Free Kakadu Calling by Jane Christophersen Page A

heknew the sun was going down behind him. It was also getting dark and he had to look for somewhere to sleep.
    Burrki hadn’t brought his firesticks with him, but he wasn’t cold. For a while he sat listening to the different sounds of the early evening. First he heard the bookbook owl calling out. He answered it because it may have been the spirit of an old man. His father had told him many stories of the owls who carried the spirits of old men who had passed away.
    Then the dingoes started howling. At first it frightened him because they made an eerie sound, but he just sat quietly and they soon stopped. Then he heard rustling in the grass and he saw the shadows of bandicoots and a porcupine sniffing around. When it was too dark to see anything, he found a place under a rock ledge and fell fast asleep.
    It was early in the morning when he feltsomething sliding down his back, but he dared not move because when he opened his eyes, he could just see the head of a python slithering past. Terrified, Burrki felt a cold shiver ripple down his spine.
    He desperately wanted to jump up and run, but he could hear his father’s voice saying, ‘Don’t move when a snake is near you. Stay quiet and it will go away.’

    Trying to stay calm, Burrki closed his eyes and waited until he could feel the last of the snake’s body slide down his back, and over his legs. He let out a big sigh of relief, but still he didn’t move. When he thought enough time had passed, Burrki got up and followed the snake tracks across the sand to a low ridge where he could see it wasresting. The python had a big bulge in his stomach. ‘I think he had one bandicoot for his supper last night,’ thought Burrki.

    Burrki returned to his sleeping place and ate the last of his wallaby meat and yam. He set off again, and by early afternoon he’d climbed his way through the hills and had emerged out onto a rocky ledge. He sat down and looked across the plains. Dotted here and there were wild buffaloes. Burrki wasn’t that worried about them, but they were huge animals, and he had once heard about a man being chased and gored in the leg.
    He sat for a long time watching them graze. His father said that if the wind was blowing awayfrom the animals, they wouldn’t be able to smell you, but Burrki could see that the buffaloes were in no hurry to leave their feeding place. He would have to find a way to make them leave. It was already mid-afternoon and he was getting worried.
    Burrki knew that if he lit a fire the buffaloes would move on, but he didn’t have a firestick, and there was no wood amongst the rocks. Then he remembered how his father had taught him to hit two stones together to make fire. First he looked for hard rocks, not soft ones, and then he collected a bunch of grass and rubbed it until it was soft. Burrki had everything he needed, but he still had to find a way to carry the fire to the plain.
    He went searching for wood and came across a pandanus tree. One of its trunks was dead and had fallen over. Burrki could use the trunk as a firestick because there was soft fibre inside it, which would burn very slowly once it had been lit.

    He waited until he felt the breeze coming in from the hills, and then he quickly got the stones and hit one against the other. Soon sparks landed on the grass below and it caught alight. He put some inside the pandanus trunk and blew and blew until the soft fibre began burning. Burrki carried his new firestick down to where the long grass grew and put the fire to it. Almost immediately it began to blaze and burn.
    He climbed back up to the ledge and watched the fire move through the plain. The buffaloes saw the smoke and flames and the herd turned and ran away. Burrki was happy now that he didn’t have to worry about buffaloes and snakes. He would beable to continue his journey through the woodland and creeks. Although he was hungry, he would have to wait until morning to