width of the road loop, following the profile of the landscape. The open area of it is littered with lopped limbs and trunks of Banksia scrub, livid branches of bloodwood mulching down into the rocky soil. Rugged grass predominates along the trail, scored across with the walking paths of various locals, like me, who enjoy walking their dogs here. At the margins of the trail, softly rounded walls of Banksia and grevillea close in, shaded in all the permutations of muted green: all you can see is the stony ground, the bush, the sky and the towering eucalypts beyond. At various points, the ground gets boggy and soft, thick with oozing mud and dotted with the fuzzy scarlet of sundews: it’s a full-time job keeping Patsy’s churning paws away from them.

As we stomped our way along the trail, our feet rattling across the stony paths, I noticed that Patsy was less than enthusiastic about her exercise this evening. Normally, she would sniff and snort her way along, tracing the trails of wombats and other canine peers; tonight, she stayed beside me, her head hanging low, darting fretful glances into the scrub on either side. Apart from our footsteps and the occasional gust of wind, the evening hush was broken only by Patsy’s infrequent growls and the soft “zzzz-zzzz” of her retractable leash cord.

About halfway along the trail, I stopped and looked around, trying to see what was bothering her. The bush was hushed and the intensity of the quiet gave it a poised quality, as if it was waiting, ready. On either side the green walls seemed tensed: it felt as if they would close in upon us at any moment like waves. Beside me, Patsy whined and stamped her paw on my foot.

‘Okay girl,’ I said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

The wind had risen sharply by the time we gained the far end of the trail and turned towards home. As we entered our street, blue, red and white flashing lights split the darkness, hiding rather than revealing the trucks on which they were carried. We moved carefully past two fire engines and some State Emergency Services vans before turning in at Wal’s front gate, whereupon Patsy began to growl fiercely.

A shadowed figure in yellow turned from pounding at Wal’s front door and called out when he saw me:

‘Hey! SES! Do you live here?’ He began pacing towards us.

I held my thumb down on the lock of Patsy’s lead to stop her charging forward. ‘No,’ I answered, ‘but she does.’ I jerked my head towards Patsy.

‘Hey girl!’ The yellow-clad man crouched down, his foul-weather gear crunching and creaking, and rubbed Patsy’s head fondly. In the flashing motley of lights, he was revealed as a smiling young fellow in his late twenties or so, with a gingery beard. He stood up and held out his hand which I shook.

‘Gareth’ he said, ‘SES volunteer’. He jerked his thumb at the logo on his jacket by way of confirmation. ‘We’re doing a house-to-house search for this missing tourist...’

‘Yeah; I heard. Any luck?’

‘Not so far.’

‘Let me get Patsy sorted out and I’ll give you the tour.’ We moved around the back of Wal’s house.

‘Perhaps you know the person who lives next door,’ said Gareth. ‘I’ve been knocking but there’s no answer. The TV seems to be on though...’

‘That would be my place,’ I said, ‘we’ll head over there next...’

*****

 

To Be Continued...

Extinct Creatures: Prehistoric Australian Megafauna

In distant ages, Australia was home to many marsupial giants which died out or evolved into the current forms which we know today. The latest thinking is that the earliest of Aboriginal tribes encountered these now extinct beasts and incorporated them into the legends of their Dreaming. Giant kangaroos, wombats the size of Volkswagens, giant goannas and snakes and marsupial lions are represented in this list. As in the case of lake monsters and ‘ape men’ across the world, the survival of these forebears is sometimes blamed for various recent cryptozoological appearances. An encounter with one of these beasts is normally highly unlikely but, as those who wilfully play around with the Plutonian Drug have discovered, “normal” is a relative term...

Anthropornis nordenskjoeldi

 

Fossil evidence for this creature abounds in the southern coastal regions of Australia and New Zealand. Essentially it is a massive penguin, roughly six feet in height and with an ‘elbow’ joint on its wings revealing a link to a flight-enabled distant ancestor. These birds were abundant in Antarctica 40 million years ago, but so far the fossil record cannot reveal if they were either blind or albino.

Bluff Downs Giant Python

 

Fossilized remains of this creature were first found in the Bluff Downs area in north-eastern Queensland. This giant serpent lived in the Pliocene Era and averaged about 10 metres in length, making it the largest snake, by a metre, ever to have lived on the planet, compared to the Anaconda or the Reticulated Python. Some feel that Aboriginal legends concerning the Rainbow Serpent are holdover memories of a time when humans interacted with these reptiles.

Another monstrous serpent – Wonambi naracoortensis – lived further south in the area around Adelaide in South Australia. It dates from the Pleistocene era and grew up to 6 metres in length. Its scientific name derives from the local tribal word for the Rainbow Serpent.

Carnivorous Kangaroo

 

Propleopus oscillans was a species of large kangaroo-rat which weighed up to 70 kilograms. Its dentition, as revealed in the fossil record, shows that it was capable of eating meat, but what is more likely is that it was a highly evolved scavenger, living mainly on insects, fruits and leaves, supplemented by stripping the occasional abandoned animal carcase. It died out about 20,000 years ago.

Diprotodonts

 

The Diprotodonts were a family of monstrous wombat-like creatures which averaged the size of large hippos. The largest of them reached 10 feet in length and 6 feet at the shoulder, weighing in at 2,000+ pounds. They roamed the arid and desert areas of Australia during the Pleistocene era. It is theorised that they may have been hunted to extinction by Aboriginal tribes around 40,000 years ago.

Procoptodon

 

The Procoptodon was a gigantic form of kangaroo, standing on average 10 feet tall and weighing around 230 kilograms (510 lbs). It had a shorter face than modern kangaroos with forward-facing eyes and two extra-long clawed fingers on each forepaw, supposedly allowing it to hook branches and other vegetation for ease of grazing. Unlike modern kangaroos, the Procoptodon had a single hoof-like toe on each foot allowing it to power through vegetation while jumping. It is thought that these creatures may have been alive as recently as 18,000 years ago.

Stirton’s Thunder Bird

 

This massive flightless bird is one of a genus of creatures called Dromornithids and appears to be a cul-de-sac in the evolution of modern waterfowl. The Thunder Bird stood over 3 metres tall and roamed in large flocks across the Australian continent. Some debate still occurs over whether they were carnivorous with recent discussion seeming to favour an omnivorous lifestyle - largely herbivorous but with some scavenging, similar to hyenas today. For many years Stirton’s Thunder Bird was thought to have been the largest flightless bird ever to have existed, but recent fossil discoveries of birds three times its size in China have nullified this record. Human impact on their environment is thought to be the reason behind their extinction around 18,000 years ago.

Thylacoleo carnifex

 

The Marsupial Lion was a cat-like mammal that was roughly the same size as a leopard. Examination of its skull has shown that it had, pound for pound, the strongest bite of any feline-type creature the world has ever known. It also had extremely strong forelimbs with semi-opposable thumbs and retractable claws (very unusual in a marsupial species). Its tail was similar to that of a kangaroo and allowed it to balance upright in order to bring all of its clawed limbs to bear in a fight. It lived during the Pleistocene era, hunting Diprotodonts and giant kangaroos, and is thought to have become extinct some 36,000 years ago.

Varanus priscus (aka. Megalania)

Essentially this was a goanna that grew from five to seven metres in length and which stood two metres tall at the shoulder. It would have been an ambush hunter capable of sudden and prolonged bursts of speed, with terrible claws and teeth used to despatch its victims; there is some continuing debate as to whether it may also have been venomous. The lizard became extinct roughly 40,000 years ago but may have had some interaction with the early human inhabitants of Australia.