It was a different time

 

"Why do you look to Boonguya?", she teased.

"I do not know that name", he replied. "My father taught me it was called the Breadknife", he added quietly.

She laughed, "Your father did not know much."

"He loved these mountains. He grew up in them, walked all the old crooked trails, and trapped rabbits here during the war."

She countered, "Simply walking over something does not give you understanding."

"He grew up on the outskirts of the town - past the race course, next to the native camp", he paused. His father had been badly wounded in the Great War before, in France, and had drunk his way through the Depression. "My father learned more from the local tribe while his father reenlisted for the next war and was posted to Townsville. The local people taught him how to hunt and how to climb the monolith known as Timor Rock barefooted. But they did not teach him their understanding of the mountains - for while he was as poor as they - they still had their culture. So he went to school and studied hard. He learned that the Breadknife - Boonguya - was the remnant of a volcano - a chimney that once joined the magma to the sky."

"Closer", she whispered, remembering how the fire reflected in the warm shallow sea, "But still there is no understanding."

He looked at her.

She said, "This doesn't explain why I let it be. Why I suffer the remnants to stand."

And in the heat haze, the mountains shimmered.

"My father taught me to trap rabbits as a child. I remember the cry of a trapped animal, the cruelty of the metal, and swift death at my father's hands. It was a different time. Farmers in the Western Warrumbungles would shoot eagles and hang them from fences next to the skins of dingoes. The rich would fly from Sydney on the 700mph highway - avoiding the hot repetitious dusty road reserved for the rest of us. But the rich missed the hidden treats along the way - the bridge at Gilgandra, the waterfall rest spots, and the glow of the mountains as the night closed around the car. it was there I first learned about fire and how it shaped us, He looked at Her, no matter what You throw at us."

She smiled.

"I learned how the bush would regenerate - how the stink of burnt land is replaced by resurgence."

The red glow of the embers slowly faded into the colors of the desert sands. And in his eye, he remembered the old jam jars of pure color of different hues of desert sand. 

Shifting to the old parched earth floors and kitchen table past the race course. The sounds of a hot day fading into night curtains being pulled against the sound of cries from the nearby camps. A thousand nights of dark stories told around outdoor fires near the waterholes. Stories of days gone feral in the teeth of wolves when bunyips roamed and the kadaicha sang death songs. A mix of real and fantastic. Half remembered European tales and half heard aboriginal dreamings.