Kept In A Tiny Brown Bowl

• Brett Morgan, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2010

Jadoomba woke with a snarl,staring at the otherside of the billabong.As loud as he was only Kitami was awake.He scavenged in his gunyah like a rat in a garbage bin, trying to find his spear and boomerang.Kitami called to Jadoomba and he ran to his side.Kitami woke the other men and they gathered their weapons.
The group set off into the night with dingoes at foot.

Jadoomba lead the group,ears pricked up,sniffing around and everyonce and a while standing on his hind legs howling into the star-filled night.The men crept along silently,unseen except for Gumbidoo with his gray-silver hair shining in the sparkling moonlight.It happend suddenly,a spear was thrown and there was a rustle in the bushes.The spear missed them all but still they never did get along with that mob.Those Goannas were always attacking them,but this time they weren't prepared.The Goannas did move again,this time throwing everything they had like an avalanche of
spears,boomerangs,axes and rocks.Gumbidoo was struck this time,he fell by the side of a coconut tree with a single coconut on top of him.This made the tribe furious especially Yubator for his father had just been killed by the evil goannas as well as an elder of his tribe.The platypus tribe didn't refuse anymore and with a cry of anger killed all of the goannas involded.They returned to Gumbidoo and took the coconut from his red body.They cried out to the spirits and begged them to return the life to Gumbidoo and revive him.It didn't work but it did rain minutes after the bloody battle.Then the platypus knew it was time to move on for the spirits had started crying.Yubator then picked up his father and headed back to camp.When he arrived he placed his father on the damp earth and began tearing at the coconut.After cracking the coconut drained and emptied all the flesh off it he began caving into it with his fathers shark tooth.Once he had finished he sat in the same position for hours.Then he made up his mind.

He called for a ceremony to bury his father.The tribe agreed.Yubator cut a slit in his fathers arm and drained the blood into the coconut bowl.Then they buried Gumbidoo.Yubator then chanted some words.
The spirit of my father shall never be forgotten and shall never grow old.For the blood of my father shall never dry up and is kept in a tiny brown bowl.For the blood of my father shall never dry up and is kept in a tiny brown bowl.