Hunting with Aboriginals
A short prose poem about how we interact with our world.
Last year Aboriginals took me to find a boomerang. Eventually, after hundreds of rejected trees, one was found buried deep within the correct bend in a mulga. Tiny tomahawk in hand the old man, of indeterminate age, bought the boomerang from out of the wood. Eventually the essence of that perfect angle at the base of the tree was revealed.
It will go on to be danced with now. And in a previous age it may have been used to kill a kangaroo. Or even a man.
I wonder now had it always been there, waiting to be found? The mulga has died completely so one small part of it can rest in a man’s hand. It did not feel wrong to me then. And doesn’t now. Were the men created to find it? Or was it the other way round?
Later they hunted for kangaroos. I went along. Silent and alien. They were more silent yet. 6 or 7 shots later. 6 or 7 dead kangaroos. Half the night gone. Had they to been there waiting to be found? They are respectfully and ritually butchered. A debt pf grattitude is owned.
The smell is overwhelming. The meat is intense.
craig scutt
as i read this i could feel my self slowing down.
then i remembered David Gulpilil’s narration in Ten Canoes, where he talks about the slower pace of aboriginal stories.
this is a story to savour, like the meat, like history.
mawaho
I’m so glad to have read your story because I have one in me too and know I will have to relate it soon.