THE DREAM-TIME WARRIORS (2025 Edit)

Garbarla & his friends race thru a reality-window in the desert & end up in different wars

Late April 1983
Ernie Singleton was in the dog yard, a hundred metres behind the farmhouse when he heard the tooter-tooter-tooter of the small ute used by the Merridale Print-Shop to deliver the Merridale Morning Mirror.
Looking at his watch, Ernie saw that it was only 6:00 a.m. and said, “Gee, they’re early today!”
He finished feeding the dogs, which were all ravenous, except for the black Barb-Kelpie, Gordo, who lay listless in his kennel.
“Gotta eat something, Gordo mate,” said Ernie dismayed to see the once sleek dog reduced to a bag of bones, having barely eaten anything in the six weeks since the death of Tanya, his bitch.
The large dog whump-whump-whumped his tail on his steel kennel at the sound of his master’s voice, but was too close to death to even look around at Ernie.
Ernie sighed heavily in dismay, then moved past the pining Kelpie to feed the rest of the station’s dogs. Knowing in his heart Gordo would soon be dead; Ernie understood the animal’s grief. Throughout March and April Ernie had done his best to forget Rowena, to give up any thought of ever marrying her. But his resolve had been hard to keep. Firstly, because he had been unable to explain to Rowena the reason for his sudden cooling off toward her so that she had kept after him in the hope that his ardour would eventually return. Secondly, because the thought of spending the rest of his life without her was almost too painful for Ernie to contemplate.
After he had finished feeding the last of the dogs, Ernie strode across to the barn-cum-garage. He dropped the large sack of grey-brown dog-pellets just inside of the garage door, then walked across to his brown Range-Rover. He got into the Rover and started down the dirt track to Donaldson’s Road to pick up the morning paper to read with his own breakfast.

“Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology is having an open day,” Ernie said, reading from the lead story of the six-page newspaper.
Ernie thought, “No way will they get me to go to any open-day.” Then as he read the article, he started to think, “Maybe it’d help me get my mind off Rowena for a while. And Gordo!”

Twelve hours later, Ernie was dressed in his best clothes and on the way to Glen Hartwell.
He parked the Range-Rover in the car park at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology, between Wentworth and Blackland Streets running from Dirk Hartog Place to Howard Street. Following the “crowd” of eight or ten people, he headed across the gravel path toward the concrete steps leading into the school.
“Young Master Ernest?” greeted Glenda Pettyjohn. Old Glenda had worked at the Glen Hartwell City Library for as long as anyone in the Glen could remember. Barely 150 centimetres tall, she was grey-haired and wrinkle-skinned. She wore her snowy hair in a tight bun high atop her head and looked to be in her late eighties. Though she never seemed to grow any older, no one could remember her ever looking any younger either. She had looked to be in her late eighties for as long as anyone could recall and some pundits had been cruel enough to suggest that when the library first opened its doors on January 17, 1842 Glenda Pettyjohn had already been installed as Head Librarian.
“Hello, Miss Pettyjohn,” said Ernie, embarrassed as though his former library-class teacher had caught him in some illicit act.
He stood back to allow her through the glass doors, hoping she would walk on ahead of him. However, as the old lady tottered down the lino-clad floor he realised he would have to walk with her.
“Come along, Master Ernest,” chided Old Glenda, as though he were the octogenarian, not she.
Blushing from the indignity, Ernie started into the wide corridor after her, almost colliding with a tall row of book lockers in his haste to catch up with his former teacher.
As they walked down the corridor, Ernie could see adults sitting at the benches in some classrooms as teachers lectured them about the various courses:
“Woodworking is both a handy way to pass the time and a way to save ....”
“Embroidery isn’t just for women, these days. Even men can ....”
“A handy way to save big dollars, is to do your own motor repairs ....”
“Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson are both reported to have stayed in Glen Hartwell toward the end ....”
“The term ‘Yowie’ is just the Australian name for what in the United States they call ....”
“Painting is no longer done on canvas as most people think ... But rather on ....”
“‘Koori’ is the Victorian and New South Wales Aboriginal name for the Australian Aborigines,” said the tall, handsome chocolate-coloured man lecturing in the last room in that block.
Finding himself fascinated by the pleasant sounding voice of the man, Ernie stopped, and on a whim knocked on the glass door, grateful that Glenda Pettyjohn continued down the corridor toward the next block.
The tall, half-breed Aborigine walked across to the glass door and pulled it open with a broad smile. “Please come in,” he greeted Ernie. “My name is Joseph Garbarla, but please call me by my last name.”
“Ernie Singleton,” said Ernie holding out his right hand to shake as the handsome tutor proffered his hand.
“Please take a seat,” said Garbarla waving toward the front row. Although intended for at least forty students, only six adults now sat scattered around the room.
As Ernie sat in the front row, looking a little uncomfortable, Garbarla handed him half a dozen printed sheets outlining the course and said, “My TAFE course in Aboriginal studies starts next Monday, and there is only a nominal entrance fee.”
“How nominal?” asked lanky Mark Blythe sitting in the back row with his older brother, Don.
“Thirty-five dollars per semester,” answered Garbarla.
“Man, I’m outta here,” said Don. The two brothers rose and strode from the class, slamming the door behind them loud enough to rattle the glass.
“Well, I suppose that just leaves six of us,” said Garbarla with a wry grin.
As the remaining enrolees snickered, Garbarla returned to the front of the class and said; “My name is Joseph Garbarla. I was been born thirty years ago, in 1957, as Garbarla Bulilka, the son of a tribal Gin, Debbie Bulilka, and a travelling State Electricity Commission linesman, Edward Hunt ....”

October 1986
The four hunters set out straight after a breakfast of cold nail-tail kangaroo, berries, and witchetty grubs. Although food had not been scarce over the summer, it would take all day for the four of them to hunt down enough meat for the small tribe’s dinner.
“How much further?” demanded Tom “Tubby” Budjiwa, one of the tribe’s most experienced hunters despite his great pot-belly, when they had barely set out into the brown dirt desert beyond the village.
“Only gone ten metres so far,” chided Alex, whose buck-toothed countenance seemed perpetually smiling, as though he had learnt to see the funny side of everything. In truth, they had journeyed about half a kilometre.
“Feels more like ten kilometres,” insisted Tubby. Panting as though about to die from shortage of breath, he trotted a few paces to catch up with the others.
Seeing him trotting, Terry Yudbunji, who at sixteen had only been going on hunting trips a few months, teased, “Good idea, let’s all jog the next few Kays to get there faster.”
“Sounds good to me,” said John Mardi. He threw the teenager a sly wink.
“I’m game,” said Alex. He furiously jogged on the spot for a few seconds.
“Go on then,” said Tubby, refusing to be baited. “I’ll meet you on your way back.”
“What do you do with a bloke too lazy even to be teased?” asked Mardi. He looked at Alex Jalburgul Gul, whose mouth had burst into a wide, buck-toothed grin.
“Keep up, old man!” called back Terry as Tubby began to fall behind again.
“It’s all right for you young blokes,” complained Tubby. He broke into a jog to catch up again.
Mardi could not help laughing at Tubby’s ungainly half run, half waddle. Even Alex broke into another broad grin.
“What ... are you ... grinning at ... you bastard?” demanded Tubby between panting breaths.
“Just thought of a joke,” said Alex tactfully. However, when Mardi and Terry both broke up into laughter, Alex eventually joined in.

They seemed to be melting in the mid afternoon sun when finally they spotted game: a small herd of emus.
“Here we go!” thought Mardi, wondering how they would ever run down any of the blue-grey, flightless birds.
“Rub dirt to hide the man smells,” said Tubby. The stocky native picked up a handful of brown dirt and began rubbing down his chest as he spoke.
“Phew, good idea,” teased Mardi, “we’re all a bit rank after that march in the hot sun.” Almost gagging on his own B.O., he thought, “If I smell this bad to me, an emu would pick me up a kilometre off.” Bending, he picked up a handful of dirt and began rubbing it over himself as the others were doing.
Five minutes later, they were ready to begin the hunt.
Tubby Budjiwa and John Mardi waited in the long Native Australian grass as Alex and Terry slowly crept round behind the flock of emus. The two hunters took a few steps, then stopped statue-still for seconds, even minutes before they dared take the next step. They took a wide arc of nearly two kilometres in more than an hour to circle around behind the emus.
Mardi had initially crouched to watch the creeping natives. Then as his knees began to ache, he followed Budjiwa’s example and sat down on a patch of native grass -- cooler on the behind than the sun-heated dirt.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, Alex and Terry reached their objective.
“Time to move,” said Tubby, sounding reluctant. He slowly pulled himself to his feet.
Crouching in a bid to keep their heads below the top of the native Australian grass, Tubby and Mardi started slowly forward.
The normal procedure for a hunt meant Alex and Terry would make some sound to frighten the emus into flight toward Tubby and Mardi, then run after them. Instead, to Mardi’s astonishment, Terry and Alex both leapt to their feet screaming, scattering the emus in all directions -- while they were still too far off for Mardi and Tubby to spear. Then the two native hunters came running lightning-fast toward them.
“What the hell ...?” said Mardi, staring as the two hunters rapidly approached.
“Tassie tiger on their tails,” said Tubby equally perplexed.
“What’s going on?” demanded Mardi as the two young hunters ran up to them.
“Wood ... wooden demon coming!” said Alex Jalburgul Gul. The broad grin long gone from his features.
“Wooden demon?” asked Mardi, sceptically. Although he felt the short hairs prickle on the nape of his neck.
“Wooden demon? Sound like they bin sniffin’ glue again,” said Tubby. He stood watching the retreating natives for a moment, then turned back to where they had run from.
“Maybe we’d better go too?” suggested Mardi. Although his mouth was dry from fear, he stood his ground, not wanting to abandon his colleague.
“Because Yudbunji and Jalburgul Gul having day-mare? No way, we got hunting to do.”
Mardi looked at the chubby hunter in surprise. He had expected Tubby to be glad of any excuse to return to the village. “Maybe he thinks there’s less work involved in following the emus, than in returning to the village.” Mardi thought.
Turning to look after the flightless birds, he decided, “Not that there’s any real hope of catching them now.” The emus were already only tiny specks on the shimmering horizon.
“Come on,” insisted Tubby. He set off across the brown dirt desert at a leisurely pace.
Mardi hesitated for a second, then started after Budjiwa.
They had only gone a few hundred metres when they found what had terrified Alex Jalburgul Gul and Terry Yudbunji. Not a wooden demon as the two natives had reported but rather a small “window”, hovering a few feet above the ground.
From a distance, the window looked like a strange, shimmering band of air. Like hot air seen in the distance in the desert, except that the shimmering did not recede as they approached and seemed to emit a strong light; so that it was clearly visible when Mardi and Budjiwa reached it, although dark had begun to fall.
“What the hell is it?” John Mardi wondered. He approached to within a few metres.
Up close, the shimmering seemed like a lightly misted or dirty window, which you could see through, but with difficulty.
Peering through the “window” Mardi saw what looked like sun-lit forestlands. “My God, what is it?” Mardi wondered. He reached out one hand toward it, then drew back, afraid to touch the window.
Hearing splashing he peered to the left and could just make out a small billabong. He could see the backs of creatures with long, green, scaly, crocodile-like tails diving into the billabong. Yet, peer as he might, Mardi could not quite make out what the creatures were. “Some kind of cayman or alligator, perhaps?” he wondered. Yet he knew there supposedly was no species of crocodile or alligator in Victoria.
For nearly fifteen minutes Mardi and Tubby Budjiwa strained to see what the diving creatures were. Finally, one of the beasts turned and started back toward them. As the animal climbed out of the billabong Mardi gasped. Seeing it’s bull-Terrier-like head, he thought, “Tasmanian tiger!” Then as it came ashore, they saw its large golden, kangaroo-like torso; powerful emu-like coiled steel legs, long crocodilian tail, and huge, feathered, eagle-like wings.
“Holy shit, what the ...?” John Mardi said. He turned toward Tubby Budjiwa, but the chubby warrior only shrugged.
For a second or two the creature stood sunning itself dry. Then there was a loud “grrrrrup” of frogs croaking in the nearby forest. The creature’s long ears shot up and it span round toward the direction of the sound. Then in an instant, the creature vanished.
“My God, I’ve never seen anything move that fast!” Mardi thought. He looked toward Tubby Budjiwa; however, the sight of the hunting creature had transfixed the thirty-four-year-old warrior, who did not even look toward the teenager.

Joseph Garbarla stood at the front of the classroom, lecturing his TAFE class on Aboriginal studies at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology.
“Since this is the last class until the seventh of February next year, I would just like to take the opportunity to remind you of the basic tenet of Aboriginal Dream-Time belief ....”

Brian Horne 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 Brian that the rains were here to stay for a while.
Sighing from boredom, Brian looked round to the front of the classroom where Garbarla stood scratching away upon the blackboard with orange chalk as he lectured. Brian felt silly sitting at the long, vinyl-topped benches listening to the lecturer. Although at twenty-four it was only half a dozen years since he had left high school, he felt he was too old to be going to school.
“Why did I ever let Ernie talk me into this?” wondered Brian. He turned his head to his left to look at the tall, Celtically dark man sitting beside him. “Ernie might find all this hocus-pocus interesting, but not me.”
Two nights a week, since February, Ernie and Brian had been attending the Aboriginal Studies classes. They had been read various Dream-Time legends: Mamaragan: the Great Rainbow Snake; Gurugadji, the Emu-Man; and many more, and most of the class had seemed to lap it all up. However, Brian prided himself on his straightforward down-to-earth approach to life.
When Ernie had first suggested that he come along to the TAFE classes, Brian had been willing enough. Unlike many country-dwellers, Brian was not afraid of knowledge. He prided himself on being one of the more literate people in the Glen Hartwell-to-Merridale area. However, he had not planned to join up for Garbarla’s class.
Brian and Joe Garbarla were close friends -- Garbarla often stayed overnight with the Hornes at Cherrytree Farm, rather than drive all the way back to his mother’s reservation outside Pettiwood. However, Brian was an agnostic by nature and could not get interested in religious fantasies: either Western or Dream-Time legends. Also, although an avid reader, Brian rarely read novels or short stories, preferring non-fiction. He often infuriated normally easy-going Ernie by saying, “What’s the point in reading a book if it isn’t even true?”
Brian considered himself well read in many fields. However, his greatest interest was military history. He had been all ready to sign up for the “Australians at War” course (although his main interest was the United States Army and Marines), when Ernie had dragged him across to join Garbarla’s course.
So for the last eight and a half months Brian had been dutifully coming along to his friend’s TAFE class, but wishing he were in the militaria class instead.

Common reality
“So to sum up,” said Garbarla, glancing across toward Brian, he realised his friend was bored to tears again, “the over-riding tenet of the Dream-Time mythology is that the Aborigines do not believe in absolute reality. That is how modern Aborigines can believe in the Dream-Time legends, yet still be Christians. They believe that there are a great number of equally true co-existing realities, running parallel to each other. In one reality the Dream-Time myths exist, but Jesus Christ does not. In another reality Jesus exists but the Dream-Time legends do not. But since both realities are equally real, the Aborigines believe in them both simultaneously, so there is no conflict.”
Garbarla sighed inwardly again noticing the bored look on the face of Brian Horne and half the other class members. “Class dismissed, have a merry Christmas and see you all in the New Year,” Garbarla said, thinking; “Well, some of you, hopefully.”
As he turned back toward the blackboard to erase his notes, he added, “Could Brian and Ernie please stay behind for a moment.”
“Detention again,” joked Ernie Singleton as he and Brian stood aside to allow the other students to file out into the yellow-walled corridor.
“Well, what is it this time, Teach,” joked Brian, “the strap or two-thousand lines?”
Laughing and shaking his head slightly, Garbarla continued to erase the chalk scrawling for a moment. Then turning back to the class, he said, “No, I just wanted to invite you both round to Bateman’s for a couple of beers.”
“I won’t say no to that,” said Brian Horne finding the idea of a couple of quick drinks more interesting than Aboriginal Dream-Time legends.

Ten minutes later they sat at a large round table at Bateman’s Hotel in Lawson Street, drinking cold beer and making small talk.
For half an hour Garbarla hummed and hawed, making Brian wonder if something had happened to Weari-Wyingga. The tribal Elder had been one of the first to accept Garbarla back at the tribe thirteen years ago and Brian knew the old man was well past eighty now. His health had been failing for the last few years and it could be only a short time before the old man died.
“What I ... what I really wanted ...” began Garbarla at last.
However, before he could finish his sentence, a tall blonde man strode across the smoke-filled bar toward them.
“Look out, it’s the fuzz,” said Brian Horne, eliciting smiles from Ernie and Garbarla, but a rueful shake of the head from the uniformed constable striding toward them.
“Very funny,” said Terry Blewett in a voice that said it was not, “I laughed the first ten thousand times I heard that from you three.”
“What can I do for you copper?” joked Brian Horne, reducing Garbarla and Ernie to belly laughs.
“If you’re gonna be rude about it, I’ll buy someone else a drink,” said Terry in faux anger.
“Sit down, copper,” teased Brian.
“I hope you’re not drinking on duty?” demanded Ernie, joining in the joke.
“No, I’m just off duty,” explained Terry sitting. “Now what is everybody drinking? And if you all say triple-Scotches, I’m outta here pronto.”
“I think we musta used that one on him once too often,” said Brian.
After Terry bought the round of drinks the four men settled down to drink and chat for a while. Then, as they were getting ready to leave Garbarla took the others by surprise, by saying, “Actually the real reason that I asked you here was to invite you both to spend a few days on the reservation. None of you has been out there for a while.”
“I haven’t been out there at all,” pointed out Terry.
“Well, here’s your chance,” said Garbarla. He downed the last of his Fosters Lager, then ran a wrist across his mouth to wipe away the foam moustache.
Terry and Ernie exchanged a look, both puzzled. Finally, they nodded their consent.
“Yeah, sure,” said Brian.
“When?” asked Ernie. He sounded a little reluctant, although he had visited the Aboriginal reserve more times than any of them, except Garbarla, and usually jumped at any invitation to go out there.
“From tomorrow or Saturday, if possible,” suggested Garbarla. He looked toward Ernie, then Terry, neither of whom had answered yet.

Ernie’s reality
Although Garbarla had done his best to sound casual in making the invitation to his friends, Ernie hesitated to answer. He wondered if the half-breed had some ulterior motive in inviting them to the reservation. Ernie had been attending Garbarla’s classes in Aboriginal studies since early 1983. Although at first their relationship had been on a strictly teacher-student basis, over the next nine months the two men quickly recognised each other as like souls. One night in late November 1984 Garbarla had come to Ernie for advice when a disaster had struck at the reservation where the half-breed lived with his mother, Debbie Bulilka. Ernie had listened in astonishment as Garbarla told of Mamaragan a Dream-Time legend having physically appeared in the Australian outback to attack a hunting party that Garbarla had been on, devouring two full-blood hunters.
Most whites would have rejected the story of a gigantic, winged serpent out of hand. Having spent so much of his early life in white society, Garbarla knew that unlike the Aborigines who had unquestioning faith in both religion and the supernatural, the white man had little faith in his religion and none at all in the supernatural. So, he had expected Ernie to scoff at his tale of a Dream-Time demon attacking a hunting party.
Instead Ernie had sat in silence, staring at his friend, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to believe. Eighteen months earlier he would certainly have rejected Garbarla’s story out-of-hand. Like most whites he would have been simply unable to believe in Dream-Time monsters. However, eighteen months ago his attitude toward the supernatural had undergone a painful transformation. Literally painful, since in early February 1983 Ernie (who had hardly had a day’s illness in his life up until then) had been overwhelmed by horrendous aches and pains in his limbs and his back; agony that seemed to penetrate right through to his bones. At their worst the pangs felt as though every bone in his body had been shattered -- although he knew this was not the case, because even at their worst he was able to move around, though at first uncertain whether movement helped or made things worse.
By the middle of February Ernie had almost despaired (along with his family doctor) of ever finding the cause of his near-debilitating illness. Then one evening, unable to face lying around the house any longer, he had wandered out onto the back porch. The hot summer night air seemed to strangely revive him and almost immediately the aches began to vanish from his body. Exhilarated by his new-found vigour, he had started to run across the farmhouse yard, easily bounding over the metre-high, chain-link fence to start toward the forest a quarter kilometre away. The further he ran the faster he seemed to run and the better he felt. It was only when he stopped to drink at a narrow tributary of the Yannan River that his euphoria had been shattered: looking up at him had not been the reflexion of a human being, but rather that of a large, black wolf!
Ernie had realised then that the reason for his aches and pains had been supernatural not natural: a sort of change-of-life process whereby his body had to adjust itself to the requirements of physically changing two or three nights each month from man to wolf, then back again. For the last eighteen months Ernie had struggled to come to grips with the fact that he was a werewolf!
Apart from the devastating shock in itself, there was also the effect that it had on his love-life. Since late 1982 Ernie had been dating a local woman Rowena Frankland. Their romance had quickly blossomed to the point where in January 1983 Ernie had purchased an expensive engagement ring to give to Rowena. However, before he got the chance his werewolf taint had revealed itself and so he still had not proffered the ring to her.
Although there was no doubt in Ernie’s heart that he loved Rowena and nothing could please him more than to spend the rest of his life with her, at the same time he was afraid for her. Afraid of placing her in danger by marriage to him. After his initial metamorphosis he had done research into the legend of the werewolf and had been horrified to learn that tradition claimed that the werewolf was an insane killer that (for reasons never explained) always attacked first those who were closest to it in its human life. Therefore, afraid that as the black wolf he might be a danger to Rowena, Ernie had resolved to spend the rest of his life a bachelor.
Therefore, he had thrown himself into his TAFE classes two or three nights a week and had soon become the top student. Ernie and Garbarla had quickly become friends until Garbarla had come to ask for his help in defeating the Dream-Time terrorising the Aboriginal village outside Pettiwood.
Ernie had agreed to help Garbarla and over the next few months they had tackled and defeated the Dream-Time demon. Yet not until it had killed nearly half of Garbarla’s tribe including virtually all of the grown men below the age of eighty. However, they had been unable to kill the Dream-Time demon, only put it into a trance, buried beneath the corroboree ground in a circle of sweet-smelling blue gum trees near the reservation.
So now, seeing Garbarla’s obvious nervousness, Ernie wondered if the monster had somehow awakened from its coma to terrorise the Aboriginal village again.

Common reality
Like Ernie, Brian had spent many happy days with Garbarla at the reservation outside Pettiwood. So there was no reason to feel suspicious at the invitation now. Yet, still he hesitated.
“What’s he really up to?” wondered Brian. Then, as his friends continued to stare in his direction, he realised they were waiting for an answer.
“Yeah, sure, okay,” he said at last.

Ernie considered the proposition for a moment. There was no real problem getting someone to look after the station -- he had helped Morrie Blewett and Tony Frankland on occasions when they had needed extra shearers for their sheep or people to help pick fruit in their orchards, so he knew that he could rely on one of them to repay the favour.
He hesitated because he knew that tonight he was due to metamorphose into the black wolf. Yet, on the other hand (still not really knowing what his werewolf taint involved), he could not help wondering whether his werewolf senses might somehow allow him to help Garbarla as the black wolf in ways that he never could help as plain Ernie Singleton if indeed the Dream-Time demon had returned to the reservation.
“Besides it’ll help me to clear my head a bit!” he decided, actually meaning that it might give him a chance to stop pining for Rowena. Aloud he said, “Yes, all right. But I’ll have to arrange for Rowena or someone else to look after the farm for a few days.”
“All right, then how about the day after tomorrow?” asked Garbarla.
Ernie and Brian both agreed.


Ernie’s reality
Early Saturday morning, Ernie set out to feed the farm dogs that were yelping for their breakfast. Ernie supplemented his farm earnings by breeding and selling dogs to neighbouring sheep and cattle stations. Even so the farm was nowhere near big enough to justify the forty to fifty Kelpies, Barb-Kelpies, Border Collies, Alsatians, and Great Danes kennelled there. The dogs, housed in upturned two-hundred-litre drums a hundred metres behind the farmhouse, were mainly a hobby for Ernie.
“How’s it going, girl?” asked Ernie as he topped up the water bowl of Maggie-May a small red Kelpie bitch. He received a yelp and WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP of the tail against the cast-iron kennel by way of greeting.
After topping up her food bowl from the Hessian bag of hexagonal grey-brown dog pellets, he moved on to the next dog, a long-haired Great Dane, Kong. But seeing Kong reminded Ernie of Rowena who was due to arrive soon to take over the feeding and watering of the animals over the next few days. A long-time fan of early horror and SF-movies, Rowena had name the Great Dane after King Kong.
Ernie smiled ruefully. He recalled the double black-and-white feature she had dragged him to at the Odeon in BeauLarkin to see last night: “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” and “The Giant Claw”. Although not really sharing Rowena’s taste in movies, he had like the first film all right. However, he smiled and shook his head as he recalled the second film. The silliest film he had ever seen, despite Rowena’s insistence that it was a classic.

Ernie had just finished feeding the station dogs and had started scattering grain in the wire chook enclosure near the house, when he heard the sound of tyres crunching on gravel. Looking round he saw a yellow Morris Minor driving up the path from Donaldson’s Road to the farmhouse yard.
He watched the car’s approach a little nervously, knowing it was Rowena Frankland driving her cousin Gloria’s car, which she borrowed from time to time. As Ernie watched, the car drove up to the woodpile near the metre-high chain-link fence circling the farmhouse yard.
Then, a little nervous still at seeing her, Ernie walked across to greet her.
As they made small talk, Ernie could not help thinking how beautiful she was: a tall, leggy, honey-blonde with pale grey-blue eyes, Rowena looked as though she would be more at home on the catwalk or in a beauty pageant than mucking out the pigs. However, he knew that she carried her weight on her father’s cattle station outside nearby LePage.
“Cuppa tea?” asked Ernie by way of casual greeting.
Rowena shook her head, “No, I’d better get straight to work.”

They had almost finished the most urgent farm chores when they heard the crunching of car tyres again on the gravel road. Looking round Ernie saw Brian Horne and Joseph Garbarla in Brian’s aquamarine HR-Holden Premier.


Common reality
“Rowie, Ern,” said Garbarla and Brian, climbing from the Premier.
“Garbarla, Brian,” said Rowena giving them the perfunctory peck on the check as Ernie shook hands with each of the men.
“Ready to go?” asked Brian.
“Yeah,” agreed Ernie.
Brian walked across to the wooden porch to pick up the large leather suitcase and asked, “This to go?”
“Yes,” agreed Ernie. Brian started across the farmhouse yard followed by Garbarla, heading toward the small corrugated-iron shed, beside the dog yard, to set out for the reservation in Ernie’s Range-Rover, which was more suited to cross-country driving than Brian’s Holden, which they would leave at the sheep station.
“See you in a few days’ time,” said Ernie. He leant down to give Rowena a quick kiss on the lips, then almost guiltily set off after Brian and Garbarla.
“I’ll leave my keys in the Premier,” Brian called to Rowena. He knew that in the Victorian countryside no one was likely to steal the car. “Feel free to use it till we get back.”
“Thanks,” called back Rowena waving to the three men as they drove off.

They set out across country from Merridale to East Merridale, then on toward Pettiwood. Within half an hour of starting out they were approaching the Aboriginal village beyond the township. This time Ernie was careful to park the Range-Rover outside the reservation. On his first visit in October 1984, he had been so engrossed in thought that he had almost driven straight into the settlement.
“We’re here,” said Garbarla, stating the obvious as they pulled up.
The “village” was actually much larger than the nearby townships; with nearly a hundred lean-toes and one-, two-, or three-room corrugated-iron huts. The first time he had been there Ernie had been relieved to see that, despite how they always depicted them on TV, the tribal Aborigines did not go around the reservation half-naked, but wore jeans, shorts, T-shirts, or simple skirts and shoes.
Ernie smiled as he recalled his naiveté two years ago. Then realising how many of the huts were now empty, their owners killed by Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake, he stopped smiling, and hoping his friend Garbarla would not have seen and been offended.
As they climbed from the Range-Rover, it seemed that the entire inhabitants of the village came running up to meet them. However, looking closely Ernie saw the Aborigines were almost entirely women and children, with just a smattering of teenage boys and older men.
Among the older males, Ernie spotted a tiny, grey-skinned old man who looked well over a hundred but was actually only about ninety: Weari-Wyingga by name, elected temporary leader of the village in Christmas 1984. With just a few wisps of white hair on his otherwise bald pate, and grey, wrinkled skin, the old man looked close to death and must surely die soon. Ernie wondered, “Who will replace him as leader then?”
Weari-Wyingga hugged Ernie then Brian with a strength that belied his frail appearance. Then the old man used his walking stick -- a blue-gum sapling whittled into a cane -- to clear a path among the chattering women and children. Then taking Brian and Ernie by one arm each he led them toward his two-room corrugated-iron hut at the other end of the village.
As they approached the hut, Ernie figured Weari-Wyingga could have taken any of a number of three-room huts left vacant after the Great Rainbow Snake had slaughtered the owners. But he decided, “The old man has lived over seventy years in this two-room hut, I guess he’s not about to leave now.”
As the old man hugged him a little harder to him, Ernie blushed a little, embarrassed by the old man’s warm reception. However, he realised Weari-Wyingga was genuinely pleased to see them, and unlike many whites was unafraid to show his feelings openly.
Weari-Wyingga released Ernie from his bear-like grip just long enough to pull open the squeaky iron door and lead them into the front room of his hut.
As they sat on the grass mats before the knee-height red gum table, the only piece of furniture in the front room, Ernie asked Weari-Wyingga, “How are you adapting to your new role of unofficial headman of the village.”
Normally Aboriginal tribes do not have any form of chief or leader. Instead, a council of all the men over sixty-five have equal say in the running of things. The council of Elders meets regularly at all-male corroborees, to discuss day-to-day events and any special situations arising. However, after the Dream-Time monster had wiped out most of the tribe’s men, there were no other surviving males old enough to sit on the Council of Elders. Therefore, Weari-Wyingga had adopted the role of temporary chief. With the next oldest male in the village nearly sixty years Weari-Wyingga’s junior, Ernie knew it would be a long time before another all-male council of Elders could be appointed.
Looking a little nervous, Garbarla explained, “It has been suggested lately that we should allow Suzie Wanjimari and a few of the female Elders to sit in at all male corroborees.”
“Over my dead body,” shrieked Weari-Wyingga waving his blue gum stick around over his head as though he intended to strike down Garbarla for suggesting such a thing. “No one would even suggest such a thing in the days before the white invasion of this continent.”
Garbarla, Brian and Ernie exchanged bemused looks, knowing that in the days before the slaughter of the other Elders, Weari-Wyingga had been famous (or infamous) for his five hour-plus harangues at corroborees about the evils of the white society. Even other traditionalist Elders had been frustrated by the duration and regularity of the old man’s lengthy diatribes about the white man.
Since Ernie and the local police chief Danny Ross had helped defeat Mamaragan, Weari-Wyingga’s hard line against whites had softened a little. But at the mere suggestion of women on the council of Elders, the old man quickly set aside his recent soft line. So, afraid they’d have to listen to one of Weari-Wyingga’s five-hour harangues, Garbarla interrupted the old man:
“Perhaps I’d better take them both to Debbie’s hut to settle in,” he suggested.
“Yes, of course,” agreed Weari-Wyingga, looking a little put out by the interruption.

Unlike Weari-Wyingga, after the slaughter of most of the village men two years earlier, Debbie Bulilka had been quick to abandon her two-room hut for a larger three-room building near the centre of the village.
As they approached the hut, the three men saw Debbie, a tall, willowy woman in her late forties standing by her front door sweeping out dust. Seeing the three men, she dropped her broom with a crash against the side of the hut and raced to try to hug them all at once.
“Ernie, Brian,” she called by way of greeting, embarrassing them even more than they had been by old Weari-Wyingga’s effusive greeting. For a moment the tall woman ignored the stares of the gaping crowd standing round watching, then waving a hand at the crowd to shoo them away, she grabbed Brian and Ernie’s right hands to half drag, half lead them in through the small doorway into the corrugated iron hut.
Ernie and Brian both winced as their eyes struggled to adjust from the bright sunshine outside to the darkness in the front room. But without giving them time to acclimatise their eyes Debbie dragged them straight through the front room to one of the two back rooms, which the two new-comers would be sharing with her son, Garbarla.
Grabbing their suitcases off them, Debbie began hurriedly unpacking their things into two unvarnished wooden cabinets which looked new as though purchased, or more likely built by one of the village craftsmen for the arrival of Brian and Ernie.
“Here, let me do that,” offered Ernie.
“No, no, go talk with Garbarla,” suggested Debbie hurriedly unpacking his things into one of the cabinets, before he could offer again.
“Let’s leave her to it,” suggested Garbarla, knowing his mother did not take to new-fangled ideas, such as men knowing how to pack and unpack their own clothing.
“Guests go sit in living room, go talk,” agreed Debbie. And without further argument Brian and Ernie followed Garbarla back to the shady front room.
“So what do you want to talk about?” asked Brian as he and Ernie sat on grass mats on the hard dirt floor.
“I’m afraid you two will have to talk among yourselves for a while,” said Garbarla heading toward the front door. “I have to help out with the cook fire. We have to get it ready for whatever meat the hunters bring home tonight.
“With most of the more experienced hunters of the village gone, things have been a little lean the last couple of years,” explained Garbarla before stepping back out into the bright sunlight.
Ernie and Brian both knew what he meant. Since the attack of the Great Rainbow Snake upon the village most of the hunters and warriors were now mere teenagers. The most experienced hunter the tribe had left, a close friend of Ernie, Nambidjimba, had only recently turned nineteen.
Ernie looked forward to seeing young “Jimba” who was out with the day’s hunting party. But in the meantime, he decided to take advantage of Garbarla’s absence to take a walk through the village.
Stretching to relieve a nagging crick in his back, Ernie tried to sound casual as he said to Brian, “I feel like stretching my legs. Feel like a walk?”
“Sure, why not?” agreed Brian.

Trying to act as though he had picked a direction at random, Ernie set out through the corrugated-iron village, toward the corroboree ground.
Although Brian Horne knew that some great disaster had decimated the Aboriginal village two years earlier, Garbarla and Ernie had never dared tell him of their battle with Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake. So, as they approached the corroboree ground Ernie could not tell Brian why he had brought him there.
Far away from the iron huts, the corroboree ground was merely a small dirt-paved area ringed by a circle of towering blue-gum trees. In the centre of the corroboree ground were a number of round stones within which ceremonial fires of blue-, red-, and ghost-gum logs were laid. The original ceremonial fire was fifty metres closer toward the village than the new one.
Approaching the old fire site Ernie breathed deeply, enjoying the eucalyptus sweetness of the blue-gum trees, which also wafted like incense from a recently used ceremonial fire. He trotted tentatively, not knowing what to expect, half thinking there would only be a gaping hole showing where Mamaragan had escaped. Ernie sighed audibly in relief as he saw the hole where Mamaragan lay was still covered with hard-packed brown soil.
“My God, what is that?” asked Brian, staring down at where the soil had settled down nearly a metre in a circular patch by the old ceremonial fire. Unlike Ernie, Brian had never been inside the corroboree ground before. “Looks like a grave site.”
“In a way it is,” thought Ernie. Although he knew the gigantic varicoloured, diamond-headed serpent that lay beneath the soil was only sleeping; in a coma held fast by the mystical Dark Stone which Ernie, Garbarla, Jimba, and Weari-Wyingga had used to “lay” the serpent two years earlier.
“Mamaragan still in the ground,” said a frail voice behind them. Startled, Ernie looked round and saw Weari-Wyingga smiling at him and he realised that the old man had guessed what Ernie had thought when asked to spend a few days at the village. “No danger from there.”
“What is it?” asked Brian, not having a clue what Weari-Wyingga was talking about.
“A ceremonial burial site,” explained Ernie.
“A human burial site?” asked Brian staring wide-eyed at Ernie.
“No,” said Ernie, unsure how to answer.
“Only snake buried there,” said Weari-Wyingga truthfully. The old man grinned wide at Ernie as though sharing an old joke with his friend.
“Then why ... why did Garbarla ask us here?” asked Ernie.
Weari-Wyingga smiled again, not giving anything away. “Garbarla explain on hunt tomorrow.”
“Oh great,” said Brian with a broad grin. He enjoyed going on the hunting trips, although he and Ernie only went as observers, while Jimba, Garbarla and the other Aborigines hunted with traditional spears, woomeras, and large, hunting boomerangs.

Ernie awakened at break of dawn the next morning, squinting against the sunlight blasting in from a half inch gap beneath the thick black curtains. He sat up on the lumpy mattress upon the hard dirt floor, yawned widely and looked around himself in astonishment, for a moment not knowing where he was.
“Rise and shine, sleepy head,” teased Brian Horne standing in the doorway and Ernie suddenly remembered that he was sleeping in the back room of Debbie Bulilka’s three-room corrugated iron hut.
Ernie started to get up and fell against the metal wall, crying, “Jesus,” and leaping aside as the sun-drenched metal stung him. Careful to avoid touching the corrugated-iron walls of the hut again, he climbed to his feet again and said, “Sorry, I must have overslept.”
“You certainly did,” said Brian with a Cheshire cat-like grin, it’s nearly five o’clock.”
For one mad second Ernie thought he had slept the day away. Then reality hit him like a brick, “In the morning?”
“That’s right,” agreed Brian, “we have to set out early to get good hunting.”
“Oh God,” said Ernie ignoring Brian’s laughter as he fumbled his way across to the dressing cabinet for his clothing. He realised that to Brian the hunt was an exciting adventure. But to Ernie it only meant trouble. He knew Garbarla had to have some more important reason to invite them to the village than just to go on a hunting trip.

After a quick breakfast of cold nail tail kangaroo meat, left over from dinner the night before, the hunting party set out. It was composed of Ernie, Brian, Garbarla, Jimba, a tall, handsome youth who was in charge of the party, plus three other teenage full bloods: Budjiwa, Judawali, and Mutapina.
Stalking through the sun-dried brush, they came upon an open plain where they saw a small band of great red kangaroos feeding. There were six adult females, three or four joeys and one solitary Old Man roo, standing nearly two metres tall upon his haunches.
Budjiwa and Judawali began covering themselves from head to foot in brown dirt, “To keep in the man-smells,” Garbarla whispered to Brian and Ernie. “Kangaroos have weak eyesight and can’t easily distinguish between stationary objects, but they have a very powerful sense of smell.”
Ernie, Brian, and Garbarla remained behind as instructed and watched as the two hunters slowly began to circle around the small herd. Crawling along on their bellies upon the brown earth, Budjiwa and Judawali inched forward, dragging their hunting spears behind them. Every few metres they paused and waited a few seconds, or even minutes, before moving on again. In this way it took them almost an hour to crawl from over a hundred metres away, to less than ten metres away from where the kangaroo herd grazed.
On the other hand it took Jimba and Mutapina little more than ten minutes to circle around the back of the herd, moving stealthily, head down, through the brush outside the clearing. They were able to move more confidently than the other two, being outside the range of vision of the herd, behind the tall grass and shrubs. When at last the other two were in place, the two warriors began to close in upon the herd until they were only twenty metres away. Then Jimba deliberately trod on a small twig to make it snap.
The adult kangaroos instantly stiffened to attention, their dog-like heads held high in the air, listening; the head of the Old Man roo went quickly round to Jimba and Mutapina’s direction. Leaning backward slightly, balancing upon his powerful tail, the roo surveyed the terrain, sniffing lightly at the air, while his harem continued to listen and their joeys continued nipping unconcernedly at tender sprouts of grass.
Catching the young warriors' scent the roo shrieked a warning to his harem. Quickly the joeys dived headfirst into their mothers' pouches and the herd leapt into flight, heading straight toward where Budjiwa and Judawali lay in wait.
Leaping to their feet the two hunters loaded their three-metre long spears into their woomeras and launched the spears almost in the same action.
Judawali’s spear felled a fleeing kangaroo but Budjiwa’s weapon narrowly missed its mark. Before the two hunters could reload their spear-launchers, the herd had moved past them and was bounding toward where Ernie, Brian and Garbarla lay concealed in the tall grass a hundred metres behind the others.
Jumping to his feet Garbarla raised his own weapon, a large hunting boomerang, swung his right arm back and at the same time collided with an onrushing kangaroo. His aim was knocked off by the collision so that his weapon went astray and narrowly missed decapitating Judawali. However, the warrior ducked under the large boomerang and without missing a step launched a spear from his loaded woomera and felled the roo Garbarla had collided with.
Judawali’s spear passed clean through the young kangaroo and through a small Joey in her pouch, pinning mother and baby alike to the ground. The Joey was killed instantly, but the mother struggled valiantly against the thick spear, tugging at it with her small front paws, biting at it with her strong teeth, while her powerful back feet kicked furiously at the ground, until Judawali rushed across to slit her throat with his hunting knife.
The Old Man roo stopped and turned back toward the men, anger flashed in his steely grey eyes, his nostrils quivered in rage. He obviously planned to make a bid to rescue his mates, but seeing it was already too late, he turned and fled, to the relief of Ernie and the others, leaving them to begin preparing the two carcases for the long trip home. Budjiwa and Mutapina each took one end of the spear with which Judawali had pinned the kangaroo to the ground, then, with Mutapina in the lead, they set off back to camp, each holding one end of the spear over his left shoulder. They travelled slowly to conserve energy as they had many kilometres to travel.
Judawali pulled the spear from the flank of the second roo, then speared it from backside to neck so that he and Garbarla could carry it home in tandem fashion also.
They had hardly started back though when young Jimba and Judawali suddenly came to a halt half a dozen metres ahead of Ernie and the others.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ernie. As soon as he spoke, he expected to be hushed by the Aborigines. Instead they acted as though no one had even heard him speak.
Receiving no answer, Ernie walked as quietly as possible to the front of the procession, closely followed by Garbarla and Brian. In the desert, twenty metres ahead of Jimba, they saw a band of shimmering light. Like hot air shimmering in the distance in summer. Yet the sky was overcast, the day cool if not actually cold, so there was no reason for the air to heat-shimmer.
“Do you remember in class when I said that the Aborigines believe in parallel realities?” asked Garbarla. He received nods from Brian and Ernie who were both too shocked to speak. “Well, we believe this ‘shimmer’ is a reality slip.”
The two white men stared toward the handsome half-breed clearly not understanding, so Garbarla explained: “We believe this is a flaw in reality. A portal if you like between two or more realities.”
“So we could step between our reality and another?” asked Ernie.
“Perhaps,” said Garbarla, sounding dubious. “But strange things have been going on here lately. Strange animals sighted. And not just by my people. Two months ago a white farmer in the LePage area claimed to have shot a Tasmanian tiger. And there have been at least two reported bunyip sightings.”
“Bunyips?” asked Brian sounding sceptical. “Tassie tigers I can believe. They once existed, so there’s a chance at least a few might still be around. But bunyips are pure fiction.”
“In our reality, yes,” agreed Garbarla. “But if this is a gap between two realities, it might lead to another reality in which bunyips do exist. In which Tasmanian tigers weren’t driven to extinction in the 1930s.”
Garbarla paused for a moment, then added, “If it’s just a doorway between realities, that would be bad enough. But my people believe it could be a reality leak.”
“A reality leak,” asked Ernie. He looked back toward the cold shimmering air in the distance.
“We believe that one of the realities is gradually leaking into the other,” explained Garbarla. “If the other reality is leaking into ours, releasing Tassie tigers and bunyips, that’s bad enough. But if our reality is the one leaking away, it could be that it will eventually leak away completely and cease to exist.”
“Then what?” asked Brian, not sure if he could believe what his friend was telling him.
“Then either the whole world will just pop out of existence, along with the human species. Or perhaps the entire human race will find itself transported to another reality. Where bunyips and other Dream-Time monsters proliferate.”
“But that’s not possible!” protested Brian.
Garbarla started to argue the point, then quickly fell silent.
Puzzled by his friend’s sudden silence, Ernie looked back. He saw Garbarla staring glassy-eyed past him toward the reality leak.
At first all Ernie could see was the shimmering air, then it began to clear like a de-misting mirror and Ernie realised, “My God, something is coming through from the other side!”
The young warriors quickly dropped their catches and raised their spears, chattering excitedly in their native tongue and Ernie realised they expected a bunyip, Tasmanian tiger, or some other lethal creature, real or fantasy, to step through from the leak.
“Shouldn’t we get out of here?” asked Brian Horne, echoing the thoughts of Ernie.
“Perhaps you’re ...?” began Garbarla. But before they could take to flight, they saw the creature coming through the leak was a man. A tall, handsome Aborigine, a few years younger than Garbarla, almost pitch-black, however; clearly a full-blood.
“Gunbuk!” cried Garbarla as Ernie also recognised the black man.
“But it can’t be Gunbuk!” rationalised Ernie. He knew that Garbarla’s half-brother, Gunbuk, had been killed two years earlier by the Great Rainbow Snake.
The black man walked slowly toward them until he was only metres away. And no one could doubt that it was Garbarla’s dead half-brother.
The “ghost” flashed a broad toothy grin at his half-brother then said, “Still got to look after the white man, keep him out of trouble.”
Ernie saw Garbarla’s face pale and wondered if he was embarrassed at the teasing, knowing it had really hurt him when his full-blood brother called him the white man. “Or is he just as shocked as I am at the sight of Gunbuk back from the grave?”
However, Gunbuk had never been buried, having been devoured by the diamond-headed Great Rainbow Snake. And he did not look like an animated corpse now. But a normal, flesh and blood human being.
Holding out his right hand, Gunbuk said, “Come, brother.”
And, to Ernie and Brian’s surprise, Garbarla took his brother’s hand and started to walk with him. “Back toward the reality leak!” Ernie realised.
“No, stop!” shouted Ernie. However, his courage failed him and he could only watch as Garbarla and Gunbuk approached the reality leak.
“Stop!” shouted Brian Horne from behind Ernie.
“They’re going to go back into ...” began Ernie. But he stopped as Brian raced past him toward the two Aborigines.
“No, stop!” shouted Ernie again. But as he stood petrified watching, Garbarla and Gunbuk stepped into the reality leak and flickered in and out of existence for a few seconds like a flickering fluorescent light about to fail, then flickered out altogether.
Then a second later Brian Horne ran into the reality leak, flickered in and out of existence for a few seconds, then flickered out of existence altogether.
“Oh Jesus!” cried Ernie. Although still terrified of what if anything awaited him beyond the reality leak, Ernie reluctantly started toward the shimmering air. He had almost reached the reality leak when he was suddenly grabbed from behind by strong hands.
Almost lifted off his feet, Ernie looked back and saw young Jimba holding him.
“They dead now,” insisted Jimba.
“No!” insisted Ernie, not wanting to believe it. “No, they’re not dead. We’ve got to go after them.”
For a moment the teenager looked as though he were going to argue with Ernie. Then he released the white man and together Jimba and Ernie stepped through the reality leak.
Like the others before them they flickered in and out of existence for a few seconds, then flickered out completely.

Ernie’s reality
Expecting to be sucked into some kind of vortex or black hole, Ernie was almost disappointed by the lack of effect as they walked into the reality leak. One second the air was shimmering around them like distant air in a heat wave, the next it was not. But otherwise nothing seemed to have changed. Ernie had half expected to find himself in some kind of 1960’s LSD-trip movie-world with a green sky and purple dirt beneath their feet. But when he looked up the sky was still azure blue streaked with balls of fluffy white, and the ground beneath his feet was still hard-baked brown dirt with the occasional tufts of green or sun-yellowed Native-Australian grasses.
Looking round Ernie saw three Aboriginal hunters behind him and wrinkled his brow. “Nothing at all has changed!”
He looked toward young Jimba, but the teenage hunter shrugged and Ernie realised, “He doesn’t know why nothing has changed either!”
“Nothing changed,” said Jimba and this time Ernie shrugged.
After a moment they started walking across toward the three hunters and Ernie realised they had been mistaken, they were in another reality after all! Instead of Budjiwa, Judawali, and Mutapina, who they had been hunting with, these were three other young hunters.
“Nanguru, Wururuma, and Marbungga,” said Ernie, recognising the three young hunters. Three full-bloods who had been killed and eaten by Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake two years earlier.
The three dead Aborigines smiled toothily for a moment, then Wururuma said, “Time to go.”
“Go where?” asked Ernie.
“Go hunting,” explained Wururuma. “Got to hunt or village no eat.”
Jimba and Ernie exchanged a bemused look. Finally they both shrugged and started after Nanguru, Wururuma, and Marbungga.
Ernie and Jimba followed the three “dead” hunters for more than an hour, before locating a small band of red kangaroos.
Ernie and Jimba stood back, perplexed, not knowing what role they were to play in the hunt. Nanguru, Wururuma, and Marbungga began to rub their bodies from head to foot in dirt to cover their human aroma.
Then, Ernie and Jimba stayed crouching in the tall grass watching as the three teenagers crept up on the kangaroo herd. Three flyers (females) and their joeys were feeding on the tall grass, while the boomer (dominant male) stood watch. Propped up on his thick tail, the boomer stood erect, scanning the horizon, sniffing at the air, searching for the scent of danger.
Wururuma circled quickly round behind the herd, while the other two natives crept forward centimetre by centimetre. It was a slow process, with up to five minutes between each step. But finally they were in place.
Just as had happened earlier, at a given signal from the others, Wururuma broke a twig deliberately.
At the sound the adult roos stiffened to attention, their dog-like heads high in the air, listening, sniffing. Catching Wururuma’s scent, the boomer shrieked a warning and the joeys dived headfirst into their mothers' pouches. Then the boomer took off -- straight toward where Nanguru and Marbungga were waiting hidden in the tall grass -- with his harem not far behind.
Leaping to their feet Nanguru and Marbungga launched their spears toward the onrushing roos. Nanguru’s spear went wide of the mark, but Marbungga’s weapon lanced through an approaching roo, which shrieked an almost human shriek as it died in agony. Ernie almost passed out in shock at the sight of the roo thrashing about wildly, shrieking like a dying woman. “Oh God!” he thought, fighting the bile that threatened to rise. Tugging at the spear with its tiny front paws, the kangaroo tried desperately to extract the wooden pole from its chest, shrilling its pain and terror as the spear held fast.
To Ernie’s relief, Nanguru rushed forward and slit the flyer’s throat with his hunting knife.
“Mmm mmmm,” said Nanguru, throwing Ernie a teasing smile, “good eatin’ tonight boss.”
The four Aborigines began to laugh at his expense, even Jimba joining in. And despite his shock at what he had just seen, Ernie could not help grinning back at the joke. He knew the village Aborigines could not resist teasing white visitors with an occasional use of Jedda-style patois.”
Wururuma went across to the speared roo. He and Nanguru each took one end of the spear to carry the roo between them as they started back toward the Aboriginal village.
They had hardly set out for home though, when the sky began to darken rapidly as though a huge black cloud had suddenly blown across the sun. At first black, the sky quickly turned to deep blue, then purple.
“The Great Rainbow Snake!” said Ernie. He was convinced now that Weari-Wyingga had been wrong. That Mamaragan had somehow awakened from his coma ... at least in this reality.
At Ernie’s words, Wururuma, Nanguru, and Marbungga took off into the desert at high speed. Still carrying the speared kangaroo between them. Ernie and Jimba stood their ground though, staring up at the ever deepening blue-purple, until gradually the colour began to separate out into a dozen or more coloured disks, flashing blue, purple, red, green, orange, or yellow like a swarm of varicoloured moons descending.
As the “moons” approached, the sky was filled with an angry hum, like the buzz of a billion bumble bees. Which soon turned into a louder WHIR-WHIR-WHIR-WHIR.
“Mamaragan?” said Jimba sounding doubtful as he looked toward Ernie.
At first Ernie had assumed the lights were the sun reflecting off the scales of the gigantic diamond-headed rainbow serpent. But now he was not so sure. Then as the “Great Rainbow Snake” continued to descend from the sky, its rattlesnake-like hiss began to sound less like the hiss of a snake, and more like the roar of jet engines.
Gradually the multi-coloured scales of the serpent began to break off to descend to Earth, like a hundred shining discs. Discs which began to look less like serpent scales and more like gigantic aircraft the closer they came to Earth.
“Flying saucers!” said Ernie, recognising the varicoloured flashes as fluorescent landing lights.

Brian’s reality
Brian Horne charged into the reality leak only a second or two after Garbarla and Gunbuk. But that second or two made all the difference. When he stepped through the reality leak, there was no sign of the two Aborigines.
Instead he found himself in the middle of a battlefield. Instead of the even dirt plains he had been on before, the ground was a muddy, pitted quagmire. Mutilated bodies lay upon the ground or lying half in dugouts or bomb craters. The stink of gunpowder, blood and rotting human flesh filled the air. Abandoned weapons and machinery of war dotted the landscape. Overhead planes and missiles whizzed past. Occasionally a missile or bomb exploded, lighting the sky for a brief moment before darkness descended again ... until the next explosion lit up the sky again.
At first Brian struggled to see in the dim light. But soon his eyes adjusted, and he wished that they had not. “My God, where the hell am I?” he wondered. Looking round at the battle-scarred terrain he decided it could not be Australia. “The Middle-East or Palestine maybe?”
Realising he was in danger standing out in the open, Brian crouched and started toward the nearest bomb-crater a few metres away. “Lightning never strikes place in the same place!” he recalled, only hoping that the same applied to bombs and missiles. But even as he thought it, Brian heard a whistling from the sky just overhead and a missile exploded seemingly right behind him.
Blown through the air, his last thought before slipping away into darkness was, “I’m dead!”

Garbarla’s reality
Like Ernie and Jimba, when Garbarla followed his half-brother through the reality leak, his first thought was that nothing had changed. Looking round the brown dirt desert he decided, “We could be just where we started!” Except that there was no sign of Jimba, Ernie, Brian, Budjiwa, Judawali, or Mutapina.
Garbarla knew that it was a white man’s myth that one piece of brown dirt looked the same as another. The tribal Aborigines possess an almost preternatural ability to distinguish one clump of Native-Australian grass from another. One smattering of rocks or gravel from another. One small depression or hillock from another. A habit which Garbarla had always envied and for a long time had been unable to emulate.
Born January 1957, he had been Christened Garbarla by his mother, Debbie Bulilka, who had borne him to a travelling State Electricity Commission linesman, Edward Hunt. For a year or so they had all lived together near the settlement outside Pettiwood. Then forced to move North, but unable to take Debbie and baby Garbarla with him, Edward Hunt had departed, promising to return for them as soon as possible. But they had heard nothing more for over ten years. Until at age eleven Garbarla had been given to his white grandmother, Bettina Hunt, after his father had been electrocuted to death at work. Against his will Garbarla had been taken from his black mother, Debbie, to be raised as Joseph Hunt. Legalised kidnapping covered by the “Aboriginal Protection Act” of 1909, which allowed Aboriginal children to be taken from their natural parents to be raised in white society, under the belief that this was somehow in the child’s best interests. Although the act was repealed in 1969, Garbarla had been won by his grandmother in a lengthy court case. So he remained in white society to be educated to HSC level, then had earnt a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Economics and Aboriginal culture. Which he had hoped to put to good use by returning to his tribe.
Garbarla had struggled to fit into with his black relatives after returning to the tribe in the early 1980s. But he had gradually started to relearn many of the hunting and tracking skills he had possessed as a child. Yet looking round himself now, he realised, “I don’t recognise any of it! I might just as well be in another state or country, or on another planet for all I can tell!”

Ernie’s reality
The whining buzz soon gave way to the more insistent WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH of what Ernie knew to be powerful rocket motors.
“Flying saucers!” said Ernie again. But his mind rejected the notion as soon as he formed it. Although science had never been his strongest subject at school, Ernie prided himself on being a logical, rational thinker. He had always concluded that UFOs were some kind of pseudo-religious fantasy, a need to make some kind of sense out of life. To believe there is something more than just eighty years of random existence, followed by death and an eternity of non-existence.
Yet, by the time the craft were two kilometres from the ground, they had taken on the unmistakable shape of aircraft or space shuttles of some kind.
“Come on,” said Ernie. He and Jimba set off on foot toward where the craft were going to land three or four kilometres away.

When they reached the location, they saw the craft had landed in a deep ravine. Ernie and Jimba stayed crouching behind a large, twisted, grey-white ghost gum at the top of the ravine.
“Do you think they’re still inside?” asked Ernie. There was no sight of any creatures, alien or otherwise, however, the craft must have landed ten or fifteen minutes before Ernie and Jimba arrived.
Jimba merely shrugged.
Up close the craft looked like traditional aerocraft or shuttles. Except for being half a dozen times larger than any planes or shuttles the Russians or Americans had yet produced.
But there was nothing traditional about the creatures which came out of the craft. They were approximately three metres tall, vaguely resembling the mythical North American Big Foot, half man, half ape, with five ten-centimetre (four inch) long talons, a yellowish-bone shade, on each of their four limbs; a thick plush, woolly coat, similar in texture and appearance to the coat of a long-haired bear -- which on reflexion the creatures resembled more than ape men. Their lush coats ranged from pale yellow to a dark brown and deep henna. Their faces were also bear-like, apart from the long incisors which stuck up from the side of the mouth, like the fangs of the long-extinct sabre-tooth tiger.
As Ernie and Jimba watched from their hiding place, a hundred metres or so away behind the gum tree, about sixty of the creatures disembarked from five craft which had landed. The creatures assembled themselves in military ranks in front of their craft, carrying in their massive paws what appeared to Ernie to be extremely advanced surveying equipment. After a quick check of their packs, one of the creatures gave a growling bark and they marched off into the brown dirt desert.
Ernie and Jimba continued watching the craft for ten minutes after the creatures marched off, to assure themselves that they had not left a cordon of guards to protect the vessels. Then, satisfied at last, they set out to examine one of the flying saucers.
“Come on,” said Ernie. He started down the sloping side of the ravine with Jimba closely behind.
“Don’t worry,” said Ernie seeing the teenager’s wide-eyed look of fear as they approached the gigantic aircraft-shaped craft, “they’ve all gone off surveying and won’t be back for hours.” He thought, “I hope!”
At close range the craft seemed to be made out of some highly luminous metallic substance, which slowly changed through the colours of the spectrum, flashing red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet in turn. As they approached, the craft seemed to soar almost infinitely overhead, but a large folding staircase had been lowered from the belly of each of the craft, so they were able to ascend into one of the spacecraft, only slightly handicapped by the oversized stairs, built for creatures much taller than themselves.
“Ugh!” said Jimba touching one wall of the craft as they went inside.
“What is it?” asked Ernie. He touched the pulsing wall and shuddered at the touch, Although the walls looked to be built of some kind of Plexiglass, it had a moist, clammy feel and was cold to the touch.
“Plastic should be warm and dry to the touch,” said Ernie thinking aloud. He saw Jimba nod in agreement.
Inside they found a long, black-walled corridor, which at first glance did not seem to go anywhere, seemingly fully enclosed.
“There must be doors of some kind,” said Ernie perplexed as they looked up and down the corridor. “Or else how do they get to the cockpit to pilot the damn thing?” As they looked about, Ernie sniffed at the air, trying to define the slightly cloying smell that filled the compartment. Finally thinking of the dog yard at his sheep station, he decided, “Like the smell of a shaggy dog drenched in rain.”
“Maybe the pilots can’t leave the craft,” suggested Jimba.
“You mean there’s no connection between the cockpit and the inner section?” asked Ernie. He received a nod from Jimba. “But in that case there should be some form of seats or cubicles out here for those ... soldiers or whatever they are. Surely they don’t just all pile in here and bunch up together?”
Jimba shrugged again.
“That would mean they’d have nothing to hold onto or hold them down during lift-off and landing,” said Ernie. “They’d be smashed about the sides of the thing!” he thought. “No, there has to be some way to get into the cockpit from here!”
“Come on,” Ernie said. He started down to one end of the corridor and stopped at a dead-end.
“Well, I don’t know ...” began Ernie. But even as he spoke, a large section of the wall simply disappeared into thin air, allowing access to a large room, laden with switches, knobs, dials, and varicoloured flashing lights.
“Cockpit,” said Jimba, mirroring Ernie’s look of surprise as they entered the large room.
Inside the cockpit was hot and humid. The wet-shaggy-dog smell was overpowering when they first entered, however, it quickly began to fade away when the “door” was opened.
Although there was no obvious steering wheel or joystick, there were two heavily padded, giant-sized chairs, facing toward one of the instrument panels. Since the craft had been built for giants, the switches and knobs were too high up upon the wall for Ernie and Jimba to examine properly from the ground.
“Well, here goes,” said Ernie climbing up to sit in one of the two seats.
The moment that his backside touched the seat, the craft began to hum wildly, and poor Jimba was thrown violently to the floor, as the craft began to rise into the air.

Brian’s reality
Brian’s slip into unconsciousness was only brief. A few minutes later he awakened, lying on his back, looking up at the night sky being continually lit up by great bursts of yellow light. “Cracker night!” he thought at first. But then as his head began to clear and he almost gagged on the smell of gunpowder and sulphur, he recalled that he was lost in some war zone.
He slowly rolled up onto his hands and knees, afraid of any sudden movement in case he had damaged his spine. But feeling nothing worse than minor bruises, he began to crawl toward the nearest bomb crater.
As he reached the edge of the crater he hesitated, seeing two soldiers lying with their backs toward him, facedown. “They could be both dead!” he realised. “Or simply waiting out the bombing!”
Brian did not want to dive into the crater unannounced, only to be shot. But as the shells continued to WHOOSH overhead and bombs exploded all around him, he decided being shot by the unknown soldiers was not as big a danger as staying outside in the open.
“Coming ready or not!” he thought as he scampered into the bomb crater.
“Don’t shoot!” Brian shrieked to make himself heard above the bombing, as he dived into the crater. However, the metallic smell of blood and sharp pong of faeces where one of the soldiers had fouled himself, told Brian that they were both dead. A fact which he quickly confirmed by examining them.
“Both dead!” he realised. Seeing the blond, sun-bronzed features he decided, “Aussies by the looks of them!” However, their deep blue uniforms were completely unfamiliar to him, looking more like track suits than any military uniform he had ever seen. “Some kind of Middle-East Peace-Keeping forces?” he wondered. Although he puzzled over the strange uniforms. Brian prided himself on having a good working knowledge of 1970s and 1980s armed services uniforms from most major countries in the world.
Seeing the machine-guns and a bag of hand grenades lying beside the fallen soldiers, Brian wondered if he should take them. “They’ll be some protection!” he thought. But as a missile exploded high overhead turning night into day for a few seconds, he realised, “But not much!”
Brian hesitated a moment longer, then finally grabbed one of the machine-guns -- which were a make that he failed to recognise. After experimenting to test the firing, he grabbed all the extra clips he could find in the crater. Then, feeling like a grave robber, he checked over the two dead soldiers and took any extra magazines he could find on them.
He also checked over the “grenades”. However, they turned out to be a type he had never seen before either. “What in the hell are they?” he wondered. They were black plastic, two centimetres thick, equilateral-triangle-shaped with two ovoid buttons on one flat edge -- one red button, the other white.
“Without knowing the order to push the buttons, these things are too dangerous to use!” he decided. So, hoping he was not making a mistake, he tossed the bag of grenades as far from the crater as he could, then lay down in the crater to rest, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with fatigued.

Brian lay in the crater for what seemed like hours. The overhead shelling and electric-light show display of WHIZZING-WHOOSHING missiles seemed at first to be endless. But finally, to his relief, the noise began to die down and the flashes became less frequent.
“It’ll be light in less than an hour!” Brian realised. Tentatively he crawled to the rim of the crater and looked out. In the emerging twilight he could make out the forms of dozens of other soldiers lying dead on the ground, or crouching in other craters or dugouts. “How many of them are corpses? How many are living?” he wondered.
He started to fear that he might be worse off in daylight than at night. “When the soldiers can see, they’ll be able to charge across the mud toward each other’s dugouts!” And almost as soon as he thought it, Brian saw half a dozen large figures racing across the landscape toward him.
Brian’s first inclination was to aim his machine-gun at them. “No, I can’t get them all!” he realised, seeing how far they had spread themselves out as they started toward him. “And they might be allies!”
He did his best to sink back into the dark of the bomb crater. However, the approaching soldiers were still at least six metres away when they saw him.
“Gook!” shouted one of the men and they all dropped face down in the cold mud.
“Friend or foe?” called one of the soldiers in a strong Brooklyn accent.
“Thank God, they’re Americans!” thought Brian. “Friend!” he called back to them.
Despite his claim, the soldiers inched they way through the mud on their bellies toward the crater.
“Keep your hands in plain sight, away from your weapons,” ordered a tall, anorexically thin man dressed in a strange looking jet-black track-suit-style uniform, which had the insignia of a U.S. lieutenant.
Brian did as instructed, hoping to soon be out of the danger zone.
“What battalion are you in, soldier?” asked the lieutenant.
“I’m not a soldier,” explained Brian.
“You’re not a Yank!” said a soldier in sergeant’s stripes; a huge, barrel-chested ox of a man.
“That’s right, I’m an Australian,” said Brian.
“An Aussie!” said the lieutenant, sounding shocked. The six soldiers all went rigid to attention.
“That’s right.”
To Brian’s horror the sergeant stepped forward and pointed his machine-gun at him. He cocked the weapon and said, “This is what we do to you Aussie scum!”

Garbarla’s reality
Garbarla looked round the brown-dirt desert, futilely trying to recognise where he was. “Maybe I’m not near the village anymore?” he decided. Although he had never believed in such things himself, he had heard of time-space warps that people supposedly fell into and got instantly transported to other lands, continents, planets, even ages.
“Maybe I’ve been transported into the future?” he considered. Then looking round the barren, seemingly lifeless brown plains, “Or perhaps into the distant past!”
Before he could ponder for long, however, his full-blood companion began to gesture for him to follow:
“Come!” said Gunbuk. Standing on a small rise ten metres ahead of his half-brother.
“Come where?” asked Garbarla. Although he had trusted his brother implicitly two years ago, he decided, “You can’t be Gunbuk! Gunbuk died two years ago!”
“Come!” repeated Gunbuk. He held up a large hunting boomerang and gestured with it for Garbarla to follow him.
“Come where?” repeated Garbarla, refusing to budge until he knew where they were going. “How do I know it isn’t a trap?” he wondered. “Maybe you aren’t Gunbuk at all, but some malignant spirit that took his shape to trick me for some reason, to lure me into danger!”
“Come!” repeated Gunbuk, waving the boomerang again.
“Or maybe you really are Gunbuk?” wondered Garbarla. “Maybe in this reality Mamaragan is nothing but a legend?” He remembered his own teaching earlier that week about parallel realities to his TAFE class at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology. “In which case Gunbuk, Bindul, Marbungga, Mayuldjumbajum, and all the others might all still be alive in this reality?”
When Garbarla continued to hesitate, Gunbuk trotted across the brown-dirt toward him. Taking his half-brother by one arm, he began to gently pull at him, saying, “Come!”
Garbarla resisted for a moment longer, but then shrugged and started to follow. “What else can I do?” he wondered. He realised that there was no sign of the reality leak on this side, so that if he did not follow his half-brother, there was no way for him to return to his own reality.
“Besides, what can it hurt?” Garbarla thought as he started out across the brown desert after Gunbuk. As he set out, Garbarla knew that he secretly hoped that by following Gunbuk in this reality, he might be able to bring his brother Gunbuk back to life in his own reality somehow.

For a long time as they travelled along, there was no change to the brown-dirt plains. But finally the brown dirt gave way to yellow desert sands.
Sand which was hot underfoot.
“Jesus!” cried Garbarla trying his best to look for cool spots in the sands.
Although he had been fully dressed when he had set out, Garbarla realised that he was now dressed like his half-brother: almost naked apart from a loin-cloth, barefoot, and carrying a spear and woomera in one hand. A large hunting boomerang in the other.
Overhead the sun beat down mercilessly, as though late spring had turned to midsummer. The further they travelled, the hotter the sand became. However, after awhile they saw a small oasis a few hundred metres ahead of them.
“Thank God!” thought Garbarla. Doing his best to ignore the sweat running down his forehead into his eyes, Garbarla took off toward the oasis. Which was nothing more than half a dozen gum trees around a small waterhole.
It was only as Garbarla got within twenty metres of the oasis, that he realised that he could not hear his half-brother’s running footsteps behind him. Stopping, he looked back and saw Gunbuk standing in the yellow sandy desert ten metres away, staring across toward him.
“What’s wrong?” Garbarla called back to his half-brother.
Instead of answering, Gunbuk started toward him, but more cautiously than before. Slowly, as though they were headed toward danger.
“What can be ahead?” wondered Garbarla. Although keen to get off the hot, yellow sand, he followed his half-brother’s example and trod cautiously toward the oasis.
As soon as they entered the small clearing the temperature seemed to drop 20 Degrees Celsius.
“Thank God!” said Garbarla. He started to walk down the slightly sloping grassy bank toward the water for a drink, when Gunbuk suddenly raced across to grab his arm to stop him.
“What’s wrong?” Garbarla asked.
By way of answer his half-brother pointed across the waterhole to a small group of blue-gum trees.
“What is it?” asked Garbarla, peering across the water. After a few seconds he could discern a human figure standing in the shadows thrown by the eucalyptus trees.
“Hello!” Garbarla called across to the figure. He stepped forward to show his intent was friendly and held his spears and boomerangs downwards in a (he hoped) non-aggressive manner. “We mean you no harm,” he called. “We just want to drink from the water.”
At Garbarla’s call, the figure stepped forward out of the shadows.
Garbarla gasped in shock. Although basically human in shape, the “man” was covered from head to toe in red, yellow, and blue snakelike scales. His face had a snakelike, almost chiselled look, and from between his lips flicked a long, thin, forked tongue.
“Liru,” whispered Gunbuk.

Ernie’s reality
“Get down! Get down!” shouted Jimba, clawing his way back to his feet.
Ernie hurried to comply and the hum, which had begun to gear up, immediately geared back down again. The spacecraft slowly settled back down to Earth, pitching both Ernie and Jimba to the floor.
“Let’s get out of here!” Ernie shouted. He turned to run back toward the “doorway” which had now disappeared. Although upon his approach the section of wall vanished into thin air once again, allowing access to the corridor beyond.
“Don’t panic,” called Jimba, grabbing hold of Ernie by one arm to stop him in mid-flight. Having faced the Great Rainbow Snake two years earlier and been one of the few warriors to survive, there was almost nothing that would faze the plucky young hunter now. “Your fault.”
“But how ...?” began Ernie. Then he realised, “Obviously these craft are so advanced that they fly themselves automatically, even landing and taking off automatically. All you have to do is sit in the driver’s seat and the craft takes off,” explained Ernie, “stand up again and it lands.”
“Obviously,” Jimba said caustically.
Ernie laughed good-humouredly at his sarcasm, then said, “All of this is fascinating; far more advanced than anything they could build on this planet.”
“So we can rule out the idea of the U.S. or Russians being involved?”
“Undoubtedly,” agreed Ernie. “Wherever these craft come from, it isn’t from this galaxy.”

They examined the cockpit as best we could for nearly an hour, before returning to the corridor. Not knowing where the “doors” were placed, they tested the wall on both sides of the corridor by stopping every few paces. They found a half a dozen rooms on each side of the corridor, most of which were store rooms or else sleeping quarters for the space creatures.
In one room they found a collection of thin, metallic, silvery rune-like tablets, which Ernie suggested were probably the aliens equivalent of CDs and floppy disks. On the spur of the moment Ernie slipped half a dozen of the runes into his pockets.
“It’s a pity Jerry isn’t here,” said Ernie. Referring to Jerry Green the coroner of Glen Hartwell and the closest thing the area had to a scientist. He was also the only person in the Glen Hartwell to Willamby area with a personal computer. But looking at the strange, thin, rectangular discs Ernie wondered if Jerry’s PC could access them.
“I doubt if any computer on Earth could access these,” he decided as they continued searching the spacecraft.
Toward the opposite end of the corridor to the cockpit, they found a huge, pale pink room which was obviously a vast food storage and freezing area. Dark brown carcases hung on hooks from the ceiling, like at a butcher’s shop. Confirming that the creatures were carnivorous.
As they entered the cold storage room Ernie felt his face flushing pink at the cold. Looking across at the teenager, he saw Jimba shivering at the icy cold. “My God, it’s cold in here!” thought Ernie. He began blowing into his hands in a bid to warm them.
Although they had been protected from the desert heat by the cool temperature aboard the spacecraft, nevertheless the biting cold in the storage room came as a great shock to their systems.
Jimba led the way into the cold storage room, then to Ernie’s surprise the teenager stopped after only a couple of paces and tried to shepherd him back out into the corridor, saying, “Come on, it’s much too cold in here.” He followed Ernie’s example of blowing into his hands for emphasis. Then taking Ernie roughly by one arm tried to pull him back out into the corridor.
“What is it?” asked Ernie. At first he allowed himself to be led back toward the corridor, accepting Jimba’s explanation for the sudden retreat on face value. But then, seeing the look of stark horror upon the teenager’s face, Ernie broke free from Jimba’s grasp and ran back into the room.
“Judawali!” cried Ernie, surprised to suddenly find himself face to face with the young hunter, who they had left behind when stepping through the reality leak. “How did you get here? We didn’t even know you followed us here.”
“Not Judawali!” corrected Jimba.
“What are you talking about?” demanded Ernie, astonished by the claim. He had been to Jimba and Garbarla’s village fifteen or so times over the last two years and certainly knew what young Judawali looked like.
“Not Judawali!” repeated Jimba, more insistent than before. Grabbing Ernie by the shoulder, he began tugging him toward the corridor again. “Not Judawali!”
“Of course it’s Judawali,” repeated Ernie. Then seeing the teenage hunters on either side of the young warrior, “And Budjiwa and Mutapina. My God they must have all followed us through the reality leak. It’s a wonder we all landed into the same reality.”
“Not Judawali! Not Budjiwa! Not Mutapina!” insisted Jimba, still tugging at Ernie’s shoulder.
“But of course it’s ...” began Ernie. But then he reeled back in horror as he realised why Jimba had been so keen to keep him out of the freezer room. He realised that Jimba had been right after all. It was not Judawali, Budjiwa, and Mutapina standing in the icy freezer room in the spacecraft.
It was their naked, disembowelled carcases, which hung suspended by meat hooks from the ceiling.
The Rainbow-creatures most definitely were carnivorous, and humans were the meat which they chose to eat!

Brian’s reality
“Oh, my God, they’re going to kill me!” thought Brian as the sergeant cocked the machine-gun, ready to fire it.
“Hold on, he’s not in uniform,” pointed out a tall, fair-haired lieutenant.
“Then he’s a spy! And we always shoot spies!” insisted the squat, Neanderthal sergeant. He raised his machine-gun again aiming it at Brian.
“No, I’m a civilian!” insisted Brian.
“A civilian? Out here?” said the sergeant. He waved his machine-gun around the bomb crater-pitted battle zone where they stood. “What in hell would a civilian be doing out here?”
“It’s hard to explain,” said Brian. He wondered, “What the hell can I tell them? If I try to explain what really happened, they’ll never believe it in a pink fit.”
“If you’re a civilian, where do you come from?” asked the lieutenant. Brian sensed he was more willing to give him a fair chance than the squat, ugly sergeant.
“Merridale,” answered Brian truthfully.
“Marydale?” asked the sergeant. “Where the hell is that?”
“Merridale,” corrected Brian. He saw the sergeant scowl and thought, “I’d better be careful, it won’t do to antagonise this bloke.” Aloud he said, “It’s a country town in south-eastern Victoria.”
“South-eastern Victoria?” repeated the sergeant, sounding sceptical. “You’re a long way from home then. This is in the south-west.”
“South-west!” thought Brian. “Then I was right, that crazy reality leak has shifted me to another location!”
“Come on, Bill, this guy is obviously lyin’,” insisted the sergeant.
“We don’t know that for sure,” protested the lieutenant. Then, turning toward Brian, “I’m afraid we’ve never heard of this place ...?”
“Merridale,” said Brian.
“Yeah, Merridale.” He considered for a few seconds then asked, “What’s the nearest township to Merridale?”
Brian thought for a moment, then said, “Well, Glen Hartwell’s about thirty kilometres away, or sixty kilometres further north would be BeauLarkin.”
“Never heard of either of them,” insisted the sergeant.
“Well, after that you’ve got Sale, then Dandenong. Then, of course, Melbourne.”
“Melbourne!” said the lieutenant, sounding shocked.
“Yes, Melbourne,” agreed Brian. He wondered why they had all started exchanging wide-eyed glances.
The sergeant laughed sardonically. “Told you he was lyin’, sir.”
“Lying? No, I ....”
“This is Melbourne,” said the lieutenant silencing Brian’s protests.
Brian could not believe it. “What?”
“That’s right,” insisted the lieutenant. He pointed to a dirty black morass where bodies of men and battle craft lay floating a hundred metres or so away. “That’s what they used to call the Yarra River. Right where we’re standing is what used to be called Flinders Street Station.”

Garbarla’s reality
“Liru?” repeated Garbarla as they stood in the small oasis in the yellow sandy desert. He wondered if he had heard correctly.
“Liru,” repeated Gunbuk.
They both stared across the small, clear pond toward the tall, man-thing with the snake-scaled reptilian skin and forked tongue, which flicked in and out of his mouth rapidly, as a snake’s tongue did to smell the air.
“Liru!” thought Garbarla. In Dream-Time legend, Liru was a poisonous snake-man, in the days when animals still had human form. Kunia and Woma were harmless snake-people. Woma was content with their life together, but Kunia wanted to travel and see the world. “Stay with me,” pleaded Woma, tugging at her husband’s arm. But Kunia would not be swayed. Impervious to her entreaties, he set off with just his dilly bag and digging knife to see the world. After walking many days, he came to a great rock, Uluru (Ayers Rock), standing in a desert of yellow sand. Kunia was still marvelling at the great rock, when he heard footsteps behind him. Thinking it was Woma, that she had followed him after all, he turned. And saw Liru, a snake-man like himself. “Hello, brother snake,” said Kunia, holding out the hand of friendship. But Liru ignored the hand. He was a venomous snake-man and lived only to kill others. “I am no brother of yours,” said Liru almost spitting the words out. He threw his spear at the harmless snake-man, who nimbly side-stepped it. Despite possessing no weapon but his small knife for digging grubs from trees, Kunia prepared to do battle for his life. The fight between the two snake-men went on for hours. As they fought they rolled about the yellow sands, which were stained red by their blood. Although peaceful by nature, Kunia fought valiantly. But he was greatly outmatched in both strength and in weaponry by Liru. So eventually the venomous snake-man won. Poor Kunia lay dead, his blood spilled out, staining the sands red. And to this day the desert around Uluru is made up of red sand.
“Liru,” said Garbarla again recalling the legend of Liru and Kunia. He knew that Aboriginal Dream-Time legend said that Liru is unbeatable, and thought, “We have to avoid a confrontation at all costs.” Holding out his right hand toward the snake-scaled man in the universally recognised gesture, he said, “Friend.”
The varicoloured snake-man spat his contempt at the gesture and started around the small pond toward them. “Kunia!” he hissed.
“No, I’m not Kunia,” protested Garbarla. “My name is Garbarla. Joseph Garbarla.”
“Kunia!” insisted Liru. Again he spat his contempt.
“No, not Kunia,” insisted Garbarla. However, when he lifted his hands, to his astonishment and horror, he saw that his flesh was now covered in snake-like scales.
“Kunia,” insisted Liru, who had almost reached them.
“My God, I really have become Kunia somehow!” thought Garbarla. “And Kunia cannot beat Liru in battle!” He looked back toward Gunbuk and received another shock. His half-brother had also changed. His flesh was now blood red and covered in large spikes. “Oohlah!” thought Garbarla. “Gunbuk has changed into Oohlah, the red, spiny lizard!” He recalled there was a Dream-Time legend about Oohlah and Liru, but could not remember what it was.
“Can Oohlah defeat Liru, where Kunia cannot?” wondered Garbarla, desperately trying to remember the legend of Oohlah and Liru. But before he could do so, Liru reached them.
Standing only a few metres from the two half-brothers, Liru the venomous snake-man held out his spear menacingly and said again, “Kunia!”
And finally Garbarla realised that it was a call to battle. “A call to a battle that I cannot win! Since Kunia cannot beat Liru!”

Ernie’s reality
Ernie gazed round the meat store in horror. He saw that all the brown carcases were naked, disembowelled Aborigines the aliens had killed and strung up to eat.
In a daze he allowed Jimba to half-lead, half carry him back out into the corridor of the alien spaceship. As they left the cold store, Ernie wondered how many human beings the bear-like aliens had killed and eaten down the centuries. He knew that there were tens of thousands of people who seemingly disappear off the face of the Earth each year, right around the world and thought, “Are these bear-creatures responsible for them all? Are they coming here regularly, eating thousands of us every year? And if so for how long have they been doing so?” He realised there have been sightings of UFOs since pre-biblical times. “Have they been coming here for thousands of years, feeding off us? Maybe humans are the only thing they do eat; maybe they have always fed off our species, at least since their species first perfected space flight?”
“Come on, got to go,” said Jimba, shaking Ernie, trying to wake him from his reverie.
But before they reached the stairway, Ernie felt the short hairs on the nape of my neck bristle and realised that they were being watched. He started to turn, but too late, and was grasped by a pair of vice-like arms and easily lifted off the floor and carried into a room at the end of the corridor. Over to what looked like a gigantic glass tube standing on end.
The creature carrying Ernie waved a paw in front of the glass, like a conjuror making magic passes over a crystal ball, and an opening appeared in the glass. Ernie was bundled inside and the opening vanished again, as though by magic, leaving him sealed inside the glass prison.
A thin mist began to enter the tube from a source which Ernie could not detect. He expected to be frozen inanimate as in the numerous science fiction movies which he had seen on late night television, or had been dragged along to the Odeon to watch with Rowena. But the only noticeable result of the gas was a slight tingling, pins and needles feeling throughout his flesh and a slightly dizzy feeling in his head. But Ernie remained awake and could watch the aliens moving silently about the smoky grey-blue room.
At one end of the room he could see a series of hundreds of varicoloured matchbox-sized lights flashing all the colours of the rainbow. “Some form of gauges to monitor my reactions?” he wondered. Although there were a dozen other glass cylinders in the room, from what Ernie could see, only his was occupied. “Surely they don’t need all those gizmos just to monitor one glass cylinder?”
From time to time one of the bear-creatures would stop to peer in at Ernie, who took the opportunity to also examine them more fully on each occasion. Once or twice Ernie thought that he saw pity in the eyes of an alien as it gazed in at him.
“So you’re not unthinking monsters at all!” thought Ernie gazing into the yellow-furred face of an alien. “You do have some humanity for your fellow creature! Or are you just the alien equivalent of animal liberationists? You don’t think of me as an intelligent creature at all. You just can’t stand to see a dumb animal caged up!” He had seen a similar look in the eyes of people watching the cruel storage of hens or cows in battery farms.
Peering out at the procession of giant creatures from his glass prison, Ernie wondered how long it would be before the “butcher” came for him. How long before he was gutted and hung up in the cold room alongside Judawali, Budjiwa, Mutapina and the others. “Maybe they don’t like white meat?” he thought, grimacing at his own attempt at humour. “Maybe that’s why they locked me in here! Or maybe their butcher is out on the surveillance expedition and they don’t want me loose in the cold storage room?”
Surprisingly the thought of his own imminent death did not terrify him -- much! But Ernie did feel sick to the stomach at the thought that his actions would cause the death of young Jimba. Who Ernie assumed was locked in another glass tube somewhere nearby.
“Or already hanging in the cold room!” Ernie realised. He almost threw up at the idea, but managed to fight down the rising bile. Although his mouth was swamped in the cloying taste of hot vomit.
Ernie peered out from his glass prison for what seemed like hours, during which time the stream of aliens dwindled to a trickle, then tapered out altogether. Then after another ten minutes or so, Ernie sudden saw a face that he recognised. That of the nineteen-year-old full-blood hunter, Nambidjimba.
For a few moments Jimba peered around the tube, obviously looking for some kind of opening mechanism. Then, unable to find any, he retreated a dozen paces or so, and raised his hunting spear.
“Holy shit!” thought Ernie. Instinctively he crouched as the spear was hurtled at the glass cage. Using the spear-launching instrument, the woomera, an Australian Aborigine can hurl a three metre spear with tremendous force. He had once seen the tribe’s greatest remaining hunter a buck-toothed teenager, Alex Jalburgul Gul, throw a spear through a thin pine tree with the added impetus of the woomera, and thought, “At this range it’ll do as much damage as a cannon-shot!”
But the spear shattered on impact without penetrating the obviously super-reinforced glass tube.
Obviously astonished, Jimba began to look around the tube again for a release mechanism. Failing to find any, after a few minutes he turned away and went across to a far wall, where hundreds of small lights were flashing yellow, orange, red, green, blue, brown, and purple.
Seeing Jimba studying the lights, it occurred to Ernie for the first time that they were actually buttons on a gigantic series of control panels. Hundreds of flashing buttons, any of which perceivably might open the glass cylinder. “Or pump in poisonous gas or kill me in any number of ways!” thought Ernie. He wished he could shout to Jimba not to risk pushing any of the buttons, however, the cylinder was sound proof. Even the wood-splintering impact of the spear had been inaudible to Ernie. “For God’s sake, just don’t push anything!” thought Ernie.
And, as though hearing Ernie’s thoughts, the young warrior finally turned away from the control panel. He returned to the cylinder where he mouthed something to Ernie, who could not understand it. Then, to Ernie’s dismay, Jimba turned away and crept out into the corridor and disappeared from Ernie’s sight.

Brian’s reality
Brian looked around the crater-pitted mire in shock. “This ... this mud pile is all that’s left of Melbourne?”
For the first time since they had met, the Neanderthal looking Yank sergeant smiled. “That’s right.”
“He’s proud of it!” thought Brian. Despite his terror his blood started to boil. “That bastard is actually proud of what they’ve done to Australia’s second largest city.”
“So what’ll we do with him?” asked a beak-nosed corporal.
They continued to argue over Brian’s fate out in the open for a few minutes more. But as day broke the tall, fair-haired lieutenant said, “Anyway, let’s not stand out in the open arguing. We’ll be sitting ducks when the sun comes up.”
“Let’s take him back to HQ for questioning,” suggested the corporal.
“Why bother?” demanded the sergeant, his machine-gun still cocked and ready. He was obviously a bit putout that he would not be allowed to slaughter Brian in cold blood. “Why don’t we just shoot him and get it over with?”
“Because he might just be a civilian as he claims. In which case it would be murder,” pointed out the lieutenant.
“So? The only good Aussie is a dead Aussie,” misquoted the sergeant.
“And if he’s a spy, he might have some valuable info we can get out of him,” said the corporal.
“Oh, all right, you’re the bosses,” conceded the sergeant grudgingly.
“My God, you really do want to murder me, don’t you, you bastard!” thought Brian.

They seemed to walk for half an hour, although it was probably only ten minutes, crouching low in a bid to escape detection from the Aussies as they wended their way through the crater-strewn morass that was Melbourne, until reaching the Yank HQ: a dilapidated two-room wooden shack, half buried in mud, with mud also spattered across the roof and outside walls as camouflage.
As they entered the hut, a good-looking, muscular black man with major’s insignia was sitting at a stool in one corner, trying to hear above the static coming through a small radio set. The front room was a strange mixture of traditional military and electronic equipment, and bizarre gadgets and weapons that would not look out of place in Star Trek Voyager or Babylon Five.
Turning round at their footsteps, the major asked, “What’s this, a gook?”
“He claims to be an Aussie civilian, but I think he’s a spy,” said the sergeant.
“A civilian? Out here?” said the major. Obviously, like the sergeant, he was reluctant to give Brian any benefit of the doubt. “I think you’re probably right, Mullins.”
“Not necessarily,” contradicted the lieutenant. “He admitted to being an Aussie as soon as we found him. Why would he do that if he was a spy?”
“Probably realised his accent would give him away anyway,” said Sergeant Mullins. “So he decided to try and bluff it out.”
“What accent?” asked the beak-nosed corporal. “He doesn’t have much of an accent at all. Which probably means he’s from right here in the south as he claims. Southern Aussies only have very light accents. It’s only in the northern half of the continent that they have the course drawl that most Yanks think of as an Aussie accent.”
While they continued to argue about his fate, Brian took the opportunity to look around the HQ. Although bare, the inside was a thousand Percent cleaner than the outside. Although there was a faint smell of disinfectant, sulphur, and chlorine in the air. In one corner of the front room was a long wooden bench that ran the entire length of the room. There were large glass jars of various coloured powders, liquids, and crystals on the table. Along with metal canisters that looked similar to the triangular grenades that Brian had not dared use earlier. Although these were square and lemon-yellow.
Looking at the metal-plastic canisters, Brian thought, “They must be grenade cases of some kind.” He sniffed at the chemical cocktail in the air and realised, “They’re using chemical weapons of some kind!”
He did his best not to breath too deeply, worried that the chemical-laden air of the shack might be dangerous to them all.
Seeing where he was looking, Sergeant Mullins said, “Forget it, gook, those grenades haven’t been assembled yet. They’d be no use to you. Even if you did know our control codes.”
“Over here,” called the black major, whose name Brian learnt was Thompkins.
When Brian hesitated, Sergeant Mullins cocked his machine-gun and pointed it in his direction. “You heard the major. Over here, gook.”
“Take him into the back room for interrogation, Lieutenant Rivers,” Major Thompkins ordered, and the lieutenant and sergeant grabbed Brian by one arm each and led him over to a small door leading to the back room.
Two small cots were set up in one corner of the back room. In another corner was a heavy wooden chair with leather restraints for the arms and legs.
“In the chair,” instructed Major Thompkins.
When Brian hesitated again, Sergeant Mullins grabbed him by one hand and virtually threw him into the chair.
“Jesus!” cried Brian as he belted one knee painfully into the wooden chair.
Then before he had a chance to rub the knee, one hand was grabbed by Major Thompkins, the other by Sergeant Mullins and they quickly strapped him into the chair.
Then, like something out of a Phillip Marlow novel, the overhead light was turned off. And a single bright light was shone directly into his face, blinding Brian as Mullins, Thompkins, and Lieutenant Rivers took turns interrogating him.

For what seemed like hours they asked him the same questions over and over again, trying to break down his story. Trying to get him to confess to being a spy for the Aussie army.
“Stubborn bastard, isn’t he?” said Major Thompkins at last, when he had failed to get Brian to change his story.
“We’ll never get him to talk like this,” insisted Mullins, “he’s too well trained.”
“Yeah,” conceded Thompkins grudgingly, “I’ll say that for the damned Aussies, they don’t send raw recruits on a mission like this. Their men can handle almost anything.”
“Let me try some of the hard stuff,” suggested Mullins.
“Hard stuff!” thought Brian. For one crazy second he thought that they were going to pour bootleg whisky down his throat. But then, following the sergeant’s glance, he saw a small cabinet containing pincers, tongs, thumb-screws, and various other instruments of torture.
“But you can’t torture him,” protested Lieutenant Rivers. “We don’t even know that he is a spy. There are rules governing this sort of situation ....”
“We’re in the middle of a war, not some society ball!” snapped Major Thompkins. “As someone once said, ‘War is hell!’ And there are no rules in hell, all right!” The major nodded toward Sergeant Mullins.
The sergeant grinned like an idiot and strode across to the cabinet. He almost ripped the door off its hinges in his eagerness to get at the contents. Then grabbing up some tools from the cabinet, he returned to Brian, who was strapped helplessly to the wooden chair.
“Jesus, noooooooooo!” screamed Brian, struggling against the straps that held him in place.

Garbarla’s reality
“Kunia!” repeated Liru, the snake-skinned man, holding his spear out menacingly toward Garbarla.
Garbarla looked at his half-brother, Gunbuk, red-skinned and spiny like a spiny, red lizard. Then he looked down in disbelief at his own flesh, green and scaly like the skin of a snake. “I can’t possibly beat Liru!” he thought. He looked round the small oasis and the yellow, sandy desert behind him, desperately searching for somewhere to hide. But he soon realised that there was nowhere to run.
“Kunia! Time to die!” said Liru, starting toward Garbarla-Kunia.
Garbarla bobbed to one side, intending to duck into the desert, futilely hoping to outrun Liru across the burning yellow sands.
As Garbarla moved, Liru launched his spear. At that distance, no more than three or four metres, Garbarla would have been killed instantly, if he had not already dived aside.
Liru cursed and ran past Garbarla, to pick up his spear. However, with the speed of the red lizard that he now resembled, Gunbuk dashed forward and grabbed the spear first.
“Kunia!” snarled Liru. He stabbed a fist toward Garbarla, to indicate that his fight was with the half-breed Aborigine, not his full-blood half-brother.
“Liru!” hissed Gunbuk, using the venomous snake-man’s own policy of intimidation back at him.
“Kunia!” insisted Liru still pointing toward Garbarla.
“No! Liru and Oohlah do battle!” insisted Gunbuk. Holding the spear out menacingly he advanced toward Liru.
“Liru and Oohlah do battle!” thought Garbarla. He realised that was the title of the Dream-Time story about Liru and Oohlah. He only wished that he could recall the story itself. “Can Oohlah kill Liru where Kunia cannot?” wondered Garbarla. “If Gunbuk can kill Liru, that will solve the problem of me having no chance against the venomous snake-man!”
Having reached the very edge of the oasis, still shaded by the sweet-smelling eucalyptus trees, Garbarla stood watching as Gunbuk-Oohlah advanced on Liru, holding up Liru’s own spear as a weapon.
“Liru and Oohlah do battle!” repeated Gunbuk as he advanced, obviously hoping to demoralise the previously fearless snake-man.
Liru stood his ground for a moment. He thrust his chest out like a cobra readying to pounce. But when Gunbuk-Oohlah refused to be intimidated by this show of bravado, the venomous snake-man turned to flee.
“Let’s see how fast you can run around the pond now!” thought Garbarla. He expected to see Liru run back around the waterhole to avoid the spear.
Instead, to Garbarla’s astonishment, Liru turned and dived into the waterhole. Coiling his body rapidly like a swimming snake, Liru sped across the small body of water, reaching the opposite bank in only seconds.
“What the ...?” thought Garbarla. His half-brother turned round to give him a puzzled look.
Then shrugging, Gunbuk said, “Liru and Oohlah lived in the time when animals were still people.”
As if this explained everything, Gunbuk set off around the bank after the fleeing Liru. Gunbuk had always been a remarkably fast runner. A fact which had served him (and the tribe) well when he was out hunting. When a hunt went wrong and kangaroos or other game took to flight before the hunters were in position, Gunbuk’s speed had allowed him to make up enough ground to get in one good shot with his spear or hunting boomerang, often bringing down a roo or wallaby while slower hunters stood round cursing their misfortune.
But although Garbarla had gaped in amazement many times before at his half-brother’s fleetness of foot, nothing prepared him for the speed which Gunbuk-Oohlah displayed now. Just as Liru has swam across the waterhole in only seconds, Gunbuk raced two hundred metres round the bank in only five or six seconds.
“No man on Earth can run that fast!” thought Garbarla. Then recalling his half-brother’s words, “Liru and Oohlah lived in the time when animals were still people,” he thought, “Of course! Gunbuk is shaped like a man, but in this reality he is a red, spiny lizard! He can run at phenomenal speed over short distances, just like a spiny lizard.”
Liru looked just as startled by Gunbuk’s inhuman burst of speed as Garbarla had been. For a second the venomous snake-man stood his ground and Garbarla thought, “He can’t be planning to do battle with just a digging stick and stone knife when Gunbuk has two spears -- his own and Liru’s.”
After a second’s hesitation, Liru turned and dived back into the pond. Again he coiled snakelike across to the other side -- where Garbarla still stood. But this time, instead of standing watching, Gunbuk took off lizard-like around the bank, hoping to beat Liru to the opposite bank.
“If Gunbuk gets there first the battle is over!” realised Garbarla. He knew that whereas he would have hesitated to kill Liru, even to save his own life, his half-brother would not hesitate for one second. Gunbuk was too good a hunter to let compassion get in the way of killing a dangerous foe.
As it was though, Liru reached the bank, while Gunbuk was still ten metres away.
“What now?” wondered Garbarla. For a moment he expected Liru to reverse direction and swim back again. And he half thought Liru and Gunbuk would continue racing round the waterhole for hours or even days.
Instead Liru leapt onto the grassy bank. Then taking his hunting knife from his belt he turned and headed straight toward Garbarla.
“Kunia cannot defeat Liru!” thought Garbarla again. Turning on his heels, he raced out into the hot yellow desert with Liru less than five metres behind him and closing fast.

Ernie’s reality
Trapped in the glass cylinder in the pale blue room aboard the alien spaceship, Ernie watched in dismay as young Jimba crept out into the corridor.
“He’s gone to get help!” thought Ernie. But after ten minutes or so Ernie began to wonder whether Jimba had deserted him.
It was nearly an hour before the Aborigine returned. To Ernie’s amazement, the young hunter was leading one of the yellow-furred bear aliens at knife point.
The creature made a few passes with one of his paws before the glass tube and a large section disappeared again. Ernie jumped out into the main room and almost fell to the floor, as his limbs gave way under him.
“Holy shit!” said Ernie. The instant he stepped out of the glass tube his lower limbs became a mass of pins-and-needles unable to support him. “I’ve got no feeling in my legs!”
As he fell, Jimba effortless caught Ernie with one arm and held Ernie up until his limbs began to function properly again.
Seeing his weakened state, the bear alien crouched as though to lurch at the two men. However, it soon changed its mind when young Jimba made a few passes of his own, with the point of his spear before the creature’s ursine face.
Ernie heaved a sigh of relief at being released from his glass prison. Although Ernie had never suffered from claustrophobia (and the view from within the cylinder was considerable, since the tube was transparent for about three-quarters of the way around), nevertheless Ernie was overwhelmed with pleasure at being free again.
To his great relief, they quickly found Ernie safe and sound within a nearby cylinder, and forced the space creature to release him. Although this time it was necessary for Jimba to jab the creature lightly in the arm to force him to obey; clearly he did not want to be responsible for having let both of us escape. But the spear jab did the job; the giant creature squealed in a surprisingly baby-like high pitch, and hurried to comply with our command.
As soon as Ernie was able to stand again, Jimba motioned with his spear for the bear alien to enter the glass cylinder that Ernie had vacated. When the alien hesitated, Jimba waved the spear in front of its face again. But this time, instead of doing as instructed, the alien stepped backward out of range of the knife.
When the bear refused to be intimidated by mere threats, reluctantly Jimba prodded the creature with the spear point. Hard enough to cause pain, but not to break flesh.
The bear alien gave a high-pitched, baby-like squeal and hastened to enter the cylinder.
Ernie almost felt sorry for the creature. But then he remembered the disembowelled corpses of Tubby Budjiwa and the others in the cold store and managed to harden his heart.
When at last the alien had entered the cylinder, they were confronted with another problem: how to close the cylinder to trap the creature inside. Although the cylinder had instantly opened when the alien waved a paw in front of it, it failed to respond when Ernie or Jimba waved a hand at it.
“Maybe it only responds to a particular hand movement,” guessed Ernie aloud.
Jimba shrugged. The young Aborigine started to say something then stopped. He pointed toward the bear alien inside the cylinder.
Following his gesture, Ernie saw the creature had his paws clasped together as though hiding something from them. “He’s got something hidden in his hands,” said Ernie. “Some kind of control device.”
“Open,” said Jimba, pointing his spear toward the bear alien’s paws.
The ursine beast shook its head in refusal.
This time Jimba had to jab the creature hard enough to make it bleed before it finally opened its paws.
At first there seemed to be nothing. “But he must have something,” insisted Ernie. He thought, “How else could he have opened the cylinder? And why else would he hide his hands, even when Jimba was stabbing him hard enough to make him squeal and bleed?”
This time it was Ernie’s turn to shrug in dismay.
They had almost given up, accepting Ernie’s idea that a particular sequence of hand movements was necessary, when Ernie saw the solution. “A ring!” he said. “It’s wearing a ring.”
They hadn’t noticed at first, because the golden-yellow of the creature’s long, shaggy fur had concealed it.
“Hand it over,” ordered Ernie holding his right hand out toward the creature.
At first the bear refused to obey. But after a couple more jabs from Jimba’s spear it changed its mind and hurriedly removed the ring and handed it to Ernie.
Placing the ring on his left index finger, Ernie waved his hand in front of the cylinder and said, “Sim-sella-bim,” as the tube wall sealed shut again.
Leaving the pale blue room, Ernie and Jimba stepped out into the central corridor and almost walked straight into the back of another alien.
Stopping to let the alien stride away from them, Ernie struggled to keep his breathing even. A problem made worse by the sticky animal mugginess inside the corridor since the return of the bear alien. “Like a Queensland summer,” thought Ernie. “Ah Queensland, hot and muggy one day; unbearably humid the next!”
They stood still -- hearts pounding from terror -- until the creature walked well ahead of them. Then cautiously Ernie and Jimba crept over to the centre ramp and climbed down to the brown dirt ravine where the space shuttle-shaped craft was standing.
They were still standing crouching under the luminous flashing craft, when the centre ramp suddenly swung upward and they heard a loud roaring whoosh of the engines.
“It’s taking off!” shouted Ernie. He and Jimba ran for dear life out into the open, back toward the safety of the rim of the dirt ravine. No longer caring if they were seen by the aliens.
Back at the rim, they watched the spaceships take off -- vertically. Then Jimba asked, “What now?”
“What now indeed!” thought Ernie as they started off toward where they hoped they would still find the Aboriginal village outside Pettiwood.

Ernie and Jimba seemed to trek for hours before finally they reached land that young Jimba recognised.
Along the way Ernie had been considering the best course of action. When they reached the Aboriginal village, on a hunch Ernie checked the parking area just outside the village and found his fawn Range Rover parked where he had left it the night before.
“Well, that much gels with our reality,” said Ernie, looking at the Rover in wonder.
“Could belong to someone else?” suggested Jimba.
“We’ll soon find out,” said Ernie. Reaching into his pants pocket he took out a key ring and tried a key in the lock of the car door. The driver’s door swung open without protest so Ernie slid in behind the wheel. He tried the key in the ignition and the engine roared into life.
“What now?” asked Jimba.
Ernie considered for a moment, then said, “I’m going to drive into Glen Hartwell to get help from Danny Ross. If even my car exists in this reality, then it must be pretty close to our own. Right down to the settlement outside Pettiwood.”
Looking back toward the Aboriginal village just a few metres behind them, Jimba said, “I’ll stay here, see if it’s like my village.”
Ernie nodded and climbed into his fawn Range-Rover to start the half hour drive. Danny Ross had been police sergeant of Glen Hartwell since late 1982. At first ostracised as an outsider, having come from sixty kilometres away to fill the vacancy left by retiring Sergeant Lawrie Grimes, Danny had had difficulty establishing friendships in the Glen Hartwell to Merridale area. He had met Ernie Singleton and Brian Horne through dating Gloria Ulverstone when Brian had been dating Gloria’s sister, Holly, and Ernie had been dating their cousin Rowena Frankland. Over the last four years the three men had often double- or triple-dated together with the women, or had gone out drinking together at Bateman’s Hotel in Lawson Street Glen Hartwell. As a consequence when faced with the seemingly unbeatable monster, Mamaragan, two years earlier, Ernie had gone to Danny Ross for help. The barrel-chested policeman had conquered his scepticism of Ernie’s tale of a giant, winged serpent in December 1984, and had helped Ernie to locate the dark Stone with which they had finally put the Great Rainbow Snake into its trance.
So now Danny Ross was the one man Ernie felt he could trust to help them to defeat or frighten away the monstrous carnivorous bear alien creatures.
Ernie was so lost in his thoughts, that he hardly noticed as he drove up Boothy Street, Glen Hartwell. It was only as he turned onto Mitchell Street that he realised the drive was at an end. “That was fast!” he thought as he pulled up in front of the small, white weatherboard police station.
He ran across the slightly overgrown lawn and almost pulled the screen door off its hinges in his eagerness to get inside to see Danny Ross.
As he entered the small front room of the station, Ernie saw two men crouched over the large blackwood desk looking through files. As he approached, the constable picked up two files and turned to return them to the grey, four-drawer metal filing cabinet.
Seeing Ernie, the constable stopped and asked, “What can we do for you?”
“I want to talk to Danny,” said Ernie.
The sergeant looked up from the desk, clearly puzzled. “Danny? Who the hell is Danny?”
Although over six foot tall and powerfully built like Danny Ross, the sergeant was as fiercely dark and swarthy as Danny Ross was fiercely blonde.
“Danny Ross!” said Ernie. He had a few seconds to study the policemen as they exchanged a puzzled look, and thought, “Lawrie Grimes, but it can’t be!” looking at the constable. Lawrie Grimes had been sergeant of Glen Hartwell for twenty years before retiring in June 1982. His predecessor, Bruce Cox, had been a tall, powerfully built, dark swarthy man. “Bruce Cox!” thought Ernie, finally recognising the sergeant. “But Bruce Cox retired in 1962 when I was only a boy!”
Then looking past the sergeant to a calendar on the station wall. “January 1962!” Ernie read aloud, not believing his eyes. “It must be some mistake, an ancient calendar they never bothered to take down.” But then he realised that he would have noticed it on the numerous times he has been into the station visiting Danny. Besides the ocean scene in the calendar picture looked so fresh Ernie almost thought he could dive into the cool, blue water. “It’s a brand new calendar!” he realised.
Then finally, as Bruce Cox demanded, “Look, who are you sir!” Ernie thought, “My God, it really is 1962!”

Brian’s reality
“Nooooooooo!” shrieked Brian Horne as Sergeant Mullins moved toward him with the instruments of torture.
“All right,” said Major Thompkins. The muscular black man leant down to look Brian in the eyes. “One last chance, gook. Tell us your real name, rank, serial number and your mission out here and you’ll be killed humanely.”
“I’m not in the bloody army!” shouted Brian desperate for the handsome American to believe him. “I’m a civilian!”
“Won’t get nothing out of that gook,” insisted the squat, apelike sergeant. “He’s been too well trained.
“Gook, gook!” thought Brian. “Why the hell do they keep calling me that? Surely American soldiers don’t talk like that?” Then it occurred to him, “No, of course, they don’t! This mob aren’t real American soldiers. They’re more like some kind of caricatures of GI Joes! They’re not real at all! They’re cartoon American soldiers!”
However, the pain that they inflicted was all to real.
“Nooooooooo!” shrieked Brian seeing Mullins advancing on him with a bayonet. However, the bayonet was only to cut away his clothing so that they could strip him naked without having to untie the straps binding his hands and legs to the heavy, wooden chair.
In only seconds Brian was sitting naked on the chair in the back room of the dugout.
Then the torture began.

Afterwards all that Brian remembered was the agony. And the three faces hovering over him: the Neanderthal face of Sergeant Mullins, the handsome black face of Major Thompkins and the grimacing blond face of Lieutenant Rivers. The latter of whom refused to take an active part in the proceedings.
When at last it ended, after what seemed like hours, but may have been only minutes, at first Brian could hear nothing above the sound of his own screams. When his screaming abated and the agony had alleviated enough for him to be able to think clearly, he saw the three American soldiers standing together near one of the cot-beds. Obviously worried, they were listening for something while peering out through a four-paned mullioned window.
Brian was pleased to see the looks of terror on their faces after what they had just put him through. Although he still did not know what they were concerned about. “A bomb!” he thought. “I hope it’s a bomb about to blow them all to hell!” Although it would also kill him, he frankly did not care one way or the other.
“Guns!” ordered Major Thompkins.
At the command Sergeant Mullins dropped the pincers that he was holding which hit the floor with a crash. He and the two officers leapt across the room to where their machine-guns were propped against the wall beside the door.
A few seconds too late though.
There was an explosion in the front room which rocked the smaller back room on its foundations. Then the door was kicked in and three blue-uniformed soldiers stormed into the back room.
Despite the different coloured uniforms, for a second Brian thought they were more Americans. But then the three soldiers began firing their machine-guns.
Strapped naked to the chair, Brian was unable to duck for cover as the bullets whizzed round the room. He watched, too numb even to be shocked, as the apelike Sergeant Mullins was almost cut in half by a stream of machine-gun bullets.
Behind the sergeant, Major Thompkins and Lieutenant Rivers tried to put their hands up to surrender. But were mown down by machine-gun fire.
“Sir, they were trying to surrender,” said a young female corporal.
“Too bad,” replied a tall man with Captain’s insignia. “These things will happen. Besides you know as well as I do that the Yanks don’t usually take prisoners.”
That was all Brian heard before he finally fainted from the shock and pain of his injuries.

When Brian came to he was in a wooden shack, very much like the Yanks’s headquarters. But the blue, track suit-like uniforms told him that they were not Yanks. He tried to sit up in the small cot upon which he lay and screamed as agony lanced through his body, and fell back onto the cot.
At the opposite end of the room three soldiers were standing by a wooden table poring over a large scale map. At Brian’s scream, they hurried across to the cot.
“Are you all right, son?” asked a tall, grey-haired general of either Greek or Italian extraction.
“I ... I’m not sure.”
“Do you know who you are?” asked a tall, muscular colonel.
“I ... I’m not sure,” answered Brian truthfully.
“Amnesia!” said a young corporal. Who despite her brutally short crew-cut was an attractive brunette.
“Those bloody Yanks, there’s no limit to what they’ll do!” said the tall, muscular colonel. Who, for the first time, Brian recognised as also being a female. Although she wore her ginger hair in a brutal crew-cut which would have done Sergeant Carter in the Gomer Pyle show proud.
The three soldiers identified themselves as General Renato Demos, Colonel Gail Dobey, and Corporal Adele Gibson.
“Brian,” he said hesitantly, still struggling to remember his own name, “Brian Horne.”
Sitting up with the help of the corporal, Brian looked around the HQ. He saw it was as curious a mixture of old-fashioned and ultra-modern technology as the Yank HQ had been.
As she helped him sit up, Brian could not help thinking of the corporal, “If you grew your hair longer, you could be beautiful!” Aloud he said, “You’ve got very beautiful blue eyes.”
The corporal blushed as though she were unused to receiving compliments from men. Both General Demos and Gail Dobey looked horrified as though he had said something obscene.
“Just lie still,” advised the corporal. Although she was obviously pleased by the compliment, Brian realised she did not dare admit it in front of the two officers. “I’ve dressed your wounds and given you antibiotic injections. But you’re still too weak to move about for a while yet.”
Realising he’d committed some great faux pas, but not understanding how or what, Brian decided to change the subject. “What ... what is going on here?”
“How do you mean?” General Demos.
“I mean between you and the Americans.”
“The Yanks? Why the Aussies and the Yanks are at war, of course,” replied the general. Seeing a look he gave the colonel, Brian realised the general thought he was still delirious.
“Which might be my opportunity to get some information out of them without trying to explain where I really come from,” thought Brian. He knew that they would never believe that he came from an alternative parallel reality to theirs.
“Yes, I know. But why?”
“Why?” repeated the general, clearly not comprehending the question.
“I mean how did it start?”
“How did it start, lord knows. It’s been going on so long now, I doubt if anyone on either side remembers how it started.” The general scratched his short, grey hair ruminatively, for a few seconds, considering. “I think it goes back to the nuclear wars of the 1950s and ’60s.”
Brian was shocked. “Nuclear wars?”
“Yes. Not world wars, of course, or no one would have survived. No, they were only national wars. Let’s see ....” He scratched his grey hair again while reflecting. “The Poms nuked the Micks in 1965 or thereabouts. They’d been battling the Sinn Fein for yonks over ownership and control of Northern Ireland. Then the Kikes and the dagos nuked each other out of existence over ownership of Palestine. Then the frogs nuked the kiwis. Which almost dragged the Aussies into a nuclear war scenario. Then the Yanks nuked the Ruskies around 1975 or thereabouts. Then the Pakis and the wogs nuked each other. By 1980 a quarter of the world was uninhabitable. So a world-wide non-nuclear pact was signed around 1982. The wars kept on coming, but without the devastation of the earlier nuclear holocausts.”
“But why are the Aussies and the Yanks at war?” persisted Brian.
Obviously lost for an answer General Demos looked toward Colonel Dobey. After a moment the redhead said, “I think it was something to do with the wheat and sugar wars of the late 1980s and 1990s.”
Brian was perplexed. “Wheat and sugar wars?” He wondered aloud, “How the hell do you wage war with wheat and sugar?”
“Oh they weren’t real wars,” Gail Dobey hastened to explain. “Only what you might call cold wars.”
“Prior to the mid 1980s the Yanks and the Aussies had always been allies,” explained General Demos.
“Well, at least that much gels with my own reality,” thought Brian.
“But then in the 1980s the Yanks started to dump billions of dollars of cheap wheat and sugar in countries which had traditionally always paid top dollar for Aussie wheat and sugar. As a consequence throughout the 1990s the Aussie economy nose-dived.”
“Understandably the Aussies never forgave the Yanks for sabotaging our economy,” said Renato Demos. “And after the Great Depression hostilities between the two nations grew steadily worse ....”
Brian was astonished. “The Great Depression? But the Great Depression was way back in the 1930s.”
“The first Great Depression,” agreed the general. “The second Great Depression was from 1987 till about 1996 or 1997.”
“1996 or 1997?” said Brian, shocked. “Then what year is this?” He thought, “The last I heard it was 1986!”
The general and Gail Dobey exchanged a puzzled look. Then the colonel said, “It’s 2021 AD, of course.”
“2021 AD!” thought Brian.

Garbarla’s reality
As Liru the venomous snake-man ran straight toward Garbarla-Kunia (the harmless snake-man), Garbarla ran out into yellow sandy desert, too frightened to even notice the burning of the sand beneath his feet as he ran. Behind Liru ran Garbarla’s half-brother Gunbuk-Oohlah (the red, spiny lizard-man).
As Garbarla ran, his heart BOOM-BOOM-BOOMed in his ears, deafening him to the sound of his pursuer. But afraid of stumbling and falling to his death beneath Liru’s hunting knife, Garbarla did not dare risk a glance back over his shoulder as he ran.
Since leaving the oasis, he had not encountered another tree, or a rock, or anything that could provide cover or act as a hiding place in the yellow desert. So all he could do was keep running until he dropped, or until Liru overtook him.

Garbarla had been running for kilometres when at last he had no choice. Overcome by fatigue, he could run no further.
“All right, do your worst, you bastard!” he shouted. He turned back to face his pursuer, fully expecting to be struck down by the venomous snake-man as soon as he stopped.
Instead, to Garbarla’s astonishment, there was no sign of Liru behind him, or of his half-brother, Gunbuk. The yellow sand behind him was unbroken for as far as the eye could see, except for one lone set of footprints.
“My God, he wasn’t chasing me at all,” realised Garbarla, feeling ashamed now at his cowardice. “He was only running in my direction to escape from Gunbuk!”
Although too exhausted to run, Garbarla started back across the yellow plains at a slow trot, following his own footsteps, heading back to where Liru and Gunbuk had gone off in a different direction to his own.

To Garbarla’s frustration he had to backtrack for hours, following his own footprints to within a kilometre or so of the oasis before he spotted the double set of prints that indicated where the two running men had headed.
By that time Garbarla had recovered his breath and was able to set off after Gunbuk and Liru at a lively pace. Although his body was drippy from sweat from his run in the desert heat and he restrained his natural inclination to run full pelt as he had done earlier.
In his haste to flee his pursuer, Liru the venomous snake-man had thrown up a great wake of sand. So there was never any danger of Garbarla losing the trail and becoming lost again.

Garbarla followed the trail through the desert for more than eighty minutes. He had started to fear that he would never catch up with the two men running ahead of him.
He had reached the base of a great sand dune, when he heard a part-animal, part-human screaming coming from beyond the dune.
“My God, what the hell is that?” Garbarla said aloud. He thought, “Surely that can’t be them?”
After a moment’s hesitation, he started to scale the great sand dune.
With the hot sand slipping and sliding beneath his feet, Garbarla seemed to take forever to climb the dune, but at last he stood at the summit, and stared in shock at the two creatures circling each other on the level ground below.
Garbarla had expected to see Gunbuk and Liru, two Aborigines fighting in the ravine at the base of the yellow sand dune. Instead, he saw a giant, red, spiny lizard holding a spear in each of its front paws, as it balanced ungainly upon its back feet, prancing almost in a ritual dance as it circled round and round a great, striped serpent.

Ernie’s reality
“I’m afraid I don’t know this Danny Ross,” said Sergeant Bruce Cox as the three men stood around by the large, blackwood desk that took up nearly a third of the front room of the two-room police station.
“You’re Bruce Cox?” said Ernie stupidly.
The sergeant back looked at his constable, who returned the files he was holding to the four-drawer metal filing cabinet behind the desk. Lawrie Grimes shrugged at Bruce Cox who turned back to face Ernie. “That’s right, sir, Sergeant Bruce Cox. And who might you be, sir?”
“Ernie Singleton.”
“Singleton?” asked Lawrie Grimes. “Would you be related to Greg Singleton?”
“Greg ...” began Ernie. Then he thought, “Gregory Singleton!” Born in Romania; christened Gregori Scarczeny, Ernie’s father had Anglicised his name to Gregory Singleton after immigrating to Australia in 1950. “Gregory Singleton? From over at Merridale?”
“That’s right sir,” agreed Bruce Cox.
Realising that Bruce Cox and Lawrie Grimes could be of no help to him, Ernie turned and headed back outside.
“But he won’t be at the sheep station now, if you’re thinking of calling on him, sir,” called Sergeant Cox. “His wife, Vikkie’s just had a baby ... a boy I believe. He’ll be round at the hospital seeing them.”
“A baby boy,” said Ernie thinking aloud.
“That’s right, sir,” said Bruce Cox. But Ernie had already walked out onto the lawn in front of the white weatherboard police station.
“A baby boy!” he thought again as he walked across to his brown Range-Rover. “January 1962, of course!” Ernie had been born on the twenty-second of January 1962.
For one crazy moment as he climbed into the front seat of the Range-Rover, he considered driving down Boothy Street to the opposite end of Glen Hartwell to stop in at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital to see himself as a baby. But more importantly to see his father one last time.
To Ernie’s great shame he had been holidaying interstate at the Wrest Point Casino in Hobart, when he heard of his father’s death. Hideously mutilated, having been run over after falling from the farm’s tractor, Gregory Singleton’s funeral had been a closed-coffin service, so Ernie’s last memory of his father was from almost a month before his death.
Feeling cheated of his last look at his father, Ernie had blamed himself for being away at the time of the accident. Although it was the first time in his life that he had been further than Glen Hartwell (except while going into BeauLarkin, sixty kilometres beyond the Glen, as a child to do his first two years of schooling, before the Glen Hartwell Primary School had opened in February 1971).
Ernie’s answer to the guilt he felt had been to turn to the land and work like a demon, hardly leaving the farm for more than a year after his father’s death. He might never have left the station again, if not for his mother, Victoria, deciding to move to a small cabin which the Singletons owned a few kilometres outside LePage -- the next town on the way to Glen Hartwell. The move was made because Vikkie decided she had to get away from the scene of her husband’s death. She had grown to hate the sheep station for having killed him. But a positive effect was that it shocked Ernie out of his ennui. After finding there was nothing he could do to change his mother’s mind, he had agreed to help her move, help fix up the long-neglected cabin, and stop in every few days to see that she was all right.
For a moment he thought, “This is my chance to set things straight.” But then he wondered how he would approach his father? What he would say to him? “Or even who do I introduce myself as? I can hardly tell him I’m Ernie Singleton. His son, a new-born baby, is Ernie Singleton!”
So after a moment’s hesitation, Ernie started the Rover and set off back to the Aboriginal settlement outside Pettiwood.

As he drove up to the settlement Ernie saw a crowd of Aborigines waiting for him. One of whom he recognised as young Jimba. Another as Gunbuk, Garbarla’s full-blood half-brother, who had been killed two years earlier by Mamaragan, when the Great Rainbow Snake had attacked the village.
“Gunbuk! It can’t be Gunbuk!” Ernie thought. But then to his shock he recognised a short, grey-haired Elder standing beside Gunbuk as Mayuldjumbajum (Jumjum for short) who had led the fatal charge on the demon and had been killed.
“But how ...?” thought Ernie. Then he recognised others, young hunters in the group: Bindul (Garbarla’s cousin), Marbungga, Nanguru, Ulagang Gang, Wururuma, all of whom had been killed and devoured by the monstrous Rainbow Serpent in late 1984.
“And none of whom should even be born yet, if this is only 1962!” thought Ernie. “Surely this reality can’t be so much like my own in some ways, and twenty years out of kilter in others?”
Yet as he stepped from the Range-Rover, half dazed, Ernie was forced to reluctantly concede that maybe it was.

Seeing his friend’s obvious shock, Jimba grinned toothily. “This reality not like the other.”
“That’s true,” agreed Ernie. He went on to relate his experience in Glen Hartwell, ending with the revelation that it was only 1962.
“Come!” said the deep voice of Mayuldjumbajum. Ernie and Jimba were startle by the old man slapping a hand across their backs. “Come, we talk.”
And Mayuldjumbajum led the two younger men through the village toward his three-room corrugated-iron house almost in the dead centre of the village.
“Come, we go inside and talk,” said Jumjum. He pulled the iron door open, allowing it to crash into the side of the house as he herded Ernie and Jimba inside the front room of his dirt-floored hut.
“Sit, sit,” said Jumjum, and Ernie sat with discomfort on one of the dried grass mats which made up the only furnishings in the front room. As he sat he saw Jimba grinning at him and knew the teenager drew pleasure from his unease at sitting on the floor.
Noticing a gaggle of gawking black faces standing by the four-paned window behind them, Jumjum glared at the villagers and pulled the pale blue curtains shut then the old man sat alongside Ernie on another grass mat.
Ernie looked uncertainly at Jumjum, then at Weari-Wyingga, not sure what to tell the Elder of their encounter with the bear aliens. Finally young Jimba broke the awkward silence saying, “I told Jumjum and Weari-Wyingga about bear creatures.”
“Scales of Mamaragan come down from sky,” said Mayuldjumbajum mimicking falling rain with his hands, “then great koalas come from scales and carry away Judawali, Budjiwa, Mutapina to slaughter and eat.”
“What?” asked Ernie wondering if he looked as confused as he felt.
“Seems we living the attack of Mamaragan on the village again,” explained Jimba. “But in this reality Mamaragan not great snake, but alien invasion.”
Mayuldjumbajum stared at Jimba as he spoke, as though not understanding his words. “Mamaragan a great snake,” insisted Mayuldjumbajum waving his arms above his head to indicate the vastness of the Great Rainbow Snake. “A great big snake whose scales can come off, sail down to Earth and release giant koalas, like ticks on a dingo. But Mamaragan’s koala-ticks capture Aborigines, eat Aborigines.”
“No, no ...” began Ernie, but seeing Jimba shake his head Ernie sighed, realising that in this reality they could probably never convince the village Elders that the spaceship and carnivorous aliens were not related to Mamaragan in some way. “So what are you going ...?”
“Great corroboree tonight,” Mayuldjumbajum interrupted. “Great corroboree called for all males of village to discuss how to defeat Mamaragan and giant koalas.”
“Oh great,” said Ernie. He thought, “Between us we ought to be able to think up some way to defeat the bear aliens.”
Jimba and the old man began talking in their native dialect. After a few minutes Jumjum began gesticulating wildly with his arms, shouting in anger at Jimba.
Although he could not understand the language, even Ernie knew that the old man was ordering them to leave, when Jumjum pointed repeatedly at the open doorway, screaming at first Jimba, then Ernie himself.
“So much for my warm welcome back!” thought Ernie as Jimba took him by one arm and led him outside.
As they walked out into the dirt “streets” of the village, Jimba explained, “Mayuldjumbajum angry at suggestion you be allowed to attend corroboree ....”
While his friend kept walking, Ernie stopped to think about that for a moment, wondering whether he should feel offended. “What’s wrong with me attending?” he finally asked, running a few paces to catch up.
“Don’t take personally ... Aborigines take religious side of corroborees very seriously. Corroboree a cross between prayer meeting at church and meeting of local council. Secrecy of religious side must be protected above all else. Idea of a white man attending corroboree is like blasphemy in your religion.”
“Oh, I see,” said Ernie, joking although genuinely annoyed at his exclusion. “They’re racists!”
Jimba chuckled a little nervously, then said, “Anyway, we soon get chance to see what sign of bear aliens is left when we go hunting today.”
When they got back to Debbie Bulilka’s hut, however, they found the middle-aged lubra standing by the door grinning nervously at their approach. Debbie and Jimba exchanged words in their native tongue -- the initial pleasantries soon changing to an angry exchange. Finally, as Debbie turned and stormed back into the metal-sided hut, Jimba explained to Ernie, “We been demoted.”
“Demoted ...? What ...?”
“Been taken off hunting party. Gunbuk and others already gone out.”
Looking stunned, Ernie asked, “What? Can they do that?”
“Yes, can do all right. Aboriginal society is commune; everyone must be ready to help wherever they needed most. Even experienced hunters like Gunbuk and Judawali can be made to do housework for a while, if that where they needed ....”
“But why have they taken us off hunting?”
“Unofficially Debbie say they punishing us for what happened last night.”
“Punishing us? For what ...?”
“They blame us for deaths of Judawali, Budjiwa, and Mutapina, accuse us both of stirring up trouble.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” protested Ernie angrily, drawing sidelong glances from two elderly lubras passing by.
“No,” agreed Jimba, “except as I tell you, Aborigines take their religion very seriously. Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake, has always been more-or-less a passive deity to my people. Like in many religions, Mamaragan has double role of creator and destroyer: he punishes by gobbling up any Aborigines who break tribal law. But his main role is as the creator: his main function is to protect and watch over my people. For Mamaragan to suddenly turn on Aborigines as he did last night, some great violation of tribal law must be involved ....” He paused for a moment to gauge Ernie’s reaction, before adding, “Such as you learning secrets of tribal life ....”
“But that’s nonsense!” protested Ernie. “Whatever those monstrous bear creatures we encountered last night were, they sure as Hell weren’t ticks off an Aboriginal deity! Maybe these aliens and their multicoloured flashing spaceship are the basis of the Dream-Time legend of the Great Rainbow Snake, in this reality, if the Aborigines have known about these ... these giant koalas for thousands of years and have mistaken them for supernatural creatures. But they’re no more part of a god than I am!”
“Maybe not,” said Jimba, although his tone surprised Ernie who thought, “Surely you can’t really believe that this monster is some kind of a god?”
“But you’ll never convince village Elders Mamaragan is anything but our god. As long as they believe that, we’re banished from hunting parties for offending Great Rainbow Snake,” continued Jimba.
So instead of helping with the hunting that day, Ernie found himself sitting on the dirt with three enormously fat, grey-haired lubras who did their best to teach him the intricacies of weaving large grass mats -- occasionally shaking their heads in dismay or muttering their exasperation at his feeble efforts.
Jimba on the other hand was assigned the slightly more prized job of helping to manufacture large hunting boomerangs. Unlike other native races who use fire to help straighten or bend wood to shapes they need for weapons, the Australian Aborigines simplify matters by having the women and children devote great amounts of their time to searching through the forest floor to locate fallen tree branches in roughly the correct boomerang shape. Then they use fire to burn away most of the excess thickness, before using stone-chisels to scrape the boughs down to the desired size.

That evening Ernie stood in the doorway of Debbie Bulilka’s hut anxiously awaiting the return of the Aboriginal men. After a while he heard the sound of angry voices from the corroboree ground and thought, “If only I could speak the dialect.”
Looking round the darkened village, he saw some of the women standing outside huts also, listening. He knew that they were also forbidden to attend the male-only corroboree. Seeing Debbie Bulilka, Gunbuk’s mother, he thought of his friend Garbarla. In the reality of 1986 where Ernie and Jimba came from Debbie had also been Joseph Garbarla’s mother. But Ernie had been a little dismayed to discover that Garbarla did not exist in this reality. In this reality Debbie had never met her white lover Edward Hunt, so Garbarla had never been born.
However, to his surprise Debbie and her son Gunbuk had taken to him as readily in this reality as their counterparts had done. So, seeing Debbie talking to old Nancy Girigibali, Ernie waved to her. The attractive forty-something black woman called a greeting to Ernie, then translated the shouting from the corroboree ground, “Jumjum say we got to kill giant koalas to punish koalas for killing Judawali, Budjiwa, and Mutapina.”
They listened as a very frail-sounding, yet loud voice shouted. Debbie translated, “Old Yudbunji says koalas are sent down by Dream-Time gods. Say it would offend gods if we attack koalas. Say we must accept the deaths of Judawali, Budjiwa, and Mutapina as the will of the gods, or go walkabout to escape the koalas.”
“Go walkabouts?” thought Ernie, shocked. “What the hell good would that do? With those spaceship they can follow us inland anywhere we go!”
As though sensing Ernie’s thought, Debbie nodded at him. Over the next couple of hours they heard a lot more shouting in Aboriginal dialect and Debbie translated some of the debate into English until the shouting started to die down. Then they were too far away from the meeting for Debbie to make out more than a few smatterings.
It was nearly 1:00 AM when at last the meeting ended. Seeing Jimba stalking toward the hut at the front of a large group of men, Debbie and Ernie both asked, “Well?”
Ignoring his friends Jimba stalked straight past them and stormed into the back room of the hut, where he slammed his fist hard against the corrugated-iron wall, making Ernie and Debbie both jump.
“Bad news,” suggested Debbie, putting Ernie’s thoughts to words.
As Gunbuk approached the hut Debbie questioned him at length in their native tongue, then explained to Ernie, “Nothing. The Elders say to do nothing about Mamaragan”
“What?” asked Ernie, not certain if he had heard correctly.
“Elders say to do nothing,” repeated Debbie. “Then Mamaragan forgive Aborigines for breaking tribal law and all will be like before again.”
“In other words we shut eyes and hope it go away!” shouted Joseph Jimba from the back room of the hut, slamming his fist into the iron wall again.
Not knowing what to do or say to comfort his friend, although understanding his rage, Ernie followed Debbie and Gunbuk into the hut.
They talked for nearly an hour, with Jimba doing most of the talking -- mainly cursing the small-mindedness of the village Elders, to the astonishment of Debbie and Gunbuk, who both agreed that something more positive should be done, but whose indoctrination into tribal thinking prevented them from ever daring to suggest aloud that the village Elders were wrong.
“How can they be so blind?” Jimba asked Ernie, almost pleading with his friend to provide an answer. “Those bear things gobble up Judawali, Budjiwa, and Mutapina, now they tell us to sit on our backsides doing nothing and hope Mamaragan forgives us. Forgives us!” As he repeated the phrase his voice had risen in indignation. “As though we did anything that justify what those monsters did!”
Despite their protests at the unfair treatment, Ernie and Jimba continued to be banned from the hunting parties. “Got to learn other tasks too!” insisted Jumjum, refusing to be swayed by their protests.

Around a fortnight later, Ernie and Jimba were part of a group of a half dozen or so tending to the laying of the fire, in preparation for the cooking of whatever meat, if any, was brought back to the tribe by the hunting party that afternoon. As the hours began to advance and twilight approached, they began to despair of having any feed that night, when they saw two figures far in the distance. From the amount of dust they were throwing up, it was obvious that the two young men were approaching at a run.
“Tiger on their tail,” said an old lubra, with a yellow-toothed grin, squatting on her haunches in the dust, closer to the truth than any of them realised.
As the two runners drew nearer, they could make out the figures of Ulagang Gang and Gudjiwa (two teenagers) carrying a speared wallaby in tandem fashion.
“Where Gallabadana? Where Bullo Bullo?” demanded the squatting lubra. But the two hunters dropped the wallaby at her feet, making her squawk her protest as dust and hot ashes flew up over her, then turned and continued on their way through the village.
It was obvious that Ulagang Gang and Gudjiwa had been running for a great distance and were both on the brink of collapse. But they did not stop running until reaching the three-room iron hut that Ernie recognised as belonging to Jumjum.
“Mayuldjumbajum’s hut,” said the aged lubra, obviously surprised, as she started to prepare the carcase for baking in the hot ashes.
“What could they want with Mayuldjumbajum so urgently?” wondered Debbie Bulilka aloud. Jumjum was by nature a jovial old man, always quick with a laugh, or a sly wink at one of the young half naked lubras, and had always struck Ernie as one of the village characters. But there was nothing jovial about him when the old man addressed an all-male corroboree which was held an hour or so after dinner.

Yet again Ernie was forced to stay away. But Jimba made certain that he arrived early so he could sit close to the ceremonial fire so that he would not miss a word of the debate, and agreed to fill Ernie in on everything that was said.
After the religious ceremonies were done with, Jumjum called on one of the young hunters, Ulagang Gang, to step forward and address the circle of men squatting upon the dirt around the ceremonial fire.
Ulagang Gang’s story was similar to what had happened to the hunting party that Ernie and Gunbuk had gone out in. They had just brought down a wallaby on the flatlands about five kilometres from the village, when they had heard the roaring thunder that they knew presaged the approach of Mamaragan. The spaceship had landed before them and a dozen or so bear alien had exited. They had used some form of ray gun to stun Bullo Bullo and Gallabadana and had taken then into the spaceship, which had taken off again before Ulagang Gang and his one remaining companion had time to react. Grabbing up the speared Wallaby they had set off at full pelt back to the village to inform Jumjum what had happened.
They sat around on the dirt in silence, staring into the ceremonial fire for what seemed like hours, considering what Ulagang Gang had told them. They were all horrified by the tale, but Gunbuk was devastated by the death of his close friend, Gallabadana. In white society such a story would have been laughed off. But the Aboriginal religion has never been weakened by false prophets, so when told that the Great Rainbow Snake had landed in the nearby plains, the Aborigines accepted it without question.
Therefore the question was what, if anything, could they do about the deaths of the two hunters. It was argued by Jumjum that they had no right to do anything at all since the rainbow serpent was the protector of the Aborigines and would not have devoured Gallabadana and Bullo Bullo unless they had both broken same tribal law.
“What tribal law?” demanded Yudbunji, a spindly, deathly thin old man.
“Gallabadana and Bullo Bullo did nothing wrong!” insisted Ulagang Gang, receiving a nod of agreement from Gudjiwa, his recent hunting companion.
“They must have done something wrong!” insisted Jumjum. “Mamaragan only gobbles up those who do something wrong.”
“But what we do about it?” demanded Ulagang Gang.
“Gallabadana and Bullo Bullo were gobbled up for interfering with Mamaragan. If we do anything about it, we get gobbled up too!”
“Mamaragan can’t gobble up whole village!” protested Ulagang Gang.
“Perhaps if we pray to Mamaragan, rainbow serpent will forgive Bullo Bullo and Gallabadana and return them to village,” suggested Jumjum.
“No point praying to Mamaragan,” insisted seventeen year old Gudjiwa. “Why would rainbow serpent return Bullo Bullo and Gallabadana because we pray? Rainbow serpent gobbled up Bullo Bullo and Gallabadana for no reason, so we must kill rainbow serpent!”
“How we kill rainbow serpent?” asked Jumjum and at last the old man had raised a valid point.
“He’s right!” thought Jimba. “How do we defeat these bear aliens? Could be hundreds even thousands of them? And if they have laser weapons, what hope we got against them with spears and stone knives?”
They continued to argue for another hour but in the end no one had an answer for Jumjum’s question, so it was resolved that they would hold special corroborees every night for the next week to pray to Mamaragan, asking him to return Bullo Bullo and Gallabadana, as well as Judawali, Budjiwa, and Mutapina taken earlier. But if this failed they would accept the loss of the five hunters as the will of Mamaragan.
Although Jimba recognised the validity of Jumjum’s question, “How we kill rainbow serpent?” he was determined not to let the matter stop at prayers to the Great Rainbow Snake. As soon as the corroboree broke up, he sought Ulagang Gang to ask for his help, expecting him to readily assent. But to his surprise, despite the pluck the young hunter had displayed earlier, Ulagang Gang now refused to go against the will of the council of Elders.
“Elders say not to hunt Mamaragan,” pointed out Ulagang Gang as they walked through the dark village, heading toward their respective huts.
“Elders are wrong!” insisted Jimba, realising by the look of horror that spread across the teenager’s face that he had gone too far.

Over the next four days, however, the Elders were forced to reconsider their strategy as there were two more attacks on hunting parties by the bear alien resulting in the deaths of five more young hunters. That night another corroboree was called to revise their strategy after the latest killings.
As they sat around the ceremonial fire, while the religious rites at the start of the corroboree were conducted, Jimba felt sick at the loss of so many of his friends. Two of the latest victims was distant cousins of his -- in his own reality if not this one. Yet he recalled the words of Mayuldjumbajum at an earlier gathering, “How we kill rainbow serpent?” when the young hunter Ulagang Gang had suggested that course of action and realised that the old man was right. “No matter how many of the tribe those bear aliens decide to slaughter, what can we do to stop them?” Jimba wondered.
After the religious rituals were completed, one of the hunters related what had happened: “We hunting roo few kilometre away, when we hear roar in sky. We look up, see Great Rainbow Snake approach. Bunabin order we hide in bush, wait till serpent’s scales come down to ground.
“When serpent scales break off and land, Bunabin order we attack one capture it. Try do as told, but unable to kill giant koalas, which one and half times size of big man.
“Giant Koalas kill Bunabin and Wururuma, and wound Jalburgul Gul, who we carry back home, after Bunabin order retreat, just before dyin’.”
The immediate inclination of the tribe upon hearing this tale, was to scatter the tribe. “We go walkabout?” suggested Weari-Wyingga, a tiny grey-skinned Elder, who looked well over a hundred years of age, but was probably in his late eighties.
Originally the walkabout ceremony was strictly a marriage ritual: before the white man invaded the Australian continent, there were nearly 500,000 Aborigines on the mainland, but divided into more than 3,000 separate tribes, spread across the breadth and width of a continent almost as large as the USA. Some of the tribes were only fifty to a hundred people in size, which meant that there was a major danger of inbreeding. To prevent this, for 50,000 years or more the Aborigines engaged in half yearly walkabouts so that the separate tribes could meet up in groups of 3,000 to 5,000 so that marriage aged males and females from different tribes could pair off to prevent inbreeding. But after many centuries the ceremony had had pseudo-religious trappings attached and was now often practised for strictly religious reasons, or in the belief that hunting might be better elsewhere on the continent.
So the old man did not hesitate to use the term walkabout, when he meant they should flee for their lives from Mamaragan.
“You want us to run away with tail between legs?” asked Jumjum.
“Better to run away than be eaten alive.”
“And what about the whites?” asked Jumjum, referring to the inhabitants of the nearby town of Pettiwood. “Do we leave them to Mamaragan?”
“What have the white men ever done for us?” demanded Weari-Wyingga. “Stole our country two hundred years ago, poisoned it with their chemicals, logged our forests and turned them into deserts ....”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Jumjum, quickly cutting off the old man (to the relief of most of the others present) for fear that he was going to break into one of the five-hour recitations on the evils of the white man, that he was notorious for. “All that is true. But Mamaragan belong to the Aborigines. He always been our god. Now he gone insane, he our demon, not demon of the whites, and it our job to kill him. Not theirs.”
“How we kill rainbow serpent?” asked Weari-Wyingga, chuckling to himself at Jumjum’s look of consternation at having his own words thrown up in his face.
“We take the matter to the white authorities in Melbourne?” Ulagang Gang suggested. “If we tell them what happening, they have better, more powerful weapons to use against Mamaragan’s giant koalas.”
“And what we tell them?” asked Jumjum. “That Great Rainbow Snake turn on black man after thousands of year protecting us?” There was a few half hearted snickers at my expense, from the circle of men sitting around the ceremonial fire. But behind the laughter was just a hint of hysteria.
“No!” insisted Jumjum. “We fight!”
“Fight who?” asked young Ulagang Gang.
“Fight Rainbow Snake, kill Rainbow Snake!” exclaimed Jumjum, taking us all by great surprise.
There was a rush of panic-stricken voices, as youths and Elders alike protested that the Great Rainbow Snake was God, and you cannot go out and kill God. But Jumjum refused to be swayed from his decision.
Holding up his hands for silence, Jumjum said, “For thousands years we worship Mamaragan, pray to Mamaragan ’cause Mamaragan good and protect black man. Now Mamaragan bad, kill, eat black man, so black man must kill Mamaragan!”

Back in the village Ernie and Debbie Bulilka stood listening to the sound of raised voices coming from the corroboree ground again.
It was after midnight when this latest corroboree finally broke up.
“Well?” asked Ernie as Gunbuk, Jimba, and Jumjum strode toward the corrugated-iron hut.
“Good news,” said Jimba.
“We fight!” Jumjum finished for the teenager.
“Great!” said Ernie. However, he suddenly realised that Jumjum had also been the one who had brought about the decision for the tribe to attack Mamaragan in his own reality two years ago. A decision which had resulted in the deaths of most of the village’s male population. “My God, let’s just hope history won’t repeat itself in this reality!” thought Ernie as he followed Debbie Bulilka and Gunbuk into their hut.

Brian’s reality
“2021!” thought Brian Horne looking from Georgio Demos to Gail Dobey. Aloud he said, “You’ve got to be joking.”
“Don’t worry, just lie back and relax,” said corporal Adele Gibson soothingly, kneeling beside the small cot where Brian lay. “It’ll all come back to you soon.”
Looking at the piles of chemicals and weapons at the other end of the small wooden building, Brian said, “But if this is 2021, why are you still using old-fashioned machine-guns? They had Uzis like those --” pointing to a weapon slung across the shoulder of Gail Dobey -- “back in my ... back in the mid 1980s.”
“How would you know that?” demanded the redheaded colonel.
“Are you a military history buff?” asked Adele Gibson smiling at him. Her blue eyes twinkled with almost childlike glee, as though she had finally found someone to talk over her favourite subject with. “So am I. Most of the people here say they see too much of modern warfare to be interested in its history.”
Ignoring the corporal’s interruption, General Demos said, “After the banning of nuclear weapons, we experimented with sonic and laser disruption weapons in the 1990s and early 2000s. With catastrophic results ....”
“Is that when Melbourne was ... was reduced to this?”
“Yes,” agreed the grey-haired general. “The yanks had the money to build more powerful sonic disrupters than anything we could produce. They would have obliterated the whole Aussie continent if the ruling World Council of Surviving Nations hadn’t stepped in to ban laser and sonic disrupters in 2011.”
“As it was the Yanks reduced Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra to smouldering rubble before they had to return to traditional weapons,” said Gail Dobey.

Over the next two or three days Brian gradually built up his strength and was able to join the battle. Although not officially a soldier he was assigned a private’s uniform.
“We’ve always got plenty of uniforms to spare,” explained Adele Gibson. They stood together in a small back room of the headquarters. Against one wall of the stores room stood four large metal cupboards. Against another wall were wooden racks, full of blue, track suit-like uniforms, all indistinguishable from each other, apart from the stripes or patches of rank.
She held a uniform up to Brian’s chest to try it for size.
“Yes, I see what you mean,” said Brian fingering a couple of darned bullet holes.
“Not your size,” said Adele returning the uniform to its rack.
Watching the corporal looking through the racks, Brian felt himself drawn to her. “You’re beautiful!” he thought. “You really are!” At first he had been put off by the brutally short crew-cut the blonde wore. But as the days had passed and soldiers had come and gone from the headquarters, he had realised all women in the Aussie army -- and they seemed to make up slightly more than half of the soldiers -- wore crew-cuts. He still did not know if it was a military requirement, or merely the way women’s fashion for hair had gone by the year 2021 AD. But he had started to grow used to it. “After all, what’s in a hairstyle?” he thought. “What’s important is that you’re beautiful. Not just your looks,” -- although he still thought she had beautiful eyes and beautiful, fine-boned features -- “but your nature too.” Thinking of the care she had taken over the last week, nursing him back to health, “You’re the loveliest women I’ve ever known!”
“You have a very large chest,” said Adele returning the uniform to the rack. She started to sort through the various pigeon-holes. Although they were marked in sizes, the uniforms did not always correspond in size to the pigeon-holes they came from.
Finally she found a private’s uniform with a 110 centimetre chest which she thought might fit Brian. Adele started to hold the uniform up to his chest. But to her surprise he grabbed her wrists and gently pulled her up against himself.
“What?” cried Adele Gibson, startled. Her words were cut off as Brian covered her mouth with his.

Brian watched Adele bent over rummaging through the racks looking for a uniform in his size. Apart from liking the young corporal immensely, he also found her willowy figure strangely exciting. When she straightened up to place the uniform against his chest, Brian acted instinctively. Without thinking of the possible consequences he took the young woman into his arms and kissed her full, soft lips.
Adele Gibson’s blue eyes shone in shock and for a moment she resisted him. Then Brian felt her resistance melt away and she eased into his arms, returning his kiss. After a few seconds her full lips parted gently to allow his tongue to flit momentarily into her mouth.
Then, as though suddenly realising what she had done, Adele pulled away from Brian and demanded, “Why did you do that?”
Brian shrugged. “I just wanted to,” he explained. Taking her small chin into his left hand he held her gently in place as he lowered his face toward hers again.
This time they kissed long and hard for more than two minutes eagerly exploring each other’s mouths inside and out. The kiss seemed to last forever and only broke when Brian noticed a tall shadow standing by the doorway behind Adele Gibson.
Hurriedly he broke off the kiss.
Seeing the look in his eyes, Adele turned round guiltily and saw the ginger-haired figure of Colonel Gail Dobey standing in the shadows watching them. From the wide-eyed glare the colonel was giving them both, it was obvious that she had seen them kissing.
“Surely a man and woman kissing can’t be against the law, even in 2021?” wondered Brian. But as Gail Dobey continued to glare at them he started to think, “Maybe it is!”

Seeing they had spotted her, Gail Dobey said, “Aren’t you supposed to be assembling grenades, Corporal Gibson?”
“Yes, sir,” said Adele Gibson sheepishly. “But General Demos said I should find a private’s uniform for Brian ... for Mr Horne.” She stooped to pick up the uniform jacket that she had dropped in shock when Brian Horne had pulled her into his arms.
“I’m sure Mr Horne can do that himself.” snapped the redhead. “Please go to the assembly table immediately.”
“I’m supposed to show Bri ... Mr Horne how to assemble grenades.”
“Very well, I’ll direct him to the assembly table when he has finished in here.”
Adele Gibson stood her ground for a moment, as though going to question the colonel’s authority to overrule General Demos’s orders. Then she turned and walked out into the main room.
Gail Dobey waited till the corporal had left. Then she walked across to where Brian was trying on the uniform jacket for size.
Looking up at the crew-cut redhead, Brian saw that she was still angry and could not understand why. “Surely she’s seen men and women kissing before? With so many women in the armed forces these days, it ought to be a common enough occurrence?” he thought. Aloud he said, “I hope I didn’t do anything against regulations, colonel?”
Gail Dobey walked up until she was almost pressed up against him. Then in a very low voice she hissed, “I don’t know how you treat women back wherever it is that you come from, Mr Horne. But in the Aussie Armed Services in 2021 women are not just for the sexual gratification of men!”
Unable to resist the cliché, Brian said, “You know, Gail, you’re beautiful when you’re angry.”
As her face flushed almost as red as her brutally lopped hair, Brian was tempted to give her a quick, hard kiss on the mouth. But just in time he realised that would be pushing his luck too far.

Gail Dobey’s face flushed in rage at the sexist quip and for a second she feared she was going to lose control and strike the private. Finally she managed to regain enough control of her anger to say, “Just find yourself a uniform, then go and help Corporal Gibson to assemble grenades.”
“Yes, ma’am ... sir,” said Brian. He saluted smartly, which did nothing to appease the colonel.
Without another word Gail Dobey turned and strode back into the main room.
Shrugging his dismay, Brian went back to checking the racks for a uniform in his size. After ten minutes or so he had found a suitable uniform and changed. Then he strode across to the door to look for Adele Gibson.
As he entered the main room of the headquarters, the petite corporal came across the room to collect Brian.
“How do I look?” asked Brian, a little uncomfortable in the uniform, which still looked more like a blue track suit, and which someone else (possible more than one soldier) had already worn and died in.
“Very smart,” said Adele.
Unthinkingly she reached up to adjust his jacket a little. Then hearing footsteps, they looked round and saw Colonel Gail Dobey standing a few metres away watching them.
“Come on, I’d better show you how to make the grenades.” Adele Gibson took Brian’s hand in hers to lead him away. Then receiving a cutting glare from Gail Dobey, she quickly dropped his hand and said, “Please follow me, Private Horne.”
Adele led Brian over to the wooden table which ran the entire length of the main room at one side. On the right end were large glass jars of various brightly coloured powders and crystals, plus boxes of small squares of what looked like golden plastic. On the left hand end of the table were the open, triangular shells of black grenades.
“First you have to connect one of these,” Adele explained. She took one of the “plastic” squares from a box. Up close Brian could see that it looked more like orangey gum or tree sap solidified than plastic, with thin lines drawn or etched into the gum.”
“What are those?”
“Microchips,” Adele replied, sounding surprised by the question. “Haven’t you ever seen them before?”
“No, but I’ve heard of them. They’re used in computers aren’t they?”
“Originally they were. Nowadays we use them to operate the timer mechanism in grenades.”
Taking him across to a blue, plastic-bodied microscope at one end of the bench, she showed him how to solder minute gold threads to connect the microchip to the red and yellow plastic buttons.
“Next you have to fill these.” Adele took two small stoppered vials out of the grenade. “One from the green jar, and one from the blue.”
Adele Gibson walked across to the other end of the table where the bottles of chemicals sat. She filled one of the glass vials with chunky cobalt-blue crystals, which had a strong alkaline smell. Then she filled the other from a large bottle of emerald-green powder, which apart from its colour looked and smelled exactly like talcum powder.
“Then you put the vials into the grenade,” she explained, placing one vial into each of two slots behind the two buttons, careful not to break the golden threads to the microchip. “It doesn’t matter which way around. Then just snap it shut and it’s ready for use.”
“How do you fire them?” asked Brian. He tentatively accepted the completed grenade from Adele Gibson, wary of touching it as though he thought it might detonate at the merest touch.

“Don’t worry,” assured Adele seeing his unease. She took his left hand into hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze, then quickly released it for fear of being seen by Colonel Dobey. “They’re perfectly safe till you press the buttons. It’s yellow, red, yellow which gives you eight seconds before they explode. Or red, red, red gives you just three seconds. If you press either combination then change your mind, it’s yellow, yellow, yellow to deactivate the grenade. Although it can’t be used again then without replacing the microchip and chemicals.”
“Yellow, yellow, yellow to deactivate!” though Brian. “I’ll have to remember that if I forget everything else.”
“Don’t worry.” Adele Gibson reached for his hand again to give it another reassuring squeeze. “For now you just have to assemble them. It’ll be days or even weeks before General Demos expects you to join the fighting.”
“Something for me to look forward to,” said Brian with a half-choked sounding laugh.
Adele giggled schoolgirlishly then gave Brian a quick kiss on the lips. Then, remembering where they were she blushed deeply then said, “Er, I’ll leave you to it then.”
Brian watched her walk away then returned to the other end of the bench to start soldering the microchips into the metal -- ? plastic? -- casing (he still was not sure what the black substance was) of the grenades.

Ernie’s reality
After the Aborigines decided to attack the bear aliens, the next problem was building up an army large enough to stand a chance against the aliens’s superior technology. Jumjum and the other tribal Elders sent Gagawars (messengers) out to all of the remaining tribes or communes throughout Australia. Over the next few weeks the ranks of the young men in the tribe were swollen by almost two thousand. They were split up into ten brigades, which set out across Victoria to await the reappearance of the bear aliens.
“But how do know the aliens only appear in Victoria?” asked Ernie one day. He and a dozen others were seated on the dirt floor of the front room of Jumjum’s corrugated-iron walled hut. “After all, Victoria is the smallest state of mainland Australia by a long shot. If the aliens pop up here from time to time, there must be a lot more chance of them landing on one of the other, much larger states?”
The Elders looked round at each other for a few seconds as though puzzled at the question. Finally it was the tiny, grey-skinned old man, Weari-Wyingga, who answered: “Yes, giant koalas must appear more often in the rest of Australia than here. But even with two thousand-plus hunters in village now, we cannot cover whole of country. But as you say, Victoria is tiny state. Two thousand warriors have good chance of covering state thoroughly and spotting koalas’s craft next time they land.”
So it was agreed that the Aborigines would patrol the state of Victoria only, looking for the bear aliens.
There was another matter Ernie had to raise before the Elders: the wafer-thin, rectangular silvery metallic rune-like tablets which he had pocketed back at the spaceship before being captured. Assuming them to be computer disks of some kind, Ernie had taken the runes into Glen Hartwell to show to Danny Ross, in the hope that Danny could direct him to someone with a computer which could read the disks. But finding himself stuck in 1962, before Danny Ross had come to Glen Hartwell -- and before the proliferation of computers outside Universities -- he had been stuck.
Ernie had not bothered to show the disks to Bruce Cox, knowing that the police sergeant could not have helped him. Although the first business computers had been in use in Australia by 1962, they had been vast room-sized machines, which read only paper cards or magnetic tape. It was debatable whether any computer in Australia in 1986 could read the disks. But no computer in the world could have read them in 1962!
“I found these in the spaceship,” explained Ernie, holding up one of the rectangular “disks”.
Although there was no artificial lighting within the corrugated-iron hut, there were large, single-paned windows in three walls in the front room. It was a typical Victoria summer day: sun streamed in through the windows lighting the room better than any fluorescent could.
As Ernie held up the computer disk, the bright sunlight hit the silvery disk making it flash like a mirror, almost blinding the circle of Elders.
For a moment as it flashed the disk seemed to hum. “It sings!” thought Ernie, wondering if he was imagining it. “The damn disk sings!”
Despite the bright sunlight, the disk shone inexplicably brightly and Ernie thought, “Heat! You must need to use heat to activate the disks!”
As it continued to hum in his hand, Ernie thought that he had succeeded; that the disk was going to reveal its contents to them. But after nearly a minute of humming and shining, the disk suddenly went dead: the humming stopped. Even the shining seemed to go out -- despite the sunlight streaming across the silvery disk from the large windows.
Throughout the performance the Aboriginal Elders had been sitting wrapt, watching. When the disk “went out” old Weari-Wyingga leaned across to take the disk from Ernie.
Following Ernie’s example, the deathly-thin old man held the disk up into the sunlight. Although the disk sparkled in the sunlight it lacked the almost preternatural luminosity that it had shone with earlier and refused to “sing” for the old man.
Looking across at Ernie, Weari-Wyingga asked, “How make disk sing?”
Ernie shrugged. “I don’t know. The first time was just a fluke.” He handed a second disk to Mayuldjumbajum, then a third to Nambidjimba and a fourth to Yudbunji and the fifth and sixth to two other Elders.
Mayuldjumbajum and the others followed Weari-Wyingga’s example and held their own disks up toward the sunlight. Each of them managed to make the disks flash -- occasionally almost blinding each other with their luminosity. But no one could repeat Ernie’s experience of making the disks sing.
With only six disks, the disks were passed from hand to hand until each of the Elders in turn had had a try to make the disks sing. But always without success.
Brows wrinkled in puzzlement, they each tried each of the disks many times. Yet no one could make the disks sing. A feat which even Ernie was unable to repeat, try as he might.
One old man placed the edge of a disk into his mouth and bit down as men had once done to test the genuineness of gold coins. However, he grimaced and quickly removed the disk, then spat to remove the taste from his mouth.
After a moment’s hesitation Ernie tried licking one of the disks. He grimaced at the sharp acidic taste with a hint of zinc or possibly manganese about it. He followed the old man’s example of spitting to remove the acidic taste from his mouth.
“Metallic by the taste,” said Ernie, thinking aloud.
The Elders passed the disks from hand to hand till old Weari-Wyingga had all six disks. The grey-skinned old man seemed transfixed by the silvery “singing” disks. He was obviously reluctant to pass the disks on, or hand them back to Ernie.
Knowing from experience how intelligent the old man was, Ernie decided Weari-Wyingga might be the best person to take care of the disks. Weari-Wyingga was in his late eighties and would not take any active part in the hunt for the bear aliens, so the disks would be safe in his keeping.
On the spur of the moment, Ernie said, “You can hold onto them for safekeeping if you like.”
The old man grinned broadly like a small child given an expensive, flashy toy. But Ernie knew better than to underrate the intelligence of the old man who had been instrumental in banishing the Great Rainbow Snake two years earlier in Ernie’s reality.
After Weari-Wyingga collected the six disks, the talks returned to the upcoming hunt for the alien spacecraft.
It was decided that each of the ten brigades would have at least one of the village Elders in charge. Jumjum would be in charge of Ernie’s group, with Jimba second in command and Ernie third in command, as his white man schooling was considered to be of potential use against the bear alien.

That night Ernie settled down in the front room of Debbie Bulilka’s two-room corrugated-iron hut. Although uncertain of the date he knew three or four weeks had passed since his trip into Glen Hartwell. By Ernie’s calculations this therefore should be the night of the twenty-third of February. Each month from the twenty-third Ernie transformed from man-to-wolf at least twice and up to four nights running. In the past whenever he had visited the Aboriginal village, he had tried to avoid the nights of his transformation. On the rare occasions when he had stopped at the village over the time of his transformation, he had always managed to get Debbie to allow him to sleep alone in the front room. That way he could sleep naked and not be trapped in his pyjamas when he metamorphosed into the black wolf. Although Joseph Garbarla did not exist in this reality, Debbie Bulilka had obviously met Ernie before and accepted without argument his desire to sleep alone in the front room of her hut.
As night fell, Ernie lay naked on top of the blankets on the dirt floor, awaiting his transformation. Seeing the full moon shining through the large window, Ernie gazed up at the orangey orb in wonder. “The full moon is supposed to affect werewolves!” he thought. However, he knew this was untrue in his own case. His transformations always occurred at the same time each month, whereas the phases of the moon slowly changed each month.
Feeling his head start to swim, Ernie looked over to check that the door was wide open so that he would not be trapped inside the hut in wolf form. By trial and error he had found that after transforming to the black wolf he had to run through the forest or desert for at least a couple of hours before he could transform back to human guise. Once when he had stayed inside to test what would happen, he had been trapped in wolf form all day and had been distraught in case he could never change back to human form. But he had gone outside as the black wolf that night and around midnight he had finally transformed back to human guise.
Ernie knew that dizziness was a sure sign that he was about to change into the black wolf. As his head swam he heard lightning flashing outside and recalled his first visit to the Aboriginal village in October 1984.
That had also been at the time of his monthly change. And on that occasion there had also been thunder and lightning as he slipped down into sleep. But on that occasion the thunder and lightning at night had presaged the destructive arrival of the Great Rainbow Snake the next day. “At least we know this time Mamaragan isn’t going to turn up and destroy the village!” thought Ernie just before losing consciousness.

When Ernie awakened, bright sunlight was streaming in through the window of the front room of the hut, blinding him.
“Jesus, what a hangover!” thought Ernie as he sat up on top of his bed clothes.
Hearing movement in the next room, he realised that Gunbuk or Debbie was awake. Scooping up his clothing Ernie hurriedly dressed ready to greet them.
It was only as he was putting on his shoes that he realised, “It didn’t happen! I didn’t transform into the black wolf last night! Maybe the black wolf doesn’t exist in this reality? If that’s the case my problems are solved.” He had put off proposing to Rowena Frankland for three years for fear that he might be a danger to her as the black wolf. But now he thought, “If I’m not a werewolf in this reality, I can stay here and marry Rowie here!”
But then his hopes were dashed as he realised, “It’s only 1962 in this reality! Rowena hasn’t even been born in this reality! Either I stay here without her, or I return to my own reality where I’m a danger to her!”
Ernie was still cursing the Catch-22 situation which he had found himself in, when Debbie Bulilka and Gunbuk appeared from the back room.
“Time for breakfast,” said Debbie. She stretched wide, then led the way outside to the communal eating area.
The morning meal consisted of cold kangaroo -- left over from the previous night’s dinner -- nuts, berries, and Witchetty grubs. Ernie ate heartily of all but the last item.

After breakfast they assembled in their particular brigade and set out on the search for the bear aliens. They knew that they might be away from the village for weeks or even months and would have to catch their own food along the way.
“Let’s go,” called old Mayuldjumbajum and they set off in a ragtag procession out into the brown dirt desert beyond the Aboriginal village.

Brian’s reality
Feeling his eye spasm, Brian pulled away from the microscope. He closed his right eye and rubbed it gently with his hand.
“Eye sore?” asked Corporal Adele Gibson. She sat beside him at the long wooden bench at one end of the Aussie Army headquarters. Over the last three days she and Brian had taken turns welding the gold thread to connect the microchips inside the black, plastic, triangular grenades and filling the glass vials with the green powder and cobalt-blue crystals. Having done her fair share of peering down the microscope, Adele knew how eyesore you could get.
“Just a little,” answered Brian Horne. Although his right eye was red and puffy from where he had rubbed at it with his knuckles.
Adele reached across to take his right hand into hers to give it an affectionate squeeze. “The trick is to keep both eyes open and try to concentrate on looking through the eye against the eyepiece only,” she reminded him. “It’s trying to keep one eye clamped shut for hours on end that causes the eyestrain.”
“Yeah, I know the theory,” said Brian with a laugh. “It’s the application that keeps letting me down.”
Adele laughed then leant across to give Brian a small kiss on the lips. Careful not to linger too long, for fear of being observed by one of their superiors -- particularly Gail Dobey. The redheaded Corporal was fond of quoting party doctrine: “Relationships are evidence of sex and sex is a means by which men can subjugate women”; “All heterosexual sex is a form of rape”; “Sex is a means by which men subjugate women to their will!”; “Emotions are anathema to reason”; “No one belongs to anyone else”; “No woman belongs to any man”; “Control means freedom to be a good citizen”; “Conformity means Equality”; “Conformity, Uniformity, Equality”. The party told lurid stories of how men had subjugated women and had used them as objects of their sick, perverted sexual desires in the bad old days before the gender-free revolution during which people stopped thinking of themselves as men and women. But Adele suspected the redhead was really just jealous of the affection that she received from Brian.
“Isn’t life wonderful!” Adele thought, wondering why Brian’s affection for her thrilled her so much. Since she had been a young girl Adele had been taught by her parents, school teachers, high-school and workplace propaganda officers that romance was a means by which men subjugated women to their wills, to turn them into slaves. She remembered a stern-faced propaganda officer at her junior high school telling them how in the days of the pure Neanderthals, 50,000 to 100,000 years ago men and women had been completely equal. Then men had waged a war of the sexes on women, had won the war and enslaved women to their sick, perverted desires. “You don’t want to be a mere serving wench to a man do you?” she remembered the bespectacled propaganda officer asking her a dozen years ago. And all her life Adele had done her bit to support propaganda as all good citizens should and to “fight the good fight” against male domination. “But the last week has been wonderful!” she thought, recalling how she had nursed Brian Horne back to health and recalling the affection -- “Love?” she wondered -- that had grown between them. For the first time in her life she wondered, “What’s so wrong with being a mere serving wench to a man?”
Embarrassed at the thought, knowing it went against all decent propaganda teachings, she blushed crimson and said, “We ... we can change over for a while if you like.”
“Thanks,” said Brian. He got up to swap stools with the young blonde corporal.
After they were seated again, Adele gave Brian’s hand another affectionate little squeeze. Then sensing rather than seeing Gail Dobey watching them, Adele quickly released Brian’s hand. She peered down the microscope and began connecting microchips to the black grenade cases. While Brian began filling small vials from the large clear bottles of green and blue chemicals.

For almost a week Brian did nothing but help Corporal Adele Gibson assemble the black, triangular chemical grenades in the large front room of the Aussie army headquarters. During that time Aussie soldiers of all ranks came and went from the headquarters. Frequently they returned to the headquarters badly injured, or not at all.
Brian had been moved to a large barracks room half a kilometre behind the headquarters some days before. So the cot in the front room could be used for other soldiers to be nursed back to health.
Seeing a tall, fair-haired sergeant carried in and placed on the cot one day, Brian asked, “Is he going to be all right?”
“I doubt it,” replied Colonel Gail Dobey who was standing near the chemical table watching them making grenades. “He’s pretty badly hurt.”
“So was I, when I was brought in here,” said Brian. At a call from General Demos, Adele Gibson went across to try to attend to the injured man. Instinctively Brian got up and followed her.

Gail Dobey scowled. Despite their attempts to conceal it from her, she had noted the growing intimacy between Brian and Adele over the last week and was determined to put an end to it at all costs. “Relationships are evidence of sex and sex is a means by which men can subjugate women”, “All heterosexual sex is a form of rape”, “Sex is a means by which men subjugate women to their will!”, “Emotions are anathema to reason”, “No one belongs to anyone else”, “No woman belongs to any man”, “The Gestapo protects us from themselves”, “The Gestapo has an important job to perform,” “Control means freedom to be a good citizen”, “Conformity means Equality”, “Conformity, Uniformity, Equality”, “Bland Means Inoffensive. Inoffensive Means Good!” she recalled with a warm glow the doctrines hammered into her since childhood by parents and propaganda officers alike.
Following them across to the cot she said, “Yes, but your injuries were carefully inflicted by experts. Designed to cause great pain, rather than do any lasting damage. Injuries caused by grenades or bullets tend to be less subtle.”

Brian glanced at the redhead, trying to decide if she was being sarcastic. Then he hurried across to where Adele Gibson was already kneeling beside the wounded sergeant. Despite his blond hair, the injured man had strongly defined Aboriginal features, making Brian wonder about his origins.
“What can I do to help?” he asked, kneeling beside Adele.
The crew-cut blonde opened the sergeant’s shirt and gasped. Looking down, Brian saw a great gaping bloody wound in the young man’s chest. “Holy shit!” he thought, recalling Gail Dobey’s comment about the subtlety of grenades and bullets.
“Just get ready to hold him down if he tries to jump up in pain,” said Adele. Taking a large pair of tweezers she lifted a slab of cotton wool. She emptied a bottle of navy blue liquid onto the cotton wool to dab at the bloody wound.
“Iodine!” thought Brian at first, despite the colour. But then he recognised another metallic smell beneath the sharp iodine odour. “Zinc perhaps?”
Remembering the corporal’s instructions, Brian crouched ready to hold down the blond sergeant. However, despite crying out as the cotton wool touched his flesh, the man was too weak to jump up.

Adele and Brian nursed the sergeant for two days before he died.
“What happens now?” asked Brian as the sergeant’s corpse was zipped into a black plastic body bag. Although he had only known the man as Edmunds (as it said on his uniform), Brian felt a strong sense of personal loss at the man’s death. “It’s so frustrating,” Brian thought with a sigh, “to feel the last two day’s effort has all been in vain.”
As though sensing his thoughts, Adele Gibson took Brian’s left hand into her right and said, “At least we helped ease his suffering a little.”
In answer to Brian’s question, Gail Dobey said, “The body will be shipped out to the next to kin, if any. If not it’ll be cremated and the ashes scattered.”
Seeing Adele and Brian holding hands, the colonel glared at the young blonde. For a second Adele held onto Brian’s hand as though about to defy the redhead and all her years of propaganda training. But finally she faltered under the older woman’s glare and reluctantly pulled away from Brian.
Two medics lifted the body bag onto a stretcher to be carted away. Brian started across toward the chemical table, assuming that he would be required to return to grenade making.
“Ah, ah, Mr Horne, where are you going?” demanded Colonel Gail Dobey.
“I thought ...?” began Brian. He stopped as he saw another wounded soldier being carried in on a stretcher and placed on the small cot.
As the wounded soldier, who looked no more than sixteen or seventeen, was placed onto the cot, Gail Dobey said, “Since you did so well with the last one, I thought we might leave you on nursing duty for a while.”
“At last we’ve found one thing men can do as well as women,” the colonel thought as she walked away, leaving Adele and Brian to attend to the teenage soldier.

Over the next week Brian and Adele nursed three or four other wounded solders. All but one of whom died despite their treatment. In the end Brian was actually relieved when General Demos finally told him that they would like him to do sentry duty in the trenches that night.
“Officially you’re not a soldier, despite the uniform,” said the tall, grey-haired general. “So I’ve spared you from the actual fighting. However, we’ve suffered an alarming increase in casualties lately. And until we can get replacements it would be a great help if you could stand watch; allowing us to send an extra solder into battle.”
“Sure ... all right,” said Brian. He thought, “Anything is better than nursing duty!” Then looking over to where Adele Gibson was comforting a dying soldier, Brian felt guilty, knowing that even the dying needed someone to care for them.

Garbarla’s reality
Joseph Garbarla -- or Kunia the non-venomous snake-man as he was known in this reality -- stood atop a great yellow sand dune. He looked down in amazement at the battle being waged in the “arena” below him.
Gunbuk, Garbarla’s half-brother, and Liru the venomous snake-man were engaged in battle to the death. Firstly in human form they fought with spears, knives, and large, cumbersome hunting boomerangs. Unlike toy boomerangs sold to gullible tourists, the hunting boomerangs were too big and unwieldy to return. Instead they were designed to crush the skull or break the neck of the fleeing animal -- or human.
But then the desert air would shimmer and like a heat mirage the image changed. It was no longer Gunbuk and Liru standing there doing battle. Instead Liru transformed into a giant striped venomous serpent. Gunbuk transformed into Oohlah -- a giant red, spiny lizard.
First Gunbuk and Liru would prance about like boxers bobbing and weaving, looking for an opening in their opponent’s defences. Then Oohlah and the giant venomous snake would battle: the snake coiling backwards and forwards through the yellow sand, or darting forward headfirst, cobra-like when trying to strike Gunbuk with his poison-bearing fangs. Gunbuk-Oohlah would dance lizardlike on his back feet to race out of reach of Liru’s deadly fangs. Or to dart forward to stab at the venomous snake-man with one of the spears which he held in each of his hands -- front feet?
“Watch out!” shouted Garbarla as the snake-man leapt headfirst toward Gunbuk-Oohlah. For a second the red, spiny lizard-man held his ground as though allowing the venomous snake-man to strike him.
“Oh no!” thought Garbarla. For a moment he thought that his warning had distracted Gunbuk and would cause his death. Then at the last second the lizard-man danced aside, allowing the venomous snake-man to dive headfirst into the burning yellow sand behind him.
“Stab him! Stab him! Stab him now!” shouted Garbarla, thinking that this was Gunbuk-Oohlah’s chance to kill Liru as the snake-man turned rapidly to return to the battle.
Instead the snake-man kept going, burrowing snake-like down into the yellow sand dune in front of him.

Hearing his half-brother’s cry, Gunbuk immediately launched one of his spears after the fleeing snake-man. But as Liru tunnelled into the dune, the spear lanced harmlessly into the yellow sand behind him.
“Damn it, he’s getting away! He’s getting away!” cried Garbarla-Kunia.
Hearing his half-brother again, Gunbuk-Oohlah turned toward him. He shrugged and said, “Can’t follow him beneath the sand. Even Oohlah, the red, spiny lizard-man can’t tunnel beneath the hot sand.”
“But damn it, he’s getting away!” said Garbarla again. He started down the side of the sand mountain toward his half-brother. Then seeing movement in the yellow sand behind Gunbuk, Garbarla realised he was wrong. “No, he’s not,” Garbarla thought, “he’s not running away; he’s circling round behind Gunbuk under the sand.”
Garbarla started to shout out a warning to Gunbuk -- too late! -- as the giant, diamond-headed snake, Liru, emerged from the sand only two metres or less behind where Gunbuk stood.
Garbarla watched in open-mouthed horror as the great snake reared up behind Gunbuk, still unseen by the Aborigine, about to strike Gunbuk down from behind.’
“Look out!” shouted Garbarla as the snake-man’s lethal fangs descended toward Gunbuk.

Ernie’s reality
Jumjum, Jimba, and Ernie’s brigade of Aboriginal hunters travelled for fifteen hours a day for six days across the brown-dirt plains without hearing anything of the bear aliens. During that time the brigade of two-hundred men had had to split their time between hunting for food and searching for any sign of the spacecraft.
Although Ernie joined in the meals, he got no satisfaction from the food. “Tasteless!” he thought gnawing a large chunk of wallaby flesh. Normally wallaby or kangaroo meat had a strong, distinctive flavour, but this was completely tasteless. At most like gnawing rubber!

Late on the sixth day, they were crouching or squatting round a large fire, eating nail tail kangaroo, when they saw a grey-brown cloud forming on the horizon. As they watched the cloud grew in size as it approached until it was obvious what it was.
“Runner coming!” said young Jimba, as though taking the thought right out of Ernie’s head.
In fact it turned out to be two teenage hunters, John Dulban and Roger Gardigardi. The two hunters raced across to Jumjum and began talking in their native Aboriginal dialect.
After a few moment’s Jimba explained to Ernie, “Wuyaindjimadjinji’s group has spotted coloured lights in the sky. They think the giant koalas are preparing to return.”

When Jumjum’s group arrived at the spot the two hunters had departed from, the eight spacecraft had already landed. Probably for reasons of concealment, the alien craft landed at the bottom of a vast dirt basin.
While the alien craft sat in the basin, hundreds of Aboriginal warriors crouched down at the top of the basin watching. They hid themselves behind the rim of the basin, or behind large boulders or desert oak, desert kurrajong, or old man salt bush trees that grew around the top of the basin.
Initially the Aborigines had the advantage. They waited until the yellow or brown bear-like aliens had disembarked from their craft, then stood, loaded spears into their woomeras and launched the spears in the same action. The aliens were completely surrounded, like a wagon-train surrounded by Indians in an old western movie, and initially they were too shocked to even defend themselves against the barrage of spears and hunting boomerangs which rained down upon them from the top of the basin.
Ernie stood near a desert kurrajong tree watching in shock as spears rained down like lethal hail onto the three-metre tall yellow, red, or brown creatures.
The thrumph-thrumph-thrumph-thrumph-thrumph of hundreds of spears was almost deafening. Yet still Ernie heard the high-pitched, baby-like squealing of the bear-creatures as they were cut to pieces by the spears.
“My God, it’s inhuman!” Ernie thought. He held his hands up to his ears in a bid to block out the death squeals of the aliens.
“It’s the only way!” Ernie told himself. Recalling the gutted carcases of Budjiwa, Mutapina, Judawali and the others in the freezer room of the spacecraft, he thought, “They’re monsters! Man-eaters! What else can we do?” But hearing the baby-like squealing he found it hard to think of the bear aliens as inhuman monsters.
“Maybe if we had attempted to communicate with them?” he thought. “Maybe they were unaware the human species is an intelligent life form? After all we slaughter cattle, sheep, goats, kangaroos to feed upon because they’re lower life forms. What if our astronauts went to another planet where the highest life form were intelligent, reasoning creatures that looked just like Earth cows? What would those creatures think if they wandered into one of our spacecraft and found the slaughtered, disembowelled carcases of their own kind? Wouldn’t they assume that we were insensitive, vicious monsters?” However, it was too late for Ernie to pass his thoughts to Mayuldjumbajum or Wuyaindjimadjinji, or any of the other Elders. “There’s no way they’d listen to me! Even if it weren’t already too late to attempt to communicate with the aliens!”
Over one hundred of the giant bear-like creatures had fallen beneath the rain of spears, before they returned to their senses and raced back toward their spacecraft.
Until then Ernie had only seen the aliens moving like bipeds. He was shocked to see them drop to all fours and lope bear-like back toward the eight flashing fluorescent spacecraft.
“Well, that’s that,” said Ernie, thinking that the aliens were making a run for it. Obviously thinking the same, a number of young bucks stormed down the sloping sides of the basin and reached the bottom before the tribal Elders could call them back to safety.
In moments the bear aliens returned. They now carried large barrel-shaped tubes, which they aligned upon their shoulders to aim and fire like bazookas.
As the young warriors charged across the open base of the basin, the aliens slowly advanced half a dozen or so paces away from their craft. They knelt upon one knee, and fired the tubes, which shot shining balls of light, like psychedelic ball-lightning, which rocketed out toward the young bucks who stopped in mid step.
Too terrified to either advance or retreat, the young warriors stood still, petrified, staring toward the oncoming balls of light which literally ripped them apart, disembowelling them or even cutting them into two.
“My God, what hope have we got against weapons like that?” wondered Ernie. And for a while it looked as though the tables had been well and truly turned on them, as the aliens cut down their young warriors virtually unchecked.
Although high on top of the basin, Ernie instinctively ducked as a bear alien aimed its weapon in his direction. A pale blue-coloured ball of light lanced out and exploded, literally atomising two young warriors. The two men exploded into red and yellow-white particles no larger than dust, which sprayed outwards blown by a hot desert wind to coat the brown dirt and other warriors standing in the basin.
“My God they were pureed! Pureed into something like slick, pink cheese paste!” thought Ernie. He had to fight the urge to throw up.
Another bear alien fired its weapon as Ernie watched the slaughter. This time it launched a pale pink ball of light. The pink ball-lightning hit a tall warrior mid stomach. The young warrior screamed once. Then his whole body glowed an unnatural pinkish, before simply vanishing.
A third alien fired and a pale azure ball of light shot out toward a young warrior. Hitting the warrior the ball sliced through him like a laser-torch dissecting the man from head to groin.
A fourth bear alien fired and a bright orange ball of light hit a young warrior who screamed and burst into flames.
“Oh, my God!” cried Ernie. He watched in shock as the screaming warrior burnt to grey ashes in only seconds.
For a second or two the grey ash hovered man-shaped, before collapsing into a shapeless pile on the floor of the dirt basin.
“Jesus, it’s ghastly!” thought Ernie as other bear aliens fired grey, yellow, red, or blue balls of light. Each coloured ball reeking a different form of havoc upon the young warriors. “Colour-coded annihilation! What hope have we got against this kind of technology?”
Then the greater body of warriors, collected around the top of the dirt basin, began to launch spears and boomerangs at a faster rate than ever before. For a while the Aborigines had stopped, partially frozen to the spot at the sight of the ball-lightning launchers, and partially from the fear of killing their own young bucks. But in only seconds the young warriors at the bottom of the basin had all been slaughtered by the aliens, so there was nothing to make the Aborigines hold their fire any longer.
Although the Aborigines were at a great disadvantage, only having spears and other primitive weapons to combat the highly advanced weapons of the bear-like aliens, they had at least three distinct advantages over the aliens. Firstly, it was much easier for them to fire their weapons down into the basin, than it was for the aliens to fire up at them. Secondly, after firing their spears, the Aborigines were able to duck down under the dirt ridge, or behind trees or boulders to reload their spear-launchers, while the aliens could only kneel or stand vulnerably out in the open while they fired their ball-lightning launchers. Thirdly, if there really is a God, Mamaragan, Jesus, or whoever, he must have been smiling down on the Aborigines that day, because of what happened to ultimately allow the Aborigines to defeat the bear-creatures.
Crouching behind the desert kurrajong, Ernie watched the ongoing slaughter for what seemed like hours. Although he carried a spear and hunting boomerang, Ernie had been too shocked to join in the battle. Instead he stayed at the top of the rim with Wuyaindjimadjinji and one or two of the Elders while every one else had raced down to join in or fall victim to the ongoing massacre.
Seeing young Jimba down in the battle zone, Ernie thought, “For God’s sake, watch out!” And almost as soon as he thought it he saw a bear alien crouching on one knee behind the young warrior aiming his ball-lightning launcher.
“Jimba, watch out!” shouted Ernie. But his voice was drowned out by the sound of the battle below and by the crash of thunder brewing overhead not far away.
“That’s all we bloody need; a downpour!” said Ernie. He leapt to his feet to launch his spear down into the basin in the hope of hitting the bear-creature before it could kill Jimba.
The spear flew well wide of the mark. More by chance than design it hit a bear alien a few metres ahead of Jimba.
Clearly startled as the spear flew past him, the young warrior span around as the bear alien fired the launcher to send a ball of coloured death streaking toward the teenager. Not bothering to side-step -- obviously thinking he has no chance of survival -- Jimba launched his great hunting boomerang.
As a storm cloud passed overhead blocking out the sun, the bear-creature fired.
And nothing happened.
“It’s misfired!” thought Ernie as Jimba’s boomerang struck the alien, cleaving its head in.
It was only when a second fire-ball launcher misfired and Ernie saw the alien holding it trying to re-align the tube with the sun (the same way that some cameras have a light that can be lined up with the sun) that flickered through the growing storm clouds intermittently that Ernie realised, “They’re solar powered! The ball-lightning launchers are solar powered!”
At first the aliens had no major problems with the solar-tubes, because it was a bright summer’s day, with a temperature well over forty degrees Celsius (over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit). But gradually the storm clouds began to sweep across the brown-dirt basin, totally blacking out the sun.
For a while some of the solar-tubes continued to fire, obviously operating on stored charge. But then one by one they began to fail. And as the Aborigines continued to launch spears and boomerangs down into the basin, in no time at all the last of the bear-like aliens lay dead or dying upon the ground.

Brian’s reality
Inside the Aussie army headquarters, the overwhelming odours had been of sulphur and other chemicals used in the manufacture of grenades and other chemical weapons. Outside the headquarters was another matter.
“Oh, my God!” said Brian. He held his nose as he followed a crew-cut brunette sergeant, Leah Maddox, out into the trenches behind the HQ. “It smells like someone has nuked the local sewerage farm.”
The sergeant grimaced and said, “It always smells like this. It’s hard to prepare proper facilities for so many women and men while a war is going on. Originally we used to ship away sewage for processing and purification. But now all we have time to do is bury it.”
“Bury it where?” asked Brian. His feet squelching in the thick morass underfoot, he looked suspiciously at the brown sludge oozing from the side walls of the metre and a half deep trenches.
Leah laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s not likely to seep into the trenches ... around here anyway. It’s over there.” She waved a hand toward the east, in the general direction that they were heading. “The closest pits are more than a kilometre from HQ.”
“Are you sure?” asked Brian, holding his nose again. Still suspicious of the brown sludge walls of the trench, he asked, “I don’t suppose you have any gas-masks handy?”
“Yes, there’s one in your pack,” she said, indicating the rucksack that he wore. “But I doubt if it’ll do you much good against this. They’re really designed for chemical gases. Your best bet is to take small breaths and wait till you get used to it.
Leah started down the trench, crouching so her head would not be above the top of the trench, with Brian following close behind. Hearing Brian gagging she joked, “Don’t worry, you get used to the pong after a year or two.”
“Thanks, that’s very reassuring.” Brian followed her example of crouching to keep his head below the top of the trench.
They walked through the muddy trenches for what seemed like kilometres. At first they continued to head east, toward the sewerage pits, until the smell was almost unbearable. “Oh, my God!” thought Brian, almost wrenching. He was tempted to put on his gas-mask, despite the brunette’s assurance that it would do no good. However, since starting down the trench, the sergeant had not stopped once to look back to see if he was still following her. And Brian was afraid of losing her in the few seconds that it would take to remove his rucksack and rummage through it for the mask. So he attempted to follow her advice and take as small breaths as possible.
After what seemed like an hour or longer, they suddenly turned a corner and took a right-angle away from the sewerage pits. At first this made little impact on the pervasive effluence smell. But after awhile as they approached the battle zone itself, the smell of sewerage gave way to the smell of gunpowder, sulphur and other aromas that Brian thought were more appropriate to a chemistry lab than a battle zone.
Overhead missiles and bombs whizzed regularly, lighting up the sky in bright bursts of yellow, silver, or red as they exploded. From time to time one side or the other would light up the night as bright as day with phosphorescent Very flares.
“We must be getting close to the battle now?” said Brian. He received no answer from the crew-cut brunette, however, the sound of machine-gun fire not far ahead was all the answer that he needed.
Lost in his own thoughts, Brian almost crashed into the back of the young sergeant as she suddenly stopped.
“What is it?” he asked, thinking she had stopped because they were near the battle. Looking past her, he saw what he took to be a large sack lying in the trench ahead of Leah Maddox. But then, as the acrid stench of gangrene hit his nostrils, Brian realised that it was a corpse. Turning away he fought down the bile that tried to rise in his throat.
“Can you give me a hand?” asked Leah.
Looking back reluctantly, Brian saw her struggling out of her rucksack. trying not to look at the rotting corpse, Brian helped Leah to remove the kit from her back.
The brunette removed a thin plastic square, which quickly expanded in the open air until it had grown into a black, plastic body bag. Still loath to look at the decaying corpse -- holding his breath for fear of throwing up in front of the brunette -- Brian helped her place the corpse into the body bag and zip it up.
“Do we have to take it with us?” asked Brian. He wondered how they were supposed to struggle through the trenches, crouching to cover their heads, while dragging along the corpse.
“No. We’ll leave it here to be collected tomorrow. There’s a two hour cease-fire every second day from ten AM till noon, so both sides can collect their dead. The main thing is to get it into an air-tight bag to keep down the spread of disease in the trenches.”
After bagging the corpse they continued along through the trench. Every few minutes they had to stop to place another corpse into a black body bag from first the young sergeant’s rucksack, then later Brian’s. Until all the body bags were used up and they had to leave any more bodies to rot where they found them.
“Not far now,” said Leah. She risked being shot to stick her head over the top of the trench and look out over the battle zone.
“Oh God don’t get shot!” thought Brian. “Lord alone knows how I’d find my way back to headquarters alone!”
To his relief, as a yellow flare lit up the night sky, the brunette pulled her head down again. “Come on,” said Leah taking a turn to the left, “this way.”
“How much ...?” Brian started to say. Then he realised Leah had stopped again. “What’s up?”
“We’re here.”
“Here? Where?” Looking about Brian could see no discernible difference between the patch of sodden brown mud-walled trench they had stopped at and the seemingly kilometres of sodden, brown-walled trench behind them.
“Checkpoint KY-17,” Leah explained. She pointed to a small wooden plaque stuck into the mud with the letters KY-17 in black on a white background. “This will be your observation point over the next few days.”
“And how am I supposed to observe?” asked Brian. Although he already suspected what the answer would be.
“Why you stick your head up above the top of the trench and look out.” Taking a small pair of binoculars -- barely larger than opera glasses -- from her rucksack, the brunette handed them to Brian. “That should help you a little.”
“But isn’t it dangerous sticking your head above the trench?”
“To an extent. But it’s not so bad at night. We’re still nearly a kilometre from the main fighting at this checkpoint.”
“Really?” asked Brian, amazed. “We seemed to travel for kilometres.”
“It might have seemed like it. But the trenches are full of twists and turns. Actually we haven’t come that far at all.”
As she spoke the sky was lit up as three missiles zoomed overhead. Leah and Brian both ducked below the rim of the trench.
“That’s one thing you have to remember though,” the crew-cut brunette said, “always duck down whenever a missile goes overhead or a flare is fired. That’s the one time you are in real danger of being shot out here. Otherwise it’s relatively safe on night duty.”
“And what exactly am I supposed to watch for?” He hoped the question did not make him sound too stupid.
“Yankee soldiers. You’ve seen their black uniforms?” Brian nodded. “Even at night they’re distinctively different from ours.”
“And what am I supposed to do if I do see any Yanks?”
“If they’re far off, nothing. Just try to keep some kind of mental record of how many you’ve seen. If they get within a hundred metres of this trench you have to either stop them with that --” she pointed to the Uzi Brian carried slung over his left shoulder -- “or if there are too many of them, notify HQ.”
“How?” asked Brian. He had noted when they had first put the corpses into body bags that neither of their rucksacks contained any form of communications device.
“Normally you’d have a transmitter with you. But at the moment we’re short on supplies. So if you need to contact HQ, you’ll have to contact checkpoint KY-19. It’s down that trench --” she pointed to a trench heading north -- “about half a Kay.”
“And how long is my watch here?”
“Ten hours,” she replied. Hearing him groan, she said, “Yes, I’m sorry. Normally it’s five or six hours. But we’ve sustained heavy casualties lately.”
“And how do I know when my watch is over?”
“When your replacement arrives. Then just make your way back down the trench to HQ.”
“How?” As he asked, Brian looked back the way they had come, thinking, Down that endless labyrinth?
“Don’t worry, as I said there are a lot of twists and turns along the way, but we’re not really that far from headquarters.” Leah pointed back behind them.
Using the opera-glasses Brian looked back and was astonished to see the mud-covered structure could be seen only a kilometre or so away. “I could have sworn we’d gone eight or ten Kays?” he thought.
Brian started to ask another question, but stopped in surprise as the flesh on his face and hands began to tingle, then burn as though covered in pinprick sized drops of acid. Looking round he saw what looked like a thick, greyish fog rolling into the trench from the battlefield.
“Gas!” shouted Leah Maddox as she reached for the gas mask in her rucksack on her back.
The pinprick stings began to feel like tiny drill points boring deep into his flesh. “Nerve gas!” thought Brian struggling out of his own rucksack. He hurriedly put on his gas mask and rubber gloves from his pack, only hoping that the gas could not penetrate the fabric of his uniform.
After a moment or two the drill points softened to no more than bee stings. Looking round Brian saw Leah lying face down in the muddy trench.
“Oh, my God, she’s been shot!” Brian thought at first. But as he ran over to help her, he saw that she had got caught in the straps of her rucksack. Unable to remove the rucksack, she had been unable to get the gas mask and rubber gloves before passing out from the agony of the nerve gas.
Tearing the vinyl straps Brian pulled the rucksack from the brunette’s shoulders and quickly dug out her gas mask and rubber gloves and put them on her. As he placed on the first of the gloves, the young sergeant began to convulse. Her chest heaved up and down, her arms and legs kicked and spasmed as though in a grand mal seizure.
“Oh, my God, what am I supposed to do!” wondered Brian, doing his best to hold her down, unsure if it was even the right thing to do. “You’re supposed to stop them from swallowing their tongue!” he thought. But he realised that there was no way to do that without removing the gas mask. “Which would only make matters worse!”
So reluctantly he stood back and waited for the seizure to wear itself out.

For nearly ten minutes Leah kicked and bucked about in the wet mud before finally beginning to calm down.
“Thank God!” thought Brian moving toward her again. Hearing the brunette breathing heavily, he checked that she was conscious then helped her to a sitting position on her rucksack so she would not be sitting in the wet mud.
It was another ten minutes before the young sergeant had fully recovered. By which time most of the grey-white gas had vanished from the trench.
“I wonder if it’s safe to remove the gas mask yet?” Brian thought. Although reluctant to subject himself to what Leah Maddox had just gone through, he was beginning to feel very claustrophobic under the mask and decided to risk removing it.
The flesh on Brian’s face immediately began to prickle. However, it did not quite reach the angry bee stings, let alone the drill-bit pain of earlier. After a minute or two even the light prickling faded away.
“Safe at last!” Brian decided. After checking the crew-cut woman was all right, he turned to check the battlefield ahead of them with the binoculars ....
And saw what looked like at least a hundred black-uniformed Yanks in gas masks crouching low as they loped across the morass toward the trench.
“Holy shit!” thought Brian. “Of course, I should have realised the gas attack would be followed by a full-frontal charge.” He unslung his Uzi and fired a ten second burst toward the oncoming Yanks.
Four or five Yanks were killed in the initial fire. The others belly-dived into the soft mud, only metres from the rim of the trench.
“How ... how many are there?” asked Leah, struggling from a sit to a crouching position.
“Dozens. Possibly hundreds by the looks of things.”
“We’ll never hold them off here then,” Leah said. “I’ll try to hold them up, while you make for checkpoint KY-19.” She pointed down the trench in case he had forgotten the route.
“You want me to leave you here?” asked Brian, amazed.
“I can hardly walk, let alone run,” she pointed out.
“No way!” said Brian. Deciding that chauvinist or not, he could not leave a woman behind to die for him, he helped Leah to her feet.
“I said, leave me behind,” shouted the sergeant.
“I’m sorry,” said Brian, “you can call it sexist if you like. But where I come from men don’t leave women behind to die for them.”
Then, before she could argue the point further, Brian tossed away his rucksack, then threw the struggling brunette over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
“Put me down!” Leah Maddox shouted indignantly.
Ignoring the command, Brian fired a quick burst of machine-gun fire over the rim of the trench to keep the Yanks hesitating. Then he bent low and started down the trench toward checkpoint KY-19, trying not to slip in the mud, while attempting to hold the struggling brunette across his shoulders.

Garbarla’s reality
Garbarla stood near the top of the yellow sand dune watching his half-brother Gunbuk in the valley below. Behind Gunbuk, Liru the venomous snake-man had circled beneath the sand and now reared up like a cobra poised to strike, ready to descend upon Gunbuk-Oohlah.
“Look out!” shouted Garbarla, fearing he was giving the warning too late.
At the call Gunbuk-Oohlah, the red, spiny lizard-man, froze to the spot as though not understanding.
“Oh God, don’t tell me I’ve killed him by shouting a warning?” thought Garbarla. He still blamed himself for the death of his half-brother Gunbuk in his own reality. And he feared that he was about to kill him again in this alternative reality.
Time seemed to almost stand still as Liru continued to rear up behind Gunbuk, seemingly metre after metre into the air. Then equally slowly, like slo-mo photography in an action movie, the venomous snake-man began to descend toward the back of the unsuspecting Aboriginal warrior. In the form of a giant, diamond-headed snake, Liru descended, jaws gaping, lethal fangs projecting outwards like spears. Ready to lance through Gunbuk’s body to fill his system full of deadly venom.
“Oh God, no!” cried Joseph Garbarla. Uncertain whether it was a cry to the Christian god that his white father, SEC linesman Edward Hunt had prayed to, or to Mamaragan the creator-destroyer of his Aboriginal mother Debbie Bulilka’s religion. “But Mamaragan is sleeping!” thought Garbarla, deciding he would have to pray to his father’s god if he wanted any help from the gods to save his half-brother.
“Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” began Garbarla. He desperately tried to get through the pray before the venomous snake-man’s poisonous fangs descended onto Gunbuk-Oohlah from behind.
“Run, dammit, run!” shouted Garbarla after finishing the Lord’s Pray. However, for agonising seconds it seemed as though Gunbuk either could not hear, or did not understand the warning. “Move, dammit, move!” thought, begged, prayed Garbarla.
Yet it seemed as though Gunbuk was doomed to fall beneath the fangs of the venomous snake-man.
“Run, Gunbuk, run!” shouted Garbarla starting down the sloping side of the yellow sand dune. He was half way down when he tripped over his own feet in his anxiety and rolled screaming in shock the rest of the way.
Sitting up spluttering, spitting sand from his mouth at the bottom of the dune, Garbarla expected to see Gunbuk fall beneath the spear-like fangs of Liru.
Instead he saw his half-brother metamorphose in the blink of an eye into his alter-ego, Oohlah the red, spiny lizard-man.
Oohlah held his ground until the venomous fangs had descended to within centimetres of his head -- still giving no sign that he was aware of the danger approaching.
Then at the very last fraction of a second, he darted lizard-like to one side effortlessly side-stepping Liru. And the venomous snake-man landed headfirst, jaws spread wide into the hot, yellow desert sand.
The venomous snake-man coughed and spluttered trying to clear his mouth and nasal passages of burning sand.
As the snake-man gagged on the sand, Oohlah spun round and launched one of the two spears that he held.
In the nick of time Liru ducked, avoiding a lethal blow. However, the spear still connected with his scaly, reptilian back. Although not deep, the wound gushed blood and Liru shrieked a loud, half-human half-snake hissing yell of rage and pain.
“You’ve done it, Gunbuk, you’ve done it,” said Garbarla in delight. But this time under his breath, afraid of shouting again in case he distracted his half-brother again.
“You’ve done it,” said Garbarla. This time a little louder than before, convinced that Liru was dead or badly wounded as the venomous snake-man lay docile half buried in the yellow sand which was rapidly being colourised by his blood.
Garbarla started across the sand toward his half-brother to congratulate him ....
Then Liru metamorphosed back to his human form. And the spear instantly fell out of the snake-man’s back allowing blood to gush more freely.
Where the blood fell onto it, the yellow sand transformed into red sand as though drawing the colour from the snake-man’s blood. “Just like in the stories!” thought Garbarla. He knew that blood of wounded man-animals often changed yellow sand or ochre to red in Dream-Time legends.
Then, to Garbarla’s amazement, the great wound in Liru’s flank quickly began to close up, healing at the speed of fast-motion photography. The red blood stopped flowing -- leaving a large patch of red sand conspicuously amongst the great plains of yellow sand. And Liru the venomous snake-man turned back to battle with Gunbuk-Oohlah again.
“Damn!” cursed Garbarla. He quickly retreated part way back up the sloping side of the sand dune, afraid of distracting Gunbuk.
Standing halfway up the great yellow sand mountain, Garbarla watched, entranced as the red, spiny lizard -- which he knew was Gunbuk as his alter-ego Oohlah -- pranced upon its back feet. It held its one remaining spear in one hand, a large hunting boomerang in the other as it circled Liru the venomous snake-man, now in human form.
Liru darted forward, and for a moment transformed into his alter-ego of the giant diamond-headed serpent. Then after a second he transformed back into his human form -- as though recalling the near fatal blow which he had received moments earlier and had decided it might be safer to do battle in human form. Although considering the red, blue, green, orange, purple, yellow scales that covered Liru’s body even in man shape, Garbarla thought, “Only just in human form!”
The red, spiny lizard nimbly danced to one side as Liru charged forward ... and for a second transformed back to Gunbuk.
Then in a blink of an eye, Liru and Gunbuk both transformed back into their animal forms.
As they fought Gunbuk and Liru constantly flowed back and forth between their human and animal personas.
Even in human form Liru’s body seemed to coil snake-like as he struck at Gunbuk-Oohlah with either venom from his fangs, or the knife he carried in human form.
Even in human form Gunbuk moved with the grace and agility of a lizard. Whether dancing back out of the way of Liru’s spears or fangs, or when moving forward to launch his own attacks upon the venomous snake-man.

Ernie’s reality
Slowly Ernie and the surviving Aborigines crept down the brown dirt sides of the great basin and approached the spacecraft, half expecting to be ambushed by aliens waiting inside the craft.
“Take a care,” warned Ernie not believing for a second that they had really defeated the bear-like aliens with mere spears and boomerangs.
They cautiously approached the aerocraft-shaped spaceships, whose luminous plastic-like hulls flashed with pulses of light, which continuously changed through the colours of the spectrum.
“There could be more inside,” Ernie warned as they neared the large-stepped staircase that folded down to the ground from the belly of the craft.
However, the first six spacecraft were completely empty, and the seventh and eighth both took off before the Aborigines could approach within twenty metres of them. Ernie and Jimba had already explained to the warriors and Elders how the spacecraft were launched automatically. So the Aborigines were all careful to avoid the seats in the cockpits.
After cautiously searching the six spacecraft, they prepared their dead warriors for burial. In the traditional Aboriginal burial a relative or close friend blows a mouthful of smoke into the nostrils and eyes of the dead man (or woman) to prevent the spirit from returning to haunt his relatives. Smoke in the eyes causes tears so that the spirit cannot see to find his way back; in the nostrils it stops the spirit from scenting them. Paperbark plugs are then crammed into both ears to prevent the spirit from hearing them. All Aborigines fear that the spirits (or shades) of the dead can return to torment them.
Ernie watched the burial routine which was performed over three days, a full kilometre from the spacecraft. “Not good to bury at a battle zone,” young Jimba explained. “Dead may rise up and think battle is still going on and keep performing it forever. Or go looking for more enemies and slaughter the living.”
Although tempted to laugh off the idea as foolish Aboriginal superstition, Ernie recalled legends of traditional battles supposedly being re-enacted by the ghosts of the original combatants. Ghostly replays of famous battles have been reported around the world: including the English Civil War at Edgehill in 1642; the Greek and Persian battle of Marathon 490 BC; Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo June 1815, the Allied raid on Dieppe August 1942 and so on. So Ernie shrugged and thought, “Who am I to scoff at Dream-Time beliefs?”
After they had buried their dead, including twenty-three young bucks whose eviscerated corpses were found hanging in the freezer rooms of the six spacecraft, they prepared to depart.
“What now?” Ernie asked Wuyaindjimadjinji and Mayuldjumbajum as they prepared to leave the burial site.
“Return to the giant koalas’s flying machines,” explained Jumjum.
“The spacecraft? But why?” asked Ernie as they started across the brown dirt plains once more.
“Got to prepare their dead too,” said Wuyaindjimadjinji.
“Prepare their dead?” thought Ernie, thinking the old man meant they were going to bury the dozens of yellow, red, or brown-furred alien corpses that still lined the battlefield around and beneath the six spaceships.
Instead, to Ernie’s horror, the Aborigines took out their knives and began to skin the bear-like aliens.
“Oh, my God!” said Ernie starting forward to attempt to stop them.
“No,” cried Jimba, placing a hand on Ernie’s shoulder to restrain him. “Must take furs to show other tribes all around Australia. Got to show the giant koalas are not unbeatable after all.”
Ernie felt sick to the stomach as he watched the skinning of the bear aliens. Despite their appearance the bears were obviously more than mere animals. “They’re far superior creatures to us,” Ernie thought, “no one on Earth could build spacecraft like these.” His instincts told him to try to stop the desecration of the alien corpses, but in his heart he knew that there was no other choice. Despite the army of two-thousand-plus warriors that they had managed to gather to fight the aliens, many more Aboriginal tribes had refused to take part in the hunting parties. Some tribes’s Elders had insisted the “giant koalas” were some kind of messengers from the gods. And as such they were invincible and any attempt to fight them off would only anger the gods and bring down the wrath of the gods upon the Aboriginal population of Australia. Some had even suggested they try to communicate with the bear aliens and offer to allow them to regularly cull the Aborigines of Australia, if they would promise to kill only a small number each year, leaving the majority in peace.
“We’ve won this one battle, but maybe the war is yet to come,” Ernie thought. “Who knows how many more spaceships they have?” With more than an eighth of their army of warriors dead, Ernie realised they had to recruit more warriors from other tribes. “And that means taking round the furs of the bear aliens to show the other tribes that the aliens are not invincible,” he reluctantly admitted to himself.

When the last of the “bears” had been skinned, the Aborigines set out on a cross-country trek to take the furs to recruit more warriors. When they met up with the other Aboriginal tribes, their Elders were always at first sceptical of their tale of having defeated Mamaragan’s giant koalas. But they could not deny the evidence of the giant furs, and this gave them the courage necessary to conquer their earlier fears. As a consequence thousands more warriors joined the brigades searching for more alien landing parties.
Over the next three or four months, nearly a thousand of the bear aliens were killed and skinned. Their luminous spacecraft left abandoned across the deserts of central Victoria and later right across mainland Australia.
Eventually, after many battles, the sightings of the varicoloured spacecraft became less and less frequent, until finally they tapered out altogether.
And so the Aborigines have now lost the legend of the Great Rainbow Snake. But then the “Rainbow Serpent had only been worshipped by certain tribes anyway. Other Aborigines worship Gurugadji, the Emu-man, others still the bunyip. Although those two are, hopefully, more fictional than the Great Rainbow Snake had been.

A couple of months later the Aborigines were sitting around upon the hard ground, in a huge circle before the ceremonial fire, in a special corroboree to determine what to do about the fluorescent Rainbow-spacecraft which were still dotted throughout the sandy deserts of the Victoria.
Surprisingly it was the grey-haired old patriarch, Mayuldjumbajum (or Jumjum) who now suggested that the Aborigines turn the matter over to the white authorities.
“But before you say they call us stupid boong and not believe us,” pointed out young Jimba.
“Before the Aborigines got no proof, white man only believe him own eyes,” pointed out Jumjum, “now the Aborigines got proof of shining scales and giant koala skins!”
So it was decided that a delegation should be sent to the white authorities to allow them to take care of the spacecraft. The delegation was made up of four village Elders, two young bucks, and Ernie. They trekked more than three hundred kilometres to the capital of Melbourne, to talk to Defence Department officials.
Initially the Aborigines were given the run-around, but after the Aborigines produced one of the giant furs, they sent a small party of technicians to check out their claims.
They took them to a site where seven spacecraft stood. The technicians were unprepared to take authority themselves and telephoned to Melbourne for orders.
Eventually a whole battalion of Army Reserves was sent out to guard the spacecraft, while a collection of scientists from the CSIRO did their level best to explain away the craft. At first it seemed as though the government had the idea that the spacecraft were really some kind of super secret U.S. Stealth Reconnaissance jets. So, to prevent themselves from being charged with the murder of American pilots, the Aborigines showed them the giant furs which they quickly confiscated.
Eventually the spacecraft were laboriously dismantled, and the parts were taken away to be studied in secret by the Australian government. (Since it was decided that it was in the best interests of the public as a whole, not to be terrified by the knowledge of the aliens.)
As for the Aborigines, their only thanks for possibly saving the whole nation from enslavement, or worse, by the aliens, was to be warned to keep their mouths shut in their own best interests. They did not actually say that no one would take the word of some coons against the word of the Australian government, but that was the impression that their warnings left Ernie and the Aborigines with.

“Well, it doesn’t look as though we’re going to have any more trouble from the bear aliens,” said Ernie one night. He, Jimba, Gunbuk and twenty or more men, women, and children sat around the cookfire, which was being prepared for the return of the hunters with that night’s meat.”
“No,” agreed Jimba. It was nearly a month since the last sighting of any of the spaceships. And on the last three sightings no battle had been necessary, since the aliens had quickly taken off again at the first sight of the spear-and-boomerang carrying warriors.
“So what do we do now?” wondered Ernie. For the first time he really understood how his friend Joseph Garbarla had felt as a half-breed Aborigine raised among whites, then returning to his native village as an adult. On a number of occasions he had listened while Garbarla complained about being an outsider: unable to fit into either the white society of his grandmother, Bettina Hunt, or the black society of the village. Although he had always sympathised, Ernie had never really understood what Garbarla had meant. “Now I know how you feel,” thought Ernie. Stuck in 1962 in this reality, Ernie could not fit into white society when he belonged to 1986. And though he always enjoyed a few days’ visit to the Aboriginal settlement, raised as a sheep farmer he could not imagine spending the rest of his life living in the Aboriginal village.
“Hunters late,” said an enormous, grey-haired lubra, Suzie Wanjimari, tending the cookfire.
Woken from his reverie, Ernie looked across at grey-haired Suzie for a moment. Then looking down at his wristwatch he saw that it was nearly 7:30 PM. “Yes, it looks like we’ll have to settle for cold leftovers tonight,” he said.
Like the others he was well used to the fact that the hunters could not always bring back meat. But after one successful hunt there was always enough cold meat left over to supplement the yams, edible tree roots and the Witchetty grubs that the women dug up, for at least a day or two. The last three nights running the hunters had been successful, catching no less than four wallabies and two grey kangaroos. So even if they failed tonight the tribe was not short of cold meat. “Still what does it matter?” Ernie thought. “The food is all tasteless in this parallel world. At least to Jimba and me. Possibly because this world and the food in it isn’t real to us?” He had considered trying to question the Aborigines to see if they could taste the food, or if the lack of taste was a feature of food in this reality. However, there was no easy way to broach the subject since they had not told the Aborigines where they had come from. “They simply accept us as belonging to this reality,” Ernie thought, wondering if they had equivalents in this reality. “And if so, where did they go to when we appeared here?”
Hearing Suzie Wanjimari speaking, Ernie looked round to find out if she was talking to him.
“Runners coming,” said the lubra with a wide, toothy grin.
“Coming fast, too,” said young Jimba. And in less than ten minutes the four running men reached the campfire.
“Bunyip after you?” joked Suzie. Her laughter turned to a squeal of protest as the hunters dumped the carcase of a nail-tail kangaroo onto the fire, splashing hot ashes everywhere.
“Hey, watch out!” protested the old woman. However, the four young men had already started off through the small village toward old Jumjum’s three-room corrugated-iron hut.
“What now?” said Ernie to no one in particular. “They can’t be back!” he thought. “It’s nearly a month since the last sighting of the spacecraft.”
Although almost dying of curiosity, Ernie forced himself to help Suzie Wanjimari prepare the large nail-tail kangaroo for cooking.
It was nearly half an hour before the young hunters returned, leading Jumjum, Weari-Wyingga and a dozen other warriors and Elders. Although some of the warriors were carrying spears or hunting boomerangs, they were not heavily weaponed. (When hunting the bear aliens each warriors had carried half a dozen or more spears.) Which made Ernie decide that whatever had caused the excitement earlier, it was not the return of the aliens.
“Something’s definitely up though!” thought Ernie, seeing the small procession heading toward the edge of the village. “Obviously they’re going bush to look at something.”
After a moment’s hesitation Ernie climbed to his feet to follow the procession. Giving young Jimba a tap on the shoulder, he said, “Come on, my instincts tell me we ought to follow.”
Without a word the young warrior climbed to his feet and followed also. As did half a dozen other young men and more than a dozen women and children.
Hearing the procession behind him, Mayuldjumbajum turned round as though to tell them to go back to the cookfire. But after a moment the old man shrugged and the procession set off into the desert.

They trekked across the brown plains for more than two kilometres before discovering the cause of the young hunters’s agitation.
“The reality leak!” said Ernie. He stared out toward where the air on the horizon shimmered like a band of hot, dry summer air. But unlike summer heat shimmer, which always occurs in the distance, this shimmer stayed put as Ernie and the procession of Aborigines trekked toward it.
“Air shimmer up close,” said Suzie Wanjimari. The grey-haired lubra tested the reality leak by tentatively prodding at it with her right hand. As her hand passed through the shimmering air, the hand seemed to vanished, as though amputated just below the wrist.
Screaming in terror, Suzie pulled back her hand and turned and ran to the back of the procession. Where she purposely studied her right hand, which had reappeared as soon as she pulled it out of the reality leak.
Debbie Bulilka and two other women also studied the hand, all wide-eyed with terror.
At the front of the procession old Weari-Wyingga repeated Suzie Wanjimari’s experiment. After a moment the tall, deathly-thin Elder astutely announced, “Gateway to the Dream-Time. Step through there and our reality gone.”
Until then the procession had been gradually edging toward the shimmering air. But at the old man’s words everyone backed away a dozen or more paces.
“Reality gone where?” asked Mayuldjumbajum.
“Just gone,” insisted Weari-Wyingga. “Dream-Time legend tells us there no such thing as absolute truth. Only layers of truth stacked side by side like many different places, many different worlds. Shimmering air is gateway leading to these other worlds.”
At his words the entire procession backed well away from the reality leak. Everyone except Jimba and Ernie.
Jimba looked at Ernie and grinned widely. “He thought we’d never get out of this reality too!” realised Ernie. Aloud he said, “I guess this is where we have to leave.”
Without hesitation Ernie and Jimba strode forward and stepped straight through the reality leak.
“We go too?” Gunbuk asked Jumjum. But before the Elder could answer, the shimmering air blinked yellowish twice, like a flickered fluorescent light, then the reality leak vanished.

Brian’s reality
Despite the protests of Leah Maddox, as the Yanks crept toward the wet, slimy trench, Brian threw the crew-cut brunette over his shoulder and started down the muddy trench at a run. Or as close to a run as he could manage while crouching to keep his head and the young woman over his shoulders below the rim of the trench for fear of being shot.
“Put me down! Put me down, you idiot!” shouted Leah. However, Brian ignored the sergeant’s pleas as he ran.
“Surely people can’t be so callous in this reality that they’d leave a young woman, barely more than a girl behind to get gunned down by enemy soldiers?” Brian thought. But then he realised they probably were. Despite his fondness (love?) for Adele Gibson, Brian realised he would have trouble adjusting to living in this reality if he had to spend the rest of his life there. “The people have no warmth or compassion here! They’re all cold, calculating robots.”
Running down the muddy trench, Brian tried to listen for footsteps behind him. At first all he heard was the plop plop plop of his own feet in the mud. “Looks like we’ve eluded them?” he thought, only wishing he could see his way better. Even Leah had stopped her complaining. Either realising how easily sound travelled in the trenches, aware the Yanks could quickly hone in on her voice. Or else overcome again by her seizure from earlier. “But that was only caused by the nerve gas!” Brian thought. Then he wondered whether the young brunette had some other reason for the seizure. “Which might explain why she was so keen to stay behind while I went for help. Even in 2021 the army isn’t likely to have signed her up if they knew she was asthmatic, or whatever.”
Brian had been half running, half sliding down the muddy trench for more than five minutes when he heard what he thought were footsteps in the trench behind them. “Come on you guys!” he heard a voice behind him say in a strong southern-fried accent, belying the unknown soldier’s status as one of the Yanks.
“My God, they’re coming!” Brian thought. And a tramp of feet behind him left no doubt that the Yanks were after them. “Hold tight,” he said to Leah Maddox, uncertain if the young sergeant was even conscious.
Brian did his best to concentrate on the trench ahead, not on the sound of running feet behind him for fear of slipping in the treacherous mud. But after a moment he thought, “They’re catching up! My God the Yanks are catching up!” And there could be no real doubt that the sloshing footsteps behind him were rapidly making ground on them.
“To the left, to the left,” whispered Leah as they approached a T-Junction in the trench.
Turning left as instructed, for just a second Brian was lit up in bright light before starting down the new tunnel. At first he thought it was a flare going off overhead. But then as a wavering light rounded the corner behind him, Brian realised it was a torch held by one of the Yanks.
“There they are!” came the Dixie-fried accent again.
A second later there came the sound of Uzi fire. Mud and bullets flew only centimetres behind Brian and Leah.
“Don’t fall over, just don’t fall over now,” thought Brian doing his best to put on an extra burst of speed. No easy task crouching with the brunette across his shoulders, in the wet, slippery trench. “It won’t help either of us now if I fall!”
Then as the gunfire continued, he knew that they were both dead anyway if he did not increase his speed.
“Here goes nothing!” thought Brian, trying to ignore the aching in his back from the continued crouching and the strain in his shoulders from carrying Leah in the fireman’s hold for so long. Although a strong man, Brian was having trouble carrying the young woman while running in a crouching position.
“Just don’t think about anything but keeping your feet and staying out of range of the enemy fire!” he thought. And after a minute or two his fear of either slipping or being machine-gunned down allowed him to temporarily ignore the strain on his back and shoulders.
Brian ran for what seemed like an hour, trying not to think of the bullets that rained around him, sometimes hitting the sludgy walls of the trench only centimetres from his face. Finally he saw a dim light up ahead and thought, “Hopefully this is checkpoint KY-19. If it’s another Yank troop we’re both dead!”
Feeling something thumping him in the back, Brian started and almost fell flat on his face in the mud.
“Put me down! Put me down!” pleaded Leah Maddox -- the first time she had spoken in half an hour, other than to give him directions. “They mustn’t see you carrying me at the checkpoint.”
“Can you run now?” asked Brian, thinking, “I was right, you do have some ailment you’re keeping secret from the army.”
“Yes, yes, just put me down!” ordered the sergeant.
“All right,” said Brian. He stopped for a second or two to do as ordered. Then as machine-gun fire rained all around them, Leah and Brian took off toward the checkpoint again.
“Thank God!” thought Brian, relieved at the loss of the sergeant’s weight around his shoulder. And the fact that he did not have to crouch quite so low while running any longer. Although the checkpoint was only metres away now.
After a second or two a torch was shone from in front of them and a voice called out, “Who goes there? Friend or foe?”
“Friend,” called Leah. The young brunette went on to call out her name, rank and brigade as well as Brian’s. To his relief, since he had not known what his own serial number and rank were, being only a temporary, acting soldier.
“And them?” asked the soldier, a corporal of obviously Aboriginal extraction. He pointed down the trench toward the soldiers running now only ten metres or so behind Leah and Brian.
“Yanks!” shouted Leah. “They overran checkpoint KY-17 and chased us all the way here.” However, the last of her words were drowned out by gunfire as the corporal and two privates began firing machine-guns down the trench toward the approaching Yanks.
While the three soldiers did battle with the enemy, Leah called to Brian, “Let’s go over to the radio.” She pointed toward a small handset -- hardly more than a walkie-talkie -- by a three-legged stool at the opposite end of the six-metre by three-metre checkpoint.
“All right,” said Brian. He followed her over.
Leah sat on the small stool and Brian crouched beside her, trying not to topple and end up sitting in the mud.
The sergeant wiggled her index finger to indicate he should lean closer. Expecting to be balled out for disobeying her orders earlier, Brian was astonished when the brunette gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
Seeing his look of surprise, Leah said, “Thank you for not leaving me behind. I didn’t really want to die back there.”
“That’s all right,” said Brian. “I thought you’d report me for disobeying an order.”
“I could, but don’t worry I won’t,” said Leah with a laugh. She looked past him to the three Aussie soldiers still locked in battle with the Yanks, who were lying in the mud ten metres from the checkpoint.
“Sooner them than me!” thought Brian.
“I also want to ask you not to tell anyone about my seizure back there,” said Leah, confirming Brian’s suspicions that she had kept something secret from the army.
“Sure, all right.”
“I suffer from hereditary epilepsy. But I didn’t bother to mention that when enlisting.”
“Why not?”
“I wanted to join up ever since I was a child. All my siblings had enlisted, most of them have since been killed in the war. So I wanted to do my bit too. But if the army knew about my complaint I’d be drummed out.”
“How come they didn’t pick it up during your army medical?” asked Brian.
“Army medical?” asked Leah with a snort of derision. “In war time ‘army medical’ is almost a contradiction in terms. In peace time the medical probably would have picked up my complaint. But in war time they’re a lot less thorough. Basically if you’ve got two of everything you should have, you’re passed as A-1.”
Picking up the walkie-talkie Leah began fiddling with the controls, trying to get through to headquarters. At first she could only raise static. But after awhile a faint voice came over the speaker. Brian was not certain, but he thought it was the voice of Colonel Gail Dobey.
“This is Sergeant Maddox,” Leah explained into the radio. She turned to give Brian a wry look, obviously unsure if she was even being received at the other end. “We are under attack by a Yankee charge.” She went on to tell about the nerve gas attack at checkpoint KY-17 and that she and Brian had been chased by Yanks to checkpoint KY-19.”
After a few minutes there was a near ear-shattering whistle from the radio then the static settled down and Leah found herself now talking to General Renato Demos.
“General,” said Leah as a mark of respect. She went on to repeat most of what she had already related.
“Yes, we know,” said Demos over the radio. “There’s been a major push by the Yanks. Checkpoints KY-15, -16, -17, -18, -20, and -23 are all in the control of the Yanks. At least temporarily.”
Brian gave a low whistle and received a nod of agreement from Leah.
“What do you want us to do, General?” Leah asked into the radio.
“Can you hold onto checkpoint KY-19?” asked the general.
“Hold on, sir,” said Leah. Turning to Brian she asked, “Can you see how things are going?”
He started to go to check, but she grabbed his right wrist to stop him. “But be careful, keep your head down,” she advised, letting him go.
Wishing he had a raincoat to keep out the damp, Brian crawled over to the other side of the checkpoint.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Not so well,” said the young Aboriginal corporal, whose uniform identified him as John Mardi.
“We can’t hold them much longer,” said a near-bald middle-aged sergeant, who Brian realised for the first time was a woman. Her uniform identified her as Deanna Hennequin.
Craning his head to look over them, wary of being hit by a Yanks bullet, Brian surveyed the scene. Half-a-dozen or more Yanks lay dead in the trench leading to the checkpoint. However, the machine-gun fire continued and from what he could see, Brian guesstimated another dozen or more Yanks were backed up in the trench waiting for the chance to overrun them.
Ducking down, Brian started to crawl out of the line of fire and collided with a young private who looked no more than sixteen or seventeen.
“Sorry,” apologised Brian.
“That’s all ...” began the young private. He stopped in mid sentence as half of his head was blown away by Yankee machine-gun fire.
“Holy shit!” said Brian, shocked. He had been in the battle zone for a couple of weeks now and had seen many dead and dying soldiers. But this was the first time that he had seen anyone killed right in front of him.
For a moment Brian stared in shock at the shattered mess of the young private’s head. Then he stared down in nausea at his own uniform which was splattered with the teenager’s blood and brains.
“Oh Christ!” said Brian. Unable to fight down the rising bile, he turned away quickly so that he would not throw up over the young man’s corpse.

At the other end of the checkpoint Leah Maddox heard the sound of vomiting and guessed it was probably Brian. Covering the receiver of the radio with one hand, she called out, “Brian! Brian! Are you all right?”
“Yes,” he called back weakly, sounding anything but all right. After a moment he crawled across from the other end of the muddy tunnel.
“My God!” thought Leah, seeing what a mess he looked, his uniforms covered in mud and blood. For a moment she thought he had been shot. But he explained, “Private Remus just got killed.”
“Oh, my God, he was only seventeen,” said Leah feeling sick. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, fine,” said Brian, although he looked anything but fine. Then almost as an after thought, “Sergeant Hennequin says we can’t hold the checkpoint much longer.”
“All right,” said Leah. Removing her hand from the mouthpiece, she repeated the information into the radio and waited for instructions.
“No point committing suicide, if you can’t hold it,” said General Demos. “We’re short enough of troops now. Do your best to return to HQ pronto.”
“Very good, sir,” said Leah. After breaking the connection, she explained to Brian, “We’re still not that far from headquarters. Only a couple of Kays as the crow flies.” Pointing down a trench behind her, “And we have a more direct route back to base from here.”
“But ...?” began Brian, thinking, “It can’t be as easy as it sounds.
“But we’ll have to get past checkpoints KY-18 and KY-20 to get to headquarters.”
“But KY-18 and KY-20 were both taken by the Yanks, weren’t they?”
“That’s right. We’ll have to shoot our way through. Or else climb out of the trenches into No-one’s Land, to bypass the checkpoints.”
“Shoot our way through two Yankee controlled checkpoints, or climb out into No-Man’s Land!” thought Brian as Leah packed up the radio. “Some choice!”
After packing up the radio, Leah went across to tell the other two what had been decided.
“Okay, you lead the way, we’ll bring up the rear,” said Sergeant Hennequin as they set out.

After the initial panic as they abandoned checkpoint KY-19, things calmed down a little.
“Are they still following us?” asked Brian. He had not heard any gunfire in a couple of minutes.
“Only two are following,” answered Deanna Hennequin at a whisper. “The rest took control of the checkpoint.”
“Well, don’t waste your fire,” advised Leah. “If we can stay ahead of them we’re all right.”
“Until we get to KY-20,” pointed out the near-bald middle-aged brunette. “Then we’ll be caught between a rock and a hard place, with Yanks on both sides of us.”
However, the problem was solved five minutes later when they came to a T-Junction. As Leah and Corporal Mardi went down the left junction, Deanna Hennequin took Brian by an arm and pulled him toward the right junction.
“What ...?” Brian asked, being quickly hushed by the sergeant.
“Just follow me,” she ordered.
They went five or six metres down the junction, then -- to Brian’s dismay -- lay face down in the sludge trying their best to vanish from eye-level in the cold mud.
“Maybe they’ve given up following us?” thought Brian, not looking forward to having to kill the two Yanks at close range. Although he had killed a few back at checkpoint KY-17, that had not been up close and he had not had to see what his bullets had done to them. Recalling the disintegration of the face of Private Remus, Brian hoped he would not have to do that to anyone.
After lying in the sludge for nearly five minutes, Brian’s hands and toes had started to go numb from the cold, and he thought, “They’ve definitely given up!” But almost as soon as he thought it, Brian saw two black-uniformed Yankees step out into the T-Junction ahead of them.
As they started down to the left junction, Deanna Hennequin shouted, “Now!” and opened fire on the two Yanks.
The Yanks were probably both dead before Brian even lifted his Uzi. But nonetheless he fired a single long burst at the backs of the falling figures.
“Come on, don’t waste ammo,” said Deanna Hennequin climbing back to her feet.
Doing his best to ignore the numbing cold and not to look at the dead Yanks, Brian stepped over them and started down the left trench after the sergeant.

They had been running down the muddy trench for almost an hour, when Leah Maddox said to Brian, “We can’t be far from checkpoint KY-20. We’d better slow down now.”
They were almost close enough to see the soldiers at the checkpoint when the air began to go a strange grey-yellow colour.
“Oh God, not another nerve gas attack!” thought Brian, afraid Leah might have another seizure -- this time in front of Deanna Hennequin and John Mardi. However, after a few seconds the grey-yellow shimmer vanished and they could see the figures of two men standing in the trench just ahead of them.
Hearing Leah cock her Uzi, Brian did the same and prepared to fire on the two men if they turned out to be Yanks.
Crouching in the mud as the two figures approached, Brian saw that instead of machine-guns they carried what looked like long polls. “Some kind of bazookas?” he wondered.
“Get ready to fire,” Leah whispered to him.
But when the two men came into sight they were not wearing Yankee uniforms. One was a tall, black haired man with dark blue eyes dressed in jeans and a green pullover. The other was an Aborigine, wearing nothing but a loin cloth. Both men carried three-metre long, handmade spears.
“Who, or what are they?” asked Deanna Hennequin from behind Leah and Brian.
“Friends of mine,” said Brian to the astonishment of the others.
“What ...?” asked Leah.
“Ernie? Jimba?” Brian called quietly, so as not to alert the Yanks in checkpoint KY-20.
“Brian?” called back a voice that undeniably belonged to Ernie Singleton.
“Over here,” called Brian a little louder, and the two figures strode toward them.

Garbarla’s reality
Gunbuk-Oohlah, the red, spiny lizard-man and Liru the venomous snake-man circled each other warily at the bottom of the yellow sand mountain. Half way up the side of the dune Garbarla-Kunia, the non-venomous snake-man watched the two warriors doing battle.
Each of the warriors had their own special skills: Liru his ability to coil snake-like and inject lethal poison. Gunbuk-Oohlah his lizard-like agility, which allowed him to dart out of reach of danger at near impossible speed, or to lunge forward to thrust his one remaining spear at the snake-man. On occasions the snake-man left himself open for a direct throw of Gunbuk’s spear, seemingly flatfooted.
“He’s faking!” thought Garbarla. “He’s trying to feint Gunbuk into throwing his last spear, so he’ll be defenceless!”
Obviously Gunbuk thought the same thing. Despite a number of opportunities to throw the spear, the warrior held back. Although he lunged forward, attempting to stab the snake-man with the spear -- occasionally drawing blood and snakelike hisses of rage from the snake-man -- Gunbuk held firmly onto the spear, refusing to release it.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, Garbarla almost gagged at the smell of his own B.O. “How can they keep fighting in this sun?” he wondered.
Yet for what seemed like hours Gunbuk-Oohlah and Liru continued to circle each other. They continued to thrust and parry without either seeming to give ground or give any indication that they could feel the heat -- which could not have been less than 55 Degrees Celsius.
As they circled each other, Gunbuk suddenly stumbled. “Oh God, he’s going down!” thought Garbarla seeing his half-brother sprawl to the sand.
In an instant Liru snaked forward with incredible speed for a moment in human form, then with a flash of light transforming into his alter-ego: a giant diamond-headed serpent.
But as the snake coiled to spring, Gunbuk-Oohlah sprung to his feet, now holding a spear in each hand.
“That’s what he fell over, his second spear that he threw earlier!” thought Garbarla.
Liru obviously realised also what Gunbuk had fallen over. Gunbuk transformed from human form to that of the giant red, spiny lizard as Liru leapt forward.
Gunbuk danced sideways out of Liru’s reach. At the same time the venomous snake-man tried to change course.
But too late!
“Got him!” cried Garbarla in glee as Gunbuk’s spear sank deep into the stomach of Liru. “Let’s see him walk away from that.”
Unlike Garbarla, however, Gunbuk was more circumspect. Instead of celebrating victory, the red, spiny lizard-man danced away to a safe distance.
Just in time as Liru suddenly sprang to his feet again in human form. For a moment blood gushed from the stomach of the venomous snake-man, staining the yellow sand red. But once more as Liru transformed back to human form the wound in his stomach rapidly stopped bleeding and the spear fell out of his stomach.
“If he can stop a wound that severe from bleeding by changing form, what hope is there of ever killing him?” wondered Garbarla.
And soon it began to look as though Gunbuk had no hope of killing Liru. Although both warriors were well-skilled and weaponed, Liru had the advantage over Gunbuk. Although Gunbuk was a trained hunter, experienced at killing animals, Liru had had thousands of years’ experience at killing: both animals and humans!
Also Gunbuk lacked Liru’s powers of self-healing. Gunbuk had landed half a dozen spear thrusts deep into the body of the venomous snake-man. But each time Liru quickly managed to staunch the flow of blood and heal his wounds by transforming from man to snake or from snake back to man.
So far the only blows Liru had landed on Gunbuk had been glancing blows, shallow flesh wounds. But, unable to heal himself the way Liru could, Gunbuk-Oohlah soon began to flag.
“He’s losing, Gunbuk’s losing the battle!” thought Garbarla. And almost as soon as Garbarla thought it, he saw Liru lunge forward, transforming to the diamond-headed snake as he lunged.
“Look out!” shouted Garbarla.
But the warning came a second too late. Before the red, spiny lizard-man could dance aside, the venomous fangs of Liru struck and latched onto his side.
“No!” shouted Garbarla. He started to run down the side of the sand dune toward the warriors in the hope of saving his half-brother. “It can’t happen again!” thought Garbarla. “It can’t.” Two years earlier in his own reality Garbarla had been unable to save his half-brother from being eaten alive by Mamaragan. But with Gunbuk’s resurrection in this parallel reality, Garbarla had dared to hope that somehow his half-brother’s return to life could be permanent. That they could both return together to Garbarla’s reality.
But Liru clung onto Gunbuk, his great jaws biting again and again, each bite injecting more lethal venom deep into Gunbuk’s chest. And Garbarla realised that his hopes had been destroyed. “He’s dead again. Once more I couldn’t save him!” Garbarla thought, wrongly blaming himself for Gunbuk’s death as he had wrongly blamed himself back in his own reality in late 1984.
By the time that Garbarla reached the battle ground, Gunbuk was lying still on the sand, Liru’s fangs still projecting from his chest.
“Get the hell away from him!” shouted Garbarla. He threw his hunting boomerang at the venomous snake-man, but the boomerang went metres over the head of Liru.
At the shout, Liru transformed back into human form and backed away a dozen paces from Gunbuk.
“Gunbuk! Gunbuk!” shouted Garbarla in distress. Dropping to his knees in the hot sand, he lifted the head of his half-brother to cradle against his chest.
“Oh God, don’t die!” cried, pleaded Garbarla, not noticing the burning heat of the sand on his knees, or caring if Liru was sneaking up behind him.
However, the venomous snake-man did not sneak up on Garbarla. Instead he stood back, head bowed solemnly as Garbarla grieved for his dead half-brother.
For almost five minutes Garbarla cradled the head of Gunbuk while the venomous snake-man watched on. Then finally Liru stepped forward and said, “Now Liru and Kunia do battle.”
“But Kunia cannot defeat Liru!” thought Garbarla making no move to rise from the yellow sand, now largely stained red by Gunbuk’s blood.
“Now Liru and Kunia do battle!” said the venomous snake-man, more insistently than before.
“Well, I guess that’s all the mourning I’m allowed,” thought Garbarla. He slowly lowered Gunbuk’s head to the red patch of sand beneath them, then climbed to his feet.
Not knowing if Liru would try to stop him, and not really caring, Garbarla walked across to pick up his spear and hunting boomerang, that he had tossed at Liru earlier.
Then, deciding his only chance of survival was in flight, Garbarla turned and raced off into the desert.
For a moment Liru stood his ground and looked puzzled. As though he had expected Garbarla to stand and fight. Then the venomous snake-man picked up his hunting knife and also Gunbuk’s spears, before setting off into the desert at a steady pace.
“Run, you coward!” Liru shouted after the retreating form of Garbarla. “Soon Liru and Kunia do battle. Then Kunia die!”
Not bothering to try to outrun Garbarla, Liru followed his footsteps at an even pace, confident that by pacing himself he would still have his energy when the running man collapsed from fatigue.
“Then Kunia die!” thought Liru, smiling widely in a toothy, self-satisfied grin.

Brian’s reality
“How the hell did you get here?” asked Brian. He was pleased, yet also shocked to see Ernie and Jimba suddenly appear in the middle of the trench in front of them.
“Through the reality leak,” explained Ernie.
“But how did you find it?” asked Brian. “I’ve been here for weeks with no sign of a way back home.”
“I don’t know if we found it, or it found us,” said Ernie. “I’m not sure, but I think once our battle was over it appeared to take us here.”
“Your battle?” asked Brian. Looking round he saw Leah Maddox and Deanna Hennequin surveying the muddy trench ahead of them and thought, “There’s no hurry, they aren’t about to rush blindly into checkpoint KY-20 and get gunned down by the Yanks!”
“Yes, our battle,” agreed Ernie. Watching the crouching forms of the two women ahead of them in the trench, he went on to relate what had happened back in the reality.
“An alien invasion? That’s impossible!” protested the young Aboriginal corporal, John Mardi.
“Obviously not,” said Brian. Although he also had difficulty believing in bear-like aliens, he thought, “Is it any weirder than what’s going on in this reality? A war between the Aussies and the Yanks, two long-time allies?”
“You’re an Aborigine,” said Jimba, speaking for the first time since their appearance in the trenches. “You should know the Dream-Time heritage says there is no such thing as absolute reality.”
“Sure, I was told all that shit as a kid by my grandfather, Bennelong. But no one believes that Dream-Time gobbledygook around here anymore.”
“Not even Aborigines?” asked Jimba, sounding distressed at the revelation.
“Especially the Aborigines. There might be a handful of gullible white university professor-types who still swallow that claptrap. But no Aboriginal is dumb enough to fall for it anymore.”
Jimba looked distressed by the information, but said nothing more.
“Don’t worry,” said Brian, “this isn’t our reality. It’s some kind of crazy parallel world. Back home the Aborigines will never give up their Dream-Time heritage like that.”
“Well, what’s the verdict?” asked John Mardi as Leah and Deanna returned.
“Seven Yankee soldiers in the checkpoint that we can see,” said Deanna Hennequin.
“So, do we go through the checkpoint?”
“No, over the top,” said Leah.
“Out into the open?” asked John Mardi.
“Well, here’s where we all get killed, if we’re going to get killed,” thought Brian as they stood up to scramble out onto the muddy ground above the trenches.
The trenches were only neck-height to Ernie and Brian. But scrambling out turned out to be more difficult than they expected. The slimy sides of the trenches gave way repeatedly whenever they tried to form footholds.
In the end Brian and John Mardi lifted the others out into No-Man’s Land. Then they in turn were pulled up out of the trenches by Ernie and Jimba.
Out in the open they once more became conscious of the missiles and cannon fire whizzing overhead -- which they had learnt (more-or-less) to ignore while crouching in the trenches.
Also the smell of gunpowder and chemical weapons was almost overpowering.
“Now comes the tricky part,” said Leah, watching as Brian was pulled out of the trench. “We have to cross the next hundred metres fairly quickly, but remember to keep your head down. There’s not much chance of finding land mines in this sector. But there could be unexploded shells and rusty barbed wire. So just be careful.”
“Okay, let’s get going,” said Deanna Hennequin leading the way.
“So all we have to do is crawl like crazy, while avoiding barbed-wire, land mines, and unexploded shells ... in the dark!” said Brian.
“Exactly,” agreed Leah Maddox, throwing him a smile.
As though hearing their exchange, someone fired a Very light and for a few seconds the crawling soldiers were lit-up as bright as day.
“I didn’t know when I was well off!” thought Brian. Following the example of the others, he pressed himself hard into the mud, trying his best to ignore the cold and sickly sludge as he tried to make himself invisible to anyone looking in their direction.
After what seemed an eternity the flare finally died out, returning them all to darkness.
“Come on,” he heard Deanna Hennequin hiss. Brian did his best to follow her voice, despite being temporarily blinded by the sudden return to darkness.
“Don’t get lost! For God’s sake just don’t get lost out here!” thought Brian, wondering how he would ever get back to the Aussie headquarters alive without the others.
When his eyesight returned Brian saw John Mardi was nearly twenty metres ahead of him. So throwing caution to the wind, Brian rose to a half standing, half crouching position and loped across the bomb-pitted mud field, heedless of Leah’s warning to watch out for unexploded bombs.
When he was only five metres behind the column, the others suddenly stopped. So Brian dropped back down to his knees, then had to stop himself from crying out as he felt a bolt of agony in his left knee.
Feeling about in the cold mud with his hands, Brian located the strand of rusty barbed-wire that he had landed on.
Trying his best not to think about the danger of tetanus, Brian extracted the twisted barb of metal from his knee with difficulty.
Then, trying to be more careful, he crawled forward till he had caught up with the others.
“What’s up?” Brian asked John Mardi at a whisper.
“Sergeant Maddox is checking out a bomb crater for Yanks,” came the reply.
“God, don’t let her be killed!” worried Brian. And only seconds later the column started forward again.
Despite Leah’s claim that they were only a short distance from headquarters, they crawled across No-Man’s Land for hours. On more than one occasion they had to bypass a bomb crater, or stop to check that any inhabitants were already dead.
Bombs and missiles continuously whizzed overhead. From time to time they heard machine-gun fire behind them. But never close enough to cause major concern.
“We must be getting close by now, surely?” thought Brian as the first hint of dawn broke. And only minutes later the smell of gunpowder and chemicals which had been near-overwhelming up until then, began to give way to the noxious odour of human excrement. Remembering the sewerage odour as they had left the headquarters earlier Brian thought, “I never thought I’d be so pleased to smell human shit!”
“We’re getting close now,” called back Leah Maddox. “It should be safe to return to the trenches now.”
“At least safer than staying up here!” thought Brian.
Locating the nearest trench, Brian and Ernie lowered the others down, then slid down the wet, slimy trench wall.
There was no sign of any other soldiers, until they were almost at headquarters. So they were able to travel quickly for the first time.
By the time dawn finally broke they were within half a kilometre of the Aussie headquarters.
“Thank God for that!” thought Brian, relieved that he had not had to crawl out in the open when dawn broke.
“Halt! Who goes there, friend or foe?” a voice called out in the trench ahead of them.
“Friend!” called back Leah. She identified herself, then the others.
“Advance and be recognised,” said a voice Brian recognised as belonging to Colonel Gail Dobey.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Gail Dobey recognising Brian as they entered the headquarters.
“Don’t sound so pleased to see me,” said Brian. He received a glare from the colonel, although he heard Leah snicker.
Entering the two-room building, they found the headquarters in chaos.
“What’s going on?” asked Deanna Hennequin. Everywhere they looked soldiers were running about packing up chemicals, grenade cases, machinery, furniture, maps, etc.
“We’re pulling out,” called across young Adele Gibson from the rear of the front room. She was rapidly stuffing grenade cases into cardboard boxes. “The Yanks have mounted a major offensive.”
“Yes, we know,” said Deanna. “They’ve taken a few of our checkpoints. But surely that’s no reason to panic?”
“They’ve taken more than a few checkpoints,” corrected Gail Dobey. “The last we’d heard checkpoints KY-7 and KY-8 had just fallen.”
“KY-7 and -8?” asked Deanna Hennequin, sounding shocked. “But they’re barely a kilometre from here.”
“Exactly,” said the redheaded colonel. “Hence the rapid retreat.” She directed them to various tasks to help with the packing up.
“Thank God we didn’t stay in the trenches and try to fight our way through!” thought Brian. “We might have got through checkpoint KY-20 and -18, but no way would we have got all the way back to headquarters again!”
“Who the hell are they?” asked Gail Dobey. She looked shocked as she stared at Ernie and Jimba.
“A couple of friends of mine,” explained Brian. “We found then wandering in the trenches.”
“Wandering in the ...?” began the colonel. However, receiving a call from General Demos, she said, “All right, the three of you can go help Corporal Gibson pack up the grenades.”
“Okay,” agreed Brian. He led Ernie and Jimba across to the long, wooden table holding large glass jars of various coloured chemical powders or crystals, the microscope and other equipment and hundreds of black triangular grenades in various stages of manufacture.
Seeing the puffy, red blotches around Adele Gibson’s eyes, he realised that she had been crying. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Oh Brian,” she said. To his surprise Adele threw her arms around his neck to hug him tight. “I’m so glad to see you. When we were told about the Yankee offensive, I thought ... thought you were dead!”
Aware that Ernie and Jimba both looked startled to see this greeting, Brian took Adele into his arms to hug her tightly. Moving one arm up to hold the back of her head, he smothered her lips with his, to give her a long, deep soul-kiss. At first his other hand caressed the small of her back. But after a moment, it crept down to lightly rub, then roughly caress her backside.
Adele Gibson gasped in obvious surprise when she felt Brian’s hand stroking and rubbing her behind. However, she did not try to pull away but pressed her body harder against Brian’s. After a second’s hesitation the blonde opened her mouth to allow Brian’s tongue to dip gently inside.
Behind him Brian heard Ernie and Jimba shuffling their feet impatiently, obviously embarrassed at this passionate display. Although he ignored his two friends’s shuffling feet, Brian was unable to ignore the bristling feeling at the nape of his neck. “Someone else is watching!” he realised, guessing who it was before even looking around.
Reluctantly Brian broke the soul-kiss, although his left hand stayed on Adele’s backside. As their lips broke contact Adele gasped as though she had been holding her breath.
Looking round Brian saw Colonel Gail Dobey standing near the cot at the opposite side of the room. Her face was flushed almost as red as her crew-cut hair. Her eyes spat venom as she started across the room toward them.
“Uh-oh, here comes trouble!” thought Brian. He gave Adele’s behind one last firm caress, slowly moving his hand right across from one cheek to the other, feeling her shiver in delight at the contact, then reluctantly he removed his hand from Adele Gibson’s backside, and prepared to received a major ear-bashing -- perhaps literally -- from the feminist colonel.
Gail Dobey had only gone three or four paces, however, when she called back by General Renato Demos. “For God’s sake, get that radio equipment out of here,” called the general. He pointed to a box of irreplaceable (in war-time) equipment that she was carrying.
The colonel paused for a moment. She looked back to where the general stood in the doorway shouting orders to privates running every which way dissembling and packing up equipment. Then the redhead turned back to stare toward Brian and the others.
“Surely she’s not going to disobey a general!” thought Brian.
“Get those bloody grenades boxed up!” shouted Gail Dobey. Before turning to carry out the general’s order.
“Come on,” said Adele Gibson. Brian noticed that her cheeks were flushed and hoped it was from pleasure at the long kiss they had just shared.
“This is Ernie and Jimba,” Brian introduced them to Adele Gibson, as they started packing up grenade cases. “They’re friends of mine.”
“Are they farmers too?” asked Adele.
“Ernie is,” explained Brian. “Jimba is a tribal Aborigine. A hunter and warrior.”
“That explains the spears,” said Adele staring at the three three-metre long spears Jimba carried. “But if they’re going to survive around here, they’ll need more practical weapons.”
Risking the wrath of Gail Dobey, Adele hurried across to get Uzis and some ammunition for Ernie and Jimba.
“Thanks,” said Ernie taking the machine-gun from the young blonde. However, Jimba refused with a wave of his hand, obviously feeling more comfortable with weapons he was familiar with.
“Are you sure? Spears aren’t much good against machine-guns.”
“I’ll keep these,” insisted Jimba.
“All right. Let’s start packing away grenade cases.”
There were literally thousands of empty grenade cases to pack away in boxes. With the Yanks advancing at an unknown pace, they held no hopes of getting everything packed and taken away. However, they were loath to leave anything behind for fear of the enemy using their own weapons against them.
“We’re having difficulty holding our own against the Yanks as it is,” explained Adele, running a roll of brown masking tape across the top of a box of grenade cases, “without them filching our weapons.”
“Do you want a hand with that?” asked Brian as Adele lifted the box to carry outside.
“No, thanks,” said Adele, “besides the colonel is furious enough at us.”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” agreed Brian. He watched the crew-cut blonde for a moment as she walked outside, then returned to stacking the black, triangular grenade cases, which were designed to be readily stacked inside each other.

Ernie Singleton also watched Adele Gibson walk away from the long, wooden table. When he was confident she was out of hearing range, he turned to Brian and said, “Listen, Bry, I don’t mean to pry, but ...?”
“But you wanted to know about Adele and me?” Brian finished for him.
“Frankly, yes.”
“Well, basically we met here and have grown very close over the last few weeks.”
“Yes, I figured as much when you grabbed her by the arse and started to use her tonsils for ice-cream cones,” said Ernie. He laughed, to show he meant no harm by it.
Brian blushed, but Ernie guessed it was from embarrassment, not anger. “Even in a parallel reality men and women get lonely for each other’s company. And ....” He hesitated for a moment. “And quite frankly things seem to be well and truly over between Holly and me.”
“Oh,” said Ernie. He did not need to be told about Brian’s troubles with Holly Ulverstone, Rowena Frankland’s cousin. They had had this conversation a number of times over the last twelve months. Brian had started dating Holly back in late 1982. Then in March 1984 Holly had gone down to Melbourne to commence a Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in chemistry and physics at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Although she had returned to Glen Hartwell over the Christmas and semester breaks, the long separations seemed to spell the end of their once steamy relationship. Two years later Holly was once more home at the Glen for the November to February Christmas-New Year break.
Despite Brian’s best efforts to rekindle their relationship each semester break, Holly had been growing ever more distant toward him for the past two years. “Quite frankly, I’m afraid she’s become a little too liberated by her two years at university. So now she considers herself, as a soon-to-be research chemist, too good to marry a mere orchard farmer,” Brian had complained earlier that year.
“Adele is another matter,” said Brian. “She’s beautiful both inside and out. Not just on the outside like Holly.”
“But Holly is a real person.”
“So is Adele.”
“In this reality,” agreed Ernie. “But she can’t possibly exist back in our reality.”
“How do you know that?” demanded Brian. However, he sounded sick, as though at heart he knew it was true. “You and Jimba and I don’t belong in this reality, but we’re able to exist here! Maybe Adele can exist back in our reality. At least I intend to ask her to come back with me.”
“That’s crazy talk,” said Ernie. But he thought, “How can I stop him from at least trying to find happiness with her? Do I have any right to even try?”
“No, it isn’t!” insisted Brian. “Adele is sweet and loving and doesn’t seem to mind that I’m only a farmer’s son.”
“And what if it kills her?” asked Ernie trying another tack. “What if stepping through the reality leak kills her?”
“Why should it? We stepped through from our world to this ... so ...”
“So maybe it’s safe for her too,” Ernie finished for Brian. “But what if it isn’t? She belongs here, man, you belong back in our world.”
They were still arguing the point, when they heard the sound of machine-gun fire just outside the headquarters.
“Jesus, Adele’s out there!” shouted Brian. He started to run toward the door to the outside.
There was an explosion, and most of the outside wall disintegrated into a sea of flying splinters.
“Adele!” shouted Brian as the wall in front of them vanished.
“Oh God, the Yanks are here!” shouted Colonel Gail Dobey as four black-uniformed soldiers raced into the headquarters. She fired of a burst of Uzi-fire, killing three of the Yankee soldiers.
The fourth Yank dived to the ground to avoid the machine-gun fire and hurled a square, yellow object at the colonel.
Too late to run, the redhead stood wide-eyed in terror as the grenade span toward her.
The Yankee grenade was only inches from Gail Dobey’s face when it exploded.
“Oh Jesus!” cried Brian in shock as the colonel’s head and neck disintegrated into a red and white spray of blood and bone splinter.
For a few seconds Gail Dobey’s headless body stayed standing as though it did not know that it was dead. Then, as Adele Gibson finally ran back into the headquarters, the colonel’s body collapsed to the bare floorboards.
“Adele, duck!” shouted Brian. He and Ernie opened fire on six Yanks running into the building behind the corporal.
At Brian’s warning Adele span round and fired her Uzi in the same movement. Between the three of them they gunned down all six Yanks. However, with most of the front wall gone, they could see into the trenches, where seemingly hundreds of black-uniformed soldiers were milling toward them.
Hearing the sound of machine-gun fire at the back of the HQ, Brian span round and saw that General Renato Demos had despatched the Yank who had killed Gail Dobey.
“Come on!” shouted the general waving toward them. “There are too many of the buggers. We’ll have to retreat through the rear entrance.”
Dozens of Yanks swarmed into the front of the headquarters building as Brian and the others raced after the general.
Not far ahead of Brian, he saw Leah Maddox and Deanna Hennequin. The two sergeants were standing firing their machine-guns toward the Yanks to allow the others to reach the exits.
“For God’s sake, come on!” shouted Brian as he, Ernie, and Jimba ran toward the two women. As he shouted Deanna and Leah turned to flee.
Hearing the now familiar whirring of a grenade behind him, Brian instinctively spun round. He saw a yellow square whizzing toward the two sergeants. “Look out!” he shouted toward them.
At Brian’s shout, Deanna Hennequin turned back and raised her Uzi ready to fire.
“Grenade!” shouted Brian.
Too late!
The grenade hit the Deanna Hennequin in the chest and exploded.
Brian stopped, staring in shock at the sight of the middle-aged brunette as her entire upper body disintegrated into a fine mist of blood, bone-splinters and minced entrails.
Behind Deanna, Leah was protected from most of the blast by Hennequin’s body. However, the explosion hurled Deanna Hennequin’s corpse into Leah, winding the young sergeant and knocking her to the hardwood floor.
Wincing at the sound of Leah’s head crashing into the floorboards, Brian ran across to help her up. “Give me a hand with her,” he called. Ernie and Adele Gibson ran across to assist him.
“Here, let me!” said Ernie. Putting an arm under her knees, he easily lifted the young brunette.
“Where to now?” asked Brian. He had to shout to make himself heard above the sound of machine-gun fire and grenades behind them.
“Over there!” shouted Adele. The young blonde pointed to a small door leading to the General’s office on the left-hand side of the back wall. “There’s a small door to the outside.”
“Okay,” shouted Brian. They all headed for the door. Ernie carrying Leah Maddox; Brian and Adele firing their machine-guns back toward the advancing Yanks.
Hearing the whirring of Yankee grenades, they all fled into the general’s office, doing their best to ignore the screams of the dying whom they had left behind.
“Help me move this,” cried Brian as Ernie and Adele stepped out through the back door.
Jimba leant his spears against the wall and helped Brian shift a metal supply cabinet against the door. Then with difficulty they pushed the General’s blackwood desk up hard against the metal cabinet.
“Well, that ought to stop them for a while anyway,” said Brian. He ran outside, closely followed by Jimba.
When they stepped outside, however, they saw the muddy paddock behind the headquarters was already covered in the bodies of blue-uniformed Aussies and black-uniformed Yanks.
“What in the ...?” began Brian. Seeing the dozens of machine-gun carrying Yanks standing in a semi-circle around them, he stopped. Looking round he saw Ernie, Jimba, Leah (who was now standing on her own feet, although obviously still a little groggy), Adele Gibson, and Corporal John Mardi standing with their hands on their heads in resignation of defeat.
Only General Renato Demos seemed unable to accept defeat. “Shoot, dammit, shoot!” ordered the general. Firing his own Uzi, the tall, grey-haired old man ran toward the Yankee line.
He managed to gun down three enemy soldiers, before the Yanks returned fire.
“Holy Christ!” said Brian. He watched in horror as the old man’s body danced around like a puppet beneath a hail of machine-gun bullets. Till finally the firing stopped and the general fell down in the mud with a splash.
Behind them they heard a grenade explode and a large section of the headquarters was blown away. Black-uniformed Yanks swarmed into the open through the hole in the wall.
“We’re surrounded on all sides now!” thought Brian.
“Do you surrender?” demanded a Yank in the deep southern fried accent that Brian had heard earlier.
“What choice do we have?” asked Brian addressing the officer, who he saw was a major.
“None,” agreed the Yankee major.

Garbarla’s reality
“Kunia can’t beat Liru!” thought Garbarla as he ran through the yellow desert. He tried not to be distracted by the burning heat beneath his feet, or the irritating graininess of the sand clogging his toes as he ran. He knew that any loss of concentration could prove fatal.
“But how long can I run for?” wondered Garbarla. He stared at the seemingly endless yellow sand ahead of him. As far as the eye could see -- to the horizon -- there was no sign of shade trees or water. Let alone anywhere for him to hide. Or anyone for him to call on for assistance.
“How much longer before I collapse from fatigue and find myself helpless, at the mercy of Liru the venomous snake-man?” he wondered. Garbarla knew after the slaughter of his half-brother, Gunbuk, that Liru possessed little if any mercy. “Maybe it would be better to stop and fight?” But he could not get out of his head the legend of Kunia the desert snake-man and Liru. And the fact that according to all Dream-Time legends he had ever heard when the two do battle Kunia is no match for Liru. “Kunia cannot defeat Liru!” Garbarla thought again. “And in this reality I am Kunia! In this reality if I stop and fight, I’ll be slaughtered and my blood will run out and stain the yellow desert red!
“But if I don’t stop soon, I’ll be too fatigued to fight. Even if I have no chance, it is better to at least try, than to find myself helpless; unable to even try to defend myself.” Looking toward the endless yellow sand, Garbarla thought, “If only there was somewhere to spring a trap on Liru. Maybe then I could win.”
But there was nothing but sand, so he realised, “Either I stand and fight and probably get killed. Or else I keep running until I collapse, helpless at Liru’s mercy. In which case I definitely get killed!”
Although neither choice offered much hope, reluctantly Garbarla stopped his mad run. Turning round expecting to see Liru only a few metres behind him, Garbarla was surprised to see no sign of the venomous snake-man.
“Perhaps he’s given up?” hoped Garbarla-Kunia. But then he saw a tiny black speck on the horizon. As he watched the speck slowly increased in size until there could be no doubt that it was a man trotting along at an even pace.
“He’s not even running! He’s that confident that I have no chance against him!” realised Garbarla.
Garbarla stood watching Liru approaching. It was only when the venomous snake-man was within a kilometre of him that Garbarla thought to attempt to change to his Dream-Time alter-ego, Kunia. “Gunbuk and Liru managed to avoid each other’s weapons for a long time by readily changing back and forth between animal and human forms!” he thought. Until now Garbarla had not thought to try transforming into his own animal form, Kunia the desert snake-man. But with Liru rapidly approaching, Garbarla decided, “It’s now or never!”
At first, try as he might, he could not work out how to transform. Finally he tried closing his eyes and trying to picture a large, desert snake.
After a few seconds his head began to swim. And thinking he was about to faint, he hurriedly opened his eyes again.
“What has happened?” he wondered. “Everything looks different.” For a moment he thought he had travelled through the reality leak again to another parallel universe. But then he realised, “Everything looks different because I’m looking through the eyes of a reptile. Instead of a mammal’s eyes as I’m used to.”
Panicking a little, he quickly transformed back into human form. Then thinking, “No, I can’t let my cowardice give Liru an edge!” Garbarla quickly transformed back to snake form.
Again and again he transformed from man to snake and back again. Until he was confident enough to be able to make the change without having to close his eyes.
“Now I’m ready,” Garbarla thought, “but how am I supposed to fight in snake form?” Unlike Gunbuk, who in his animal form as Oohlah the red, spiny lizard-man had had arms and hands to still holds his spears, in snake form Garbarla had no arms. And whereas Liru’s spears transformed into great venomous fangs in snake form, as Kunia the non-venomous snake-man, Garbarla had no fangs.
“The only real advantage is speed,” I suppose, Garbarla thought. Like Liru, as Kunia the desert snake-man, Garbarla was able to coil his way through the sand far faster than he could ever run in human form.
“Well, here comes the moment of truth!” thought Garbarla as Liru approached to within a dozen metres of where he stood and launched one of his three-metre long spears.
The spear was only centimetres from Garbarla, when he transformed into Kunia, the desert snake-man. Twisting his great reptilian body to one side, he dived headfirst into the sand, allowing the spear to pass harmlessly overhead.
Garbarla heard a snake-like hiss of rage overhead as he burrowed through the sand. “Keep calm, just keep calm!” thought Garbarla, still a little uneasy at moving snake-like below the surface of the yellow sand. Although after hours in the blazing head above he found the coolness beneath the sand a welcome relief.
After a moment the sibilant hissing above him disappeared. Garbarla-Kunia tried to listen for some sound of Liru above him. But there was only silence. “Time to surface!” he decided. He only hoped that he would not be laying himself open to easy attack when his head first appeared above ground again.
However, when Garbarla poked his head above the sand, there was no sign of Liru.
“Where the hell has he gone now?” wondered Garbarla. Quickly transforming back into human form, he scanned the yellow sand in all directions. “Nothing!” he decided.
But even as he thought it, the sand began to bubble up a few metres to his left. Looking round quickly, Garbarla tried to duck out of the way as Liru the venomous snake-man appeared only centimetres in front of him.
“Change! Change! Change!” thought Garbarla. He quickly transformed back into Kunia the desert snake-man as Liru lunged toward him.
The transformation allowed Garbarla-Kunia to avoid the lethal fangs of the venomous snake-man as it leapt past him. However, he was caught a glancing blow by the side of Liru’s diamond-shaped head.
“Jesus!” screamed Kunia feeling vertebrae in his spine snap. He quickly transformed back into human form, however, he was paralysed below the waist, unable to run as Liru coiled toward him.
Liru transformed back into human form to advance upon the helpless, half-breed Aborigine.
“Liru and Kunia do battle!” said Liru for the umpteenth time. Advancing to within a few metres of Garbarla, the venomous snake-man held his spear high, ready to hurl it into his enemy’s heart. “And Kunia die!”

Brian’s reality
“You’ve got no chance at all!” repeat the southern-fried Yankee major as they stood around in the mud and slime behind the half destroyed Aussie headquarters.
Looking down at the bullet-riddled body of General Renato Demos, Brian thought, “He’s not kidding. How are we supposed to get out of this?”
He looked round to where Ernie, Jimba, Adele Gibson, Leah Maddox, and John Mardi stood huddled in a group with their hands raised. Noticing Leah and Ernie still had their machine-guns in their hands, as he did, Brian briefly thought, “Perhaps it’s not too late to shoot our way out of it?” But seeing the dozens of black-uniformed Yanks surrounding them, he realised it would be suicide to even try.
“There’s nothing we can do!” Brian thought. He turned to give Adele a smile of encouragement, but ended up staring in amazement as he saw a large section of the Yankee army behind her and the others simply vanish.
“Oh, my God, what happened to them?” called the Yankee major also seeing the disappearance of the troops.
“Some kind of secret weapon the Aussies have devised?” wondered Brian. But then he realised what it was.
“The reality leak!” cried Ernie Singleton. And he and Jimba raced toward the shimmering air that had cancelled out the line of Yankee soldiers.
“Stop! Stop or we’ll fire!” the southern-fried major called as Ernie and Jimba passed through the reality leak and vanished from sight.
“Holy Jesus!” said John Mardi seeing the two men vanish.
“Come on!” shouted Brian. Running across to Leah, John Mardi, and Adele Gibson, he grabbed Adele by one hand. “Come on, honey,” he said, trying to drag her through the reality leak.
“Oh no, we can’t go through there!” screamed Adele, pulling away from him.
“It’s all right, we’ll be safe,” insisted Brian. He tried to pull her through, however, she pulled out of his grip and raced away from the shimmering air.
“Stop, or we’ll shoot!” ordered the Yankee major. And at his order the remaining Yank soldiers opened fire on the small group.
“Adele!” shouted Brian, looking back at the sound of machine-gun fire. He stared in horror as Adele Gibson, Leah Maddox, and John Mardi were all machine-gunned down.
For a second Adele’s body twitched face down in the cold mud, before finally lying still.
“Jesus, no!” cried Brian. For a second he started back toward the Yankee soldiers. But seeing the reality leak beginning to dim, he realised he had little time left.
After one last look at the corpse of Adele Gibson, Brian turned and ran through the reality leak after Ernie and Jimba.

Garbarla’s reality
Lying on the hot, yellow sand, Garbarla tried to move his feet. But feeling no sensation in his lower body, he realised that his back had probably been broken.
Standing over the fallen warrior, Liru, the venomous snake-man, grinned a wide shit-eater grin as he prepared to hurl his final spear.
The snake-man started to throw the spear, then stopped. He turned his head slowly from side to side as though listening to something that Garbarla could not hear.
“What can you hear, you bastard!” demanded Garbarla.
“One of your friends has lost his battle!”
“What ... what do you mean?” asked Garbarla. He wondered, “Can he mean Ernie or Brian?”
“One of your friends has lost his battle!” repeated Liru. “The other has won. So the forces of good and evil are tied on one win all. This will be the deciding battle. Winner takes all. If you lose here, your friends will die too!”
“Winner takes all!” thought Garbarla. “How the hell am I supposed to win, when I can’t even move my legs?”
Clutching his spear in his right hand, Garbarla wandered if he dared try to throw first? “Then I’ll be completely helpless if I miss!” he realised. “If I could be any more helpless than I already am.”
Garbarla was still debating the point with himself, when he saw the air begin to shimmer only metres behind Liru. “The reality leak!” thought Garbarla. “My way out! If only I could run.”
He tried desperately to crawl away, only to be stopped by the pain. “Jesus!” Garbarla cried as his spine seemed to explode with agony. Tendrils of pain lanced through his vertebrae and for a moment he thought Liru had already loosed his spear into him. Then realising the excruciating agony came from his own attempts to crawl, he thought, “How can I possibly crawl a hundred metres, past Liru, to escape, through the reality leak.”
As he stared toward the reality leak, Garbarla saw it wavering slightly and thought, “Oh God, don’t let it disappear again!” Instead he saw three figures emerge from the reality leak, behind Liru the venomous snake-man.
“Time for Kunia to die!” said Liru. Lifting back his right arm he prepared to launch his spear from point-blank range!

Emerging from the reality leak, Ernie, Brian, and Jimba looked around to get their bearings. “Just don’t let it be another battle zone!” thought Brian Horne. “I’ve had enough fighting to last me the rest of my life.”
“Garbarla!” cried Jimba.
Looking round to where the teenager was pointing, Brian saw Garbarla lying on his back on the yellow sand, with the hideous, snake-skinned figure of Liru standing over him.
“Holy Jesus!” cried Ernie Singleton. For a second all three friends stood rigid from shock, staring in disbelief at the two figures before them.
“What’s happened?” asked Brian. “It’s Garbarla, yet it’s not Garbarla. His skin is all scaly like the skin of a snake!”
Seeing Liru raising his spear to hurl it toward their fallen friend, Ernie shouted, “Never mind about that!” Stepping forward he raised his Uzi and began to fire toward the figure of Liru, venomous snake-man.
After a second’s hesitation, Brian levelled his own machine-gun and began firing also.
Hundreds of machine-gun bullets slammed into the scaly, snake-like back of Liru.
The venomous snake-man was slammed off his feet by the force of the machine-gun slugs and hurled face down into the yellow sand only a metre from where Garbarla lay.
“My God, you did it!” cried Garbarla. “How could it be that easy?” he wondered, almost feeling that his friends had cheated by helping him.
“Are you all right?” Brian called across to Garbarla. He, Ernie, and Jimba started at a run toward their fallen friend.
“It only hurts when I breath,” said Garbarla trying to sound more cheerful than he felt. He started to push himself into a sitting position. But as his body was wracked with explosions of pain, he cried out and fell back to the sand.
“Wait till we get there!” called Brian.
However, when they were half a dozen metres away, Liru suddenly rolled over onto his back.
“Holy shit!” said Brian. He stopped in his tracks so suddenly that Ernie and Jimba almost collisioned into his back.
Hissing snake-like in rage, Liru leapt to his feet and started to advance toward the three warriors, temporarily forgetting Garbarla.
Brian and Ernie opened fire on the creature again with their machine-guns, firing round after round until they had to change the cartridge cylinder. However, the bullets had no noticeable affect on the monster, which barely flinched as the bullets struck its scaly flesh and bounced off like bullets bouncing off superman in the old TV series.
“Your weapons cannot kill in this reality,” Liru explained, sneering a smug shit-eater grin at them. “In this reality Liru and Kunia must do battle with conventional Aboriginal weapons. No other weapons will kill here!”
“In that case, let me try,” said Jimba. Hearing him, Brian and Ernie dropped to one side as Jimba launched a spear at the venomous snake-man from only a couple of metres away.
The spear struck Liru full in the stomach.
And shattered on impact.
The snake-man laughed at the young warrior’s attempt to kill him. “Your spears cannot kill Liru.”
“Why not? They’re traditional Aboriginal weapons,” pointed out Jimba.
“But they don’t belong in this reality. You followed Ernie Singleton into the bear alien reality. That was his reality and yours. Your spears will only kill in that reality. Or back in your original reality. Not here.”
As he was speaking the venomous snake-man had been slowly advancing. Until he was less than a metre from the teenage hunter.
“For God’s sake run!” Ernie called to the young warrior.

Wracked with bolts of agony, it was all Joseph Garbarla could do not to pass out. But seeing the machine-gun bullets bounce off Liru, and Jimba’s spear shatter, he knew that he could not pass out. “It’s not just my life now!” he realised. “If I fail Jimba, Ernie, and Brian will all die too!”
Trying not to scream out as bolts of pain rocketed through his body, Garbarla raised his spear in his right hand. “Don’t be too weak! God don’t let me be too weak!” he thought as he threw the spear.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” screamed Liru as Garbarla’s spear thundered into his back from half a dozen metres away.
The venomous snake-man fell headfirst to the hot desert sand with Garbarla’s spear sticking like a flagpole in the middle of his back.
Behind Liru, Garbarla finally passed out, falling back onto the yellow sand.
“Give me a hand!” cried Brian. He raced across to Garbarla with Ernie and Jimba close behind.
“We have to help him,” said Ernie as the three men knelt beside Garbarla.
“Help him, how?” said Jimba. “We got no medicine here.”
“Shit, that’s right,” agreed Brian.
“Wait, look!” said Ernie. He pointed back behind Jimba.
Looking round they saw the shimmering air that meant the reality leak.
“Help me lift him,” said Ernie.
“Is it safe to move him?” asked Brian.
“Maybe, maybe not. But he’ll die for sure if we leave him here.”
“All right,” said Brian. Reluctantly he lifted Garbarla’s legs, while Ernie lifted his arms.
While Jimba watched on, Ernie and Brian lifted Garbarla between them. Then, not knowing how severely hurt he was, they carried the half-breed Aborigine toward the reality leak, doing their best not to jolt him.
From time to time Garbarla cried out in pain. “Just hang on, mate, nearly there,” encouraged Brian as they finally entered the reality leak.

Common reality
“Well, where are we this time, I wonder?” asked Ernie Singleton as they emerged from the reality leak.
“Back home, I hope,” said Brian Horne. Putting down Garbarla’s legs, he began to look about for some sign of where they were.
They were on a brown-dirt plain, which was sparsely covered in sun-dried brown weeds and Native-Australian grasses. Not far from where they stood was a clump of grey-white ghost-gums. Sniffing the sweet smell of eucalyptus, Brian thought, “It sure makes a refreshing change from the smell of sewerage, gunpowder, and chemical weapons.”
“Back home,” agreed Jimba.
Ernie and Brian looked toward the teenage warrior who was pointing back past Ernie. Turning to look where the nineteen-year-old was pointing, they saw a group of scantily clad Aboriginal hunters a couple of hundred metres away.
“What now?” thought Brian. Looking down at the injured form of his friend Garbarla, he wondered, “How are we supposed to get you away if we have to flee some new menace?” He knew that in a pinch none of them could abandon Garbarla to save their own lives.
But as the natives approached they saw that they had nothing to fear. It was Tubby Budjiwa, Barry Goorjian and Larry Mutapina, the three young hunters they had left behind when first entering the reality leak.
“Budjiwa? Mutapina? Judawali?” said Ernie staring goggle-eyed at the three young men in disbelief. “But it can’t be ... you’re ....”
Realising what Ernie was thinking, Jimba whispered, “Not dead! Not here. Judawali, Mutapina, Budjiwa only dead in other reality. In this reality still alive.”
“Of course!” thought Ernie. Still he had trouble accepting that the three young warriors were still alive, when he had seen their gutted corpses hanging on the freezer room of the alien spaceship.
Noticing the three warriors had the speared carcases of two red kangaroos between them, Brian thought, “Surely they can’t be the same roos speared before we went into the reality leak?” Looking down at his wristwatch he saw that it was Late November 1986. We’ve been away a good six weeks according to this? Aloud he asked, “How long have we been gone?”
Mutapina looked up at the sun to gauge the time. After a moment he answered, “About four hours.”
“What?” asked Brian, wondering if the Aborigine was joking.
“But we can’t have been gone only four hours!” insisted Ernie. Then recalling that it had been 1962 in his parallel reality and 2021 in Brian’s reality, he thought, “I guess Einstein was right about time being relative! That way four hours in this reality can be equal to weeks or even months in parallel realities.”
“Got to hurry back to camp or roo spoil,” said Mutapina.
“We need help with Garbarla,” said Ernie. Until then he, Brian and Jimba had been blocking the three hunters’s view of the injured man. They now stood aside to reveal him.
“What happen?” asked Budjiwa.
“He’s been hurt,” said Brian stating the obvious. “Can you help us to get him back to the village?”
Dropping the speared kangaroos, the three warriors ran across to Garbarla. Kneeling they examined him for a few minutes. Finally Judawali said, “Should make stretcher to carry him safely.”
They looked about the brown dirt desert for a moment. They could easily break branches from the wattles and ghost gums a few metres away. However, they had no twine to tie the branches together. So reluctantly it was decided that they would take turns carrying Garbarla by the arms and legs as Brian and Ernie had done earlier.
Although only seven or eight kilometres from the Aboriginal village, it was necessary for them to abandon one of the speared red kangaroos so they could conserve their energy to carry Garbarla.

It was late in the evening when they finally came within sight of the Aboriginal settlement outside Pettiwood.
Young Jimba ran on ahead to get help carrying Garbarla. After a few minutes he returned with four young warriors. They carried between them a stretcher made of blue-gum boughs and sun-dried bark.
Careful not to drop the patient, the four young bucks sprinted toward the village, each carrying one handle of the stretcher. Behind them came Jimba, Ernie, Brian and the others at a more leisurely pace.
At the outskirts of the corrugated-iron hut village, they found old Weari-Wyingga and a couple of dozen curious women and children waiting to quiz them.
“What happen to Garbarla?” asked Weari-Wyingga.
Ignoring the old man’s question, Budjiwa, Judawali, and Mutapina took the one remaining red kangaroo to the cookfire to be prepared for a late dinner. Leaving behind Ernie, Brian, and Jimba to attempt to explained things to the spindly old man.
“It’s a long story,” said Brian. “Perhaps we can sit down first before telling it?”
“All right,” agreed Weari-Wyingga. The old man led them through the village to his corrugated-iron hut.
Inside they sat on grass mats on the dirt floor. Then, hesitantly, they told the old man everything that had happened to them over the four hours that they had been missing. Four hours which had been weeks to Ernie, Jimba, and Brian.
They told him as much as they knew of what had happened to Garbarla. “But you’ll have to get the whole story from him,” said Ernie Singleton. In fact it would be three days before Garbarla was well enough to tell his story. Despite Garbarla’s fears of having a broken back, he was able to walk around in another ten days, although he was a little hesitant on his feet for a few weeks. However, he was all but recovered by February 1987 when he was due to teach the next class of his TAFE course on Aboriginal Studies at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology.

Weari-Wyingga listened to their tales with great interest. However, he seemed both delighted and shocked as Ernie mentioned the “singing disks” that he had salvaged from the alien spaceships.
“Wait here,” he instructed them. Clawing his way arthritically to his feet, the bony old man staggered frailly into the next room of the hut.
“What’s he doing?” asked Brian rhetorically. Sitting cross-kneed on the mats they could hear the old man rummaging through the various odds and sods that he had collected over nearly ninety years. From time to time the old man cursed in either English or his native dialect.
After nearly ten minutes they heard a cry of satisfaction. Then Weari-Wyingga returned to the front room of the corrugated-iron-walled “house”.
“What have ...?” began Ernie. He stopped, staring in amazement as the old man held up six thin, silvery triangular objects.
“The disks!” cried Jimba as shocked as Ernie.
“But how?” demanded Ernie.
Weari-Wyingga kept them all in suspense while slowly seating himself cross-legged on the floor again. Only then did he pass round the silvery disks for Ernie, Brian, and Jimba to examine.
“I was given these back in 1962,” said Weari-Wyingga at last.
“What?” cried Ernie. “But that was the year ....”
“The year of your parallel reality,” agreed the old man.
“But how? Where? Who gave them to you?” asked Ernie. Looking at the disks, he saw that they were cracked and pitted with age. Great rust-coloured jagged holes pock-marked the disks. Some passing right through the disks -- showing the disks had been solid, not mere outer casings for inner disks, like modern computer disks -- others only part way through.
Weari-Wyingga considered Ernie’s question for more than a minute. Finally he said, “Don’t know. Can’t recall after all these years. Old man of eighty-seven; sometimes memory lets me down.”
“But you must remember something?” persisted Ernie.
“Only that the man who gave them to me was white. He lived on a farm somewhere around Glen Hartwell and visited the settlement a number of times in 1962,” said Weari-Wyingga. He lapsed into a meditative silence for a few minutes and Ernie began to wonder if the old man had fallen asleep. Finally he opened his eyes and said, “I remember the white man was a friend of Jimba.”
“What?” cried Ernie. Turning round he stared at the teenage warrior. Jimba shrugged his shoulders, obviously puzzled. “Don’t tell me the old man is finally going senile?” thought Ernie. “How will the village cope without his guidance with the other Elders all dead?”
Weari-Wyingga laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not losing my marbles just yet. Not Nambidjimba. Tudjarajimba, Nambidjimba’s father.”
“Tudjarajimba was also nicknamed Jimba,” the teenager confirmed.
“And Tudjarajimba, Jimba’s father, was friends with the white man who gave you the singing disks?” asked Ernie.
Weari-Wyingga nodded.
“Then what are we waiting for?” asked Brian. He and Ernie climbed to their feet -- a little shakily, their legs cramping from being crossed so long. “Let’s go talk to Jimba’s father.”
Jimba shook his head. “Tudjarajimba died twelve years ago when I was only seven.”
“Oh,” said Ernie, crestfallen.
“What about your mother?” Brian asked. “Surely she would have known this white man if he was a close friend of your father?”
Jimba lowered his head, staring at his hands in his lap.
“Jimba’s mother suffers from Alzheimer’s,” explained Ernie. “It’s not likely she could remember anything that happened twenty-four years ago in 1962.”
“Perhaps if I speak to Sarah first,” suggested Weari-Wyingga. Despite his great age and frail appearance the old man climbed to his feet with less difficulty than Ernie and Brian.
“Sarah Jardagara is Jimba’s mother,” explained Ernie to Brian. Then to Weari-Wyingga, “All right, we’ll wait outside until you call us in.”
Despite the lateness and the fact that they had not yet eaten their belated evening meal, they set out through the corrugated-iron village immediately. Sarah Jardagara’s two-room iron shack was only a couple of hundred metres from Weari-Wyingga’s hut. Unlike most of the other shacks which were either unpainted or painted plain grey or white, Sarah Jardagara’s hut was painted a gaudy flame pink -- inside and out.
“She’s had a penchant for pink since she went strange,” explained Jimba, noting Brian’s surprise as they stopped at the gaudy coloured hut. Brian had seen and been amazed by the bright hut before when visiting the village. However, until now he had not realised that it was where Jimba’s mother lived.
As they reached the front door, Brian could see that even the four-paned windows had pink adhesive plastic stuck to them. “To allow the light to shine through,” explained Jimba. “Originally she had me paint the glass pink, but it was too dark inside.”
While Jimba, Ernie, and Brian talked Weari-Wyingga rapped on the plyboard door. Hearing a faint murmur from the hut, the old man swung the door open and stepped inside.
“How long do you think they’ll be?” asked Brian.
Jimba shrugged.
“It depends on how lucid she is,” explained Ernie. “Some days she seems completely normal. Others ...” He left the sentence hanging, knowing the conversation was hurting Jimba. Although he knew the teenager loved his mother dearly, he knew that it also broke his heart to see her on her “off days” and knew he did not like to talk about her condition in front of the others.
In a bid to change the subject, Ernie sniffed at the air, then said, “Smells like the meat is almost ready.”
“Yes, I can’t wait,” said Brian.
Ernie laughed, knowing that unlike him, Brian had never acquired a taste for kangaroo meat, despite having eaten it on his numerous visits to the Aboriginal village over the last two years.
It was more than an hour before Weari-Wyingga returned from the hut. In the meantime the other huts had been vacated as men, women, and children all started to make their way down to the cookfire for their share of the night’s meat dish.
“Looks like we’re going to miss out on the meat tonight,” said Ernie watching the last of the stragglers head down the dirt path toward the fire.
Jimba merely shrugged.
“Well, thank God for small mercies,” thought Brian. He almost smiled at his own joke, but seeing how glum young Jimba looked wiped the smile from his lips.
Hearing the squeee-ak of the metal hinges, they all looked round as the door finally opened.
“Sarah only so-so,” Weari-Wyingga explained popping his head out through the doorway. “I’ve asked about white man friend of Tudjarajimba, but she can’t seem to recall him.”
“What about the disks?” asked Brian. “Have you shown her the disks yet?”
The old man shook his head. “Thought it best to have Jimba there when showing her the disks.”
The old man opened the door wide and stepped aside for Jimba to walk past.
When he did not shut the door again, Brian and Ernie exchanged a look, uncertain if he wanted them to enter also. After a moment Ernie shrugged. “Come on,” he said stepping into the hut. “He didn’t say to wait outside.”
Inside the hut was dark. It was nearly 9 PM so the sun had set, leaving them in darkness apart from the glow of a small oil lamp that they could see burning in the next room. The lamp threw just enough light for them to see the inside of the hut was also painted flame pink.
“Surely they don’t let her burn a lamp if she’s got Alzheimer’s?” said Brian. He meant to whisper, but in the corrugated-iron hut his voice seemed a shout.
“She has a nurse,” explained Ernie as they entered the back room.
The back room was as dark as the front room. However, the oil lamp was ancient, so most of the room was in darkness. Around the room shadowy shapes crouched: home-made furniture for the most part, but also the figures of four Aborigines. In the middle of the room was a squat, metal cot-bed upon which sat a short, fat, heavy-featured woman, sitting up, half shrouded in a mound of blankets. At the opposite side of the room to the door, Weari-Wyingga’s form could just be made out in the dark. The old man stood leaning over the bed talking in a low voice to the fat woman. Near the foot of the bed, beside the old man, young Jimba sat on a pink, plastic stool. Near the head of the bed, a tall, willowy Aboriginal woman, named Judith, sat on a pink, high-backed wooden chair.
As they approached the cot, there was an overwhelming smell of urine and a fainter smell of human excrement and rancid B.O.
“Oh, my God!” thought Brian backing away toward the doorway. Seeing Ernie wrinkling his nose, he realised his friend also smelt the foulness, although Weari-Wyingga, Jimba, and Judith all seemed not to notice it.
Seeing Ernie and Brian, Weari-Wyingga put a finger to his lips to shush them. Ernie nodded to show he understood.
“I guess you don’t want to go far into the room either,” thought Brian. He looked back longingly toward the front door of the corrugated-iron hut, now wishing he had stayed outside in the night air.
Looking back toward the cot-bed, Brian saw the old man was still looking toward him for acknowledgement of the signal for silence. “Okay,” Brian mouthed.
After a moment Weari-Wyingga seemed satisfied. He looked back toward the fat woman on the bed and said in a low voice, “Sarah, we got to know about 1962.”
“1962?” echoed Sarah Jardagara blankly.
“When Tudjarajimba knew white man.”
“White man?”
“White man came to village in 1962,” the old man explained. “White man good friend of Tudjarajimba.”
“Tudjarajimba,” repeated the woman. For the first time she looked up from the bed. Slowly she turned round to face Weari-Wyingga, with just a hint of awareness in her previously blank features. “My Tudjarajimba!” she said emphatically.
“Yes, your Tudjarajimba,” agreed the old man. “In 1962 your Tudjarajimba became friendly with a white man who came to visit village that year.”
“White man came to village that year,” agreed Sarah Jardagara. Her eyes shone in the dark as though dredging something up from the dim mire of her feeble memory for the first time in years.
“Yes, white man came to village in 1962,” agreed Weari-Wyingga. “White man give long silver disks to Weari-Wyingga for safe-keeping.”
“Long silver disks,” agreed Sarah Jardagara.
“Long silver disks,” repeated Weari-Wyingga. Then while he had her attention the old man quickly held up one of the wafer-thin, rectangular metallic silvery disks.
As the disk was held up, the dim light of the oil lamp seemed to shine brightly for a moment. Once more, as had happened in the parallel reality, the silver disk lit up with a blinding light. Like a small star held high by the old man the disk seemed to fill the room with blinding tendrils of light like the tentacles of a luminous octopus.
For a moment the disk began to sing, just as it had done in the parallel universe.
“So you don’t need natural light to activate the disk?” whispered Ernie.
Then the disk’s singing turned into a loud metallic whining which had them all clutching for their ears.
“Holy shit!” thought Brian. He used the need to flee the ear-piercing whining as an excuse to at last head toward the front room, then out into the fresh air to await the return of the others.

After a minute or less, the whining turned into a low popping, spluttering noise. Seeing the dark rust-brown edged pit-marks in the disk, Ernie thought, “It’s damaged with age! Even if it is a computer disk of some kind, no computer on Earth could ever access it now!”
Until now there had been no reaction from Sarah Jardagara. She had sat in the middle of the cot, staring wide-eyed at the shining disk as though entranced. But at last she began to thrash about, bouncing up and down on the cot like a child sitting on a trampoline, making the cot-bed rattle and squeak alarmingly.
“Eeeeeeeeeiiiii!” shrieked the fat Aboriginal woman, finally finding voice. “Eeeeeeeeeiiiii!”
“Sarah, what’s wrong?” Weari-Wyingga had to shout to make himself heard above her screaming.
“Eeeeeeeeeiiiii!” shrieked Sarah.
“Sarah!” demanded the old man leaning over the bed.
“Watch out!” warned Jimba as Sarah Jardagara began thrashing her arms around wildly.
Too late the old man tried to duck as the flailing arms swung toward the silvery disk he held. One arm knocked the disk out of the old man’s hand, sending it Frisbeeing toward Ernie, who tried to catch the disk, but missed.
“Oh no!” thought Ernie as the silvery disk hit the corrugated-iron wall beside him and broke into a dozen or more pieces.
Sarah Jardagara’s other hand caught Weari-Wyingga in the face and sent the old man flying toward the corrugated-iron wall.
Young Jimba leapt from his stool to attempt to catch the old man. However, he was too late to stop him from cannoning into the wall with a crash that made the wall shake and rattle precariously. Overhead the roof whined and for a moment Ernie thought, “My God, the roof is caving in!” He wondered how they could flee in time taking Sarah Jardagara and Weari-Wyingga with them?
“Sarah! Sarah!” called the nurse, Judith Waipuldanya, leaping toward the cot to attempt to calm her patient.
“Look out!” warned Ernie, expecting to see the nurse go flying across the room next. But, to his surprise, the petite woman managed to calm her enormous patient quickly. Until Sarah sat still blubbering in the middle of the cot-bed.
Having leapt to his feet to help the young nurse, Ernie found she had managed without him. Looking across the bed he saw Jimba holding up Weari-Wyingga. The old man was clutching at the back of his head where he had collided with the wall.
Walking around the cot, Ernie asked, “Are you all right?”
“Been better,” admitted Weari-Wyingga.
“You’d better leave,” suggested Judith from the cot, where she was still calming Sarah.
“She’s right,” agreed Jimba. “Help me get him out of here.”
“All right,” agreed Ernie. He took Weari-Wyingga by the right arm and helped guide him toward the doorway. As they left Ernie saw the shattered disk on the floor and felt dismayed at its loss. “Still, it was probably useless anyway,” he thought. “They’re probably all too pitted with age to be able to be read now!”

Outside they found Brian standing by the door waiting. Seeing Weari-Wyingga being all but carried by the other two men, Brian rushed to give assistance. “What happened?” he asked.
“That bloody disk happened,” said Jimba. He went on to relate what had happened inside after Brian had departed.
“I guess I’d better go back in and get it,” said Ernie. Leaving Weari-Wyingga in the hands of Brian and Jimba, Ernie crept back into the pink hut to collect the pieces of the shattered disk.
When he returned a couple of minutes later, Ernie found his three friends talking to two young Aboriginal women. Seeing Ernie, the two women tittered like schoolgirls and lowered their eyes. Ernie knew that by tribal law single women are not allowed to talk to young men, unless they are related to them. Also lowering their eyes when Brian looked their way, the two young women spoke in their native dialect to Jimba and Weari-Wyingga. In the dark it was difficult to make out their features, but finally Ernie recognised one of the young women as Susan Gurtima, a cousin of Jimba.
Tittering again, the two women skirted past Ernie and went inside the garish, pink-walled hut.
“Last call to eat,” explained Jimba as they set off at last toward the cookfire.
“Thank goodness for that!” thought Ernie, who had thought they would miss out on the night’s meat.
Since officially they had only been at the village a single day -- due to the time difference between the various realities -- Brian and Ernie decided to stay at the Aboriginal settlement for a few more days to see how Garbarla recovered from his injuries.

The next day, knowing how concerned they were for their friend, Weari-Wyingga explained, “Garbarla will recover. If he had stayed in the other reality, he would have died. But in this reality his wound not severe. Garbarla pull through.” However, it was nearly a week later before Weari-Wyingga would allow Ernie and Brian to visit Garbarla.
They found him propped up on a mattress on the dirt floor in the back room of his mother, Debbie Bulilka’s, two-room corrugated-iron hut. Garbarla was being nursed back to health by Debbie and Jimba’s two girl cousins -- Susan Gurtima, and the second woman, whose name Ernie had forgotten.
Seeing Brian and Ernie, Debbie Bulilka -- a tall, willowy woman in her late forties -- raced over to hug them each in turn. Partly by way of greeting her two white friends, and partly to thank them for bringing her son back to her alive. Ernie knew how devastated she had been by the death of her younger son, Gunbuk, two years ago and thought, “It would have killed her to lose her second son as well.”
Promising to call them back if needed, Weari-Wyingga shooed the three women into the front room. Then the old man, Brian, and Ernie sat on small backless, wooden stools around the patient.
After a few minutes of standard pleasantries, the conversation quickly turned to what had happened to them in their respective alternative realities. Although Garbarla had already related his story to Weari-Wyingga, he repeated it for the benefit of Ernie and Brian. They in turn told Garbarla of their own experiences.
“But what was the point to it all?” asked Garbarla. “Were we just victims of three random alternative realities? Or was there some point to it all?”
“I think you were the whole point to it,” suggested Weari-Wyingga.
“Me?” asked Garbarla.
“I think it was all to test your resolve. Test your faith in yourself and in your black heritage.” Garbarla bowed his head guiltily, obviously guessing what the old man was going to say next. “Since returning to us from Queensland, where you were brought up by your white grandmother, you have been pulled back and forth between your black and white halves. Your white education makes it hard for you to accept life in our tribal society. Yet your colour makes it hard for you to fit into white society.”
“But what about Brian and Ernie? They also fought for their lives in their respective parallel realities. What was their importance to my having to prove myself?”
“Nothing. They were pulled into the reality leak by accident.”
“Is the reality leak still a danger?”
“No. The reality leak will appear no more, since you won the final battle.”
“And if I had lost the battle?”
“Then the reality leak would still have vanished. But with you still inside it. If Ernie and Brian had still been in your reality, they would have been killed, like you would have, when the reality leak vanished.”
“But Ernie won his battle,” Garbarla pointed out. “Wouldn’t that have saved him at least?”
“No. His battle and Brian’s battle were ....” The old man paused for a moment, hunting for the right words. “Not quite irrelevant, but were not the real battle. Your battle against Liru was the real contest. The fight to the death. Ernie and Brian’s battles were no more than a build up ....”
“A prelude to the main fight,” suggested Brian.
“Exactly,” agreed Weari-Wyingga. “A prelude to the main fight. I believe that if they had been killed in their battles and you had won yours, they would have been returned to life again. But if you had been killed Ernie, Brian, and Jimba would also have died. Even though Ernie and Jimba won their battle.”
“But how come I was able to kill Liru with a spear? He healed himself by shape-changing from man to snake and vice-versa when Gunbuk’s spears stabbed him?”
“Not Gunbuk’s battle,” suggested Weari-Wyingga with a shrug, this time clearly only guessing. “Gunbuk interfering in your battle, trying to save you from having to do battle with Liru. Same thing if Jimba, Ernie, or Brian had picked up your spear and tossed it at Liru.”
“We could have hurt him, but not killed him, since it wasn’t our battle?” asked Brian Horne.
“Exactly.”
“But Liru only say we need weapons from that reality to kill him,” pointed out young Jimba.
“Liru only telling half the truth,” said the old man. “Liru gloat by telling you why your weapons fail to kill him. But he not silly enough to tell you how to kill him.”
“Namely that only Garbarla could kill him?” asked Brian.
“Yes.”

23 February 1987:
Looking round the rows of vinyl-topped rectangular benches, Brian Horne had to resist the urge to yawn. Four months after their adventures in the parallel realities, he was still depressed and regretted agreeing to attend night classes again this coming year.
“Particularly since the whole thing is Ernie’s idea, and he isn’t even here,” thought Brian. Looking round the rectangular benches he realised attendance of Garbarla’s class in Aboriginal Studies was down at least a third on the previous year. No more than fourteen or fifteen students -- ranging from eighteen to seventy -- sat waiting for Garbarla to appear.
“I’m sure Garbarla wouldn’t take offence if I told him I was too busy to attend his classes anymore,” thought Brian. But when Garbarla finally appeared, walking with the help of a thick cane, he looked ten years older than his true age of thirty. And Brian did not have the heart to opt out of his class. “Not yet, anyway! Maybe later in the year when he’s less depressed.”
But thinking of depression only made Brian depressed also. Made him think of Adele Gibson and his hopes of her returning with him to this reality.
“Maybe Ernie was right,” he tried to console himself, “maybe she would never have been able to adjust to this reality. Maybe it was all for the best.” But then he remembered the sight of the young crew-cut blonde being machine-gunned down by the enemy soldiers and decided, “No, anything would have been better than that! At least she would have been alive in this reality. How could death be better than that?”
He sighed heavily and realised, “I guess I really did love her.” He sighed again. “Maybe I should have stayed there with her? And been mown down by machine-gun fire too? But what would have been the point of that? But maybe if I had stayed behind I could have saved her. Maybe she wouldn’t have been killed then? But would that have really mattered? Who knows, maybe I’ll be killed in this reality anyway?”
Brian remembered his disbelief at being told that the war was between the Aussies and the Yanks when he had first entered the alternative reality. He had thought, “Australia and America are traditional allies, they could never go to war against each other.” But since his return to his own reality the first of the “wheat and sugar wars” had happened. Despite howls of protest from within both the U.S.A. and Australia, American President Ronald Reagan had dumped billions of dollars of cut-price wheat and sugar in traditional Australian markets. Thereby causing a massive slump in the Australian economy. A slump which some economists were already calling the Second Great Depression.

Brian was finally awakened from his reverie when he heard someone calling his name. Looking round he saw Joseph Garbarla was calling the roll. Seeing Brian looking round at last, Garbarla said, “Here ... in body if not in mind.”
Brian blushed from the good-natured joke as the rest of the class snickered at his expense.
After he had finished marking the attendance roll, Garbarla waved one hand toward two people standing beside him and said, “I’d like to introduce two new students: Stefan Kostas and Adele Gibson.”
“What?” said Brian, shocked at the mention of Adele’s name. He looked toward the young woman expecting to see the tall blonde, with the brutally short crew-cut he had known and loved in the alternative reality. Instead he saw a tall, leggy woman of perhaps twenty or twenty-two with seemingly an ocean of ash-blonde hair flowing down her creamy back which was revealed almost to the top of her behind by the plunging back of her skin-tight, red micro-mini.
“She’s nothing like my Adele,” thought Brian. “For one thing Adele would never have worn such a dress.” He blushed from embarrassment at the tightness of the skirt, which left almost nothing to the imagination. “Or am I just being a prig?” he wondered. He realised Holly Ulverstone had worn dresses as daring as that when he had dated her and he had never batted an eye.
“Maybe it’s just that I’m used to seeing the other Adele dressed almost like a man?” he thought.
Although more than half the seats in the room were vacant, Garbarla directed the two new-comers to chairs in the front row.
Brian was half pleased, half displeased when Garbarla directed Adele Gibson to sit next to him. As she walked across, like every man in the class, Brian could not take his eyes off her.
Sitting in the brown plastic chair next to him, Adele adjusted her dress to an almost decent degree -- the shortness of the skirt making it impossible not to be embarrassingly revealing as she sat. Then she turned toward Brian and smiled.
“Hello,” she said in a voice painfully like the voice of the other Adele Gibson.
“H ... hi,” stammered Brian, blushing in embarrassment.
As she smiled at him, Brian realised he was wrong. “She does look like the other Adele,” he realised. “Her facial features are identical.” It was only the long, flowing hair and ultra-feminine clothes that had made him think at first that she looked unlike her namesake.

Although there was still plenty of daylight and he had many chores that still needed doing about the sheep station, Ernie Singleton knocked off work at 8 PM that night. “One early night won’t bankrupt me!” he thought, only hoping it was true as he headed from the dog yard -- where he had just finished feeding the dogs from a sack of grey, hexagonal dog pellets -- to the farmhouse a hundred metres away.
Too tired to make the short detour to the grain store to the right of the house, Ernie dropped the burlap sack on the wooden patio and stumbled in to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Although exhausted, he forced himself to stop long enough to eat a late tea. “God knows I’ll be starving tomorrow as it is,” he thought as he began rummaging through the refrigerator, “without starving myself tonight.”
So, fighting the urge to fall asleep in the cooling air from the refrigerator he made himself a quick salad of cold roast beef, cheese, beetroot and apple-cucumber.
Yawning as he sat at the table, Ernie stretched to relieve a crick in his back, then wolfed down his food.
By 8:30 he had showered and headed for the bedroom.
It was a humid summer night, but that was not the reason that he checked that the bedroom window was open before getting ready for bed. Usually he wore pyjamas, but tonight he curled up naked on top of the blue-green quilt on his small, single bed.
Almost as soon as his head hit the pillow Ernie fell asleep. However, he awakened less than an hour later.
“It’s started!” he thought as his head began to swim. He looked up to check again that the bedroom window was open. “Yes,” he started to say, however, the word turned into a yelp in mid syllable as he transformed from Ernie Singleton into his alter-ego the black wolf.
The black wolf dropped from the bed and raced across to leap out through the window.

Landing deftly on all fours on the hard ground beside the side of the farmhouse, he turned to avoid running into the wire-mesh fence only a couple of metres from the white weatherboard house.
Heading round behind the house, the black wolf saw a number of shapes moving about in the dog yard. However, he knew from experience that none of the farm dogs would challenge his passing. Over the last four years since his first transformation, the dogs had become used to -- if not pleased at -- seeing the black wolf coming and going past the back of the farmhouse two or three times a month.
Reaching the wire-mesh fence ringing the farmhouse yard, the black wolf easily leapt over and started toward the forest half a kilometre away. As he ran he breathed in deeply, savouring the sweet pine and eucalyptus smell of the forest, occasionally sneezing as he breathed in the pollen of the wattles.
After four years Ernie still had no way of knowing how, or why he had been affected with the werewolf taint. He was uncertain about the details of his father’s birth, however, he knew that he had Anglicised his name to Gregory Singleton after immigrating to Australia as a young man on the migrant-assistance plan in 1950. He had been christened Gregori Scarczeny. “Did he come from Hungary or Romania or some place like that?” wondered Ernie. He vaguely recalled that he had once been told that his father had fled from a Soviet-controlled nation, or one in which the Soviet Union had been showing interest in acquiring in 1950.
Although always kind and loving, in many ways his father had been a strange, moody man. Gregory had taken long walks deep into the forest around the Singleton sheep station late at night, two or three nights every month, all the year around. Sometimes not returning to the farmhouse until almost dawn. Once as a child of eleven or twelve, Ernie had seen his father returning one winter’s morn soaking wet, and stark naked! Wondering why his father would have been walking naked through the rain, Ernie had wondered if his father had been cheating on his mother with one of the local women. He had wanted to tell his mother what he had seen, but had been afraid of hurting Vikkie if she found out that her husband had been cheating on her. However, he had been more afraid of hurting himself, if he found out for certain, preferring not to know one way or the other. But now he wondered, “Were you really vanishing into the forest to shape change into the original black wolf of Glen Hartwell?”
That would explain why Gregory had gone on his “walks” even in the middle of winter in the pouring rain, since he would not have been able to control when his transformations from man to wolf occurred. “It would also explain why you went naked through the forest,” he thought, relieved after ten years of worrying to finally know that his father had not been unfaithful to his mother, since in traditional legends werewolves have to strip naked before changing to wolf form.
Since the early 1950s, more than a decade before Ernie’s birth, there had been rumours of a large black wolf with dark, blue human-looking eyes roaming the forests around Glen Hartwell and Merridale. As a child Ernie had been fascinated by regular reports of sightings of the black wolf. But after his first transformation to the black wolf, Ernie had often wondered, “Were you the first black wolf father?” Ernie realised now that this was much more likely than the idea that his father had been having an affair, since there was no need for Gregory to run naked through the forest for any sexual rendezvous. However, he would have to take off his clothes before transforming for fear of being trapped in them in wolf form -- as Ernie had to do each time he transformed into the black wolf.
Ernie had often longed to ask his father the truth. But Greg Singleton had died before Ernie’s first transformation, so Ernie had never had a chance to question him.
The black wolf whined as it thought of Gregory Singleton. Ernie regretted his decision not to try to see his father while in the parallel reality last October. He sighed heavily as he thought of the farming accident which had killed his father in the last week in July 1980.
“Why, oh why didn’t I stop in to see you one last time?” thought the black wolf as he loped through the sweet smelling forest. “What possible harm could it have caused?”

Throughout the first hour’s lecture Brian Horne did his best to concentrate on Garbarla’s words. However, try as he might, he could not stop staring at the beautiful ash blonde sitting beside him at the rectangular school bench.
“She does look like the other Adele,” he thought again, wondering if fate -- God? Kismet? -- had decided to give him a second chance at love after all? When the first hour’s lesson ended, there was a rush for the corridors by students eager to get a Coke or hot drink during the ten minute break. Brian waited till the others had left, then nervously turned to the beautiful woman seated beside him and asked, “Would you like a cup of coffee or something?”
“Yes, that would be nice,” said Adele Gibson, flashing him a broad smile as they walked out into the grey-linoed corridor together.
Watching them exit, not quite arm in arm yet, Garbarla smiled, knowing that Brian Horne had been heart-broken since the death of the other Adele Gibson. “The Lord moves in mysterious ways,” Garbarla decided, picking up a duster to start erasing the first hour’s notes from the blackboard.

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