Australian nemeton  

              A love parable

 

By Pip Wilson

 

   

 

 

'Nemeton' is an ancient Celtic word for a sacred grove of trees. This is a true story about an Australian nemeton.


he patchy sunlight drew out the aroma of the gumleaves on the bush floor and Kookaburra annoyedly deflected a swoop from Currawong as she had done for all of the days of her life, on the same gum tree branch that had been the scene of many thousands of swoops and cackles, counter-swoops and counter-cackles, by their ancestors, and beside the same ferny creek where the feud had started eons ago, back in the golden days when the Southern Cross was still a family of cockatoos, when the inscriptions on scribbly gums were understood by scholars, when a leaf would fall to nourish itself beneath the tree.

But on this balmy, dappled, dinkum October day, for the first time ever in the chronicle of the Feud of the Birds, a kookaburra had an idea. "Currawong," she said, "if you'd only stop swooping me for one day, or even for the time it takes for the shadow of the big western hill to travel from the foot of that tree-fern to the trunk of that cabbage tree palm over there, then I could tell you a story. Wouldn't you like a story? Oh, Currawong, I'm sick at heart of this foolish joust, and my ancestors and I have scarcely a cackle left in us."

Currawong pulled hard out of a swoop and glided onto a low branch of the tree beside Kookaburra's. She tilted her head and slyly looked up at the old bird. "Tell me a story then, Kookaburra, and we shall see how well it is told. If your storytelling is as wingless as your combat, I shall soon return to my ancestral imperative. Tell me your story, old enemy, old friend."

"Old friend!" thought Kookaburra, then picked at her wing with her ancient, chipped beak. Gathering her composure and the threads of a long-forgotten story, she turned her face down to her black and white nemesis.

"It is said," Kookaburra intoned, "that in the old times, far from here but not so far, half a morning's flight behind the coastal dunes, on an outcrop of sandstone deep in the bush, there was once a sacred grove, an Australian nemeton of angophora trees.

"The strong form of this sacred grove was delineated by the oldest trees. These were beings that were already old when the Feud of the Birds started, and were wise long before the ocean froth ever was scooped up by old women to blow into lovers' promises.

"And, oh, the colours of those trees. They were the colours of every sunrise and every sacramental ochre. They were streaked, spotted and spattered, speckled, scribbled and dribbled with every colour of wine, every human skin and all the bloods of warriors and of women, and tinged with the tones of every star and planet, the colours of the laughter of infants.

"This was a sacred grove," said Kookaburra, "even before the humans came to worship. Indeed, it was a kookaburra and a currawong that led the first humans to this grove by the sound of their swooping and cackling, but that is another story.

 

"In this story, the name of the two greatest, oldest, strongest trees in the grove were Old Mother Dawnleaf and her husband Old Boomer. From any perspective in the sacred grove, Boomer and Dawnleaf were at the centre and, magically, also at the edge, and no matter which way the lesser trees were born to lean, they magically leaned towards the glory of the grandparent trees.

"Also in this grove were two small angophora seedlings, so small that to describe their colours would be impossible. They had been born in a good season but had not seen two, neither good nor bad. They had seen the moon wax and wane nine times, but fire they had never seen, nor drought nor flood nor pestilence.

"Spring-grow was her name and Skybound was his, and they had been given life on the same day, when the summer turned to autumn.

"As the days grew hotter and drier, Spring-grow and Skybound grew thirsty, but only Spring-grow could send her filaments of roots towards the moist earth beside the creek, because Skybound grew not near the watercourse but close to the gnarled roots of Old Boomer."

Kookaburra continued her tale to Currawong: "As Spring-grow drank of the water which first fell from the comforting clouds and then dripped off Old Mother Dawnleaf's back and Old Boomer's leaves and ran into the creek then soaked into the ground around her, she grew tall and handsome and strong. But Skybound was bound to the earth in the gritty and parched sand beneath his grandfather Boomer's feet. He cried out to his sister: 'Spring-grow, you are growing taller than me! Where are you going without me, and what shall I do near the ground?'"

Kookaburra continued. "Spring-grow answered that she could not help her winding and stretching towards the sky and that the clouds had given her water off their grandmother's back and their grandfather's back and she could not refuse it. She offered her brother Skybound some water but he could not reach his roots out to the cool, nourishing, damp earth, and he remained in the matted and tangled woody roots beneath his grandfather, Old Boomer. Skybound thought that he would perish, for this was in the high sun of summer in the days when summers were hotter than bushfires and longer than years.

"Just then," said Kookaburra, "Old Mother Dawnleaf looked down on the sacred grove and saw Skybound wilting, bending his head, then prostrated and weeping tears that dried instantly on the sand. Dawnleaf spoke gently to him as he burned and wept.

"'Skybound,' whispered Old Mother Dawnleaf, 'Move your parched and dying body into the shade of your sister Spring-grow, and you will find relief.'

"Though fearful at first," Kookaburra explained after grooming her feathers once more, "Skybound slowly inched his thirsty head into the shade of his sister Spring-grow. There he felt the cooling breezes of the eons, cast not only by his sister but also by the loving shadows of all the angophoras in the Australian nemeton. His parched angophora lips kissed the earth beneath her feet and tasted the icy clear water that trickled up, it seemed, from the cold centre of the world.

"Skybound felt a tingle of invigoration at first, then a rush of revitalisation. Timorously he rose to his knees and then confidently to his feet, the cool sap rushing upwards and pushing out lush, green new growth. His spindly trunk thickened and, some say, took on some of Old Boomer's famous sunset colours. In Spring-grow's cooling shade he grew and passed her, then she in his healing shade grew to meet him, and so it went until, it is said, Skybound and Spring-grow looked back peacefully on more summers than there are raindrops in a January storm and birds in the Milky Way.

"Soon," said Kookaburra, "the brother and sister stood, ancient and wise, next to the grandparents, at the centre and edge of the sacred grove, or so it seemed from whichever perspective the other angophoras looked. And I am told that they took all the colours of the sacred grove, and even those from all parts of the bush and of humans, and it was Spring-grow and Skybound who placed the moon in the sky with which to paint the bush with silvery-turquoise at night so that those who wish to dream might dream, and those who wish to see to fly, might fly.

"And that, old Currawong, is the story of the twin saplings in the sacred grove."

So spoke Kookaburra, and for a few moments at least, the Feud of the Birds had abated and the bush had been still. The staghorn on the fig tree even thought that he might permanently be able to rest his weary head. But currawongs being currawongs, and kookaburras being kookaburras, and their ordained nature being to joust, it is not proper that a truce last for longer than the length of a storytelling. So soon the lizards on the creek bank were listening to the swooping and cackling which from time immemorial had given them a chance to sneak out in safety under Kookaburra's tree, and drink from the crystal waters.
 

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