Riding the Black Cockatoo by John Danalis Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t suppose you have any idea where the cranium came from?’
    ‘They came from just outside of Swan Hill,’ I explained. ‘I’ve been studying the maps and I’m pretty sure it’s from Wamba Wamba country.’
    There was an audible intake of breath on the other end of the phone; a sort of sucking noise – not fear or shock, something more like astonishment. I heard him mutter to himself, a barely audible few words slipping through the earpiece like wisps of smoke: ‘weird . . . can’t believe . . . just keeps happening’.
    Simon returned from his private thoughts.
    ‘John,’ he said evenly, ‘are you sitting down?’
    ‘Mmmm, yes,’ I lied, more intrigued by Simon’s curious reaction than concerned with finding a comfy chair.
    Simon explained that the day before he’d received a fax from the Wamba Wamba tribal council informing the Museum that a reburial had been scheduled to take place on Wamba Wamba land in two weeks time.
    ‘How often do these reburials take place?’ I asked, imagining that they were a regular occurrence.
    ‘Almost never,’ Simon answered, ‘at least not like this one. Every so often a single set of remains might go back into the ground, you know, quietly, but this one’s big. Thirty sets have been returned from different institutions from all over Australia and as far away as Scotland.’
    We talked some more and Simon promised to get back to me the next day with the telephone number of one of the elders.
    ‘They’ll be very interested in your story.’

    After the call, I sat in the kitchen and stared through the louvred windows that opened to the back yard. Rainbow lorikeets twittered amid the bright yellow explosions of golden penda flowers, bees droned about the nectar-laden coils of grevillea. In that moment of contemplation, in that neutral space between the whirling gears of thought, I understood the perfect synchronicity of it all; the pushing feeling, the fax, the reburial in two weeks. Mary’s people were going home and he wanted to go too! I phoned Dad and excitedly filled him in on developments. As usual, my mind raced ahead of my mouth and I announced that I might fly Mary to Melbourne and hand him over personally. There was a gruff silence, then, ‘Christ, son, you’re going to a hell of a lot of trouble for an old Abo skull.’

CHAPTER
FIVE
    { 23 SEPTEMBER 2005 }
    The next morning, Simon from the Melbourne Museum phoned as promised. He’d been in touch with the Wamba Wamba elders. ‘They’re thrilled that another of their people is going home, they’re over the moon.’
    Simon gave me a name and phone number.
    ‘Thank you, John,’ he said, ‘and please pass on my thanks to your mother and father.’ It wasn’t a hollow, greeting-card thank-you, it was one of those rare thank-yous that remind you what a powerful combination those two words can be.
    I nervously phoned the number, expecting to hear something like the gravelly, earth-weathered voice of Skippy’s Tara. Instead a young man answered with a breathless energy that suggested his life was a full one. Caught off guard, I opened my mouth and the voice of a stranger oozed forth; my tone lacked any sense of warmth, completely at odds with the way I truly felt. I sounded like a hard-nosed property developer negotiating a transfer of land rather than human remains. I sensed a negative energy in the phone line. Then Jason explained that it was a bad time to talk, there’d been a death in the community that he had to attend to, but he promised to get back to me soon.
    What a letdown; I’d been expecting my first contact with Mary’s people to be something special – magical, even. Later on I phoned Dad to pass on Simon’s thanks.
    He grunted in that stubborn Greek way of his and moved the conversation on to something else.
    { 24–25 SEPTEMBER 2005 }
    I waited all weekend for Jason to call. Nothing. Mum phoned on Sunday evening while Dad was out and told me how happy she was that Mary was going