Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Fethafoot Chronicles: Guluya and the Lake Mungo Mystery
    The Fethafoot Chronicles: Guluya and the Lake Mungo Mystery
    The Fethafoot Chronicles: Guluya and the Lake Mungo Mystery
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    The Fethafoot Chronicles: Guluya and the Lake Mungo Mystery

    By Pemulwuy Weeatunga

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Australia, around 39987BP (before the present): This chronicle comes alive from the legend of a great sweeping saga, which covered of the lives of four Australians who lived and died numerous generations ago. Their meeting and lives together left an archaeological puzzle that stands even today. In those times, our chronicle reveals, Mega-fauna, the giant-sized animal ancestors’ of our modern day fauna still roamed across our lands. The stage is set, the lights drop, the curtain rises - and when the lights come back up at the scene of a ‘dig’ on the shores of Lake Mungo, two Australian archaeologists’ have just uncovered two sets of ancient bones.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateFeb 4, 2015
    ISBN9781483549361
    The Fethafoot Chronicles: Guluya and the Lake Mungo Mystery

    Read more from Pemulwuy Weeatunga

    Related to The Fethafoot Chronicles

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Books

      Mar 13, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Keep Your Eyes On The Toad

      May 12, 2021

      Keep Your Eyes On The Toad
      3 min read

    • Article

      Breaking The Silence

      May 1, 2023

      Breaking The Silence
      5 min read

    • Article

      March Of The Ants

      Nov 11, 2020

      March Of The Ants
      8 min read

    • Article

      Rescue At Sea

      Oct 9, 2021

      Rescue At Sea
      10 min read

    • Article

      Friend OF THE Owl

      Dec 18, 2023

      Friend OF THE Owl
      10 min read

    • Article

      Here’s Rooking At You

      Feb 28, 2024

      Here’s Rooking At You
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Antidote To Spiritual Malaise

      Aug 12, 2022

      Sparrowfart!” On 19 May, 1924, Charles Hayes walked into his boatshed hearing the clatter of timber on timber from the lean-to on one side. “Morning Mr Peel!” “Aye Mr Hayes” the other Charlie replied, as he examined a stack of rough-sawn kauri. Plank

      3 min read

    • Article

      Born To Run

      Mar 9, 2023

      Born To Run
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Worm’s-eye View

      Mar 18, 2020

      ARCHAEOLOGICAL evidence suggests that worms have been around for 600 million years, but Japanese religious lore offers a charming alternative. Certain of the Shinto gods decided to create the world’s creatures from living clay; formulating, in turn,

      4 min read

    • Article

      Life As We Know It

      Jun 8, 2022

      Life As We Know It
      6 min read

    • Article

      Why Hasn’t Evolution Made Another Platypus?

      Sep 14, 2017

      Snuffling through the underbrush, the shaggy little creature wanders through the sylvan night, sticking its nose in one place, then another, seeking the aroma of its soft-bodied dinner. The forest is dark and the pixie’s eyesight poor, but long whisk

      15 min read

    • Article

      Ruddy Apes And Cannibals

      Apr 10, 2021

      Does the rain remember vapor? Does vapor remember rain? Yet both were the other in their past lives. If you told their stories to each other, would they even comprehend? And, does that mean their stories are unnecessary, unimportant and implausible?

      15 min read

    • Article

      Go Ahead, Jump!

      Feb 22, 2023

      Go Ahead, Jump!
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Power Of Poo

      Nov 17, 2022

      The Power Of Poo
      6 min read

    • Article

      Snakes In The Grass

      Sep 22, 2021

      Snakes In The Grass
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Rise & Fall of the Terror Birds

      Mar 1, 2020

      The Rise & Fall of the Terror Birds
      5 min read

    • Article

      Braindump

      Jun 8, 2023

      Braindump
      7 min read

    • Article

      Racecourse Rabbiting

      Jun 7, 2023

      Racecourse Rabbiting
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tongue Stones

      May 27, 2022

      Tongue Stones
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Last of Its Kind

      Jun 25, 2019

      The Last of Its Kind
      9 min read

    • Article

      Q&A

      May 7, 2020

      Charles Darwin travelled the world, but also spent countless hours observing nature in Britain (see p12). One common wildflower in his garden and local woods long perplexed him. Why did primroses appear in two quite different forms? So-called ‘pin’ t

      6 min read

    • Article

      Call Of The Wild

      Nov 13, 2022

      It’s just as well Professor Tim Flannery fits the cliché about “needing no introduction”, because to list all his credentials would risk overwhelming his pithy advocacy. Mammologist, palaeontologist and explorer give but a sketch of his career, but h

      2 min read

    • Article

      7 Things You (probably) Didn’t Know About Neanderthals

      Jul 7, 2022

      One of the most common questions on this topic is what exactly is a Neanderthal? From an evolutionary point of view, Neanderthals are hominins, so are within the same genus as Homo sapiens – the species to which modern humans belong. For a long time,

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Fethafoot Chronicles

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Fethafoot Chronicles - Pemulwuy Weeatunga

      16

      Prologue

      Lake Mungo, Australia

      At the place where the left foot of one of the mighty Dreamtime creation spirits touched down on our land, known more recently as Lake Mungo west of Sydney in New South Wales, the Fethafoot Clan have a tale passed down that restores flesh and blood to the dry ancient bones recently excavated there. It is a story that starts the blood pulsing once more through long-dried arteries and gives voice to four ancient Australians who lived loved and died in that area; finally to become an age-old enigma to the curious recent arrivals on our shores. The skeleton and bone remains found recently by archaeologists near the foreshores of Lake Mungo, are from an Australian Aboriginal man and woman of similar age, with matching carbon-dating times – one cremated, one buried.

      The time-worn Fethafoot account from that period, also foretold that these remains would be found by the wily new arrivals on our shores: the Ghost people who came from afar across the seas in great wind-boats. It was prophesised that these empathetic ghost-beings would work their strange high magic and discover this couple’s life story, and it is said that although only particular generic aspects of their lifestyle would be exposed via the modern investigations, this historical exhumation would give much needed hope to the Heart-rock people of that time, who would have only just survived a terrible calamity. It also said that their clever magic would expose these two ancients as real people and that their descendants would also learn more of how their ancestors had lived and survived in that area.

      Ignorance has always been and is still now, repugnant to Fethafoot teachings. In a caveat with the foretelling, it was passed down that if the modern Heart-rock people wanted to survive – as they had always done over the sundry previous generations – these future people would need to hear the ancient knowledge of survival and wisdom that these well-worn ancients’ bones would tell…

      Now listen here eh, you-fla, (you-fellow), while we word-paint the rich ancient woven colors of Australia’s ancient past to life once more…

      Mega-fauna

      In those long ago times, mega-fauna, the giant animal ancestors of our modern day fauna still roamed across our lands. However, at the time this chronicle begins, the unremitting, progressively warming climate and huge environmental changes occurring around these huge creatures were making their survival extremely difficult; impossible for those without instinctive, ingrained, speedy adaptation skills. Modern day scientific archaeology reveals that on those ancient unfolded pages of our past, they have found bones and remains of many such amazing long-lived and large creatures.

      These ancient icons of our past were literal giants of some of our contemporary survivors. There were four metre tall kangaroos, massive hairy wombats and emu-sized ducks. There was a huge, marsupial tapir and those terrifying marsupial lions – Diprotodon australis – the largest marsupial ever known, once roamed our ancient lands.

      Lagunta, the Tasmanian tiger; a wonderfully unique pack carnivore, also roamed the Australian continent and not just Tasmania’s lush wetlands, as they were when the Ghosts arrived there. There were also giant, long-beaked echidna and the great and feared Wonambi Naracoortensis – a giant serpent that lived at that time and grew to six metres in length. Then there were the great Megalania prisca – a Goanna of terrifying proportions. Envisage six metres of hungry arrogance with sandpaper like, thick-skinned muscle, bone-crushing jaws and dragon-teeth, plus four sets of Tyrannosaurus sized claws: imagine that crashing terror on the red dirt plains of early Australia, chasing and taking down the gigantic Genyornis newtoni – a giant Emu.

      It was toward the tail end of these great creatures’ times where this Chronicle began – with one of these now extinct animals…

      Chapter 1

      Change -the only assurance

      Even though sitting beside the tall lush-green trees that grew in the fertile earth between the lake and river systems on the southern borders of the Barindji lands, the great noble animal still loomed unnaturally large on the landscape. Guluya, the giant short-faced kangaroo abruptly stood up tall and proud, sniffing the air and winds around him with his huge hairy nostrils in a routine and forlorn hope. He sniffed in air deeply through those large nostrils, the whistling wind created sounding similar to some great monstrous Bunyip creature of children’s fears, taking air before dipping back into the deep black still waters of a murky secluded billabong.

      Today, as with every day for several seasons there was no scent, no inkling of his kind at all. The big creature shook his massive head violently, sending burrs dust and grass seed flying from his head, his scruff, shoulders and front paws as he tried to shake off the feel of impending doom that had begun to creep over him recently. It was not just of his own end – that was normal, acceptable – but the long-lived creature could almost sense some wide yawning chasm ahead that was much deeper than his own small demise, and it was approaching rapidly.

      Guluya sensed that he was the last of his kind and every day lately, he felt the crushing weight of a horrendous loneliness that only a solitary horde animal could know. He felt it down deep in his large bones. The big Roo was nearing 80 language-creature’s years old and for the last few years, he had seen neither spoor nor sign of another of his kind anywhere within the large region that he claimed as home. His once familiar motherland had changed gradually and irreversibly over the last several seasons and now, he habitually sniffed the winds in despair, coughing out his unique call at even the slightest hint of another of his kind.

      Recently, those great ears of his had begun playing tricks on him, sending vague hints of faraway tail thumps that had them turning independently toward each possible sound in the same forlorn hope. It was happening so frequently of late that he had begun to form the vexing habit of shaking them and his great woolly head violently, to castigate them and himself for his wishful thinking and sending clouds of flies and dust from him with a loud slapping sound that could be heard for kilometres around. Guluya was past worrying about being heard anymore: with the great mobs’ disappearance, most of his peer-type predators had vanished also – while any straggler band foolish enough to attempt to turn him into a meal, soon found that his many years of survival had made him a formidable foe…

      The changing world

      The massive water runoffs from the second ice-age melt worldwide, had unwittingly brought many of the two-leg, kunning creatures to his home; changing his and many other creature’s world immediately and completely. The warmer temperatures, ever-plentiful drinking water, healthy small animals that they hunted, along with thick grasses and plentiful insects and birds that inhabited the area had brought only few of the strange-smelling, stick-toting fire-makers at first. However that number doubled rapidly, then tripled, then more yet and slowly but surely, so many came that a creature his size found it difficult to stay out of sight at all. His own grunting, coughing, playful mob had quickly dissipated. Those that hadn’t fallen prey to the kunningwuns in those first frantic bloody and restless seasons left quickly, never to be seen again.

      The clever two-leg kunningwuns had brought with them the use fire as a weapon; a natural terror for all animals, even animals as large as Guluya who stood four metres tall and had forearms the size of an African lion and, whose massive tail could easily kill that same predator with one lithe sweep. But fire set off an uncontrollable panic mechanism in all animals, and the kunningwuns knew how to send the terrifying hungry, crackling smelly beast racing at the mob…

      The age-old enemy

      One warm ordinary languid moment, Guluya and his small mob of family were grazing contentedly and all was as it should

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1