The Chronicles of Australis #1

An Extract from the diary of Walter Natural.
from
The Chronicles of Australis, Chapter One – Melancholy Isle.

At this precise moment I am comfortably reclining against an ancient stump between twin, flowering gum trees. The powerful aroma of their magnificent red blooms has a tremendous calming effect and is so integral to the beauty and peacefulness of the landscape around me that I wonder if this place is real at all. And perhaps it isn’t.

Surrounding the four of us, my three organic companions and I, is a vast expanse of lush grass, almost a lawn, which is fastidiously manicured by a grotesque little band of deformed kangaroos. Fortunately these latter are absent tonight for I believe they would contrast strongly with my newly found resolve. Behind me my lawn forms an enormous semicircle. All around its curve is dense forest, making me the focus of this strangely natural amphitheatre. The view to the front however, between the V of my crossed feet, is unsettlingly different. It is uninterrupted, endless, spectacular, savage, red-brown. Strange then, that it marks the western most boundary of my new world, but that it does. A viciously abrupt demarcation during the day, it is now fading away to infinity and insignificance with night fall. True darkness cannot be more the half an hour away.
The transition is rapid here.

Overhead the sky is that peculiar matt steel-blue of dusk. Faint stars are beginning to appear but out there to the west the sunset dominates, illuminating the edge of the world in a tremendous arc of vibrant oranges, reds and purples. A few thin wisps of stratus are all that remain of the day and they stripe the colourful arc in ghostly grey shadows. The sun itself is the merest sliver of bright gold on a perfectly flat horizon. All is beautiful here. Awesomely beautiful. Deadly beautiful.

Already my world is reducing to the cone of light supplied by my makeshift lamp, suspended from a branch overhead. Before long I will be forced to retreat to the safety of my camp. Sounds ominous doesn’t it? To be honest I have seen no evidence here of any animal more dangerous than a kangaroo. No, what frightens me is not the physical but the mental; like all human beings it is the unknown which I fear. You see I haven’t ventured far in my new world so I don’t know what dangers await me out there. In essence, because I don’t know where I am, why I am here or exactly how I came to be here, I fear what I might discover. Or not discover! But there is more to my fear of the unknown, for out here I seem to feel it physically, draping itself about me like a thick cloak of isolation, so that I must rush back to my camp to be amongst my few remaining possessions. It was at night when I gave this place its name – Melancholy Isle.

The nature of my arrival here is unique, as far as I know, and beyond my power with words to abbreviate—it will require…further explanation. For now let me just say that it was very unexpected, virtually instantaneous and, it appears, irreversible.

__________

. I spy with my little eye
. A reflection of my mind in the darkening sky
. Shimmering with fear and beginning to fry
. Bursting with yearning to break free and fly
. Lost in star frost and reluctant to try
. Or is it I’m looking through tears as I sigh?
. Where am I? When am I? Why?

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australia, book, fantasy, adventure, time, story, diary, fiction, brett, foster, photobloke, baf and chronicle