The Confessions of a BeachcomberBanfield, E. J. (Edmund James)
History
The Confessions of a Beachcomber
Banfield, E. J. (Edmund James)
Dunk Island (Qld.); Natural history -- Australia -- Queensland
Caves and caverns in the rocks and the tops of the mountains are not
favourite resorts of blacks. According to them nearly every mountain has
its mysterious lagoon, which none but old men have visited, but which
teems with fish and waterfowl. When direct inquiries are made as to the
precise locality of any particular lagoon, invariably inconclusive
evidence is tendered. "Old man, he bin see 'em;" and, the old man is
never forthcoming for cross-examination. The origin of the romance, no
doubt, is to be attributed to the desire of the blacks to account to
themselves for the water which glitters on the face of the rocks far up
the mountains. One boy gave an exceptionally graphic description of a
lagoon on the top of one of the highest peaks of Hinchinbrook Island, in
which all manner of sea fish revelled. When doubt was expressed as to
the possibility of sea-water and sea-fish getting up so far "on top" and
it was suggested--"What you think, that old man humbug you?" "Yes,"
was the ready response; "me think that old fella no tell true. Him
humbug." Some blacks possess something wiser than knowledge.
On the northern aspect of Dunk Island, where the sea swirls about the
buttresses of the hills, there is a cavern only approachable by boat. The
mouth is overhung by vines and ferns, and through the moss which covers
the lintel water trickles and splashes with pleasant sound. When the
bronze orchid lavishly decorates the rocks with its crinkled flowers of
dull gold, the entrance has a specific character; and quite another when
the glossy leaves of the umbrella-tree form the relief and its long
radiating spikes of dull red, bead-like flowers attract the brilliant
sun-bird, and big blue and green and red butterflies. Even when the sea
is lustrous the cavern, with all the artfulness and grace of the
decorations of its portals, is a black blotch--the entrance to something
unknowable and unknown--at least to the blacks. None had ever ventured
near it and they never will. They tell you how it came to be made. How a
long, long time ago, a big man, "all a same debil-debil," took out with
his mighty fingers a plug of rock and put it "on top alonga
Hinchinbrook." Now the particular decapitated pinnacle of Hinchinbrook
is 20 miles away, and out of all proportion. But these facts do not
affect the legitimacy of the legend. There is the hole, and there on the
top of the far-away mountain the prodigious plug demonstrative evidence
too obvious to be set aside on any such plea as the eternal fitness of
things. Is not the blue point of the mountain a defiantly triumphant
fact? Is not the legend authenticated by tradition and confirmed by
topography?
Why, therefore, doubt it for a moment?
And the hole--it goes a long, long way under the mountain. It is a bad
place, a very bad place. No one has ever been there. Suppose any fella
go inside, bi'mby that fella sick, bi'mby that fella die.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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