I Know A Place

• Lexi Kappa, Grade 3
• Short Story
• 2014

I know a place where the trees sway from side to side. I know a place where the red soil is delicate and soft. I know a place that no one else knows of. I go off when no one is looking to my place. I race with the running water, it is so clear. I dream of being a mermaid swimming though the water.
I know a place where we spear barramundi and eat it for lunch. When the red hot sunset comes through the trees we go and sleep around the flickering flames of the fire. We rest our knees and listen to the wood crackle and crunch. We are from the Bonurong tribe. My friend got speared from the Watherong tribe and sadly she died. I have to look after her kids now. I take them down to play in the summer tide. We have been doing it for five years now it seems like a while since she died.
The men in our tribe go spearing at night. Early in the morning they teach the younger boys how to make spears. The girls come with me and we pick the berries.
One boiling hot day when we were picking berries, I saw a massive white thing coming towards us, it was frightening. I gathered every one and sprinted to the men, who were spearing fish in the Yarra River.
I could not believe my eyes!! It looked like possums climbing trees. But it was white man up the mast. I knew it was definitely not my culture, and different to what I had heard before. Fear over took me, what did this mean for me and my tribe?
That night there was a massive fight, my place was destroyed, we did not know where to go, and we could not go and rest our knees in the warmth of the fire, for it was too dangerous to go to sleep.
Weeks past, huts were built, trees where chopped, our environment changed tremendously. I did not know how I was going to survive. This is my side of the story - the story of when I lost my place.