Children of the Earth and Sun
4: Song of Grandfather Tree
The great water serpent was rising.
Though no water had fallen from the sky, evidence of it was visible.
The white termite ants had moved in rows to the higher bank. Long lines of swollen white backs and scurrying legs reached the main parade heading for the safety of the mound.
Giant carrion birds circled, swooped and rested in surrounding trees awaiting the easy gift of drowned game.
The rock wallaby and the grey kangaroo sort higher ground, ears twitching at the escalating sound of rushing water.
Slowly at first, trickles appeared through the coloured pebbles and shiny quartz, tiny twigs, small panicking insects and broken leaf shards adrift.
Soon the trickle rose but only into a fast flowing shallow stream, a few gallant finches dipped to snatch an unsuspecting beetle or bug caught out in the middle of the creek.
Suddenly the galah rose in unison screeching a warning to the sun and below their crescendo could be heard a roar.
A tumbling wall of wood, twigs and debris as high as a man with a child on his shoulders came head long to the far edge of the bank over there.
It smashed into its edges turning stones and boulders, carving gouging crevices. Behind it’s foaming head of splintered branches followed great trees torn from their resting place of many years, tumbling, crashing, splitting into broken shards.
The roar imbued with the clattering crescendo of tumbling rocks and boulders rebounding and bouncing far below the tumbling torrent.
Soon the head of the great water serpent had passed this spot and its long body followed in giant rolling waves carrying more trees to which clung the unsuspecting animals that had been caught by the serpents arrival.
An echidna atop a swollen white gum clinging to its smooth surface, a little black wallaby fighting to keep its head above the turbulence, another close by, neck broken and body shattered from the collision of fallen trees, floated in the boiling foam.
The serpents main fury passed as it sort to eventually find its resting place where it will lay shiny, curled and quiet on the huge lakes south, country belonging to the brothers and sisters of salt and ochre.
But the water serpent passage is slow and it moved over many months before it rested.
And in its silver body it produced flat fast fish, soft tiny crabs and swollen arrogant frogs who’s own songs are know by many including us, the children of the earth and sun.
And part of the abundance and part of its awe is this tree we journey to in our great dreaming cycle.
For though it is hard to believe, the might of the great serpent, angry with the arrogance of that cheeky frog, once reached this far from its banks and deposited between the crevices of the grey rock upon which we sit a tiny seed only as big as the nail on my little finger.
Safe from the serpents fury the tree grew slowly, peacefully and over many generations to become a shelter for all the animals of the dreaming and to bring shade to those wishing to escape the fury of the sun at its peak.
This happened so long ago that the giant tree we call great grandfather has hardly ever changed from the generation to generations who have sung of its presence.
And though it is far from its original kin it has thrived here on our dreaming path, woven into the tapestry of our song.