THE FIRE OWL (2025 Edit)

A Dream Time monster, the Fire Owl, comes to Glen Hartwell

Joseph Garbarla enjoyed the red-streaked sky at twilight as he walked slowly through the small village of corrugated-iron huts. A cooling breeze blew through the Aboriginal village, bringing with it the sweet smell of eucalyptus from the surrounding forest of red, blue, grey, lemon-scented, and ghost gums.

Ahead of him strode an attractive gin in her late twenties, swinging her hips provocatively as she walked. Garbarla blushed at the sight of her near-naked body. Although he had been back among his tribe for a dozen years now, the half-breed was not yet used to seeing women of the tribe walking around topless in summer, with only the tiniest of loincloths to cover their genitals, leaving their buttocks revealed. Just as the men of the tribe loved to tease him for his ignorance of their ways by calling him the “white boy” or “white man”, he knew that the single younger women flaunted their nudity around him, enjoying his red-faced embarrassment and wide-eyed stares.

They had almost reached the forest beyond the edge of the village when the young gin turned around as though looking to see if he was still behind her. Garbarla saw the beautiful, dark-chocolate coloured face of Lucy Gabadabadana grinning cheekily, obviously aware that he had been following her. A subtle lift of one eyebrow told him that she was well aware of the effect that her nudity had on him: taking him to a state of great arousal and equally great embarrassment.

Although at twenty-eight she was a spinster by Aboriginal standards, Lucy was one of the most sought-after unwed women in the village. Garbarla knew that by his animal totem ,he would be allowed to court Lucy, having (he hoped) subtly discovered her animal totem, however, his natural shyness held him back. But seeing her toothy grin as she looked around, Garbarla smiled back and started to jog to catch up with her ... Until the smile was wiped off her face, replaced by a wide-eyed look of horror ....

“What? I ...?” said Garbarla, shocked, hoping that she didn’t think that he had been following her to attack her. “I was just,” he began. But before he could finish, “going the same way as you,” she screamed, turned and fled away from him.

“Lucy, I ...” shouted Garbarla, afraid of the fear that he had seen in her eyes. Before he could start after her, though, he heard a shrill, almost metallic screech from behind him. Not quite animal-like, not quite mechanical in sound, the screech puzzled him.

‘What the Hell!’ he thought, starting to turn. Then, he felt a rush of air and a hot wind scorch his face as whatever had terrified Lucy Gabadabadana zoomed past him at head height.

Smelling a foul, sweaty odour like someone who hadn’t washed in a month, Garbarla looked forward and saw a red light rushing toward the running gin. For one crazy second, he thought that it was a car light on a police car or fire truck. But then, he realised that there was no vehicle beneath it.

Garbarla started after the terrified woman at a run. He had almost caught up with her when the red light struck Lucy, landing with a thud on the back of her shoulders.

‘My God, it’s some kind of bat!’ thought Garbarla, seeing the wing-like shape. ‘A vampire bat?’ he thought as Lucy began to scream again. ‘But vampire bats are tiny.’ Whereas the “bat” on Lucy’s shoulders stretched right across her back. ‘And vampire bats only exist in South and Central America.’

Then, seeing the red glow of the creature, he wondered, ‘What kind of a bat is fluorescent red? A flying fox might be deep orange, even red, but wouldn’t glow in the dark!’ As this creature did.

“Hold on!” he shouted to the gin, who was shrilling in pain and terror.

Reaching her, Garbarla grabbed the “bat” and tried to pull it off her back. Seeing smoke billowing, he didn’t realise at first what was burning.

“Oh, God!” cried Garbarla, pulling his hands away. For a secon,d he stared in shock at his burning hands, nauseated by the burnt meat stench. Then, coming to his senses, he cupped his hands to his chest to beat out the flames, still not yet feeling the pain of his badly scorched flesh.

“I’ll get something to knock it off your back,” Garbarla shouted to make himself heard above Lucy’s shrieking.

He raced across to pick up a large red gum bough lying on the dirt near the edge of the hardwood forest a few metres away.

Grabbing the bough, he raced back to Lucy, then stopped in shock. The “bat” was shining an almost blinding red light now, and smoke billowed from Lucy’s back. Flames shot out of her body; small sprays of fat jetted from her back and shoulders, which sizzled like barbecuing sausages.

What the Hell is going on! wondered Garbarla, too stunned to use the red gum stick that he held. As smoke began to billow from the front of her body -- her large breasts seeming to collapse into her body -- Garbarla realised that it was too late to save the young gin.

Hearing gasps from behind him, Garbarla looked around and saw the wide-eyed stares of fifty or sixty women and children of the tribe, who had been drawn by Lucy’s screaming. The sight of the crowd roused him from his inertia, and Garbarla darted forward again to try to knock the “bat” from the gin’s back with the red gum bough. But her whole body was on fire now; the air stank with the pall of cooking human flesh. When he tried to reach Lucy, Garbarla was driven back by the heat, which felt as though it would set his flesh on fire again when he was still more than a metre from the dying woman.

Seeing the gaping hole in her back, Garbarla gasped, shocked and thought, ‘It’s burning right through her! That damn thing is burning right through her body!’

In seconds, the “bat” had vanished from sight inside the body of the young woman. Lucy finally stopped screaming as she collapsed onto the hard, brown earth. For a few seconds, she lay burning furiously. Then, in only minutes, the figure had lost all trace of human form, reduced to hot embers, which collapsed into an unrecognisable heap.

‘Jesus, what could generate that kind of heat?’ wondered Garbarla. As he watched, the still smouldering ashes of the young woman collapsed with a whoosh like talcum powder onto the ground, into a lifeless pile.

‘No, not quite lifeless!’ realised Garbarla, seeing a mole-like tunnelling among the ashes. After a few seconds, the glowing red “bat” crawled to the top of the pile of ashes.

At the sight of the “bat”, the women and children began to shriek in terror.

“What the Hell is that thing?” asked Garbarla of no one in particular. But the others had turned and started fleeing toward the other end of the small village.

“Garbarla,” he heard a voice whisper behind him. Looking back, he saw the pretty, milk-chocolate-coloured figure of his mother, Debbie Bulilka, standing five metres away. Although she had not run with the others, she was obviously too terrified to approach any closer.

“Come, let me fix your hands,” she said.

He looked down and, for the first time, saw how burnt and blistered his hands were. Dropping the tree branch that he still carried, he started after his mother, trying not to think of the pile of ashes that only a few minutes ago had been a beautiful young woman.

They walked through the village for a few moments. But instead of continuing to Debbie’s corrugated iron house at the other end, to Garbarla’s surprise, they headed toward the centre of the village. ‘Where is she ...?’ thought Garbarla. Then, he saw the garish flame pink-painted corrugated-iron hut of Sarah Jardagara. A victim of Alzheimer’s disease, Sarah had become fixated with the colour pink.

As they approached the hut, Garbarla saw a young buck whom he recognised as Nambidjimba (commonly called Jimba), Sarah’s son. He started to call a welcome to the young man, then stopped in surprise, seeing the three wide, blood-dripping lines along the young man’s chest. At first, he thought that Jimba had been involved in some accident (or attacked by his occasionally violent mother). Then, he realised that the young man had been involved in some kind of manhood ritual. Seeing the wounds only made Garbarla feel more of an outsider in the village: legally abducted by his maternal stepmother, Bettina Hun,t at age eleven, he had been raised in white society until returning to his mother’s village in his mid twenties. By that time, the thought of submitting to physical mutilation had seemed barbarous to him. But, in his late thirties, he now regretted not having undergone the scarring, feeling that he had alienated himself further from his tribe.

“Judith in?” Debbie Bulilka asked Nambidjimba. Garbarla realised at last why she had led him there: Judith Waipuldanya had been Sarah Jardagara’s nurse for the last ten years.

“Yes, go in,” said Jimba.


Later that night, Garbarla sat on the brown dirt in an all-male corroboree, in a small clearing within a circular grove of towering blue gum trees, a hundred metres outside the village. Fifty or so men, mainly in their teens or early twenties, sat in a circle around a small open fire. Normally, religious dancing and ritual storytelling opened any corroboree. But that night’s meeting had been called as a special gathering by the tall, spindly, thin man standing immediately in front of Garbarla. Normally, Aboriginal tribes do not have a chief or leader; however, after a disaster had wiped out most of the tribe’s men eleven and a half years ago (in December 1984), Weari-Wyingga had adopted the role of temporary chief. With just a few wisps of white hair on his otherwise bald pate and grey, wrinkled skin, the old man looked every day of his ninety-odd years and might die soon. Garbarla wondered who would replace him as leader then?

Realising that the old man was waiting for him to speak, Garbarla hesitantly told of his experience a few hours earlier. Some of the teenagers snickered when he told of his embarrassment at Lucy Gabadabadana’s nudity; however, they stopped when he told of the glowing red bat that had sent her shrieking toward the forest. Although his hands had been expertly bandaged by Judith Waipuldanya, he held them up for emphasis as he told of trying to tear the smoke-billowing “bat” from the young gin’s shoulders.

When Garbarla had finished his story, old Weari-Wyingga said two words at barely more than a whisper. “Weng Wirmul.”

Having been back among his tribe for thirteen years, Garbarla spoke their dialect fluently and knew that the words “weng wirmul” were Victorian Aboriginal for “fire owl”.

“Fire Owl?” asked David Ngamirimba, a thirty-year-old buck, Lucy Gabadabadana’s cousin.

Weari-Wyingga stood silently for a few moments, staring in obvious displeasure around the circle of young men.

‘Here we go!’ thought Garbarla as the old man stood glowering down at them. Weari-Wyingga had devoted many hours at past corroborees, decrying the fact that the younger men in the tribe knew more about Western ghost and Halloween legends than they did about their Dream-Time heritage.

‘And I suppose it’s true!’ thought Garbarla. When he returned to the village in the early 1980s,, Garbarla had been frustrated at his difficulty in picking up his native dialect. Yet many of the teenagers in the village in the late 1990s could only speak English -- although they had not been snatched away as a child and raised in white society as he had.

Obviously deciding that his withering look had cowed the young bucks enough, the old man finally spoke: “The fire owl is what the Whiteman calls a fire elemental or a flame devil,” he said.

“A flame devil?” asked Garbarla. He had recently read a novel where a creature called a flame devil had terrorised and killed people during the Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria in 1983. But that creature had looked roughly like an oversized man, or gargoyle, living in a swirling ocean of flames. “But this thing looked like a bat, or ...?”

The old man held up a hand to silence him, obviously guessing what Garbarla was thinking. “Flame devils come in all shapes and sizes, and have a variety of causes,” explained Weari-Wyingga. “Man-like, dingo- or wolf-like, bat- or owl-like. And many, many more ....

“The Dream-Time stories tell us that the fire owl is the revenant or ghost of someone wronged and unavenged. Or someone who will soon be murdered. Or who was murdered and left unburied.”

“How can it be the ghost of someone who has not yet been murdered?” asked Garbarla. Although fearing to look ignorant in front of the others, he saw by the looks that they were exchanging that most of the young warriors and hunters were as puzzled as him.

“Yes?” demanded David Ngamirimba.

Weari-Wyingga shrugged his bony shoulders, obviously having no answer. “Some say being from the Dreaming-Time, the fire owl does not have to follow our rules of cause and effect. In the Dream-Time, effect can precede cause; a ghost can come before death, as a warning to prevent a murder.”

“What about the murder of Lucy?” demanded David.

“Yes?” agreed Garbarla. “If this fire owl is a presentiment of imminent evil, why would it commit an evil act itself?”

“No one knows for certain where the fire owl comes from,” explained Weari-Wyingga. “Only that they are an omen of impending murder or a sign of unavenged murder. Possibly it is the mind of the murderer that sends out the fire owl,” he said, waving his hands wide. “The evil is building up inside the mind of the soon-to-be killer.”

They sat around the ceremonial fire till well past midnight, debating their best course of action. But as old Weari-Wyingga pointed out, “Without knowing what caused the fire owl, there’s not much that we can do.”

“We can’t just wait and watch till one of us gets killed,” protested John Dulban -- a tall, handsome hunter in his late twenties.

“No,” confirmed Larry Mutapina. Another young hunter, Larry, was a close friend of John Dulban and tended to agree with everything that Dulban said at corroboree gatherings.

“Until another one of us gets killed. Don’t forget Lucy!” insisted David. And with that, the warriors fell silent.

After another ten minutes, they set off for their huts, with Weari-Wyingga warning them to “Stay alert for any sign of the fire owl.”

“What’s the point in staying alert when we don’t know how to fight it?” muttered John Dulban as they strode away, all anxious to get some sleep before having to wake at dawn.

‘He’s right!’ thought Garbarla, meandering off in the same basic direction as Dulban.


Reaching his mother’s hut, Garbarla saw the lithe figure of Debbie Bulilka waiting for him. Not concerned about violating “men’s secrets”, he quickly told her all that had been said at the corroboree.

“Do nothing?” said Debbie, obviously shocked, as she helped her son prepare for bed.

“That seems to be all that we can do for now,” said Garbarla. He winced as pain-darts stabbed his badly burnt hands.

With visions of the death of Lucy Gabadabadana swirling through his head, Garbarla expected to lie awake all night. Yet by 1:30, he was sound asleep. But only four hours later, Garbarla was awakened by a hand roughly shaking him.

“What ...?” cried Garbarla, only half awake. Looking up, he saw Debbie kneeling over him. “What’s the matter?” he asked. He blinked against the blinding summer sunlight streaming in through the four-paned window of his bedroom.

By way of answer, he heard an almost monkey-like chattering of excited voices outside the three-room hut. Looking up, he saw men, women, and children streaming past the hut in their dozens.

“Something has woken the entire village,” said Debbie. And indeed it seemed so when they went outside after hurriedly dressing.

Joining the excited crowd, Garbarla spotted the muscular physique of young Nambidjimba a dozen metres ahead of him. Pushing through the swarming mass of black bodies, Garbarla caught up to the young warrior and asked, “What’s going on, Jimba?”

“Fire owl killed John Dulban last night after the corroboree,” said Jimba, passing on the rumour that was rampant in the village.

“What?” asked Garbarla in shock, wondering if he had heard correctly. As people began to push and shove around him, Garbarla realised that he had stopped, and did his best to catch up with Jimba again.

The swarm passed dozens of seemingly identical unpainted corrugated-iron huts. Until it gradually came to a stop two-thirds of the way toward the corroboree ground. Ignoring the squeals of protest, Garbarla pushed his way to the front of the crowd, where he saw young Jimba arguing with Neal Judawali, a warrior in his early thirties, who had obviously been posted on guard outside the grey iron hut. Holding up a three-metre-long spear, Judawali refused to allow Jimba to pass.

They continued to argue for more than a minute, until the wrinkled head of old Weari-Wyingga appeared in the doorway. The old man whispered a few words to Judawali, and Jimba was allowed to enter. Then, seeing Garbarla, the old man waved him over as well.

When the two men entered the hut, the crowd tried to follow them. But Neal Judawali brandished his spear like a sword, and the crowd reluctantly fell back.

After the blinding light outside, Garbarla was surprised to find that the hut was in darkness. “We pulled the blinds to stop people looking in,” explained Weari-Wyingga. He led them through the dirt-floored front room to the bedroom at the back. Reaching the curtain over the doorway, he hesitated for a second and said, “Prepare yourself for something nasty.”

‘I’ve already seen what the fire owl does to people!’ thought Garbarla. Recalling the pile of shapeless ashes that Lucy Gabadabadana had been reduced to, he expected to see something similar in the bedroom.

Instead, to the surprise of Garbarla and Jimba, they saw the relatively intact form of John Dulban lying on a wire-frame cot. The young man looked as though he were only sleeping. Except for the ugly hole bashed into the back of his head, where dried blood had already turned black.

“How? What?” stammered Garbarla, caught off guard.

By way of answer, the old man pointed to a blood-stained stone axe lying beneath the cot.

“He was murdered?” asked Garbarla, stating the obvious. He almost heaved a sigh of relief that the fire owl had not claimed another victim. But he managed to stop himself in time.

“But who?” asked Jimba. Like Garbarla, Jimba had been a close friend of John Dulban.

“Mutapina,” said Weari-Wyingga.

“Mutapina?” echoed Garbarla, at first not understanding. Then, he realised, “You don’t mean Larry Mutapina killed him?”

“Seems like it,” agreed Weari-Wyingga.

“But Mutapina and Dulban were the best of mates,” pointed out Garbarla.

“Mutapina doted on Dulban,” added young Jimba.

Weari-Wyingga shrugged, obviously as puzzled as they were. “Who knows? Maybe ...?”

But before he could finish, they heard footsteps behind them. Turning, they saw the short figure of Roger Gardigardi, a young hunter.

“We found tracks,” said Roger.

“Show me,” said Weari-Wyingga. They all filed outside to where the sea of black faces still swirled outside the hut.

“Go home! Nothing here to see!” ordered the old man. And one or two of the gawkers did as ordered. But, despite the best efforts of Neal Judawali to shoo them off, most of the crowd followed after Weari-Wyingga, Garbarla and the others.

Only a minute or two later, they arrived at the unpainted two-room corrugated-iron hut that Larry Mutapina shared with his widowed mother, Wendy Tudjudamara. Still, with most of the village following them.

“Go home!” Weari-Wyingga shouted at them again, waving his iron-bark walking stick for emphasis. But the crowd continued after them as Roger Gardigardi led them to a clear set of human footprints in the dirt to one side of the hut.

“Made no attempt to hide his tracks,” mused Weari-Wyingga, obviously puzzled.

“In too much hurry to get away,” suggested Gardigardi.

“Or else he wanted us to see them,” said Garbarla, thinking out loud. He heard loud gasps from some of the spectators and blushed from embarrassment.

“Why would he do that?” asked Weari-Wyingga.

“So that we would follow him and he could ambush us,” suggested Garbarla.

“Perhaps,” agreed the old man.

They followed the footprints right through the village to the start of the brown dirt plains beyond, where they found David Ngamirimba waiting for them.

“He’s gone bush,” said David. And they all looked toward Weari-Wyingga for advice.

Normally, such an important matter would be put to an all-male corroboree for a vote. But the longer they delayed, the more chance Mutapina would have time to escape. So, exercising his powers as temporary tribal leader, the old man ordered, “Go after him.”

Nambidjimba, David Ngamirimba and Garbarla all started out after the tracks. But Weari-Wyingga caught Garbarla by the arm and stopped him.

“Not you,” said the old man. “Your hands need time to heal.”

Garbarla started to argue. But as his bandaged hands began to throb, he realised that Weari-Wyingga was right. “All right,” he said. He sighed his frustration as he watched his two friends set out into the desert to track down another of his friends. ‘Or be killed by him!’ thought Garbarla. He was unable to shake off the feeling that Larry Mutapina had meant for them to find his tracks and to follow him out into the desert.

As a cooling breeze blew in from the desert, he smelt the sweet aroma of eucalyptus. And remembered smelling the same aroma just before Lucy Gabadabadana had been killed by the fire owl.

‘Please God, take care of them!’ he thought. Uncertain whether he was praying to the Emu-Man, God of his black mother, or Jesus, God of his white father, Edward Hunt.


Over the next month or so, life returned to something like normal in the Aboriginal village. Garbarla’s hands healed enough to allow him to return to the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology (where he taught a Technical and Further Education (TAFE) course in Aboriginal culture to adult students) when the new term started in early March. By the end of March, they had still heard nothing more from David Ngamirimba and Nambidjimba. Garbarla had started to fear that Larry Mutapina had killed both of the young hunters. And noting the increasingly despondent look on the face of Weari-Wyingga, Garbarla knew that the old man had started to fear the worst also.

On the 28th of March, a Friday, Garbarla returned to the village around 6:00 PM to find the village in chaos. Seeing the frenetic Aborigines running through the village, he thought back to the murder of John Dulban and thought, ‘Jimba and Dave must have returned with Larry!’

Hugging his books to his chest, Garbarla joined the milling horde again, expecting them to head toward the corroboree ground -- where Mutapina would be tried. Instead, to his dismay, he realised that they were headed toward the centre of the village. ‘Where can they be going?’ he wondered. ‘They’ve already passed Weari-Wyingga’s hut!’ The other place Larry Mutapina might have been taken.

When they finally stopped, it was before a single-room iron hut belonging to Tammy Margurla, an old lady of nearly ninety.

“Why the Hell are we going here?” Garbarla thought aloud.

At the sound of his voice, the crowd parted to allow him through -- aware of the special esteem that old Weari-Wyingga had for the white-educated half-breed.

Seeing Weari-Wyingga standing by the rusty iron door to the hut, Garbarla started across toward him. “What ...?” he began as the old man looked up at him. Then, Garbarla stopped as he saw the large pile of black ashes spread across the threshold -- half inside, half outside the small hut.

“Tammy Margurla,” said Weari-Wyingga.

Garbarla gulped in shock as he realised that the ashes were all that remained of the old lady.


Later that evening, all the men of the village were gathered at a special corroboree to discuss the death of Tammy Margurla. They sat cross-legged on the hard earth before the raging ceremonial fire, within the circular blue gum grove again. Garbarla sat beside Weari-Wyingga, glad of the warmth of the open fire. Although it was three months till the start of winter, the nights were drawing in rapidly. Also, he enjoyed the pleasant eucalyptus smell of the wood burning in the fire.

Garbarla looked slowly around the circle of brown faces, all looking stern and solemn. All except one that is. Just like the last time that Garbarla had attended a corroboree, after the death of Lucy Gabadabadana, they had dispensed with the usual religious rituals at the start of the corroboree. But for a different reason this time. Because of the special witness who now came forward to give her testimony about the death of Tammy Margurla.

Traditionally, women are not allowed to attend male corroborees -- although they can hold their all-female corroborees. Over the last twelve years, since the deaths of most of the men in the village, there had been calls to allow some of the more senior women to stand in as Elders at male-corroborees. But Weari-Wyingga and other traditionalists in the tribe had held out against the idea.

Now, to the astonishment of many of the men, a woman had finally not only attended, but stepped up to take centre stage before them.

“‘Allo,” said twenty-six-year-old Nancy Girigibali. She grinned toothily, scratching nervously at her hair, for a few moments. Finally, after some prompting from Weari-Wyingga, she went on to tell what she had seen earlier that day: “I wus,” she began. Then, seeing Garbarla, who had taken on the unofficial role of English teacher to the whole tribe, she corrected herself, “I was walking through the village on the way to see Sandra Gurrupiya around 4:30 today, when I ’eard ... heard a sort of screeching noise coming from behind me. Then, I felt hot wind burn the ’airs ... hairs on the back of me ... my neck. Then, this red thing whizzed --” She demonstrated a “whizzing” motion with her right hand as she spoke --, “past at head height and zoomed toward old Tammy Margurla who wus ... was standing outside her hut talking to Jenny Munggundina.”

‘Jenny Munggundina!’ thought Garbarla, wondering why the name set off alarm bells inside his head. Then, he recalled that Jenny Munggundina had once been engaged to Larry Mutapina. But she had dropped Mutapina and taken up with John Dulban! ‘Of course!’ he thought, wondering why it hadn’t occurred to him before. ‘Jenny Munggundina dumped Larry Mutapina for John Dulban, so Larry killed John!’ He started to voice the thought aloud. But looking around the circle of faces, Garbarla realised that they had all had the same thought.

“Anyway,” continued Nancy Girigibali, “it made this kind of tinny noise. Like ...” She stopped for a moment to consider before continuing, “Like someone opening and closing the lid of a glass jar, only more metal-sounding. An’ ... and this blood-red bird-thing zoomed toward them. They wus ... were standing together talking, till it was almost on them. Then, Jenny shrieked and ran into Tammy’s ’ouse ... house. Old Tammy started after her, but the bird-thing ’it ’er ... hit her on the back of the head and knocked her down. Hearing her screaming me and half the village ran to help. But when we got there, she was on fire. She just burst into flames like Lucy Gabadabadana done ... did.”

At the mention of Lucy’s name, Garbarla thought of her cousin David Ngamirimba. Who, with Nambidjimba, was hunting John Dulban’s killer. ‘What can be taking them so long? It shouldn’t have taken them this long to find him and bring him back! Unless they’re both dead!’ Garbarla thought. Again, he thought of how easy Larry Mutapina’s tracks had been to find, and he wondered if Larry had killed David Ngamirimba and Nambidjimba.

Garbarla was suddenly roused from his thoughts by the sound of wailing. Looking up, he saw Nancy Girigibali wailing and staring glassy-eyed back over his shoulder. All the men in the circle had risen to their feet and were slowly reversing across the corroboree ground. Like Nancy, their eyes shone like the eyes of a rabbit caught in a spotlight.

“What’s the matter?” Garbarla asked. Receiving no answer, he looked toward Weari-Wyingga, who pointed back over the grove of blue gums that separated the corroboree ground from the village beyond.

Stare as he might, for almost a minute, Garbarla could not see what had startled the others. But in only seconds, he heard the metallic screeching that he had heard before the death of Lucy Gabadabadana and thought, ‘My God, the fire owl is attacking the village!’ But the screeching rapidly approached, and soon Garbarla could pick out a pin-prick of red in the distant sky beyond the blue gums. ‘No, it’s not!’ he realised. ‘It’s coming after us!’

As though reading his thoughts, the warriors behind Garbarla began to wail their terror louder than before.

“Stay calm, try to stay calm!” he heard Weari-Wyingga advise them. But as the fire owl reached the grove of leafy trees, Nancy Girigibali let out a shriek and raced out of the corroboree ground, heading away from the village, out into the brown dirt desert.

“No, wait!” called Garbarla. Hearing a strange, almost snake-like hissing, he looked back and saw smoke billowing from the grove of blue gums.

“It’s burning its way through the trees!” shouted Neal Judawali. At his words, most of the warriors turned and fled after Nancy, leaving behind only Judawali, Garbarla, Weari-Wyingga, and a sixteen-year-old hunter, Bobby Mandawuya.

Thick, pungent, grey-black smoke continued billowing from the gum trees. Forcing Garbarla and the others to drop to their knees, overcome as the smoke filled the corroboree ground.

“Oh God!” cried Judawali between gasping coughs.

‘Don’t waste time praying to God,’ though Garbarla. ‘This fire owl thing is a creature of the devil!’ But then, he realised that in Dream-Time mythology God (the Creator) and Devil (the Destroyer) were two aspects of the same being, whether Aborigines worshipped the Great Rainbow Snake, the Bunyip, or the Emu-Man as Garbarla’s tribe did.

‘It really does look like an owl! A big red owl!’ thought Garbarla as the fire owl slowly emerged from the grove of gum trees.

To the relief of the four men, once the creature emerged into the corroboree ground, the blue gums quickly stopped smouldering.

“Watch out!” warned Bobby Mandawuya. “It’s hiding in the smoke!”

For a few moments, the fire owl was invisible as it roared around the corroboree ground above their heads. Its location hidden except for the thunderous whirring of its wings – ‘Jesu,s it flies faster than any owl I’ve ever seen!’ thought Garbarla, -- and its occasional metallic shriek. But once the gum trees stopped smouldering, the thick pall of smoke was quickly blown out of the area by the evening breeze.

The creature continued to circle the clearing for a minute or more, as though deciding which of the four Aborigines to settle its deadly body upon.

Each time that it circled over him, Garbarla instinctively ducked, although it was three metres above his head. And he knew from what he had already seen that it flew too rapidly for him to have any hope of escape if it did decide to settle upon him.

Finally, the fire owl swooped down. Not to attack, but merely to roost.

“It’s flying into the fire!” said young Bobby Mandawuya. Obviously astonished as the creature flew straight into the roaring ceremonial fire in the centre of the clearing.

The “bird” landed on a large red gum log blazing in the fire and began to preen its “feathers” like any normal roosting bird. Except that the roost it had chosen was a glowing red log, and a sea of fire swirled around it as the fire owl preened.

“The fire doesn’t hurt it,” said Bobby, sounding more awed than afraid.

‘Why should it?’ thought Garbarla. They watched the “owl” as it hopped from foot to foot slowly, stepping up the diagonally lying log toward the “cool” end for a few seconds, then, slowly hopping back down toward the heart of the fire.

“What’s it doing?” asked Bobby as the “bird” continued to tap-tap-tap up to the high end of the bough, then, tap-tap-tap down to the low end, over and over again.

“Trying to find a comfortable place to roost,” explained Neal Judawali. “Haven’t you ever seen a boobook owl roosting on a tree branch?”

“Yes, but never on a branch in the middle of a blazing fire!”

For two minutes -- which seemed two hours -- the fire owl tap-tap-tapped up and down the burning log. All the while staring at the four men, watching each man in turn.

‘It’s trying to decide which one of us to attack!’ thought Garbarla. He wished now that he’d had the sense of mind to flee with the others earlier. But he knew that frail old Weari-Wyingga would not have been able to keep up with the younger men and would have been the fire owl’s victim. ‘I owe the old man some loyalty,’ he thought. Weari-Wyingga had saved Garbarla’s life more than once over the last thirteen years.

All four men watched the fire owl in horror. Afraid to run, afraid to stay. All wished that they had run earlier. All were wondering who the fire owl would select to be its next victim.

‘Just don’t let it be old Weari-Wyingga!’ thought Garbarla. Looking across the corroboree ground, he saw the old man trapped in a bad spot near the ceremonial weapons, tools, and relics. Nearly a hundred metres from the lone entrance through the blue gum grove ringing the corroboree ground. Much too far for the old man to have any hope of escaping.

Finally, to the relief -- ? Dismay? -- of the four men, the fire owl stopped its tap-tap-tapping around the burning red gum branch. And stopped facing Weari-Wyingga.

‘Oh God, no!’ thought Garbarla, realising that his presentiment had been correct.

Flexing its long, red luminous wings to their full length -- nearly half a metre across -- the fire owl stretched up and let out its metallic cog-grinding shriek.

“Oh Jesus!” cried Bobby Mandawuya, slapping his hands to his ears.

Although his eardrums felt as though they were going to burst, Garbarla could not take his eyes off Weari-Wyingga as the fire owl finally launched itself into flight: straight across the clearing toward the old man.

“Look out, it’s attacking!” shrieked young Bobby.

“Wait!” cried Garbarla. But the sixteen-year-old panicked and raced across toward the small gap in the blue gum grove. After a second’s hesitation, Neal Judawali raced after the teenager.

“No, stop! We’ve got to help him!” shouted Garbarla. Then, realising that the others had deserted them, he started across the clearing at a run -- having to side-step the ceremonial fire -- in a vain bid to rescue Weari-Wyingga. ‘My God, how can I help him?’ wondered Garbarla. Seeing the blotchy state of his still-healing hands, he recalled how helpless he had been trying to save Lucy Gabadabadana two months earlier.

‘But I’ve got to try, can’t let the old man be killed!’ thought Garbarla. Expecting Weari-Wyingga to run toward the break in the grove, Garbarla was surprised when the old man stood his ground.

“Run, damn it, run!” shouted Garbarla, thinking that the old man was frozen to the spot from terror. But instead of running, the old man continued to hold his ground. And began ferreting around among the ceremonial weapons, tools, and relics on the ground around him.

‘What the Hell is he doing?’ thought Garbarla. Wondering what the old man was looking for: ‘A ceremonial knife or spear?’ But he doubted if any man-made weapon would be effective against the fire owl.

“Stay back!” warned Weari-Wyingga, shooing Garbarla away. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I hope to God you do!” said Garbarla as the old man began to straighten up again.

“Which God?” asked Weari-Wyingga with a toothy grin. “Gurugadji? Or Jesus?”

Before Garbarla could answer, the fire owl stopped circling the old man and swooped down, shrieking its metallic shriek all the while. But as the old man straightened up, the fire owl stopped its downward rush. Its shrieking took on a higher, shriller pitch, and it began to bob and weave like a small boat on a stormy sea.

‘It’s going to fall out of the air!’ thought Garbarla. He watched the “owl” desperately trying to stabilise itself as it was rocked about by the power of whatever relic that Weari-Wyingga was holding up toward it.

‘What is it?’ wondered Garbarla. But stare as he might, through the failing light, he was unable to see what the old man was holding aloft. But whatever it was, it certainly had an effect on the fire owl. The creature’s shrilling reached an even higher pitch until Garbarla had to cover his ears with his hands, almost passing out from the agony. ‘Oh God!’ thought Garbarla. He was afraid that his eyeballs were going to pop out as the shrilling seemed to slice through his brain like a laser. His sinuses began to throb, and Garbarla feared that he was going to suffer a nasal haemorrhage.

Then, suddenly, the shrilling stopped. And the orange-red bird-like demon lost its battle to stabilise itself and fell with a thud to the ground at Weari-Wyingga’s feet.

For a few seconds, Garbarla was too numb from the throbbing in his head to move. But as the throbbing subsided, he cried, “Oh, my God, you’ve killed it.” He started forward at a run, ignoring the fact that the fire owl was still flopping around like a fish trying to find its way back to the water.

“No, no, stand back!” warned the old man, holding up what Garbarla now recognised as the Dark Stone: a black marble, triangular stone, fifteen centimetres in length along the sides, five centimetres thick, with thin bars of white ochre embedded along the front and back. Unlike the other relics, this Dark Stone was only eleven years old. It had replaced an ancient Dark Stone, which had been buried with the monstrous serpent Mamaragan, which had killed most of the men in the village back in December 1984.

“Stay back,” Weari-Wyingga repeated. He held up the Dark Stone as though to drop it on the fire owl. “It’s far from dead yet.”

As the old man dropped the Dark Stone, the fire owl suddenly came to life again. And rocketed straight across the clearing toward Garbarla.

Garbarla jumped to the ground, expecting to feel the fire owl drop onto his back as it had done to Lucy Gabadabadana. But, although the hot air singed the hairs on the nape of his neck, the fire owl kept going, soaring out of the corroboree ground. Toward the nearby forest.

“Come on,” said Weari-Wyingga. He quickly picked up the Dark Stone again and then fled the corroboree ground with surprising speed.

“What is it?” asked Garbarla, racing after the old man.

“We’ve chased it toward the village,” pointed out Weari-Wyingga. “Women, children sleeping there.”

“God, yes,” agreed Garbarla, as he raced up to the old man.

“Take this,” said Weari-Wyingga. He handed over the Dark Stone.

Reluctantly leaving the old man, Garbarla raced through the corrugated-iron village on the trail of the fire owl. To his pleasant surprise, the fire owl soared straight through the village, into the brown dirt plains beyond.

“Thank God for that,” said Garbarla. Unwilling to follow the fire owl alone into the plains at night, Garbarla stopped at the edge of the village to wait for Weari-Wyingga. He shivered as the cold night air caught up with him as he stopped.

Seven minutes later, the old man arrived.

“It went out there,” said Garbarla. He nodded toward the desert.

“After Jimba, David,” said Weari-Wyingga.

“What?” asked Garbarla, shocked.

“Mutapina sent the fire owl here to stop us. But when it failed here, he sent it after his hunters, to stop them from finding him.”

“My God,” said Garbarla. As the old man took back the Dark Stone, Garbarla asked, “How did you know that that would stop it?”

The old man grinned toothily. “I didn’t. I grabbed the nearest relic, which was heavy enough to use as a weapon against it.”


Two days later, as evening approached, they were sitting around the cook fire near the edge of the settlement, waiting to eat the evening meal: roots, berries, and two young nail-tail kangaroos that the hunters had brought back that day. Garbarla watched old Wendy Tudjudamara tending the fire. He wondered how she felt knowing that, by Aboriginal law, her son, Larry, would be executed if brought back to stand trial. After a few seconds, the old woman looked around as though feeling his eyes on her. In Aboriginal society, the next-of-kin of criminals are not hounded as they are in white society. But Garbarla suspected that old Wendy must feel that everyone was watching her all the time, blaming her for having borne a murderer.

Beside Wendy squatted Suzie Wanjimari, another elderly lubra, helping to tend the fire. Suzie picked up a long grey gum stick and bent across to prod at the cooking nail-tails. But at the last second, she stopped and stared across in Garbarla’s direction. At first, he thought that the old lubra was staring at him. Then, he realised that she was staring behind him, out toward the desert. As he started to turn around, Suzie pointed over Garbarla’s shoulder and said, “Runners comin’!”

Peer as he might out into the brown dust bowl, for nearly a minute, Garbarla could see nothing. Then, finally, he made out the tiniest of puffs of flying dust way off near the horizon. But as he (and most of the village) watched, the dust cloud rapidly approached, all the while growing in size.

“‘Ow many runners?” asked Karen Yunupingu, David Ngamirimba’s mother.

“Two runners only,” said Suzie Wanjimari confidently.

‘How the Hell can she tell that?’ wondered Garbarla. He still was unable to say with confidence that the dust cloud was running men, not kangaroos or emus. ‘And I’ve got 20-20 vision! Just how good is her eyesight?’

“What men?” asked Wendy Tudjudamara, in a small, frail voice.

Garbarla glanced over at her, knowing that she must be torn between wanting to see justice done and hoping that her son had escaped.

Even old Suzie with her phenomenal vision had to peer for a few seconds. Before confidently announcing, “Nambidjimba and Mutapina.”

Wendy Tudjudamara let out a loud sigh of either grief or relief. Karen Yunupingu began to wail in distress that her son David Ngamirimba had not returned.

As other women began to wail in support of Karen’s grief, Garbarla felt like joining them at the thought of the death of his friend David.


That night, as soon as it was dark, the men gathered in the clearing within the grove of blue gum trees in a special corroboree. This time to decide the fate of Larry Mutapina.

Unlike other corroborees that Garbarla had attended recently, this one did start with ceremonial dancing. The Emu-Dance to show their worship of Gurugadji the Emu-Man, Creator-Destroyer God of Garbarla’s tribe. While Garbarla and Weari-Wyingga sat watching, most of the other men in the village did the dance around the fire which had them slowly awkwardly stepping in imitation of an emu’s strangely wooden gait, their heads and hands bent before them in imitation of the emu’s jerky motion, which has the flightless bird dipping its head and long neck forward and back as it walks, like some kind of mechanical toy.

For nearly thirty minutes, the young men danced around the ceremonial fire while Garbarla and Weari-Wyingga watched. The only other men not joining in were Larry Mutapina and the two young men guarding him, Neal Judawali and Nambidjimba.

When at last the dance was done, young Nambidjimba stepped forward to tell how he and David Ngamirimba had followed Mutapina’s footprints out into the desert for weeks, killing food every day or two. Stopping for only five or six hours sleep a night in the hope of overtaking Mutapina. And Garbarla noticed for the first time how drawn and lined the young man’s eyes were. ‘He must be close to collapse!’ thought Garbarla, impressed by Jimba’s stamina and dedication to duty.

Garbarla suddenly jerked to attention as he heard his name mentioned. He realised that Jimba was relating how, despite their great speed, he and David Ngamirimba had been ever cautious of ambush, recalling Garbarla’s warning that Mutapina’s footprints around his hut were a little too obvious, “Possibly left on purpose to be found and followed,” Jimba quoted.

He heard a sharp intake of breath from some of the young hunters and knew that they must be thinking, “At last the white man is learning Aboriginal ways.”

“But despite our best efforts, we were ambushed,” explained Jimba. He went on to describe how Mutapina had lain in wait behind a giant basalt boulder in the desert, “And speared Ngamirimba in the back as we went past.” The young warrior’s voice quavered as he related the death of his friend. And mutterings of anger arose from the ring of seated men on hearing how Larry Mutapina had cowardly struck from behind without warning.

But Larry Mutapina merely stared forward, his hands tied behind his back. ‘No guilt, shame, remorse, or even fear on his face!’ thought Garbarla. ‘Doesn’t he care whether he lives or dies? Doesn’t he care that he has murdered two young men, John Dulban and David Ngamirimba?’

Yet for most of the trial, that is exactly how it seemed. Larry Mutapina felt no remorse for killing the two hunters and did not care about his own fate. He stood wooden-faced, refusing to acknowledge young Nambidjimba, or later Weari-Wyingga, as the old man tried to question him:

“Do you deny killing your close friend, John Dulban?” asked Weari-Wyingga. Then, when he received no reply, “Do you deny killing David Ngamirimba in the manner described by Nambidjimba?” And finally, “Do you have anything to say in your defence?”

Garbarla could tell that the stony silence was beginning to irk the usually imperturbable old man. And he himself felt strangely troubled by it. ‘It’s almost as though he knows that there’s nothing that we can do to harm him!’ thought Garbarla. He wondered if it was true? ‘Can he summon up the fire owl at will to do his bidding? To free him and possibly kill all of us? But if so, why did he have to use a stone axe to kill John Dulban and a spear to kill David Ngamirimba? Why couldn’t he just send the fire owl swooping down onto them to burn them to a cinder, as it did with Lucy Gabadabadana?’

“Did you kill John Dulban out of jealousy over Jenny Munggundina?” asked the old man. “Because she broke off your engagement and became engaged to Dulban?”

For the first time, Mutapina’s facade wavered as he sneered at the mention of Jenny Munggundina. But despite his lip quivering for a moment, he still refused to speak.

The old man continued to fire off questions at Mutapina throughout the night without receiving any reply. It was nearly dawn, and Garbarla saw that the other men all looked as fatigued as he felt. When Weari-Wyingga in frustration, finally asked, “Can you give me any reason at all why I should not sentence you to be killed?”

Finally, Larry Mutapina acknowledged the old man’s presence. Looking directly at Weari-Wyingga for the first time, in a calm voice, he said, “You can’t kill me. The fire owl won’t let you kill me.”

“Why should it care if we kill you?” asked Weari-Wyingga.

“The fire owl is evil, and I do its bidding,” explained Mutapina. “As long as I continued to do its bidding, it won’t let me be killed!”

Weari-Wyingga and Garbarla exchanged a puzzled look. Garbarla knew that the old man must be thinking the same as him. According to Aboriginal legend, it is Mutapina’s evil that controls the fire owl. Now he’s telling us that its evil controls him!’

“Were you doing the fire owl’s bidding when you killed John Dulban?” asked Weari-Wyingga.

Larry Mutapina hesitated as though afraid of being trapped into an admission. But finally he smiled broadly as though to a friend and said, “Yes, yes, I was. The fire owl wanted John Dulban dead. So even though he was a good friend of mine, I killed him.”

‘He’s just hanged himself!’ thought Garbarla. Although he knew that Aboriginal executions do not involve a noose.

It was already dawn when Weari-Wyingga finally finished the questioning. Although, to Garbarla’s eyes, Mutapina was clearly mad, Aboriginal justice makes no allowance for loss of reason. So finally Weari-Wyingga announced, “Larry Mutapina, by your own words, you are guilty of murdering John Dulban. So I sentence you to be executed for your crime.”

Mutapina smiled broadly as though at a great joke, then repeated, “You can’t kill me. The fire owl won’t let you kill me.”


Since he did not have any TAFE classes to teach that day, Garbarla was able to sleep in upon his small cot-bed in the second bedroom of his mother’s corrugated-iron hut. But the noonday sun flooded in beneath the curtain over his four-paned window, waking him. Garbarla rolled over to try to shield his eyes, but he soon found that the patch of heat in the small of his back distracted him.

As his mother began to move about in the next room, Garbarla sighed and said, “Well, I guess I’d better get up.” He slowly dragged himself to a sitting position on the bed, then rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles. He yawned widely and stretched, still exhausted after the all-night corroboree.

Garbarla had missed breakfast, but he found Debbie preparing lunch: raw roots and cold, baked nail-tail kangaroo left over from the night before. Sitting cross-legged on a mat on the dirt floor to eat, he thought of Larry Mutapina, who would be similarly seated, eating in Wendy Tudjudamara’s hut right now. Rather than lock convicted prisoners in gaol, Aboriginal society places them in a form of “house arrest” with armed guards patrolling the borders of the village to make certain that they cannot escape.

They had finished eating and Garbarla was helping Debbie clear up -- something which, as a “white man” he was allowed to do, whilst other Aboriginal males his age would be ashamed to be seen doing woman’s work -- when a rapping came on the iron door of the three-room hut.

Garbarla and Debbie exchanged a puzzled look. Both were wondering who would come calling on them. Garbarla said, “I’ll go see who it is.” At the front door, he saw the smiling, buck-toothed figure of Alex Jalburgul Gul. One of the tribe’s most experienced hunters.

“Weari-Wyingga wants to see you,” said Alex, grinning widely.

“Why?’ asked Garbarla, puzzled.

Although Weari-Wyingga was the leader of the village and often asked Garbarla for advice, drawing on his white education, the old man had always wandered across to Debbie Bulilka’s hut. Never in the thirteen years since Garbarla’s return to his people had the old man ever summoned him before.

Alex grinned widely again. “He wants you to be a Gagawar,” said Alex.

“A Gagawar?” echoed Garbarla, still puzzled.

A Gagawar is a sacred messenger sent out from one tribe to another to arrange meetings between the Elders of the two villages. Or to get permission for hunters from one village to cross another village or tribe’s land. Over the past thirteen years, Weari-Wyingga had sent out hundreds of Gagawars. If not daily, then certainly every two or three weeks. Most of the village males aged sixteen upwards had had turns as Gagawars. So, although Garbarla had never been a Gagawar before, this did not seem special enough to explain the old man summoning Garbarla to his hut.

“Your turn had to come sooner or later,” said Alex, leading Garbarla through the corrugated iron village. Outside many huts, women were sitting darning mats or clothing. Others were grinding millet into flour in stone grinding bowls -- although they now used wooden or steel grinding mallets. Still others were carving wood into boomerangs, spears, or woomeras -- wooden launchers which allow Aboriginal hunters to throw a three-metre spear over a hundred metres with great accuracy.

As they approached Weari-Wyingga’s three-room hut, a strong salt breeze blew into the village from the nearby Yannan River. “It’s going to rain soon,” suggested Alex Jalburgul Gul, knowing what the salt wind portended.

“Yes,” agreed Garbarla. He thought, ‘A great time for me to suddenly be appointed a Gagawar!’ He didn’t look forward to the idea of trekking hundreds of kilometres across country in pouring rain. But he knew that if he wanted to remain in his ancestral village that he could not refuse the appointment.

On the outskirts of the village, Garbarla spotted the short, stocky figure of Tom Budjiwa in the underbrush, making no real effort at concealment. Obviously Tom was one of the guards assigned to keep Larry Mutapina in the village until Mutapina’s time of execution.

When they reached the old man’s hut, the iron door swung open before they could knock, as though Weari-Wyingga had sensed their approach. Weari-Wyingga sniffed at the salt breeze and smiled widely as he said, “Big rain coming soon.”

“Yes,” agreed Alex. After a nod from the old man, the hunter turned and strode away.

Weari-Wyingga placed a withered fatherly hand on Garbarla’s shoulder and led the young man into the front room of his hut. Which was as sparsely furnished as Debbie Bulilka’s, with only a low red gum table and half a dozen woven grass mats. Then, to Garbarla’s surprise, instead of stopping to sit in the front room, Weari-Wyingga led him through to the third room, at the rear of the hut. This room had a larger red gum table and six rickety-looking red gum chairs. It was also in darkness, since, unlike the other rooms, it had no windows.

Expecting to be told that he was to be a Gagawar, Garbarla almost fell over in shock when the old man said, “I want you to be Mutapina’s Mulunguwa.”

“Mulunguwa!” echoed Garbarla, startled. He knew that the Aboriginal word meant “executioner”. Unlike white society, where executions are carried out openly, sometimes even publicly, Aboriginal executions are shrouded in secrecy. Quite commonly, executioners’ absence from the village for weeks on end is explained by the cover of being appointed a Gagawar.

“Mulunguwa!” repeated Weari-Wyingga.

‘Why me!’ Garbarla wanted to ask, but knew better. Over the last thirteen years, since his return from white society, this was what the half-breed had feared more than anything else.

“You have been back with us for thirteen years now,” said Weari-Wyingga. “Now it is time to prove yourself.”

“Prove myself to whom?” asked Garbarla. He looked around the gloomy, darkened room, thinking that it matched his state of depression. “No one else will know what I have done.”

“Prove yourself to me ... And prove yourself to you,” said the old man. He spoke in a quiet, yet firm voice, which made it plain that he would brook no further argument.


‘Oh great!’ thought Garbarla as he stepped out of Weari-Wyingga’s hut. And into the pouring rain. The “streets” between the huts were already a morass. ‘I could use a dugout canoe!’ he thought as he started back at a trot toward Debbie Bulilka’s hut.

‘I could refuse the appointment!’ thought Garbarla. He felt sick to the stomach at the idea of having to kill someone. As his feet slop-slop-slopped through the ever softening mud, he knew, though, that he could not do that. To refuse the duty of Mulunguwa would mean banishment from the village for life. ‘Or possibly worse!’ he thought, wondering if another executioner would be sent after him if he refused the appointment.

“My God, look at you!” said Debbie in surprise as Garbarla stepped into the front room of their hut, soaked half to the skin. “Looks like a drowned cat,” she said, getting the idiom wrong. “Go change, I’ll get some towels to rub you dry.”

“All right,” said Garbarla. He started to shiver and sneeze as he headed toward his bedroom. For a second, he wondered if he caught a cold -- or flu -- whether it would excuse him from the duty of executioner. Then, he recalled old Weari-Wyingga’s words, “It is time to prove yourself ... Prove yourself to you,” and felt ashamed for his cowardice and weakness.

Garbarla had already stripped down to his underpants when Debbie returned and started to rub him dry, ignoring his embarrassed protests.

“Don’t be a baby,” chided Debbie as she continued to rub him vigorously.

“Take care, I still need that skin,” joked Garbarla.

In Aboriginal society, it is common for mothers to see their sons naked in adulthood, but after his white upbringing, Garbarla had trouble adjusting to his mother’s behaviour.

“What did Weari-Wyingga want?” asked Debbie, obviously trying to take her son’s mind off his embarrassment.

“He appointed me Mul ...” he stopped himself in the nick of time, saying instead, “Gagawar.”

He hoped that his mother had not caught the slip, but her sharp intake of breath told him that she had. But he knew that she would never admit it, since they would both be punished harshly for him having told her. A Mulunguwa is sworn to take the secret of his appointment to the grave with him.

“When ... when are you leaving?” asked Debbie, in a faint voice.

“I was,” he had to stop when he was overcome by an attack of sneezing. As Debbie helped him into his bed, he said, “I was supposed to go out tomorrow.”

But as the machine-gun ratta-tat-tat of rain on the iron roof continued, Garbarla doubted that he would be able to go out the next day. ‘Even if I am well enough!’ he thought, before starting to sneeze uncontrollably.


When the next morning came, Garbarla woke up sneezing again, to the realisation that he did indeed have a cold. And also that the rain from last night had continued without respite.

“Need a canoe to get about the village,” said Debbie by way of greeting as she came to see how he was. She grinned sheepishly, and Garbarla knew that she must be thinking that he couldn’t go out as Mulunguwa or Gagawar in this kind of weather. ‘Still, I suppose Mutapina can’t leave the village either!’ Garbarla thought.


They had finished breakfast, after Garbarla had dressed despite his mother’s protests, when they heard a hammering at the front door.

Debbie and Garbarla exchanged a puzzled look, both thinking the same thing. “Who could that be coming out in this kind of rain?” asked Debbie as Garbarla went to investigate.

At the door, Garbarla was greeted by Alex Jalburgul Gul’s smiling, buck-toothed countenance. To the astonishment of Garbarla and the delight of Debbie -- who they heard giggling behind them -- Alex was holding a full sheet of corrugated iron over his head instead of an umbrella.

“Come on in,” said Garbarla. He stepped aside to make way for the young hunter.

Alex rested the dry side of the iron against the hut and stepped inside, obviously relieved to be out of the rainstorm even temporarily.

“Breakfast?” asked Debbie. She pointed to the cold meat and roots left over from their meal.

Alex shook his head, grinning almost idiotically. “I just came to tell you that Weari-Wyingga says Garbarla won’t have to go out as Gagawar until the rain stops.”

“Thank goodness!” said Garbarla. He heard Debbie heave a sigh of relief and knew that there was no doubt that she had guessed that his real assignment was as Mutapina’s executioner.

“Sure, you won’t have a bite to eat?” asked Debbie.

“No, I only came over to give Garbarla the news,” insisted Alex. Although he was obviously not keen to go back out into the pelting rain. “I gotta help out watching Larry today.”

Garbarla saw Debbie look up at the comment.

“Not that he’s likely to make a break for it in this downpour,” joked Alex. “He might be mad, but he’s not crazy.”

Then, despite their further protests, Alex took up his corrugated-iron sheet and raced back out into the rain. Somehow he kept his footing in the slushy mud.

Despite Garbarla’s protests, Debbie insisted that he return to bed. “Time for you to be up and about when your cold is broken.”

“It already has,” protested Garbarla. Only to be doubled up by a fit of sneezing.

“Back to bed!” insisted Debbie. And this time he did as ordered.


It was five days before the rain finally stopped. When Garbarla finally stepped outside the hut again, the village smelt so fresh and clean. As it always did after a big rain. But looked so dirty.

“What a stinking mess!” said Garbarla.

He stared out the door of the hut at the mud-splattered village, which looked as though it had been through a Queensland monsoon.

“I’d better see what I can do to help clean it up,” he said.

Looking about, he saw that some of the iron huts had been blown down in the heavy rains and winds, and would need complete rebuilding. Other huts had gaping rectangular holes in the roofs or outside walls, where sheets of iron had been blown off, to either lie in the mud, or against or on top of neighbouring huts.

Slowly, Garbarla and Debbie walked through the village, wary of stepping on nails or torn corrugated iron. They were almost at Weari-Wyingga’s hut when Debbie tapped her son’s shoulder and said, “Hut slide.”

Thinking that he had misheard, Garbarla looked around and gasped, surprised to see that she was right. Most of the huts were built with little or no foundations. Many of them had moved a few centimetres in the storm without suffering any major structural damage. However, the big mover was the two-room hut of Nambidjimba’s twenty-eight-year-old cousin, Susan Gurtima, which had slid eight or ten metres, completely cutting off one of the “streets” between the huts.

“My God!” said Garbarla, unable to stop himself laughing. “How’ll they ever move that back?”

Debbie shrugged and said, “Walk around it.”

Garbarla laughed, then realised that she was probably right. Aborigines have managed to survive 65,000 years in Australia because they have a very relaxed outlook on life.

He stopped laughing when they noticed a tall, lean figure standing by one of the storm-damaged huts, glaring toward them.

“Mutapina!” warned Debbie. But the murderer made no move to attack them.

Although he could have turned and reversed direction, Garbarla realised that, having been appointed Mutapina’s executioner, it was important not to show weakness. So, trying to look more confident than he felt, he strode straight up to Mutapina. He was almost past the murderer when Larry put out an arm to block his passage.

Garbarla considered pushing the arm away to rush past. But in the end, his bravado failed him, and he turned to face Mutapina.

“What can I do for you, Larry?” asked Garbarla, hoping that he had kept the quiver out of his voice.

“Let’s finish it now, Garbarla!” challenged Mutapina.

“Finish what?” asked Garbarla, feigning surprise. He wondered, ‘How could Mutapina know that I’ve been appointed his executioner?’ No one but Weari-Wyingga, Garbarla and Debbie had known, and none of them would have told the murderer.

“I know you’ve been appointed my Mulunguwa!” declared Mutapina. Obviously not caring that he had broken tribal etiquette by announcing this fact in front of others.

Garbarla heard both Debbie and Susan Gurtima gasp and knew that others must have heard also. It seemed to him as though the whole village had gone quiet, all the clean-up had stopped so that everyone in the village could listen. But he knew that this could not be true.

Garbarla considered for a moment. He thought, ‘What have I got to lose? He’s just as likely to kill me in an ambush as an open fight.’ Aloud, he said, “All right. I’ll meet you in the corroboree ground in an hour’s time.”


An hour later, Garbarla arrived at the clearing among the grove of blue gums. He had changed his clothes and was now naked except for a loincloth. His chest was painted in white ochre in the ceremonial patterns of battle. He was carrying a large hunting boomerang, a woomera, three three-metre spears, and a large stone knife. Entering the corroboree ground warily, he saw Larry Mutapina, standing in plain sight at the other side of the ceremonial ground. Mutapina was dressed and armed similarly to Garbarla.

In the middle of the corroboree ground, the ceremonial fire burnt brightly.

“I was afraid that you wouldn’t show up,” Larry Mutapina called out tauntingly.

Blushing red at the slight, Garbarla thought, ‘He’s trying to make me lose my cool and go off half cocked.’

“I’m not the type to run,” called back Garbarla. “That’s more your speciality, as I recall it.” Even across the hundred metres of the corroboree ground, he could see Mutapina’s face flush with rage.

“I’m no coward!” Mutapina shouted. “I only ran so that those two fools would follow, so that I could kill them. And it worked. I was able to kill David Ngamirimba!”

“But only by spearing him in the back,” taunted Garbarla. Although not happy about this part of the war ritual, he knew that it was required by tribal law. “And you weren’t good enough to kill Nambidjimba. Jimba caught you single-handed and brought you back here at spear-point.”

“That’s a lie!” shouted Mutapina. “I wanted to come back, to face you idiots. To fight you idiots. To kill you idiots!”

“All right,” said Garbarla, wishing that he felt as brave as he was acting, “you can have one free shot.” He turned around to present his naked back to Mutapina. “Go ahead, this is how you like your targets, isn’t it?”

“I am not a coward!” shrieked Mutapina. And for a second, Garbarla feared that the murderer would actually take up the challenge to spear him in the back.

As he started to turn back around, Garbarla noticed Weari-Wyingga standing a dozen metres away, beckoning him over. Ignoring Mutapina, Garbarla strode across to the old man, standing under a large blue gum bough.

As he approached, Garbarla saw that the old man was holding the Dark Stone, which they had already used to defeat the fire owl once. Weari-Wyingga was chuckling at the way that Garbarla had bested Mutapina in the opening verbal skirmish. But he soon upbraided the young man:

“You should never have agreed to come here to fight him in open combat. You should have waited outside the village for your chance to ambush him.”

“How could I deny him the right to a fair fight?” demanded Garbarla.

“He doesn’t want a fair fight. It isn’t in his nature. A spear in the back, like with David Ngamirimba, that is Mutapina’s style.”

“But he challenged me ...!”

“You mean he tricked you. Used your sense of fair play against you. All he wants is to escape punishment.”

“I don’t understand?”

“By tribal law, if he kills you in open combat, his execution order must be annulled. Then, the murders of Lucy Gabadabadana and David Ngamirimba can never be avenged.”

“Oh,” said Garbarla, understanding at last. He suddenly felt very stupid.

“Also,” continued the old man, “since he has told the whole village that you are his Mulunguwa, he has put you in a no-win situation.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He might kill you, or if you kill him as a Mulunguwa, you can then be legally sought out and killed by any of his living male relatives. Who in turn, cannot be punished for killing you.”

“What?” demanded Garbarla, in disbelief.

“That is why the identity of a Mulunguwa is always kept so secret. To protect him from retribution by his victim’s next-of-kin.”

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“It is tribal law!” pointed out Weari-Wyingga, sounding a little indignant.

“It’s still bloody ridiculous.”

“Possibly so,” agreed the old man.

“Are you going to stand there talking like old women?” shouted Larry Mutapina. “Or are we going to fight?”

“I was waiting for you to stop trembling from fear,” responded Garbarla. Turning, he started back toward the centre of the corroboree ground.

He stopped by the ceremonial fire, enjoying the eucalyptus smell of the burning gum tree wood. But hearing movement in the fire, he looked down and saw the orange-red figure of the fire owl tap-tap-tapping its way around a large bough, searching for a comfortable perch.

“Don’t worry, it won’t hurt you!” shouted Mutapina. “This is between you and me now.”

Deciding that it was time to change the subject, Garbarla asked, “How did you know that I had been appointed your Mulunguwa?”

“It told me,” said Mutapina, pointing with a spear toward the fire owl. Which had finally found a satisfactory perch on a burning log and was in the process of preening itself.

“All right,” said Garbarla, “let’s fight.”

“You’re the Mulunguwa, you come over here,” challenged Mutapina.

Although he would have preferred Mutapina to come to him, Garbarla knew that he could not afford to show any sign of cowardice. So, reluctantly, he circled the ceremonial fire to cross to Mutapina’s side of the corroboree ground.

As he approached Mutapina’s side, Garbarla heard the attack before seeing it. Instinct saved him as he ducked a split second before Mutapina’s great hunting boomerang whooshed past his head.

Unlike toy boomerangs sold to tourists, hunting boomerangs are designed to crack open the head of prey and are too heavy to return. Hearing the boomerang thud into the ground, Garbarla risked a quick look behind him. And saw the boomerang buried fifteen or twenty centimetres deep, with no obvious damage to the weapon. Seeing the jagged hole in the ground, Garbarla thought, ‘That’s what it would have done to my head!’ Turning back, he saw Mutapina grinning widely and knew that the madman was thinking the same thing.

Too late, Garbarla realised that Mutapina was smiling at him, falling for a “double-play”. When Garbarla had turned away, Mutapina had launched his stone knife.

Garbarla tried to leap aside, but the knife connected with his lower ribs with a loud cracking of bone.

As his senses were swamped by the burnt-copper taste and smell of blood, for a second, Garbarla feared that the knife had penetrated his heart. But then, he realised, ‘I’d already be dead in that case.’

After that, Mutapina and Garbarla circled each other warily. Neither anxious to expose himself to attack, nor waste the loss of a weapon.

When at last the fighting started in earnest, to his surprise as much as his opponent’s, it was Garbarla who struck the next blow. ‘Well, here goes nothing!’ he thought, trying not to give away his intention in advance as he lunged forward with one of his spears.

“Aaaaah!” shrieked Mutapina as the spear sank deep into his left thigh with a dull thud.

Startled, Garbarla almost dropped the spear, but he managed to hold on to the hilt. Then, trying to ignore the fire in his ribs, he quickly pulled out the spear, making Mutapina scream again. This time, in anger, as blood spurted from his injured thigh.

“You’ll die for that Mulunguwa!” shouted Mutapina. He lunged wildly forward with one of his spears.

Garbarla easily side-stepped, and as his opponent went past, sank his spear deep into Mutapina’s left flank. Pushing deep to increase the injury, Garbarla released the spear, deciding that he could afford to lose one in preference to taking the time to pull it out, risking aggravating his own injury.

‘Let him be defenceless, not me!’ thought Garbarla. And as Mutapina started tugging at the spear, shrieking in pain and anger, Garbarla decided to risk the loss of a second weapon. Expecting to miss his mark, Garbarla launched his hunting boomerang.

As the boomerang whump-whump-whumped through the air toward him, Mutapina jumped to one side, forgetting the spear in his flank.

The boomerang narrowly missed his head but connected with his left shoulder with a sickening cracking of bone. Which made the murderer shriek in agony and drop to the ground.

Hearing Weari-Wyingga’s loud gasp across the corroboree ground, Garbarla realised that the old man was as surprised as he was that Garbarla was getting the upper hand in the fight.

Then, hearing the metallic, grinding screech of the fire owl, Garbarla looked around as the creature launched itself from the red gum bough in the ceremonial fire.

“Look out!” Weari-Wyingga shouted in warning. Only a second before, the fire owl streaked across the ceremonial ground toward Garbarla.

“Holy shit!” Garbarla cried. For a second, he was too stunned to move as the fire owl sped toward his head. Then, at the last instant, the half-breed dropped like a rock to the ground.

The fire owl zoomed centimetres past his head. To soar into the blue gums behind him. The gum trees immediately began to billow with smoke at the fiery touch of the creature.

Deciding that it was no longer safe to try to fight openly, Garbarla raced across the corroboree ground toward where Weari-Wyingga stood.

Having missed its original target, the fire owl soared in a semi-circle, out through the back of the blue gum grove, then back in again. Easily outpacing Garbarla as it streaked toward its new target: Weari-Wyingga!

As Garbarla raced after the fire owl, the old man held up the Dark Stone in defence. And called across, “Finish the fight. Only by killing Mutapina can you destroy this monster!”

For an instant, Garbarla hesitated, hoping that the Dark Stone would frighten away the fire owl as it had done before. But the demon bird kicked the stone out of the old man’s hands with one of its talons. Then, to Garbarla’s horror, it settled onto Weari-Wyingga’s chest with a thud that knocked the old man onto his backside.

“Mutapina! Kill Mutapina!” shrieked Weari-Wyingga.

So Garbarla forced himself to turn away and run back toward where Larry Mutapina was still writhing on the ground from the agony of a shattered shoulder and the spear which still protruded from his flank.

Garbarla hesitated, having never killed a man before. “Why doesn’t the Dark Stone work this time?” he demanded of Mutapina.

As Weari-Wyingga began screaming shrilly, Garbarla raised his stone knife and repeated, “Why doesn’t the Dark Stone repel the fire owl this time?”

“Because I don’t believe in it,” explained Mutapina. “So it cannot work against me or that which I serve.”

“But it worked before when you weren’t here?”

“Because I wasn’t here then. The fire owl operates on instinct, not intelligence. It sensed the old man’s belief in ceremonial magic, and that was enough to make the stone work then. But now I’m here, and the fire owl has my knowledge.”

Weari-Wyingga’s screaming rose to a higher pitch, and Garbarla looked back and saw smoke billowing from the old man’s chest. ‘I’ve got only seconds to save him!’ thought Garbarla. He recalled how quickly Lucy Gabadabadana had burnt to ashes, yet still he hesitated to kill the murderer.

As he hesitated, Larry Mutapina laughed and said, “I knew you were gutless. You haven’t got the courage to kill me. Even to save the old man.” Even as he spoke, Mutapina pulled the spear from his side and hurled it at Garbarla.

Garbarla effortlessly side-stepped the spear and tossed his second spear straight into Mutapina’s chest.

“Nooooooo!” shrieked Mutapina.

For a second, Garbarla feared that the spear had failed to penetrate the murderer’s heart. Then, blood began to bubble from Mutapina’s mouth. And as Garbarla turned aside to throw up, he realised that he could no longer hear Weari-Wyingga’s screaming.

When at last he could stand again -- his stomach aching from emptiness, his throat and nostrils reeking with the foul taste and smell of hot bile -- Garbarla turned around, expecting to see the old man dead.

Instead, Weari-Wyingga was also warily climbing to his feet, looking every bit as frail as Garbarla felt.

“Are ... are you all right?” asked Garbarla. He staggered across the corroboree ground to help the old man. Only hoping that his legs would not give out on him.

“I’ve seen better days,” admitted the old man, taking Garbarla’s arm to steady himself.

For a second, Garbarla hesitated, thinking, ‘My God, it’s still here! Still on him!’ He stared at the large owl-like shape on the old man’s chest.

Then, he realised that it was not the fire owl. Merely its outline burnt half a centimetre deep into Weari-Wyingga’s chest.

Although Garbarla knew that the deep burn must be excruciating, the old man grinned as he looked down at his chest. “From now on they’ll have to call me ‘Weari-Wyingga, the Owl,’” he joked as he allowed Garbarla to half lead, half carry him toward the exit through the blue gum grove.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia