Musings on Mirrool Creek
This second episode, of a longer work, draws on an experience of the flooding of the Mirrool Creek NSW (Australia) back in 2012. Only this is different. It is a fictional tale about how animals responded to the flood. When I was a youngster I was familiar with both Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908)and Ethel Pedley’s Dot and the Kangaroo (1899). Evidently, both had an impact on me.
Episode Two – Wallaruby Wanders and Wonders
After the flood
A wallaby could be seen.
Not any wallaby.
This was Wallaruby,
And she twitched and scratched
At silt on her strong
And noble
Hind legs.
Then, leaned over
Ever so carefully,
To sip from a pool.
This pool was at a place
special to them.
Three parts of the creek
Came together
Like three toes of one claw.
Generations of wallabies
Had gathered here to
Drink, having come down
From their ironbark woodland
On higher ground.
Then a dazzling light shone
Back near the horizon.
It came closer and brighter
A whining noise and
“Oh no!”
Wallaruby gasped.
But it passed
As quietly as it came,
Its sound replaced by
“Urrr, urrr!” Thump! Thump!
Down
In the drying delta
Two wallaby bucks fought.
Forepaws gouging in a
Left, right, left. Left, right.
Then
Hind legs too –
Thud! Thud!
Wallaruby pretended
Feigned disinterest
By licking at
a succulent stem.
On the fight went as it sang:
We are the instinct of the fittest,
The males will fight this way
And the greatest witness,
Is the one who holds the sway.
For when this fight is over
The loser goes that day
And the dandy-randy victor
Will then have his way.
As the fight subsided
Wallaruby was seen heading
Into the light scrub of wattle
The victorious buck close behind.
Sometime later
Wallaruby was seen
Silhouetted against the rising sun.
A swelling beneath her belly
Could barely be noticed.
But hark!
Look closer!
From the belly
A little face
Could be spotted
And looking up
It was a mini form
Of a head
Just like Wallaruby
Fluffy ears, leather nose.
A little wallaby pouched
In the care
Of a very proud Wallaruby
Who, ever so gently
Stooped and drank
From a pool
by the billabong .
Simon C.J. Falk 16 January 2015
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