THE BURGIN GIN (2025 Edit)

A Dream-Time terror is stalking Glen Hartwell, killing people!

Andrea Blewett lay on her back in the big double bed in her Lawson Street home, wishing that her ex-husband were lying beside her. Then she coloured from anger and thought, ‘No, I don’t, he’s a wimp. I’m better off without Terry. It’s bad enough that he let Danny Ross steal his rightful job of sergeant of police at the Glen. But then to forgive him and accept him as a mate. Huh, what a wimp!’
Though they had separated in 1986 and divorced in May 1996, more than nine years later, in September 2005, Andrea still missed her handsome ex-husband. Although her fiery Italian blood refused to let her admit it -- even to herself. Except on the loneliest and longest spring nights.
Andrea had dated on rare occasions over the last nineteen years, but never seriously. And her strict Catholic upbringing had prevented her from having even one-night stands. But her main regret was never having had children. At forty-eight, nearly forty-nine, she knew that it was unlikely that she could successfully carry a child to gestation, even if she was to remarry.
“And it’s all your fault, Terry!” she said aloud. But then she started to wonder if it really was. ‘Have I been too harsh on you, Terry?’ she thought, for the first time since they had separated nineteen years ago. She knew that her ex-husband still loved her and had hardly dated (if at all) since their separation.
‘Maybe it was partly my fault after all,’ she thought, listening to the rain as it started to fall upon the corrugated-iron roof. ‘Late in the year for rain?’ she thought. ‘Still, the farmers won’t be complaining.’
She listened to the rain and watched as lightning flashed outside her bedroom window for a moment, then she smiled and thought, ‘Maybe I’ll call Terry tomorrow, just to say hello? Maybe we can meet for dinner and a few drinks, or something?’
She blushed like a schoolgirl contemplating her first date and realised that it would be her first date in two or three years. “Who knows ...?” she said aloud, not daring to even finish the thought that they might even get back together again after so many years apart. Might even remarry after so many lonely years.
Blushing again, she thought, ‘But who knows?’ For the first time in nineteen years, she realised that she still loved Terry Blewett. Loved him and missed him every bit as much as she knew he still loved and missed her.
“Well, maybe we will, maybe we won’t,” she said, grinning like a schoolgirl at the thought of getting back together with her ex-husband.
“Perhaps ...?” she said, stopping in shock as she saw a small animal standing on the ledge outside her window, gazing in at her.
“Oh, my God, what is it? A rat?” she wondered, leaning forward in her bed, trying to peer through the dark. She wondered whether she should get out of bed to turn on the light, but hesitated.
Instead she sat up in bed, leaning forward till her back ached, staring out at the figure. At first unable to see what it was. Then when a lightning flash revealed the figure in all its horror, unable to believe what she was seeing.
“It can’t be ...?” she said, as the figure slammed against the window with all of its might.
Andrea screamed in terror as the figure threw itself against the window again and again. Commonsense told her to leap out of bed and run downstairs to the telephone to call Terry or Bear Ross. But terror kept her frozen to her bed, leaning forward staring in disbelief as the small figure slammed repeatedly against the bedroom window.
Until, with a crashing of glass, the window shattered inwards and she heard a thud of little feet as the tiny figure dropped to the window box. Then once more as it dropped to the carpeted floor.
“Oh no, it can’t be!” she said aloud, too scared to scream for help or run as she heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet across the carpet from the window box to the foot of the double bed.
‘I’m safe now! I have to be safe!’ she thought, hoping that the tiny creature would be unable to scale what for it must be the Everest-like heights of the wooden-frame bed to reach her.
For a moment, it seemed as though she were right, as the figure hesitated at the foot of her bed. Then, hearing the evil pitter-patter of feet around the left-hand side of the bed, she squealed in terror and pulled up the quilt from where it dangled down to the floor, lest the creature climbed the quilt to reach her.
Hearing only silence, for a second Andrea feared that she had helped the demon creature, pulling it up onto her bed along with the quilt. But then she heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet again as it ran back to the foot of the bed, then around to the right-hand side.
Just in time Andrea pulled up the quilt on that side. And hearing a shrill child-like squeal of anger, she realised that the creature had intended to climb the quilt to reach her.
Andrea wanted to turn on the bedside light, yet was afraid of seeing again what she had already seen highlighted in the window. Looking toward where she knew the dressing table was on the right side of her bed, she wished that she had installed the extension to the phone that she had been meaning to have installed for over a year now. ‘Or if only mobile phones would work in this area?’ she thought, silently cursing Telstra for their apathy toward country phone users.
Hearing the pitter-patter of tiny feet returning to the foot of the bed, Andrea hoped that the nightmare creature had given up trying to reach her and was going back to the window to depart the same way that it had arrived. Then hearing a loud thump against the wooden foot of the bed, Andrea began to whimper in terror. She realised that the evil creature would never go away and leave her in peace.
“Not while I’m alive!” she realised.
As the crash-crash-crashing against the foot of the bed continued, Andrea knew that somehow the tiny assassin had found a way to scale the vertical face of the wooden bed.
Crash! Crash! Crash! again and again the noise reverberated, as slowly the beast hacked a series of climb holes into the wood to allow it to start up the bed toward its intended victim.
“No! No! No!” shrieked Andrea Blewett, at last able to scream as she heard the demon beast scaling the foot of the bed and knew that it was only a matter of moments before it reached her.
“Heh! Heh! Heh!” tittered the fiend, excited by Andrea’s terror as it continued to scale the wooden slope to reach her.”
“No! No! Noooooooooo!” shrilled the petite brunette, her plea turning to one long continuous shrieked syllable, as her tormentor inexorably climbed toward her.
“Heh! Heh! Heh!” cackled the fiend as it finally reached the top of the wooden foot and crouched there for a moment, enjoying the music of Andrea’s hysterical screams. Then, as though realising that eventually someone would hear her and come to investigate the screams, the creature leapt forward.
“Aaaaaaaah!” shrilled Andrea. She started to kick her legs wildly beneath the sheets as she felt the monstrous creature leap down onto the bed beside her.
“No! No! No! No!” shrieked Andrea, trying to kick the demon onto the floor again. And for a moment it floundered on the rocking bed, struggling to climb back to its feet, almost falling over the edge of what to it might well be a lethal precipice.
Then, finding its feet again, the demon raced down the side of the bed, beside the brunette and jumped up into her lap.
Shrilling even louder in terror, Andrea began beating at the monster with her hands, scarcely noticing the stinging in her hands and arms as it stabbed out at her again and again.
“Please! Please! Please!” she began pleading, sobbing, screaming as the tiny monster stabbed at her again and again, until finally she was unable to stand the agony and was forced to raise her hands and present the tiny assassin with a more vulnerable target.
“No! Please!” sobbed Andrea as she felt the first stabs into her belly, then chest by the creature’s weapon.
No longer able to resist, as though submitting to death, the forty-eight-year-old woman fell back against the bed, knowing as the demon ran up her body that she would never reach her forty-ninth birthday. Knowing that she would never make things right with Terry, who she realised she had grievously wronged all of those years ago.
“Terry!” she shrieked as the demon reached her chest and began to stab downwards, instinctively knowing where her heart was, even in the dark.
“I’m sorry, Terry!” she cried, then Andrea Blewett died as the monster finally stabbed right down into her heart.

Joseph Garbarla, a tall, handsome, half-breed Aborigine in his late forties, stood at the front of the classroom, lecturing his TAFE class on Aboriginal Studies at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology.
“Since it’s nearly time for a break, I would just like to remind you all of the basic first tenet of all Aboriginal Dream-Time belief ....”

Terry Blewett sat by the window listening to the unseasonable rain pelting upon the windows and the bitumen outside. A strong salt breeze blew in from the nearby Yannan River telling Terry that the rains were here to stay for a while.
Sighing from boredom, Terry looked around to the front of the classroom where Garbarla stood scratching away upon the blackboard with pink chalk as he lectured. Normally Terry felt silly sitting at the long, vinyl-topped benches listening to the lecturer. At forty-six it was twenty-nine years since he had left high school, so he felt he was too old to be going to school.
Originally he had only agreed to come along to keep Brian Horne and Ernie Singleton company. But Ernie and Brian had dropped out years ago after their marriages to Rowena Frankland and Adele Gibson in October 1987 and May 1996 respectively.
Terry himself had only continued attending the lectures out of loyalty to Joe Garbarla, who was one of his closest friends. Looking around the classroom, Terry saw just four other pupils -- a teenage girl, two elderly women, and an old man -- remained from the class of eighteen in February. Over the last fifteen years it had always been the same: eighteen or twenty students to begin with; but only three to five by the end of October when classes broke up for the year.
‘Who knows, maybe with a little luck, I’ll have an excuse not to come along any more soon,’ thought Terry. Although he had barely spoken a word to Andrea over the last few months, she was not as openly hostile to him anymore as she had been for years after their separation in 1986. He supposed he could understand the reasons for her anger when he had befriended Danny “Bear” Ross. After the retirement of Lawrie Grimes as Sergeant of Police at Glen Hartwell in June 1982 Terry had naturally expected to be promoted to fill the vacancy, having been Lawrie’s constable for five years, since graduating from police academy at age eighteen in 1977. A fact seemingly confirmed when Terry had been made acting sergeant at the Glen upon Lawrie’s retirement. By October 1982 Terry had applied for the position permanently and had assumed that he would get it, and was naturally crestfallen when Danny Ross had been promoted instead and transferred from BeauLarkin, sixty kilometres closer to Melbourne. Initially Bear had been ostracised by the populace of Glen Hartwell for robbing Terry of his promotion. Terry and Andrea had led the opposition determined to drive the interloper out of town. However, Danny’s kindly nature, including his understanding of Terry’s resentment toward him, had gradually endeared him to the people of Glen Hartwell, with even Terry finally unable to resent his superior any longer, and finally even accepting him as a friend. To the horror of Andrea, who had been unable to forgive Bear or accept Terry forgiving him.
“What kind of man are you to forgive him after what he’s done to you?” Andrea had demanded the day she had thrown him out of their home in 1986.
Shattered at being tossed out by the woman whom he loved, Terry had had no answer. But now nineteen years later, he finally had at least a glimmer of hope that he might be able to make Andrea love him again.
Although he had had to be careful, for fear of being guilty of stalking, Terry had tried to keep an eye on Andrea over the years, to see that she was all right. In the process he had realised that she rarely dated other men. And never let them stay overnight, he was pleased to discover. Although he knew that it was none of his business if she did, since they were no longer married. Still, he was pleased.
He hated to see her depressed, but knew from what he had been told by Mabel and Will Poyntner and other local gossips, that she had been lonely lately. And had been talking a lot about him lately. A lot of it had been angry talk, blaming him for what had gone wrong between them. ‘Still,’ he thought, ‘at least she’ll say my name aloud now. Not so long ago she treated it like a dirty word spoken by accident in church.’
He sighed and thought, ‘Nineteen years is a long time. A long time to even hope.’ Still he did hope and with a little help from Mabel and Will Poyntner he hoped to convince Andrea to see him again, go on a one-off date at least in the hope that they could restart their romance after all those years.
‘A long time to even hope,’ he thought again. ‘But what’s the point in even going on living if I give up on hope?’

At the front of the class Joseph Garbarla had stopped writing and now talked by rote to his class. He hardly even heard his own words as he examined the raven-haired figure of Terry Blewett sitting in the front row. ‘I hope things work out for you, mate,’ thought Garbarla, knowing how Terry still pined for his ex-wife. And knowing of Will and Mabel Poyntner’s efforts to try to reunite the Blewetts.
Startled by the unexpected Rap! Rap! Rap! on the glass door, Garbarla looked down at his wristwatch, thinking that he had over-extended his lecture again. But seeing that he still had ten minutes to go, he looked around to the left and saw a tall, willowy, slightly greying brunette whom he recognised as Mabel Poyntner, whom he had just been thinking about.
‘Speak of the Devil!’ thought Garbarla, wondering if Mabel was here to put into effect her plan to get Terry and Andrea back together. But as he approached the windowed door, he saw the massive figure of Sergeant Danny “Bear” Ross -- so nicknamed due to his great height and muscular physique -- and beside Bear the six foot four Amazonian figure of Hilly Hindmarsh who had taken over from Mabel when she had retired from duty on the Glen Hartwell police force in June 1995.
As Bear Ross rapped again, Garbarla walked across, swung the door open wide and asked, “What can I do for you, officer?”
In a stern voice, not matching the levity of his friend, Bear said, “I need to see Terry.”
For one crazy moment Garbarla wondered if Mabel and Terry were being charged with stalking Andrea Blewett, for their attempts to get Andrea and Terry back together again. Then seeing the deathly solemn looks on the faces of Bear, Mabel, and Hilly Hindmarsh, he realised that it was about something much more serious than mere match-making.
“Terry?” called Garbarla, waving a hand toward where the raven-haired man sat at the front of the classroom.
“What’s up? Don’t tell me I’m back on duty already?” said Terry, looking pointedly at his wristwatch. “I thought I had tonight and tomorrow off?”
Normally Bear Ross would have responded with a caustic quip, so seeing his stern look, Terry stopped smirking ran across to ask, “What’s up?”
“It’s about Andrea,” said Bear. Then realising that the other four students were listening to their conversation, he stepped back to allow Terry out into the grey-lino floored corridor, then slid the glass door shut.
“Andrea?” asked Terry, now looking worried. “Is she okay?”
Garbarla watched Bear Ross and Mabel Poyntner share a troubled look and realised that something was terribly wrong. “She’s crashed her car?” he thought, knowing that Bear or Terry had had to pull her over a few times for speeding.
“Has she ... has she crashed ...?” asked Terry, suddenly white-faced in shock, as though reading Garbarla’s thoughts.
“No, she’s ...” said Bear, stopping as he realised that he didn’t really know what had happened to her. He exchanged another troubled, now puzzled look with Mabel Poyntner, then looked at Amazonian blonde Hilly Hindmarsh who shrugged, obviously as lost for words as her superior. Finally, Bear breathed deeply -- as much in the hope of drawing in inspiration as to calm himself -- then blurted out, “Andrea is dead. But we don’t know how she died yet.”
As Terry Blewett fainted, Bear Ross and Joseph Garbarla leapt toward him, each catching him by one arm before he could hit the floor.
“Let’s get him to the car and we can rush him round to the hospital,” suggested Bear.
Garbarla merely nodded and moved to take Terry by the feet to help carry him down the long corridor.
While the students in the various classrooms watched on in amazement, Garbarla and Bear carried Terry Blewett down the grey-lino covered corridor with Mabel Poyntner and Hilly Hindmarsh following, unable to do anything till they got Terry to the car.
“Let’s put him into the back,” said Bear Ross as they started down the concrete steps to where his white Holden Torana was parked illegally just outside the door of the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology.
‘Oh well,’ thought Garbarla as Mabel Poyntner climbed into the back of the car first to help steady Terry, ‘that’s one of the perks of being the local police chief. No one is going to book you for parking illegally.’
“Hold on, don’t drop him,” warned Bear. And with difficulty they managed to place Terry into the back seat beside Mabel, with Hilly Hindmarsh on the outside.
“Just stop him from falling to the floor until we get him to the hospital,” advised Bear as he and Garbarla climbed into the front seat.
“We would never have thought of that,” said Mabel Poyntner caustically, making Garbarla laugh at his friend’s expense.

Half an hour later Terry Blewett was sedated in a private ward on the second floor of the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital on the border between the two towns. Hilly Hindmarsh was seated on a wooden chair on one side of his bed, and Terry’s mother Thelma was seated in a chair on the opposite side. By the doorway stood Morrie Blewett, Bear Ross and Garbarla, talking to the hospital’s head doctor and co-ordinator, Gina Foley.
“There’s not a lot more that we can do for him,” said Gina, a tall, willowy brunette. “We’ve sedated him, so he’ll sleep for twelve hours or so. But other than that we can’t do to much more.”
“What about Andrea?” asked Garbarla. Then when Gina and the others turned to stare at him, he explained, “How exactly did she die?”
“We still don’t have a clue,” admitted Gina. “We’ve examined the body from top to bottom and there is no sign of any wound or any indication of blood haemorrhages. Until we perform an autopsy it’s anyone’s guess what killed her.”
“When will that be?”
“Not for a couple of days. We had hoped to get Terry’s permission. But with him traumatised, we’ll have to try to contact her parents.”
“Do we know who they are?”
Bear Ross reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a small black address book. He flipped through it for a moment, then said, “Filide and Gerardo Agostino, in Mosman in New South Wales.”
He looked at Gina, then Morrie Blewett (a tall, burly farming man), obviously hoping that one of them would volunteer. When neither did, Bear said, “I’d better go ring through to them.” Leaving them, he headed out into the corridor.
“You can use the phone in my office,” offered Gina going after him.

Bruce Cox was just falling asleep, when the small animal dropped onto the bed near his feet, waking him. Anyone else might have panicked, but even at ninety-five, Bruce prided himself on having the proverbial nerves of steel. ‘You don’t serve as Chief of Police, even in an outback area like Glen Hartwell for twenty years, if you’re some kind of a wimp,’ he thought. Although Bruce’s term as senior sergeant had ended back in April 1962. Even his replacement Lawrie Grimes was now long retired, replaced by Bear Ross.
‘Still, I’m as fit as I ever was, and just as on the ball,’ thought Bruce as the small creature started down the bed in the dark toward him. Although it was over forty years since he had seen active service as a cop, Bruce was still a dedicated volunteer fire-fighter each bushfire season, and was always the first to help out when any emergencies occurred in the local area. Or when one of the local farmers needed extra labourers for a few days and didn’t have the cash to pay anyone.
‘Yes,’ thought Bruce, ‘they’ll have to kill me to stop me from helping others in any crisis. Country folks can’t survive day to day if they aren’t prepared to help each other out in times of trouble.’
For a moment the small creature propped near the foot of the mattress, as though listening to Bruce’s thoughts. But finally it began to pad slowly down the bed toward the old man.
Feeling the footsteps start toward him, Bruce sighed and thought, ‘I knew I was in trouble when Mopsey had eight kittens. Should’ve got rid of them.’ But in the countryside people were reluctant to own cats, since unlike farm dogs, they could not as readily earn their keep. And old Bruce was too kind hearted to drown the kittens in the Yannan River as most of his friends had suggested. ‘There’s enough life lost to bush fires and floods in the country without taking lives needlessly.’
Still, it was difficult for the old man to keep nine cats on his police pension. ‘It’s not so bad now, when they’re still on mother’s milk and I only have to feed Mopsey. But in another month or so my budget is going to be stretched to breaking point.’
As the unseen creature reached his arthritic old knees and accidentally pressed his left knee, making the old man wince in agony, he thought, ‘Not to mention my bleedin’ patience if they keep invading my sleeping quarters.’
Bruce knew that it was really his own fault. ‘I should have taken a hard line with Mopsey years ago.’ But she was a clean cat who had never messed in the house, and never had fleas. So there had seemed no harm in allowing one small black she cat to curl up on the foot of his bed in winter. Or even early spring. But to his dismay, when the kittens had been born a few weeks back, Mopsey had immediately returned to sharing the bed with the old man. And where Mopsey went, the eight kittens were sure to follow.
‘I wouldn’t mind sharing with one or two of the little buggers,’ thought Bruce. ‘But nine cats all at once leaves little room for me.” And unlike their mother, the eight little bundles of fluff weren’t quite housebroken yet.
“There are limits, you know,” Bruce said aloud as though expecting Mopsey or her kittens to be able to understand him. And at the sound of the old man’s voice the small figure propped just past his left knee, as though just realising that the old man was awake.
For a minute which seemed like hours, the small creature tried to hide on the bed in the dark. Then, perhaps thinking that the old man had fallen back asleep, it began moving much more stealthily than before in the dark, continuing toward the top end of the bed.
‘No doubt planning to curl up on the pillows,’ thought Bruce, whose twenty-five years on the Glen Hartwell police force allowed him to detect the slightest movements up the bed, despite the tiny creature’s best efforts at stealth.
‘Oh no, you could never get up early enough in the morning to fool old Bruce Cox like that,’ thought Bruce, doing his best to still his breathing, so that the small interloper would think he was asleep again.
As the small creature reached the old man’s chest, Bruce suddenly sat up in bed in the dark.
“All right you young bugger, which one are you?” demanded Bruce, reaching toward the approaching footsteps without bothering to turn on the bedside lamp.
At the sound of his voice, the tiny figure stopped again and propped, obviously hoping that he couldn’t see it in the dark. But Bruce was confident that with his twenty-five years police training he knew exactly where the small creature was. So, without hesitation he lunged his hand at it, hoping to grab the feline in the dark before it realised what he was doing.
Instead, the old man shrieked in agony and let go of the small fleshy body as something wickedly sharp skewered his left hand.
“Damn!” he cursed, pulling away. He raised his hand to his mouth to lick it, but then thought better of it, since he had not yet had the eight kittens inoculated. “I’ll have to have your claws snipped.”
At this suggestion, as though recognising the threat in his voice, the unseen creature leapt onto the old man’s body and started to run up his abdomen toward his head. And for the first time Bruce Cox realised that the creature was much too large for one of Mopsey’s kittens, or even the She cat herself.
“What the hell is it?” said Bruce leaning over to reach for the lamp beside his bed. As the lamp flickered on, Bruce blinked for a few seconds, then stared in disbelief at the small figure standing on his chest.
“Oh, my God, that can’t be what it looks like?” said Bruce, staring rigid with terror for the first time in ninety years as the small creature lunged toward his chest and started to stab downward again and again, until it punctured the old man’s heart.
“Help me!” Bruce called out too late, and too quietly for anyone to hear, only seconds before the evil creature finally stabbed into his heart. He felt a hot flush of blood fill his mouth, and then old Bruce Cox who had dedicated his life to helping others died.

Joseph Garbarla, Bear Ross, and Mel Forbes (police sergeant of nearby Merridale) stood in the small viewing area as Gina Foley and the local coroner, Jerry ‘Elvis’ Green, prepared to commence the autopsy on Andrea Blewett’s naked body. Although she had been an attractive woman in life, Garbarla and the others were too shocked by Andrea’s mysterious death to be excited by her nakedness now.
Garbarla glanced across to where Hilly Hindmarsh and Petra Drysdale, a plump, matronly type (another of the local constabulary’s pro-rata policewomen only taken on duty when Glen Hartwell needed extra police officers) did their best to comfort a tiny, bald-headed man, who had been introduced to them as Andrea’s father Gerardo.
Embarrassed by the sight of the little man openly crying at his daughter’s death -- and shocked at the way that it brought back memories of his own grief at the death of his fiancé Geraldine Gleeson a few years back -- Garbarla turned back toward the autopsy room.
Inside the room, as Gina and Elvis began the autopsy, a tape recorder was started by Danielle Butler, a tall, willowy blonde who had been Elvis’s secretary since 1988 and had been dating Bear Ross since the 1990s.
At the foot of the autopsy table Kim Monroe -- a local photographer who freelanced for half-a-dozen local newspapers -- stood clicking off photo after photo. On rare occasions he asked Gina and Elvis to stop while he took a close-up of something, or so that he could change film.
As the autopsy progressed, Garbarla was relieved to only be in the viewing room. Looking across at Bear Ross, he realised that the big man wished that he could leave too. But Bear was bound by his oath of office; Garbarla by his friendship with Terry Blewett and his own curiosity: wondering how Andrea could have died in such a way that Gina Foley could not (or would not) even guess at the cause of death prior to an autopsy.
Midway through the autopsy Andrew Braidwood -- Mel Forbes’s constable -- arrived to whisper to Mel and Bear for a moment.
“I’ll go, if you like,” offered Mel. And after a nod from Bear, Mel and Andrew departed.
After a brief glance at Gerardo Agostino, Bear stepped across to Garbarla and leant down to whisper, “They’ve just found Bruce Cox, dead in his bed.”
Recalling the cheery old man, who was always quick to help out in times of trouble, Garbarla sighed in dismay, then said, “He was in his nineties, wasn’t he?”
“Ninety-five or ninety-six,” agreed Bear. “So it’s probably unrelated to Andrea’s death. But so far Edward van Reyk hasn’t been able to locate any possible cause of death, so who knows, there could be a connection.”
Garbarla nodded and thought, ‘Ed van Reyk must be in his late 90s too.’
The autopsy took hours -- which seemed like days to Garbarla and the other spectators. Then Gina and Elvis stitched up the corpse again -- having promised Gerardo Agostino that his daughter would still be presentable for an open-casket funeral after the autopsy.
Finally, they had finished, and leaving the body on the autopsy table for one of Gina’s nurses to return to the freezer room, Gina and Elvis walked into the observation room, leaving Danielle Butler and Kim Monroe, who was carefully labelling the rolls of film to be sent to Harpertown for priority developing.
“Well,” asked Bear as Gina and Elvis stepped out of the autopsy room, “what’s the verdict?”
Gina and Elvis exchanged an almost guilty look for a moment. Finally Gina said, “We could find nothing to explain what killed her.”
“What?” asked Bear, sounding as shocked as Garbarla felt at the answer. “How is that possible. I thought that even in cases of death by so-called natural causes, there has to be some form of haemorrhage, scarring, or other symptoms to explain the death?”
Again Gina and Elvis exchanged a guilty look. Then Elvis, nicknamed due to his long, black sideburns, said, “In theory that is true. In reality sometimes the cause of death is so obscure that the signs are all but impossible to detect unless you know what you’re looking for.”
“Not without minutely dissecting the corpse,” added Gina. “Which would, of course, make it impossible to have an open-casket funeral.”
Garbarla felt himself paling at the suggestion of Andrea Blewett’s corpse being dissected like sliced meat. He looked across to where Gerardo Agostino was still being comforted by matronly Petra Drysdale and the Amazonian Hilly Hindmarsh. He was relieved to see that the old man had not overheard, and knew that as strict Catholics the Agostinos would never allow Andrea’s corpse to be treated like a side of beef. ‘It must have been hard enough for them to allow the autopsy to go ahead at all,’ he realised.
Looking back into the autopsy room, where Andrea Blewett’s corpse was now covered by a corpse sheet, Garbarla thought, ‘I wonder how they’ll take it when they find that after agreeing to an autopsy, we still don’t know what killed her?’ Suddenly thinking of his friend lying sedated in Gina’s hospital, he thought, ‘Or Terry for that matter? Terry’s tough, he has to be to survive as a cop, even in the Australian outback. But he loved Andrea so very, very much. It’ll all but kill him if Bear can’t tell him what killed her.’
Bear, Gina, and Elvis were still talking about the autopsy more than half an hour later, when Mel Forbes and Andrew Braidwood returned.
As he stepped up to listen into their conversation, Andrew Braidwood, a tall, lanky blond man, gave Garbarla a quick look. However, both men knew that the half-breed was a close friend of Bear Ross and Terry Blewett, so they did not worry about him overhearing police business.
“How’d it go?” asked Bear as they approached.
“Looks like we could have another one,” said Mel Forbes, running a hand over his broom-cropped snowy white hair. “Both Ed van Reyk and Old Doc Wilkinson have examined Bruce Cox’s corpse from head to toe and can’t find any reason for his death.”
“Oh, no!” said Gina Foley.
“Whatever this is, I hope we’re not about to have an epidemic,” said Elvis Green.
Bear sighed, clearly not looking forward to seeing another corpse, then said, “I guess I’d better get over there to see what’s what.”
Instinctively Garbarla said, “I might go with you, if you don’t mind.”
Bear looked uncertain about the suggestion. He had allowed Garbarla to view Andrea’s autopsy since he knew that the half-breed Aborigine was a close friend of Terry Blewett. But Garbarla had barely known Bruce Cox. Yet after a moment Bear nodded and said, “Yeah, why not.”
“I might come along too,” offered Elvis Green. Although the sigh in his voice suggested that he had seen enough corpses for a while.
“Not me,” said Gina Foley as they all looked toward her. She made a few notes in a small pad that she was carrying, then said, “I’ll hear all I need to from Paul Wilkinson when he reports to me tomorrow at the hospital.”
“Okay, your loss,” said Bear.
Gina snickered without bothering to look up from her notepad.
Bear went across to speak to Petra Drysdale and Hilly Hindmarsh for a moment, as Danielle Butler and Kim Monroe finally exited the autopsy room. Kim was holding a black metal suitcase containing his cameras and half a dozen rolls of film that he had shot during the autopsy of Andrea Blewett.
Leaving Petra and Hilly to attend to Gerardo Agostino, the others departed. Bear and co to Bruce Cox’s Boothy Street house; Andrew Braidwood and Kim Monroe to Harpertown thirty kilometres from Glen Hartwell. Since the local area had no Kodak or Fuji store, Montgomery’s general store in Harpertown developed film for the locals, including (for a small regular fee) doing priority developing and printing for Bear Ross and the other local police.

When they arrived at Boothy Street, they were greeted by Jim Kane, sergeant of police from Harpertown and his constable, Paul Bell.
‘Wow, everyone’s getting into the act,’ thought Garbarla as they entered the small house. ‘Two mysterious deaths in as many days is probably chicken feed by the standards of Melbourne or New York. But by the standards of a small Victorian country town, it’s rapidly approaching epidemic status.’
In the bedroom they found Paul Wilkinson -- who looked even older than the corpse of the ninety-five-year-old man -- and Edward van Reyk still puzzling over the death of Bruce Cox. And doing their level best to shoo away Mopsey and her eight kittens, who each seemed determined to climb onto the bed beside the old man’s corpse.
Despite the death of the old man, Garbarla couldn’t help smiling at the sight of Mopsey and her offspring. He wondered who would look after them now and thought, ‘If Geraldine were still alive, she’d probably insist on adopting them all.’
He blushed in embarrassment as the thought of Geraldine Gleeson and realised that more than two years after her death he still hurt from missing her. That he still loved her and hadn’t accepted that he would never see her again.
“Get out of it!” hissed Paul Wilkinson taking a half swipe at Mopsey and deliberately missing.
As the large black she continued to scale the single bed to get to her owner, Garbarla reached out and scooped her up. “Here, let me,” he said, knowing Paul Wilkinson as a self-confessed animal-lover wouldn’t really clip the feline pest across the head. No matter how much her persistence and yowling might make him long to.
“One down and eight to go,” teased Bear, pointing to where the kittens were in hot pursuit of the corpse also. Three, barely fist-sized bundles of fur had somehow managed to scale the (for them) Himalayan heights of the foot of the bed and had begun the epic trek across the mountainous rolls of blankets and sheets toward the head of the bed.
“Easily fixed,” said Garbarla. Grabbing the nearest fluff-bundle, he deposited it into the left hand pocket of his coat, then grabbed the next to pocket it on the right. Then, despite Mopsey’s best efforts to escape his grip, he managed to hold the She in his left hand while scooping up the third kitten in his right.
“Let’s just hope those kittens are pocket-trained,” joked Bear bending down to grab up two kittens halfway up the foot of the bed. He followed Garbarla’s example and placed the first kitten into his left pocket. Only to find that the second kitten was a fighter, determined to cling to the quilt with its claws despite his best efforts to free it.
“Come on you little so and so,” said Bear pulling at the kitten as forcefully as he dared, afraid to crush it in his large hand.
Clinging tightly to the quilt by its front paws, the kitten began to yowl for its mother, who promptly began yowling in answer and struggling in Garbarla’s arms.
The half-breed Aborigine had started to laugh at Bear’s predicament, only to find himself the centre of merriment as he struggled to prevent Mopsey from leaping free from his grasp and tried not to drop the kitten that he was still holding in his other hand.
“Let’s get them outside,” suggested Mel Forbes, scooping up the three remaining kittens in his two oversized mitts. Juggling the three kittens precariously, he headed toward the door to the corridor.
“Good idea,” agreed Garbarla. Hoping that the two kittens hadn’t already messed in his coat pockets, he clung onto Mopsey and her brood and started after the policeman.
Behind him he heard Bear curse as the kitten held on for dear life. Then with a rending of fabric, the quilt gave way and Bear started after them, with a kitten in each hand -- one still defiantly holding onto a small square of red quilt with its front paws.
“Okay, here comes the tricky part,” said Garbarla as they reached the back door. “How do we get them all outside without some sneaking back in again?”
“We carry them outside, I suppose,” suggested Mel Forbes. With some difficulty he managed to open the back door, while juggling the three kittens and started down the three concrete steps to the immaculately mown back lawn.
“Bruce still looked after this place, I see,” said Garbarla nodding toward the evenly trimmed hedge and weed-free garden at the back of the yard.
“Yes,” agreed Bear, looking relieved to be able to set down his two furry bundles of trouble. Which promptly raced back toward the concrete steps and started to meow to be let back into the house. “Bruce took pride in how he could still keep the place tidy. I think he’d have rather had it pulled up and concreted over than let it run to weeds.”
Relieved to be able to release the struggling she cat, Garbarla hurriedly released her three kittens too, relieved to find his coat pockets unsoiled. “So what happens to them now?” he asked. “Mopsey and the kittens, I mean?”
Released his own trio, Mel said, “I suppose they’ll have to be put down. Bruce never married and he outlived any other relatives that he might have had.”
Knowing that he could be making a major mistake before he even said it, Garbarla offered, “Maybe I’ll take them back to my flat and see if I can find homes for them. If you don’t mind.” He blushed, feeling silly as he said it, but knowing that it was what Geraldine would have done if she were still alive.
“Out here?” asked Bear. The big man looked as though he thought his long-time friend was going soft in the head. “As a rule country people regard cats as parasites. They’d run them down without a qualm if they stepped onto the road in front of them.”
“Country folk expect animals to earn their keep, herding cattle or whatever,” explained Mel.
“They keep down mice don’t they?” persisted Garbarla.
“Yes,” agreed Mel. “And that can be a big problem in grain silos on grain farms. But most of the properties around Glen Hartwell are strictly sheep or cattle stations. Morrie Blewett raises Angora goats, and Brian Horne’s farm still grows a little fruit and berries. But most of the others are strictly sheep or cattle.”
“It’s a pity Holly isn’t here to take charge of them,” said Mel Forbes. Bear and Garbarla exchanged a look, all thinking fondly of Holly Ulverstone, a self-confessed cat-aholic who had died in May 1993 in an industrial fire that had killed more than two-hundred people.
“She's the pied-piper of cats the way she can control the furry menaces,” Holly’s one-time boyfriend Ernie Singleton had once said. Thinking of Ernie, Garbarla decided he might try to recruit Ernie’s wife Rowena to help him find homes for the kittens. Rowena was Holly’s cousin and possessed some of her dead relative’s cat management skills.
Knowing how well loved Bruce Cox had been in and around Glen Hartwell, Garbarla thought, ‘With Rowie’s help I shouldn’t have too much trouble finding nine homes for them ... I hope!’

Suzanna Hoffman packed away her easels for the night, depressed for the first time in months. Like many great artists forced to teach or do other menial tasks to earn a living, Suzanna periodically suffered from fits of depression. At thirty-eight, single, and hardly dated in her life, her longing to have a husband and children also depressed her. She knew that at a hundred and ninety centimetres and built like the proverbial brick chicken-house, most men mistook her for a lesbian and were afraid to approach her. At times she felt like emulating gays coming out of the closet and shouting to the world, “I am straight!” as a means of attracting men. But she supposed that equality didn’t extend far enough to allow heterosexuals that option.
Deciding that it was best not to brood too much, Suzanna hurriedly packed away her easels, brushes, and other gear and started out into the corridor of the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology. Yawning as she walked down the long corridor, she thought, ‘I’ll be glad when the academic year is over in November.’
Suzanna always looked forward to the long break in teaching over the Christmas/New Year period. It gave her a chance to catch up on her private painting, and helped her to keep faith in her elusive dream that one day she would be recognised as a great painter and no longer have to teach for a living. ‘If only I could get short-listed for the Archibald, or some other prestigious award!’ But she knew that after twenty-two years of struggling for recognition her chances were fading fast.
The last few years had been particularly frustrating. With the Howard Government’s Work For the Dole scheme, where long-time unemployed were forced to do menial tasks or return to school for higher education, Suzanna’s class had greatly expanded. Instead of the eight to ten dedicated students with genuine artistic bent that she had once taught, the last few years she found herself teaching classes of forty to forty-five. Most of whom had no feeling for the arts, no interest either, and had chosen painting and sculpting as a less-odious option than having to dig ditches or mend bitumen roads for the dole.
Shaking her head, Suzanna silently cursed Prime Minister Howard as she started down the concrete steps toward her lime green Corona.
Tossing her current portfolio into the back seat, Suzanna squeezed in behind the steering wheel, almost bumping her head on the low ceiling of the car. Despite having the seat adjusted back as far as it would go, it was a tight squeeze for the Amazonian woman to fit into the small Japanese car.
Half an hour later, the green car was driving down Rochester Road in Merridale, thirty kilometres to the North-West of Glen Hartwell. Suzanna realised that she should not be driving so fast at night, but was impatient to get to her Yorke Street home. Barely noticing the historic iron-work bandstand and war memorials lining the grassed-in promenade down the centre of Rochester, Suzanna turned right at the through street and was soon pulling up in the small garage attached to the side of her house.
She used a remote control to shut and lock the garage door, then turn on the light -- ever conscious that even Amazonian a hundred and ninety centimetre women get mugged and raped -- before climbing out of her car. Then she stepped across to unlock the small door leading directly into her living room-cum-studio.
Dropping her portfolio and personal painting equipment onto the paint-splattered sofa, Suzanna looked around with a sense of satisfaction at the paintings that took up most of three walls of the studio. For the most part they were still lifes, portraits and historic buildings in Glen Hartwell, Merridale, LePage and the surrounding countryside. Almost all of one wall though, was taken up by something noticeably different. Suzanna’s pride and joy. A portrait of a gigantic, black kangaroo; Kuperee from Aboriginal Dream-Time mythology. In legend Kuperee was the original kangaroo. So huge that even the otherwise fearless bunyips were terrified of him. Suzanna had painted the picture to Geraldine Gleeson’s instructions in July 1991. Then she had inherited the painting back from Geraldine upon her death in July 2003.
Although Kuperee was Suzanna’s finest work, looking at it made her think of the brutal, unsolved murder of her friend Geraldine. Thinking of Geraldine Gleeson made Suzanna ache from loneliness. Although they had never been lovers as some of the locals had liked to sneeringly suggest, Geraldine and Suzanna had been as close as two straight women can be.
Sighing again, Suzanna turned away from the painting and headed for her bedroom. She quickly changed clothes then climbed into bed, not really expecting to get much sleep. But she found that she was exhausted and fell asleep within a few minutes.
It was nearly midnight when Suzanna was awakened by a sound like a window pane smashing.
“What ...?’ cried Suzanna trying to sit up in bed. Only to find herself crushing beneath a great weight.
‘Oh, my God, my heart!’ thought Suzanna, wrongly thinking that she was having a heart-attack.
Then hearing shallow breathing, the big woman realised that there was someone else in the room with her.
“Is ... is there anyone there?” she asked, feeling stupid as she said it. She thought, ‘Sure thing, a burglar or rapist is going to reply, isn’t he?’
She reached up for the switch to the lamp on the small table beside her bed, when she felt the tiny footsteps on her bed.
Thinking it was a dingo or other rural pest that had got into her house, she started to sit up when she received the first of a great series of sharp thumps, directly over her heart.
“Aaaaaaaaah!” she started to scream. But the scream soon turned to a gurgle as her mouth filled with blood and Suzanna Hoffman died -- never knowing that her masterpiece Kuperee would be short listed for Australia’s most prestigious art award, the following year.

For the second time in as many days Joseph Garbarla, Bear Ross, and Mel Forbes stood in the observation room watching as Gina Foley and Elvis Green performed an autopsy. This time on the corpse of Bruce Cox.
Once more the autopsy seemed to last forever. But finally Gina and Elvis finished up, leaving Kim Monroe to take a few more autopsy photos while Danielle Butler redressed the corpse.
“Well?” asked Bear as soon as the surgeons stepped out of the autopsy room.
Gina and Elvis exchanged a frustrated look, then Elvis said, “No dice, Bear. We don’t have a clue how he died.”
“What?” asked Bear Ross. “Not again.”
Elvis smiled at the comment and shrugged.
“He was ninety-five,” pointed out Mel Forbes.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Gina Foley. “Even old age doesn’t kill without leaving some sign of how the person dies: a worn-out heart, a brain-haemorrhage, or whatever.”
“Is it possible to perform the minute dissection of the corpse that you spoke of last night?” asked Bear.
Gina and Elvis exchanged a troubled look, clearly neither keen on the idea. Finally Elvis said, “Yes, if we can get permission from his next-to-kin.”
“He had no next-to-kin as far as we know,” said Mel. “He had no wife or kids, and by age ninety-five all his brothers and sisters are long in the ground.”
“I’ll take the responsibility for the dissection,” offered Bear Ross.
“Well ... okay,” said Elvis, clearly not anxious to perform the microscopic autopsy.

As they walked through the morgue toward Baltimore Drive, Bear tapped Garbarla on the shoulder and said, “I’ll give you a lift down to Mitchell Street.”
“Yes, okay,” agreed Garbarla.
A few minutes later Bear’s white Torana pulled up outside the Mitchell Street police station and they went inside to collect Mopsey and her brood, who were now safely confined within a large wicker cat carrier.
“Mustn’t forget your orphans,” teased Bear. “The last thing we need is the station cluttered up with nine yowling little terrors.

Forty minutes later Garbarla’s yellow Mini Minor turned off Donaldson’s Drive to head down the dirt path leading to a sheep and cattle station outside Merridale, owned by close friends of Garbarla, Ernie and Rowena Singleton.
As he drove down the path, Garbarla saw Ernie standing by the woodpile chopping logs into kindling. In the farmhouse yard Rowena was trying her best to hang washing onto a line, despite the assistance of her eight-year-old daughter, Kirsty.
Garbarla marvelled at how unalike the pair were: Ernie Celtically dark, with jet-black hair and dark blue eyes, a tall, burly farming type; Rowena a tall, willowy honey blonde with high cheek bones and piercing pale blue eyes. Young Kirsty had inherited her mother’s looks, but had more of her father’s moodiness and feisty nature.
Hearing the approaching car, Ernie and Rowena stopped what they were doing and turned round to wave at the approaching Mini. Kirsty waving till Garbarla was sure her right hand would fall off.
Garbarla pulled up just past the woodpile outside the chain link fence ringing farmhouse yard, Climbing from the Mini, the half-breed Aborigine walked over to Ernie to make small talk for a moment before telling him of the death of old Bruce Cox.
“Oh, my God,” said Rowena, dropping the plastic clothes basket that she had started to pick up. With young Kirsty trailing along behind, Rowena strode across to the wire-mesh fence to talk.
“So, I’m stuck with taking care of Mopsey and her eight youngsters,” said Garbarla. When Ernie and Rowena failed to comment, he added, “So, I was hoping Rowie might be able to help me to find homes for them all.”
Ignoring her husband’s disdain for the idea, Rowena smiled and said, “Sure, I’d love to help out.”
“Just don’t let you know who see them,” said Ernie pointing to where the honey-blonde girl was trailing behind her mother. “Or we’ll be stuck with the lot.”
“You know who, see what?” asked Kirsty. But before her parents had time to think up an answer, the little girl’s ears picked up the sound of mewling coming from the back seat of the yellow Mini.
“Kittens!” she shrieked in delight, racing across to the gate to let herself out into the main yard.
“No! Not a chance!” insisted Ernie, bending to scoop up his daughter before she could race across to the small car. “This is a working farm. We only have animals that bring in money for us. Not pests.”
“We’ve got dogs,” insisted Kirsty pointing to the dog yard a hundred metres from the farmhouse, where nearly fifty Kelpies, Barb-Kelpies, Queensland Heelers and other dogs were kennelled in halved two-hundred litre drums.
“The dogs work for a living, herding sheep and cattle,” Ernie explained patiently. “And we sell others to local farmers to help out our income.”
“Kittens!” persisted Kirsty, struggling in her father’s grip.
“No!” insisted Ernie shaking his head.
“Kit ... tens!” pleaded Kirsty in her most pouty, almost crying voice.
Garbarla and Rowena exchanged a wry smile, both knowing the usually strong country man Ernie was as weak as a kitten himself when it came to trying to deny his daughter anything,
“Kit ... tens!” repeated Kirsty at something closer to crying and poor Ernie heaved a sigh of frustration.
“Well ...” said Ernie. He looked toward Garbarla and Rowena for help, only to see them both smirking at his expense. “Okay, but only one of the little horrors. We don’t want this place being overrun by feline menaces.”
“Kittens!” shrieked Kirsty, happy again as her father reluctantly carried her across to the Mini Minor to select one.
“See what a good salesman you are,” said Rowena to Garbarla, “you’ve found a home for one of them already.”
“Well, what are you going to call it,” asked Rowena, ten minutes later when she, Garbarla, and Ernie were seated in the lounge room nursing cups of coffee and watching Kirsty spoon-feed milk to a black and tan kitten.
“How about Dennis the Menace?” suggested Ernie, still not fond of having a cat on his farm.
“What if it’s a girl?” asked young Kirsty. “Dennis is a boy’s name.”
“Then you can call it Denise the Menise,” suggested Rowena.
“Denise the Menise,” agreed Kirsty with a determined nod of her head.

Over the next week there were eight more mysterious deaths. Three more in Glen Hartwell; others in neighbouring Harpertown, LePage, Merridale, Lenoak, and Daley.
The microscopic autopsies on Bruce Cox, Suzanna Hoffman, and the others turned up nothing. Until Gina Foley and Elvis Green performed it upon the tenth victim, Lonnie Yorkshire of Lenoak.
“Anything new?” asked Bear Ross as Gina and Elvis exited the autopsy room.
“Yes,” said Gina to the surprise of Bear and Mel Forbes, who had both started to fear that they would never detect the cause of the mysterious deaths. “Three pin-prick sized holes through the chest, passing through the sternum and into the heart.”
“He was stabbed in the heart,” explained Elvis. “Either by some kind of amazingly thin yet durable probe or needle. Or some kind of stinger of a snake or type of insect that I’ve never encountered before.”
“How come you didn’t detect them on the other corpses?” asked Mel Forbes.
“They’re only minute,” explained Gina defensively. “But they go right through to the victim’s heart.”
“What about the other corpses?” asked Bear. “Will they have these pin-pricks too?”
“Presumably, but we’ll have to have another look at them to be sure,” said Elvis. He sighed, not looking forward to the length procedure of rechecking the previous nine corpses.
By the end of that day Bear Ross, Mel Forbes, Andrew Braidwood, and the two surgeons were assembled in Elvis Green’s office at the morgue in Baltimore Drive.
“What was the result?” asked Bear.
“Every one of them had the puncture marks,” said Elvis. He handed over a hastily compiled report for Bear and Mel to peruse. “Some as little as one or two; others as many as a dozen or more. We missed them because they were so tiny. But once we knew where to look and for what, we were able to determine all ten victims, as I think we can now safely call them, have been stabbed through the heart.”
“Have you determined what by?” asked Mel.
“At first I thought it might be an insect stinger,” admitted Elvis. “But the wounds are too perfectly smooth, without jagged edges or tearing that would be caused by a stinger.”
“And there is no sign of insect or reptile DNA in the wounds,” offered Gina Foley.
“Then what did kill them?” asked Bear.
Gina and Elvis exchanged a puzzled look, considering for a moment, then Elvis said, “Some long, incredibly thin, possibly metallic object.”
“A knitting needle perhaps?’ suggested Mel.
“No, it is much too thin for any knitting needle,” insisted Gina. “Although it would probably have to be as long as the average length knitting needle.”

Over the week since first visiting Ernie, Garbarla and Rowena had managed to give away all of the eight kittens, with old Glenda Pettyjohn, head librarian at the Glen Hartwell Library even offering to take ownership of Mopsey -- after she was spayed. “Don’t want to find myself stuck with a new litter as soon as you’ve got rid of the first one,” explained the old lady.
After dropping Rowena back at the Singleton station, Garbarla decided that he was too tired to head back to his apartment in Lawson Street -- which like the Mini Minor he had inherited from Geraldine Gleeson in July 2003. So, instead he set off for his mother Debbie Bulilka’s Aboriginal settlement, a few kilometres past the town of Pettiwood.
Although it was after 10:00 PM and the village had already bedded down for the night, Garbarla saw his mother, Debbie Bulilka, waiting for him at her front door as he walked down a wide ‘street’ passing through the village of one-, two-, and three-room corrugated-iron huts toward her hut.
When he had returned to his tribal village in the early 1980s, the full-blooded Aborigines had liked to dupe him into believing that they possessed some kind of native magic. And he might have once thought Debbie had somehow sensed that he was coming to share her hut that night. But a decade and a half older and wiser, Garbarla realised that she had probably heard his car approaching and had learnt to distinguish its rattle from the rattle of the handful of other cars that ever stopped at the village.
Grinning widely as though she hadn’t seen him in weeks, instead of days, Debbie threw her arms round her full-grown son’s neck to welcome him, then led him into her three-room iron hut.
Pointing toward the back room, where he slept when staying at the village, she said, “Cot already made up.”
‘Maybe she really does have ESP or something?’ thought Garbarla as he headed into the back room.
Not bothering to change into pyjamas, Garbarla pulled off his shoes and outer garments and slipped in beneath the blankets quickly, before freezing. Although by late September the spring weather was starting to warm up in readiness for summer, the nights were still Antarctically cold.
Garbarla had almost drifted off into sleep, when he heard the sound of small feet on the hard dirt floor.
“Rats?” he thought, puzzled. His mother had always been a good housekeeper and the village as a whole had been vermin free in the twenty-three years since he had returned to the settlement from Queensland where he had been raised by his white grandmother.
He started to sit up on the small iron cot, when something small leapt onto his chest.
“What?” cried Garbarla, startled. Leaning over he picked up a small flashlight from a squat table beside his bed and flicked it on, expecting to see a rat or other small animal.
Instead, to his amazement, Garbarla saw the figure of a tiny Aboriginal warrior, wearing only a skimpy loin-cloth and carrying a long, golden rod as long as any knitting needle, but only a fraction of the thickness.
“What in hell!” said Garbarla, convinced that he was hallucinating as he stared at the figure. Which was perhaps twenty to twenty-five centimetres tall.
For a moment Garbarla and the tiny warrior stared at each other in the meagre light of the small torch. Then, holding the golden ‘spear’ above its small head, the tiny man began to scream, “Eeeeeeeiii!” and race up along Garbarla’s legs, heading toward his upper body.
Realising that the tiny man planned to stab him in the chest with the spear, Garbarla shrieked in terror and leapt out of bed.
“Eeeeeeeiii!” cried the tiny warrior again. But this time in alarm as it was flung across the room as Garbarla leapt out of bed.
Hearing running footsteps outside his room, Garbarla looked round to the left and saw his mother peaking in through the doorway.
“What wrong?” asked Debbie, probably thinking that her son had had another nightmare about the death of Geraldine Gleeson, who she knew he had been hoping to marry.
By way of answer, Garbarla pointed to where the tiny Aboriginal warrior lay on its side by the corrugated-iron wall of the hut, which it had rebounded off after being flung across the room when Garbarla leapt from his bed.
“What ... what is it?” asked Debbie Bulilka, staring at the tiny figure. In the dark it looked like some kind of plastic action figure. Except that no one had ever produced a twenty-five centimetre plastic replica of an Australian Aboriginal warrior holding a thirty centimetre golden spear.
“I’m not sure,” said Garbarla. He and Debbie both inched toward the fallen “warrior”, both expecting it to leap to its feet and attack them at any second. “But I think it’s what killed Bruce Cox, Suzanna Hoffman and the others.”
Debbie stopped and stared at her son in wonder. These days he only spent his weekends at the village during the school year, preferring to stay at the flat that he had once shared with Geraldine Gleeson during the week. However, Garbarla had told Debbie and the others at the village about the killings. And some of the young bucks now chose to work in Glen Hartwell or the other local country towns, earning money as labourers or farm hands in preference to doing tribal chores -- so the whole village knew of the series of inexplicable deaths in Glen Hartwell and Merridale recently.
“How this ... thing kill people?” asked Debbie.
By way of answer, Garbarla shone the flashlight beam onto the long golden spear that lay beside the prostrate warrior.
“Golden knitting needle?” said Debbie, sounding as puzzled as her grown son felt.
“I don’t think so,” said Garbarla. “It looks too thin for any knitting needle. And it can’t be solid gold, or it would be too soft to stab through the breastplate and into the heart.”
Still half expecting the tiny warrior to leap back to its feet and attack them at any second, Garbarla tentatively stepped forward. Hearing his mother’s sharp intake of breath, he hurriedly bent down and scooped up the golden spear, then took half-a-dozen quick steps backwards from the tiny figure.
Careful to try to keep the torch pointed at the warrior, Garbarla took the golden spear in both hands. Placing his right thumb in the middle of the spear he tried to bend it around his thumb.
For a few moments the spear resisted and Garbarla thought that he would not be able to bend it at all. But finally it began to bend just a degree or two. But even that took all of Garbarla’s strength to achieve.
“Too strong for gold,” agreed Debbie watching her son’s efforts.
Giving up the attempt to bend the spear while it was still almost straight, Garbarla said to his mother, “Go fetch Weari-Wyingga. I’ll stay here in case that thing is still alive.”
After a second’s hesitation, Debbie said, “Be careful.” Then she turned and started through the corrugated-iron hut to fetch Weari-Wyingga, the tribe’s acting headman.
“Don’t worry,” said Garbarla. He had no intention of going near the tiny figure again.
Ten minutes late, Garbarla heard footsteps. Looking round he saw Debbie returning with Weari-Wyingga, a tall, spindly, grey-haired man who looked every day of his nearly one hundred years. Behind Weari-Wyingga came three spear-carrying warriors: Tom “Tubby” Budjiwa. Who, despite his love of white man’s candy and a sizeable paunch, was one of the tribe’s best hunters. Alex Jalburgul Gul, who’s buck-toothed faced seemed to be perpetually smiling, even in the face of danger or great hardship. And Tony Gobaboingu, who at twenty had already established himself as the tribe’s best hunter and tracker.
“What’s wrong?’ asked Gobaboingu.
By way of answer, Garbarla pointed to where the body of the twenty-five centimetre tall Aboriginal warrior still lay. He heard sharp intakes of breath from all of the warriors, but almost nonchalantly Weari-Wyingga said:
“Burgin Gin.”
“What?” asked Garbarla, puzzled, having heard the term before. “But I thought the Burgin Gin were supposed to be dwarves, about a metre or so high, half the height of an ordinary man?”
Weari-Wyingga smiled, pleased that unlike the younger bucks in the village, Garbarla knew at least some of the tribe’s Dream-Time legends. If only partially. “No,” he said, “Burgin Gin are tiny men who hate all of humanity and devote their life to attacking and killing us. In New South Wales and Queensland their legends say Burgin Gin are dwarves two and a half to four feet tall. In Victoria and South Australia, our legends say Burgin Gin are only tiny. No more than ten or twelve inches at most. They carry a golden spear, which they have forged for their own personal use and stab through the heart of their chosen prey.”
Taking the golden spear from Garbarla, the old man continued: “Although it looks like pure gold, the weapon is an alloy of gold, steel and other substances. Unlike gold it is very difficult to bend.”
“What Burgin Gin doing here, trying to kill my Garbarla?” asked Debbie Bulilka.
Weari-Wyingga looked at Debbie, then turned to stare at the tiny warrior again, clearly as puzzled as she was.
“I think it may be responsible for killing Bruce Cox and those other people in the Glen recently,” said Garbarla. He heard loud gasps of breath and realised a crowd of villagers had gathered in the next room (and possibly all around the small, iron hut) in the hope of getting a peak at the cause of all the excitement.
“You mean that this one tiny warrior killed nine or ten people?” asked Tubby Budjiwa, sounding sceptical.
“No, Burgin Gin always travel in packs of at least five or six,” insisted Weari-Wyingga.
“That include women and children, or only warriors?” asked Debbie.
Weari-Wyingga considered for a moment, looking perplexed. “Legends only talk of adult male Burgin Gin. No mention of women and children. Yet they have to reproduce or they soon become extinct.”
Garbarla and the others considered this for a moment. Then Garbarla started to ask a question, when they heard shouting and hysterical screaming coming from the village outside.
At first Garbarla ignore the ruckus, thinking that it was a reaction to the news of the tiny corpse inside the hut. Then he realised that the screaming was from abject terror, not mere shock.
“Screaming!” said Tony Gobaboingu as though he thought the others could not hear it for themselves.
At the young hunter’s words there was a near stampede as the people gathered in the next room tried to reverse out of the hut to allow Weari-Wyingga, Garbarla and the others to get outside.
“Let us through!” ordered Tubby Budjiwa, as though hoping that at his words the crowd would part like the Red Sea to allow them through.
“Come on, come on,” pleaded Weari-Wyingga, like Budjiwa trying to push his way through the crowd of gawkers to get to the screaming natives outside the small iron hut.
At the rear of the bedroom, Garbarla and Debbie stood watching as Weari-Wyingga, Tubby Budjiwa, and the other warriors tried to push their way through the crowd. At first it looked as though they would never get out of the hut. But finally the crowd began to escape the hut, or back up into the third room -- Debbie’s bedroom -- and Weari-Wyingga and the three warriors were at last able to push their way through, to head toward the outer door.
“Come on,” said Garbarla, taking his mother by one arm to lead her toward the outside also. But Debbie hesitated, held onto her son, trying to keep him from leaving the hut.
“No, stay,” said Debbie, fighting to keep her son from leaving.
Looking puzzled, Garbarla pulled free from her grip and started after Weari-Wyingga and the others.
“No! Stay!” shrieked Debbie as though having some kind of presentiment of what they would find outside in the village.
Startled by the edge of hysteria in her voice, Garbarla stopped and looked back. Seeing the panicked look in her eyes, he half wondered if she really did possess some kind of precognitive powers. If she had had some kind of vision of impending doom for him. Debbie had lost her eldest son, Gunbuk, fifteen years ago in December 1984, and the frantic look in her shining black eyes seemed to say, “Don’t let me lose my youngest son too.”
Alarmed by the look of terror in his mother’s eyes, Garbarla hesitated, afraid of what might happen to him if he left the relative safety of the hut. But as the villagers outside continued to shriek in agony and fear, he knew that he could not abandon them to his own cowardice.
After one last look at Debbie, Garbarla turned and began to push his way through the now rapidly thinning crowd.
Outside the hut, Garbarla found old Weari-Wyingga watching on in obvious astonishment as Tubby Budjiwa and the other hunters tried to calm the panicked villagers. Despite their best efforts, the full-bloods were charging around like human Dodgems, colliding with each other, cannoning into the corrugated-iron sides of the huts with crashes like thunder claps, all the while screaming from terror.
“What ... what’s going on?” asked Garbarla, since there was no obvious sign of what had panicked the village.
Weari-Wyingga shrugged. He was clearly as puzzled as Garbarla as they watched the desperate attempts of Budjiwa, Gobaboingu, and Alex Jalburgul Gul to calm the frenetic natives.
For nearly ten minutes Weari-Wyingga, Garbarla, and Debbie Bulilka (who had reluctantly left her iron hut) watched perplexed as the three hunters tried their best to calm the terrified Aborigines. Finally, they saw Tubby Budjiwa and Alex Jalburgul Gul break away from the panickers to return to where they stood by the door to Debbie’s hut.
“Well?” asked Weari-Wyingga, having to shout to make himself heard over the screaming villagers.
By way of answer, Budjiwa held up a small dead warrior in both hands.
Garbarla started to ask why he had brought the dead Burgin Gin from Debbie Bulilka’s hut. But then he saw that Jalburgul Gul was also holding out the figure of a tiny native. But Jalburgul Gul’s prisoner was struggling wildly in his hands, and Garbarla realised that these were two different Burgin Gin.
“They’re attacking the village,” explained Alex Jalburgul Gul, smiling his buck-toothed smile even as he said it.
“What ...?” asked Garbarla. He jumped away in shock as the captive Burgin Gin struggled frantically in Alex Jalburgul Gul’s hands, squealing almost rat-like in rage at its captors. Seeing the look of abject hatred in the tiny creature’s eyes, Garbarla knew that it would like to kill them all by driving its golden spear through their hearts.
“What’ll we do with it?” asked Garbarla.
“Only one thing to do,” said Weari-Wyingga. Reaching out to take the squirming figure from Jalburgul Gul, the old man took it by the neck and twisted his right hand savagely.
“Oh, my God!” cried Garbarla in shock at the sickening crunching of bones as the old man broke the Burgin Gin’s neck.
Looking up at him, Weari-Wyingga smiled sympathetically. “Don’t waste tears on them. They’re lethal vermin. Burgin Gin’s only purpose in life is to kill our kind. Ten dead already in nearby white towns, maybe more killed here tonight.”
Garbarla nodded, knowing that the old man was right, but still feeling sickened by the way Weari-Wyingga had ruthlessly killed the creature.
“But ... couldn’t we have reasoned with it.”
“How you reason with vermin?” asked Weari-Wyingga. “Burgin Gin don’t understand human speech. Their own language -- if it is language -- is like the squeaking of vermin. Can’t reason with them, can’t make them lead us to their camp. Can only kill them to stop them killing us.”
Garbarla nodded, although he was still unconvinced.
Leaving the two dead Burgin Gin, Jalburgul Gul and Budjiwa returned to the fray. With some difficulty they and Tony Gobaboingu managed to firstly calm the other hunters -- Arthur Andilyaugwa, Casper Bullo-Bullo, Charlie Gallawadi Wadi, and Danny Koolalongoo among them. And with the help of these extra hunters, they managed to lead the villagers out of town.
“Toward corroboree ground,” called Weari-Wyingga, pointing toward a large, circular grove of blue gums a hundred metres outside the village, heading into the brown dirt desert.
Koolalongoo and some of the others stopped to stare at the old man in surprise. By Aboriginal law both men and women are allowed to use the blue gum grove for corroborees, but never together. Men are forbidden from all female corroborees, and vice versa.
Obviously realising the reason for their hesitation, Weari-Wyingga waved toward the corroboree ground. “Special case,” shouted the old man. “Get everyone to corroboree ground and to safety.”
After a moment’s uncertainty, the warriors started to herd the still hysterical Aborigines toward the blue gum grove which had only one entrance or exit.
Realising this, Garbarla wondered if the old man was making a mistake. Although the gum trees grew densely together, there were small gaps large enough for the tiny Burgin Gin to easily pass through. “They’ll be trapped in there,” he said, hoping to make Weari-Wyingga change his mind. “Wouldn’t they be better off out in the open?”
“Out of sight, out of mind?” suggested the old man. “Maybe if Burgin Gin can’t see them, they forget them?”
“Maybe,” said Garbarla, sceptically.
“Besides, which way they run? Into forest leading back to towns? Out into desert? And which way Burgin Gin come from? Whichever way they run, they could be running into deeper trouble.”
It took the better part of fifteen minutes to get the two hundred or so panicked Aborigines into the blue gum grove. Then they left Tony Gobaboingu and a seventeen-year-old warrior, Ron Waggaman, to watch over the tribe, while Johnny Galarrwuy (the tribe’s senior medicine man) did his best to patch up the ugly wounds which many of the Aborigines had received from the long, golden spears of the Burgin Gin.
“Now what?” asked Garbarla, as the warrior returned to the village.
“Now we go through village hut by hut and look for any Burgin Gin hiding here,” explained Weari-Wyingga.
Half wishing that he had stayed with Debbie in the blue gum grove, Garbarla hefted the three-metre spear, which he had grown quite proficient at hunting with over the last two decades and started forward with the thirty or more other men as they slowly combed their way through the corrugated-iron village.
“Look everywhere,” instructed Garbarla, receiving a grunt of annoyance from Casper Bullo-Bullo and other warriors, clearly thinking that he should know by now that they would not leave a job half done.
Holding his spear in both hands, Garbarla tried to follow his own advice. ‘At only twenty-five centimetres or so high, the Burgin Gin can hide in almost any nook or niche,’ he thought, stopping at the door of a garishly painted pink house.
He looked back toward Weari-Wyingga and Nambidjimba, the tribe’s most experienced tracker, whose mother, Sarah Jardagara, lived in the hut. Jimba nodded to Garbarla, who stepped forward and tentatively grabbed the small brass knob and tried to push the door open quickly.
“It sticks sometimes,” explained Jimba as Garbarla shook his twisted wrist. The young hunter stepped forward to put his shoulder against the corrugated-iron door to push inward as Garbarla held the knob again.
For a second or so it seemed as though the door would defeat them both. Then, just as old Weari-Wyingga stepped up to help out, the door suddenly flew inwards, sending Jimba and Garbarla sprawling into the front room of the dirt-floored hut.
‘So much for taking every precaution!’ thought Garbarla as he lay on the floor with Jimba sprawled across his legs. He looked about the hut for his spear which had flown out of his grip, half expecting a Burgin Gin warrior to leap out of the dark shadows to stab him in the face with its golden spear.
Hearing footsteps, Garbarla looked around, eyes glazed with terror. And was relieved to see it was only Danny Koolalongoo and Arthur Andilyaugwa stepping into the hut to help them up. The two warriors all but lifted Nambidjimba to his feet, then helped Garbarla to stand again.
Still conscious of the possibility of tiny assassins hidden in the dark, Garbarla hurriedly picked up his fallen spear. Then using a couple of heavy-duty torches to light the way, they slowly checked out Sarah Jardagara’s two-room iron hut. Careful to look under the low cot bed as well as through the three small wooden cupboards and even in her shoes, in the unlikely event that a particularly tiny Burgin Gin could be hiding there.
Finally, half pleased, half disappointed not to have found anything, they departed the hut to continue the search through the village.
It was three huts later when Garbarla finally did locate a Burgin Gin.
“Look out,” teased Koolalongoo as Garbarla went down on his hands and knees to look under the wire cot.
Unable to distinguish shapes under the bed, even with Koolalongoo’s best efforts to shine his torch under the bed, Garbarla decided to jab his spear at the largest object.
The metallic ting-ting told him that it was a chamber pot.
Koolalongoo started to laugh at Garbarla’s efforts, when there was a blur of movement under the bed, from behind the potty.
“Look out!” warned Arthur Andilyaugwa.
Nambidjimba reached forward to pull Garbarla out of the way. Just in time as a small humanlike figure raced out from under the bed, wildly stabbing its golden spear in all directions as it charged.
“Watch it!” warned Jimba as he pulled Garbarla back out of the way. The momentum toppled Nambidjimba and Garbarla over backwards, and once more they fell to the dirt floor in a heap.
Squealing rat-like in delight at their helpless state, the twenty-centimetre Burgin Gin raced across toward them. As it ran, the tiny assassin began swinging its golden spear wildly like a cheerleader swinging a baton, as though undecided whether to hurl it or hold it to stab into the chests of Jimba and Garbarla.
Just in time Danny Koolalongoo returned to his senses. The Burgin Gin warrior was only centimetres from where Jimba and Garbarla lay sprawled together, when Koolalongoo lunged forward and stabbed the metal head of his spear straight through the abdomen of the creature.
“Eeeeeeeiii!” squealed the tiny assassin, squirming frantically upon the spear for a second or two before finally lying still.
“Be careful!” Weari-Wyingga reminded the young warriors as he and Koolalongoo helped Jimba and Garbarla back to their feet.
“Yes,” agreed Garbarla, shaking a little in fright at the thought of how close he had come for a second time that night to becoming the victim of a Burgin Gin.
Disentangling himself from the others, Garbarla followed Weari-Wyingga outside. Where they found the night village alive with the firefly like glow of bobbing flashlights.
They had barely stepped from the iron hut, when they heard the sounds of shouting from a hut across the village.
Leaving Jimba and Koolalongoo, Weari-Wyingga and Garbarla raced across expecting to find another Burgin Gin being hunted. Instead they found the corpse of a young lubra, Jayne Maung, on a small wire-framed cot. Beside her lay the battered body of her new born baby, Tommy.
“Holy ...” said Garbarla, uncertain how to finish. Not knowing whether he should call on Jesus, the god of his white father, Edward Hunt, or Gurugadji, the Emu-Man, god of his black mother, Debbie Bulilka.
“Holy who?” asked Weari-Wyingga with a grin, liking to tease the half-breed about his mixed origins. However, there was no trace of laughter behind the grin. Any pleasure their friendly banter would normally bring, had been killed by the sight of Jayne Maung and her baby boy.
Hearing movement behind them, the old man warned, “Keep back Mark,” referring to a young buck, Marcus Malak-Malak, husband -- now widower -- of Jayne Maung.
But too late!
“Noooooooo!” shrieked Malak-Malak as he raced into the back bedroom of the hut, almost falling over the wire cot in his frantic bid to reach his wife.
“Grab him!” warned Garbarla.
For a few seconds no one moved though, as Malak-Malak leapt onto the bed to scoop his wife’s corpse into his arms, still shrieking out in grief. Then Neal Judawali and Alex Jalburgul Gul leapt forward and grabbed Malak-Malak by one arm each.
“Noooooooo!” shrieked the distressed native, refusing to be parted from the corpse of his wife.
For a few seconds it seemed as though Malak-Malak might manage to fight off the two warriors. Then Weari-Wyingga stepped forward and brought down his walking stick with a sickening thud on the back of Malak-Malak’s head.
Startled, Garbarla and the others turned to stare at the old man.
“Got to be cruel sometimes to be kind,” Weari-Wyingga reminded them. Then to Alex and Neal, “Take him to corroboree ground to be tended by Johnny Galarrwuy.”
Nodding, they hefted the prone figure between them and started to half carry, half drag Malak-Malak out of the hut.
“Then come straight back,” said the head man. And Garbarla suspected that he also wanted to make certain that the Burgin Gin had not doubled back to attack the women and children of the village.
“How come the Burgin Gin killed Jayne and the baby, but not Malak-Malak as well?” asked Garbarla, more thinking aloud than asking a question.
“Probably killed baby first, then Jayne, then before it can kill Malak-Malak commotion start in village,” guessed Weari-Wyingga. “Malak-Malak leap up and go to investigate, not knowing Jayne and baby dead on bed beside him. Later he think they safely in corroboree ground with others.”
“My God,” said Garbarla, hurting for the loss of his friend Marcus Malak-Malak. This time Weari-Wyingga did not bother asking which god.
They spent nearly ten minutes searching the hut in case the Burgin Gin had waited for the return of Malak-Malak.
They had barely set foot outside again when Alex Jalburgul Gul and Neal Judawali returned to report on the medicine man’s treatment of Malak-Malak. “Women and children fine too,” added Alex, sensing that had been the main reason they had been sent to the corroboree ground.
Weari-Wyingga smiled; the last time Garbarla would ever see him smile, then started to speak, when a rat-like shrieking came from a hut not far from where they stood.
“Burgin Gin!” cried Judawali. Raising his spear, the young hunter raced over to the hut and ran inside.
“Be careful!” shouted Weari-Wyingga.
From inside the iron hut came a banging and crashing, then a great inhuman shriek, which had every warrior in the hunt racing across toward the hut.
Before they could race inside though, the iron door swung inward and Neal Judawali stepped out, brandishing his spear, upon the point of which writhed a shrieking Burgin Gin.
Reaching out, Weari-Wyingga grabbed the tiny creature by the head and sharply twisted his hands. “That for Jayne Maung and baby Tommy,” said the old man, sounding pleased by the snapping of bones as he broke the monster’s neck.
This time Garbarla and the others were not shocked at the old man’s actions. The sight of Jayne Maung and her baby’s bodies had killed any sympathy that they may have previously had for the pint-sized assassins.
After the discovery of Jayne Maung and baby Tommy, the tribal males were even more on edge than before -- if possible -- as they slowly hunted through the village. Aside from the corrugated-iron huts, they also hunted through cooking utensils, rugs, and other possible hiding places around the huts, ever wary of what might leap out at them.
‘The bogey man will get you if you don’t watch out!’ thought Garbarla as Alex Jalburgul Gul cautiously prodded behind a stack of brooms and other tools lying against the outside of one hut. He almost said the childish phrase aloud, but the memory of Jayne and Tommy and the Burgin Gin writhing on Judawali’s spear was enough to wipe the mirth from his thoughts.
“Take a care,” called Danny Koolalongoo as Alex hunted behind the broom handles. And at his words the pile of tools suddenly shifted and with a scraping of iron slid down the corrugated-iron wall toward Alex Jalburgul Gul.
Alex leapt backwards in fright, almost falling onto his backside. However, when the brooms and shovels stopped sliding, no tiny warriors emerged.
“Just slid over,” explained Alex with a broad buck-toothed grin. And even Garbarla could not resist smiling as Koolalongoo and a couple of the other warriors chuckled aloud at Alex’s expense.
“Just be careful,” warned Weari-Wyingga, “next time could be Burgin Gin hiding there.”
For another hour or more they slowly hunted through the iron village without finding any sign of any more Burgin Gin. Until reaching the very end of the village. Almost into the brown-dirt desert beyond.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” said Garbarla. Weari-Wyingga had started to nod his head in agreement, when they heard a cry from inside the last hut.
For a few seconds no one moved, then the cry was repeated, along with the shrill rat-like squealing of a Burgin Gin.
“Inside!” shouted Koolalongoo, pointing toward the corrugated-iron hut, as though the others could not detect for themselves the source of the human shrieking and inhuman squealing.
As the mad rush for the hut started, the screaming and shrill squealing both mysteriously stopped.
“Not good!” predicted Neal Judawali with his right hand on the knob of the iron door. The warrior hesitated for a second, then pushed the door inwards, raised his spear in one hand, a torch in the other, and ran into the front room of the three-room hut.
As Garbarla, Jalburgul Gul, Koolalongoo, and the others entered the hut, they could see furniture -- mainly hand-made from red gum at the village -- overturned and grass mats tossed aside, where someone had clearly been searching through the room.
In the centre room, three small iron cots had been tossed upside-down. However, there was still no sign of either human or Burgin Gin. So they continued to the back room.
At first nothing seemed to be out of place. Then Neal Judawali stood aside and Garbarla and the others saw a middle-aged man sitting on the floor, with his back up against the corrugated-iron wall. A long, golden Burgin Gin spear protruded from the ruins of his left eye. In his hands wash the crushed corpse of one of the pint-sized assassins.
“Aaron Yannar,” said Weari-Wyingga.
“Is he ...?” asked Garbarla, leaving the question hanging.
“Dead,” answered Judawali. “Killed each other.”
“Oh God,” said Garbarla, feeling ill at the sight of Aaron Yannar’s corpse. Risking the derision of the tribal hunters, he stepped back into the middle room of the hut.
When Koolalongoo and the others joined him in the centre room a few minutes later though, they all looked as ill as he felt and no one teased him for his frailty.
“What now?” asked Garbarla, as to his relief, they finally left the hut.
“For now join the others,” said Weari-Wyingga, pointing toward the blue gum grove surrounding the corroboree ground past the other end of the settlement.
“What if Burgin Gin return?” asked Arthur Andilyaugwa.
‘Yes, what then?’ wondered Garbarla. At their tiny size the Burgin Gin were easy enough to kill with spears when trapped. But it would be almost impossible to prevent them from sneaking back into the village unseen at night.
“Do we have to take turns on permanent guard duty every night for the rest of our lives?” asked Alex Jalburgul Gul.
Weari-Wyingga looked from Koolalongoo to Garbarla, then Jalburgul Gul, looking increasingly worried. And they all realised that the old man was stumped. For one of the few times in his life Weari-Wyingga had no answer for their questions.
“Don’t know,” he admitted at last. “For now have to organise some kind of guards around village.”
“You’d need half the men of the village to stay up all night every night to protect the village adequately against another sneak attack by those things,” said Garbarla pointing out what they all already knew.
Weari-Wyingga shrugged, acknowledging the hopelessness of their predicament. “What else can we do?” he asked as they started at a leisurely pace back through the village where the women and children awaited in the corroboree ground a hundred metres or so beyond the village.
They were almost back to Sarah Jardagara’s flame pink iron hut, when the silence of the night was shattered by an inhuman wailing shriek.
“Burgin Gin!” shouted Nambidjimba looking toward his mother’s hut, although he knew that Sarah was with the other women and children in the blue gum grove.
For a moment or two Garbarla and the others looked about the village, thinking that the Burgin Gin had returned as soon as they had finished the search. But then as the cry rang out again, Danny Koolalongoo pointed toward the blue gum grove and said, “Corroboree ground!”
At the words, Garbarla, Jalburgul Gul, and the others took off across the brown dirt plain toward the blue gum grove.
They half expected to find all the women and children slaughtered. Instead, everything seemed virtually normal. Accept for the fact that Tony Gobaboingu and Ron Waggaman were nowhere in sight.
“Where Waggaman? Where Gobaboingu?” asked Weari-Wyingga as they arrived at the small entranceway where the two warriors should have been standing guard.
Garbarla heaved a sigh of relief as he saw Debbie Bulilka alive and well. At the old man’s words, Debbie pointed across the corroboree ground to where Tony Gobaboingu was being treated by the tribe’s head medicine man Johnny Galarrwuy.
“What happened?” asked Alex Jalburgul Gul after they managed to fight their way through the crowd of women and children to where the two men were near the ceremonial fire in the epicentre of the blue gum grove.
By way of answer, Johnny Galarrwuy pointed to Gobaboingu, who lay on the ground doing his best not to cry out in agony, despite the long, thin, golden needle sticking out of his chest.
“Can you pull it out?’ asked Garbarla, hoping that it wasn’t a stupid question.
Galarrwuy shook his head. “Too close to the heart. Have to take him to Glen Hartwell for Gina Foley to operate.
“Can we risk moving him?” asked Jalburgul Gul.
“Got to risk moving him,” insisted Galarrwuy.
“All right, I can drive into Pettiwood to call an ambulance,” offered Garbarla. He patted down his trousers to make certain that he had his car keys with him.
“Can’t wait,” insisted Johnny Galarrwuy. “Best you take him into Glen Hartwell.”
Garbarla started to protest, then seeing how close to passing out from shock Tony Gobaboingu was, he realised that the medicine man was right, they had no time to waste. “All right, but we’ll need some kind of litter to carry him to my car.”
Galarrwuy pointed to a small wooden stretcher a few metres away.
“Okay,” said Garbarla, still not happy at the thought of moving Gobaboingu before Gina Foley had examined him. “But he probably won’t live long enough for us to bring Gina out here,” thought Garbarla. Besides, he realised that they did not have the facilities to treat the injured man that the hospital had.
Weari-Wyingga and Garbarla stood out of the way as Johnny Galarrwuy and Judith Waipuldanya (a registered nurse who permanently tended to Nambidjimba’s mother Sarah Jardagara who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease) eased Gobaboingu onto the stretcher. Then Danny Koolalongoo and Alex Jalburgul Gul carefully lifted the stretcher, stopping for a second as Gobaboingu cried out in pain.
Trying their best to ignore the warrior’s occasional cries, the litter-bearers set out, with Garbarla leading the way and Galarrwuy and Waipuldanya trying their best to comfort the badly injured man.
Outside the blue gum grove, Garbarla looked back and saw that the stretcher-bearers were well back behind him, walking at a snail’s pace in a bid to minimise the jarring on the injured man. Looking ahead to where his Mini Minor was parked beyond the small village, Garbarla wondered, ‘Would it be better if I went ahead to collect the car?’ But seeing the bumpy terrain from the corroboree ground to the car, he realised that it might be easier for the stretcher-bearers to minimise the jarring of Gobaboingu’s wound, than it would be for him driving the Mini.
Trying his best not to be impatient, Garbarla watched as Jalburgul Gul and Koolalongoo painstakingly carried their patient across the rocky terrain, stopping for a second or so each time Gobaboingu cried out in pain. Having been on numerous hunting parties with the two men over the years since returning to his mother’s village, Garbarla knew that the full-bloods had nearly infinite patience and an almost preternatural ability to avoid tripping when traversing even the most hazardous terrain.
The trip from the corroboree ground to where the car was parked seemed to take hours. And in fact dawn was just starting to break when finally they reached the yellow Mini Minor.
“Now what?” asked Danny Koolalongoo. “How we get him into the Mini?”
“Well ...?” said Garbarla looking about. He looked toward Weari-Wyingga, then Johnny Galarrwuy, who both shrugged, forced to concede that the stretcher was too long to lie along the back seat of the car.
“Could we tie the back doors to the litter and drive with the back doors open?” asked Judith Waipuldanya, more thinking aloud than offering a real suggestion.
“Too dangerous,” suggested Weari-Wyingga, and the medicine man agreed:
“Doors could hit something, jar Gobaboingu, make injury worse.”
Looking up, Garbarla saw the car had no luggage rack and realised, “We couldn’t carry him that way anyway.”
“Take him off stretcher. Hold him in back seat?” suggested Koolalongoo.
Both Judith Waipuldanya and Johnny Galarrwuy looked sceptical of the suggestion. But Garbarla realised that they might have no other option.
“Perhaps we could ...?” began Garbarla, then he stopped, puzzled, vaguely recalling that Geraldine Gleeson had once lowered the front seats of the Mini to create more room to carry a barrel of hazardous chemicals. “Or was it this car?” he thought. But then, seeing a small burn mark on the front passenger seat he recalled, ‘No, that’s where she spilt some ....’
Aloud Garbarla said, “Hang on, we should be able to lower the seats.”
It took nearly five minutes for Garbarla to find the catches to lower the seats. Then, with difficulty, they manoeuvred the stretcher round so that Gobaboingu’s head was in the back of the car, his feet on the front passenger seat. Then Judith Waipuldanya sat in the back seat with Johnny Galarrwuy, trying to hold Gobaboingu’s upper body steady. In the front seat young Danny Koolalongoo crouched down doing his best to hold the injured man’s legs still, while trying his best not to sit on the gear stick as Garbarla started the small car with a grinding of gears.
“Take it slow and steady,” advised Weari-Wyingga. “More important to avoid potholes, than to get him there too fast.”
“Okay,” agreed Garbarla. He had already started the yellow Mini, when there was a loud ululation from the crowd of women and children who had followed them from the blue gum grove.
Thinking that the Burgin Gin had returned, Garbarla, Weari-Wyingga and the others looked back toward the corroboree ground. Instead they saw a lone figure running past the blue gum grove.
“Runner coming,” said Nambidjimba, pointing toward the figure.
“Ron Waggaman,” said Alex Jalburgul Gul, sounding surprised that the missing warrior had not been killed by the Burgin Gin, as they had all assumed.
Between panting breaths, Waggaman said, “I’ve found their nest.”
“What?” asked Weari-Wyingga, not understanding.
“The Burgin Gin,” explained the exhausted hunter. “After attack on corroboree ground, I trail after Burgin Gin. Manage to track them to their lair.”
“Where is it?” asked Nambidjimba.
“Big hole in ground beneath granite face on side of Mount Wanderei.”
Garbarla and Weari-Wyingga exchanged a puzzled look. In the 1830s there had been a slaughter of nearly a hundred Aborigines on the side of Mount Wanderei by early white settlers to Victoria. Since which time the mountain outside Wilhelmina had been a sacred site to Garbarla’s tribe.
“We’d better get going,” said Johnny Galarrwuy.
“Yes,” agreed Weari-Wyingga. Then to Garbarla, “Bring back petrol.”
“What?” asked Garbarla, not understanding.
“Gasoline,” explained Weari-Wyingga. “When you return from hospital, bring back gasoline. Two, three Jerry cans at least.”
“Okay,” said Garbarla, looking puzzled. Then realising that the old man was not going to clarify the request, Garbarla put the car into gear again and they started for Glen Hartwell.

Driving slowly to avoid as many potholes as possible, it was nearly an hour later before the Mini Minor pulled up outside the emergency entrance of the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.
“How’s he doing?” asked Garbarla, who had barely been able to glance at Gobaboingu during the long drive.
“Hard to say,” said Johnny Galarrwuy. “Unconscious, but breathing okay.”
As they drove down the thin path beside the hospital, they saw the towering, redheaded figure of Thomasina Madigan, who had been head matron at the hospital since before Garbarla had returned to the local area.
Seeing the small car pull into the emergency area, the powerfully built matron strode across to investigate. Then recognising Garbarla, who she knew was a friend of both Bear Ross and Gina Foley, Thomasina asked, “What has happened?”
“He’s been stabbed,” said Danny Koolalongoo, pointing to the golden needle sticking out of Tony Gobaboingu’s chest.
“Oh, my God,” said Thomasina Madigan. She quickly called for two orderlies and a stretcher to hurry the injured man into hospital with Garbarla and the others trailing along behind.
Ten minutes later, Gobaboingu was on an operating table, with Gina Foley, Thomasina Madigan, and two very young looking nurses attending to him, ready to operate.
“Oh, God,” said Gina, staring at the long, golden needle sticking out of Tony Gobaboingu’s chest, as realisation struck her. “This is how they all died, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” agreed Garbarla from the observation room outside the operating theatre.
“But how? Who? What?” asked Gina, for the first time since medical school floundering for words.
“Sorry, I don’t have time to explain,” said Garbarla, suddenly remembering the Jerry cans of petrol that Weari-Wyingga wanted. “I have to return to the village.”
“What? But you can’t,” protested Gina. “Bear isn’t here yet. He’s bound to want to talk to you.”
“He’ll have to come to the village then,” insisted Garbarla.
“Garbarla!” protested the brunette, but the half-breed Aborigine had already left the observation room.

A few minutes later Garbarla stopped at Ted Tucker’s service station in Boothy Street to purchase three twenty-gallon cans of petrol, then set off again for the Aboriginal village just outside Pettiwood. No longer forced to tooter along in low gear.
By the time that Garbarla arrived back at the village, he found that the Aborigines had more or less returned to everyday life. They had (with trepidation) returned to their own huts and were trying to go about their everyday lives. Although preparations would have to be made for the burials of Jayne Maung, her baby Tommy, and Aaron Yannar.
Even from the car park just outside the village though, Garbarla could notice one obvious change to village life: the absence of men. Only women and children milled about in the village.
Climbing from his car, Garbarla stopped on the small overgrown rise that he used as a car park, and looked around the village slowly. On careful examination he could see Tubby Budjiwa and four or five other men lurking around the outskirts of the village, armed with spears and other weapons, clearly on guard in case the Burgin Gin returned.
As he started through the village, Danny Koolalongoo and Debbie Bulilka raced across to greet him.
“How Gobaboingu?” asked Debbie.
Garbarla shrugged. “I don’t know. He was alive when I left Glen Hartwell, but Gina hadn’t started to operate on him.”
“Got petrol?” asked Koolalongoo.
“Yes,” answered Garbarla. The two Aborigines ran back to the yellow Mini Minor.
Garbarla opened the back door of the Mini, then struggled to lift out one of the twenty-gallon Jerry cans of petrol. Koolalongoo reached in and grabbed one Jerry can in each hand and to Garbarla’s surprise lifted out both cans at once.
“Arnold Schwarzenegger lives,” said Garbarla, drawing a grin from Koolalongoo and a titter from Debbie.
As they started to lug the three canisters of gasoline toward the village, two young bucks John Wururbiddie, and Ned Wagait ran across to help them. “Thank God!” thought Garbarla, who had been struggling to carry one of the Jerry cans.
“What about the car?” asked Garbarla.
“Ground too rocky between here and Mount Wanderei,” reminded Koolalongoo and Garbarla knew that he was probably right.
“Okay, so we walk,” agreed Garbarla.
“We run,” insisted Wururbiddie. “Weari-Wyingga say no time to waste.”
“Okay, we run,” conceded Garbarla as they took off through the village toward the forestland, leading past Pettiwood, Merridale, LePage, and Lenoak, on toward the outskirts of Wilhelmina, a ghost town.
Although the half a dozen small country towns were not far apart, Garbarla was panting from exhaustion by the time that they reached Wilhelmina, and realised that he could never have made it carrying one of the twenty-gallon Jerry cans of petrol.
There was no danger of being seen and questioned, since Wilhelmina had been abandoned nearly thirty years earlier, after a local disaster. Nonetheless, the four men took great pains to circle round the outskirts of the town, rather than run through it.
“How much further?” asked Garbarla, not used to running great distances.
“Just past trees,” explained Koolalongoo, pointing to where the snow-capped peak of Mount Wanderei could just be seen above the tops of the sweet smelling forest of wattles and eucalypts.
“Just be grateful we don’t have to climb up there,” thought Garbarla, looking up at the towering heights of the mountain as they slowly approached it.
At the base of the mountain there was no sign of Weari-Wyingga and the others, and Wururbiddie explained, “Granite face round other side of mountain.”
“It would be,” said Garbarla, making the full-bloods laugh as they all started around the base of the mountain.
Not quite halfway round the mountain, they saw Weari-Wyingga, Alex Jalburgul Gul, Roger Gardigardi and another dozen warriors waiting. All armed to the teeth with three-metre long spears, long hunting boomerangs, stone axes, and even store bought axes, picks, and shovels.
“Runners coming!” said Gardigardi, pointing as Garbarla and the three full-bloods came into sight.
“What’s going on?” asked Garbarla, surprised by the amount of weaponry that Gardigardi and the others carried. “Are we declaring war on someone?”
“Yes,” said Weari-Wyingga, without the glimmer of a smile. The old man pointed to where Gardigardi, Jalburgul Gul and the others had been digging away at the granite face of the mountain.
Six or seven large holes, like the entrance to rabbit burrows could be seen, still partly concealed by the granite face of the mount.
“What are they?” asked Garbarla.
“Burgin Gin burrows,” explained Weari-Wyingga. “They hide in the ground like rats.”
“So how can we get to them?”
“Petrol,” said Weari-Wyingga. Then, when Garbarla obviously did not understand, “We pour gasoline down burrows.”
“To drown them?”
“No, pour petrol down, then set it alight,” explained the old man holding up a box of matches. “Burn them out.”
“But we can’t, that’s inhuman!”
Weari-Wyingga sighed in frustration, as though dealing with a particularly obtuse pupil. “Stop thinking of them as people!” ordered the old man. “They’re assassins. Unthinking killers. Enemies of mankind!”
“Okay,” conceded Garbarla, although he was still not happy as he watched Roger Gardigardi and Alex Jalburgul Gul start to empty the contents of the first twenty-gallon Jerry can into the nearest couple of Burgin Gin burrows.
The first Jerry can was almost empty when they heard shrill squealing coming from the Burgin Gin burrows.
Leaving the canister to Alex, Gardigardi hurriedly grabbed up one of his three-metre long spears and stabbed it deep down into one of the petrol free burrows.
He jabbed the spear in and out of the burrow half a dozen times rapidly. Then the spear began to quiver in his hands thump-thump-thumping against the dirt sides of the burrow, as though something in the hole were trying to pull it from the grip of Roger Gardigardi.
For a second or so Garbarla thought that it would succeed. Then Gardigardi pulled the spear from the burrow and held it up proudly to show two pint-sized Burgin Gin warriors writhing on the blade.
Garbarla felt sick to the stomach at the sight of the tiny manlike creatures writhing in agony on the spear point. But Gardigardi grinned like a child who had done something clever and expected to be rewarded.
“Finish them off,” instructed Weari-Wyingga, and Gardigardi stabbed the spear downward into the grassy ground half-a-dozen times until the minute warriors stopped struggling. Then he used his right foot to scrape the tiny corpses off the spear.
Placing his spear back beside two others lying against the sheer side of the mountain, Gardigardi helped Jalburgul Gul to heft the second Jerry can of petrol, to start pouring the contents down another two Burgin Gin burrows.
As the petrol started to pour down the burrows, shrill shrieking emanated from the remaining holes.
“Get ready!” ordered Weari-Wyingga. At his words Danny Koolalongoo, John Wururbiddie, Arthur Andilyaugwa and two or three other warriors stood around the remaining burrows, holding up stone or metal tipped spears.
Alex and Roger had almost emptied the second Jerry can of petrol, when the shrieking suddenly shot up a few decibels. And six or seven Burgin Gin raced from the remaining burrow entrances.
“Get them! Get them!” shouted Weari-Wyingga and Koolalongoo and the others started stabbing downward at the frantic Burgin Gin with their spears as though stabbing at fish while standing in a canoe.
Each time a Burgin Gin warrior was stabbed through the abdomen it shrieked a rat-like shriek of agony and writhed on the spear until Garbarla had to look away for fear of throwing up.
It was because he had looked away, that Garbarla saw a lone Burgin Gin which had somehow escaped the gauntlet of stabbing spears and was running toward the long native Australian grasses in the forest behind them.
“Look out!” shouted Garbarla, pointing at it. “One of them is getting away.”
“Here,” said Weari-Wyingga handing Garbarla a three-metre spear.
Garbarla hesitated for a second. Then realising that it was a test of his readiness to fit back into his mother’s tribe, he took the spear and reluctantly started into the forest after the tiny assassin.
Behind him Garbarla could hear the sound of Gardigardi and Jalburgul Gul emptying the third Jerry can of petrol down the remaining Burgin Gin burrows. Then he did his best to block out the sounds behind him and concentrate only on the sound of tiny running feet ahead.
Doing his best to avoid potholes and prickly shrubs, Garbarla ran through the forest for nearly five minutes. Until realising that he could no longer hear the sound of tiny feet in the long grass ahead of him.
Trying to control his heavy breathing, Garbarla stopped to scan the terrain. Mulga bushes and native Australian grasses grew to knee height, making it easy for the Burgin Gin to conceal itself.
“Now where are you, you little so-and-so?” thought Garbarla, starting slowly through the brush again. “Just keep a slow, even pace,” he told himself, trying to draw on what Nambidjimba and Jalburgul Gul had taught him about hunting over the last twenty-two years. “Slow and easy. Control your breathing and try not to make any noise. Blend into your environment until your prey accepts you as a natural part of the landscape.”
At first Garbarla’s white upbringing made it difficult not to stomp through the brush. But soon by concentrated willpower, he managed to ease his way round the Mulga bushes and tall Australian grasses, instead of stomping through them. By taking tiny steps and continually stopping every few centimetres, he managed to minimise any damage done to the surroundings, until to Garbarla’s delight he really did seem to be able to blend right into his environment.
‘Now try to see past the trees and vegetation to the microcosm of life all around you,’ thought Garbarla, recalling what he had been taught.
To his pleasure he realised that he could see teeming life forms -- brown kookaburras and green parakeets in the branches of trees, spiders and beetles of all varieties in the bark of trees and in the tall, native grasses. At ground level he could see cicadas and other insect life, and by a sheer effort of concentration had started to dissimilate individual sounds: the squawks of parrots, lorikeets, budgerigars, from the chirping of crickets, cicadas and so on; the breathing of opossums and other larger animals as they went about their business or crouched waiting for him to pass.
‘There!’ thought Garbarla as he managed to discern the sound of slow, regular breathing behind a Mulga bush a few metres ahead and to the right of where he stood.
He started inching toward the Mulga, when he was startled by running footsteps behind him. Spinning round, Garbarla half expected to see a group of Burgin Gin assassins attacking him.
Instead he saw Danny Koolalongoo and young John Wururbiddie, both forgetting their hunting training in their enthusiasm to reach Garbarla.
“How’s it going?” asked Wururbiddie, at sixteen, the least experienced of the three men at hunting.
“I think he’s hiding behind that Mulga,” said Garbarla at a whisper, nodding toward the bush as he spoke.
Wururbiddie started forward impetuously, however, Koolalongoo put out a hand to restrain his enthusiasm, to allow Garbarla to creep slowly toward the Mulga.
Garbarla was almost up to the shrub, when he detected a hint of movement inside the bush. Trying his best not to hurry, he slowly lowered the tip of his spear toward the brush and used it to part the Mulga down the centre.
He had almost parted the bush to ground level, when suddenly a small figure took off like the proverbial rocket.
“Get it!” cried Wururbiddie, pointing toward the fleeing figure.
Without stopping to think, Garbarla hurled his three-metre spear and shouted, “Yes!” in satisfaction as the spear flew home, pinning the tiny figure to the forest floor.
“Got it!” said Garbarla with satisfaction, turning to grin at Wururbiddie and Koolalongoo. However, the smile soon slipped from his face as the three men ran across to retrieve the spear.
“You sure did,” agreed Wururbiddie, unable to resist the urge to laugh as they looked at the spear, which had cleaved clean through a large, grey rabbit.
“Everyone helps to keep down the rabbit pest,” agreed Koolalongoo, grinning broadly. “There is a rabbit plague going on in Victoria at the moment.”
“At least your aim’s improving,” teased Wururbiddie. “Two years ago you would’ve missed that rabbit.”
Doing his best to ignore the full-bloods’ sarcasm, Garbarla went across to retrieve his spear, tentatively stepping on the rabbit carcase to pull his spear clear.
He was just walking back toward the other two men, when another small figure broke cover from the Mulga bush, startling Wururbiddie and Koolalongoo.
“What ...?” said John Wururbiddie swinging up his spear as the Burgin Gin warrior raced out of cover to start toward two giant she oaks fifty metres from where they stood.
Wururbiddie launched his spear, but too late. His aim went wide as the small figure vanished in a growth of native Australian grass closer to the she oaks.
“Circle round,” suggested Koolalongoo, as Wururbiddie went to collect his spear. “Got to get him before he goes deeper into forest.”
Doing as instructed, Garbarla and Wururbiddie did their best not to rush as they began to creep around either side of the tall grass. While Koolalongoo crept straight forward.
‘Easy does it,’ thought Garbarla, conscious of the two full-blood warriors. Despite his natural inclination to hurry, he forced himself to move at little more than a snail’s pace.
To the point where Wururbiddie and Koolalongoo were both in place when Garbarla was still more than two metres from the patch of tall grass.
“All right slowly, slowly,” said Koolalongoo at a whisper as at last Garbarla caught up with the other two warriors. Raising their spears as one, the three men began to stab wildly into the native Australian grass, chopping it to pieces in the hope of also stabbing the Burgin Gin.
To their dismay though, when the tall grass had been flattened, there was no sign of the tiny assassin.
“Where the ...?” asked Wururbiddie to no one in particular.
“Time to go!” said a voice behind them. Spinning round Garbarla and the others were startled to see Alex Jalburgul Gul standing a few metres away.
Jalburgul Gul grinned broadly at their surprise, pleased at his success at sneaking up on them. “Time to go,” he repeated. “Weari-Wyingga about to light gasoline. Wants us all there in case other Burgin Gin try to escape fire.”
Pointing to the forest, Garbarla asked, “What about this one?”
“Too late. Not going to catch it now,” said Jalburgul Gul. And with a sigh of frustration, Garbarla acknowledged that Alex was right.

Back at the base of Mount Wanderei, Garbarla wasn’t sure what to expect when Weari-Wyingga lit the petrol. He was relieved to see that they had used the last trickles of the petrol to run a liquid fuse ten metres or so from the half a dozen Burgin Gin burrows at the base of the mountain, rather than merely dropping a match into the petrol filled holes, as he had half feared they were going to do.
“All ready?” asked Weari-Wyingga, looking from Jalburgul Gul to Roger Gardigardi, to Wururbiddie, Koolalongoo, then finally Garbarla.
Receiving nods from each of the warriors, the old man lit a single match and dropped it onto the line of petrol.
“Stand well back,” advised the old man and they all backed off into the forest a little as the flames raced across the forest floor toward the base of the mountain.
When the flames reached the petrol filled burrows, for a few seconds the petrol burnt furiously. Then there was a great roaring explosion, which had the Aborigines ducking for cover behind wattle, pine, and eucalyptus trees, desperately hoping that the entire mountain would not fall down on them.
For what seemed like hours to the crouching men, they hid in the tall native grass or behind trees as a great series of explosions went off deep beneath the base of Mount Wanderei.
Perhaps partly deafened by the exploding gasoline, the natives did not realise at first when the explosions finally stopped.
“Is that it?” asked Garbarla, crouching behind an eerie, grey-white ghost gum. Beside him Nambidjimba shrugged, either not hearing him clearly, or having no answer.
For a few moments the Aborigines continued to crouch in the long grass, rubbing at their ears to bring back their hearing.
Finally, one by one, they stood up, although each man hesitated to be the first to step out into the open. So, in the end it was old Weari-Wyingga who stepped out first. Followed by Alex Jalburgul Gul and Roger Gardigardi. Then Danny Koolalongoo and Arthur Andilyaugwa. Followed by Garbarla and Nambidjimba, and the others only seconds behind.
When they reached the base of Mount Wanderei they stared in wonder.
“Holy ...!” said Garbarla, leaving the oath incomplete as he stared at the mountain. Seemingly tonnes of granite had broken away from the mountain, leaving a great open “bite” in the side of the mount. The Burgin Gin burrows had imploded, taking much of the granite deep into the ground beneath the mount, sealing the burrows, entombing any remaining pint-sized assassins.
“That’s the last we’ll ever see of them!” predicted Koolalongoo.
“Unless they have more burrows around the mountain,” said Garbarla, really only thinking aloud.
Blushing from embarrassment as the rest of the warriors turned to gape at him, Garbarla knew what Weari-Wyingga was going to say even before the old man opened his mouth: “He’s right, got to search,” insisted Weari-Wyingga, ignoring the groans of dismay of the young warriors.

By nightfall the warriors were exhausted. At Weari-Wyingga’s continued insistence, they had searched every centimetre of ground at the base of the mountain, and as far up the mount as it was possibly to climb without mountaineering equipment. Fortunately not far, since on one side the mount was sheer from the base. On the climbable face, it became sheer after less than a quarter of the way up. Still, even with most of the men sixteen or older in the tribe searching, they were lucky to finish scanning the mountain as far as possible by sunset.
Seeing the tired, bedraggled state of his young warriors, old Weari-Wyingga said: “Now we go home. Have good night’s sleep.”
“Are you sure you don’t want us to search all the other mountains around here as well?” teased Garbarla. “Mount Hargreaves, Mount Peterson, Mount Russell, Mount Abergowrie ....” Seeing the whole tribe staring at him, Garbarla shut up, suddenly realising that the old man might take his jest seriously.
“No, no,” said Weari-Wyingga, to a great sigh of relief by all the young warriors. “Too late tonight. Other mountains can wait till tomorrow.”
As the warriors groaned again and glared at Garbarla, he thought, ‘Hopefully the old man is just joking!’ After two decades back among the tribe, he knew old Weari-Wyingga had a wicked sense of humour.

It was nearly 10:00 PM by the time the men returned to the village outside Pettiwood and all ached from head to toe, too tired to even eat supper before going to bed.
Although normally a light sleeper, after the exertions of the day, Weari-Wyingga fell asleep almost as soon as his near bald head hit the small pillow on the thin mattress upon which he slept on a small wire framed cot in the back room of his three-room corrugated-iron hut.
Like most of the villagers, the old man’s dreams were filled with the images of tiny Burgin Gin assassins, wielding thirty centimetre long golden spears, which they span round like cheerleaders’ batons before jamming them hard into the chest of their victims.
“Ugh!” cried Weari-Wyingga waking in a sweat from the nightmare of pint-sized murderers.
Seeing the lone pint-sized warrior standing on his chest, at first the old man thought that he was still dreaming.
Too late he realised that the Burgin Gin was real!
“Noooooooo!” Weari-Wyingga tried to scream, his words choking in his dry, parched throat as the tiny assassin lunged forward burying fifteen centimetres of the shiny, golden spear deep into the old man’s chest.
For seconds Weari-Wyingga watched in terror as the tiny spear plunged into his chest. Then his brown eyes began to glaze over, and the old man fell backwards onto his cot and died.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia