The Blue Seal of Trinity Cove by Linda Maree Malcolm Page B

time, long, long, long ago. They called it dreamtime. He told them how the Aborigines had a story for everything that happened in nature. How the rainbow was made, why the snake sheds its skin, how the moon comes at night and the sun in the day. They were simple people living in nature. Yes, they sometimes had disease that the Shaman couldn’t cure. Yes, they did not know about God. Yes, they did not know how to write and read. But yes, they were happy like that. He said that they had no opportunity to know anything but what their parents and their parents’ parents told them and they didn’t know there was another way of life. Their dreamtime gave them all the answers they needed so they hunted and gathered because that was what his people had always done.
    He spoke in such a colourful way, drawing out the ends of his words and using his hands and facial expressions to describe what he was saying that it wasn’t long before Bobby and David had become completely entranced by the story. He poked at the fire in the stove every now and then and threw in more sticks of wood when they were needed. Bobby and David used their imaginations to picture the people and events he was talking about.
    His tale continued as he told them about how the white man thought the Aborigines were dirty animals and that they needed to be taught about God, and how to read books and wear clothes such as they wore. White men wanted to make them slaves in their houses and take the children from them, just like that, to send them to schools and convents. White man decided that the Aborigines were at fault for all things that went wrong and decided that every white man could shoot a black man if he saw him. Many of his people died because of this.
    Bobby was appalled at this new information. How could she not have known about this before? She imagined the black men being shot on sight.
    He spoke of how the black men who were left were not allowed to go anywhere near the white men and they were not allowed to go back to their other way of life either.
    He interrupted his account and asked Bobby and David in a distressed voice, “So where were they meant to go? There was not a place left for them on this earth.”
    Before the children could answer, he continued once more, pointing out the door, “On the ninth day of the ninth moon, all of my people from around here meet at the gorge,” and Bobby remembered that she had seen that gully of gum trees when they had first arrived.
    He explained that they did it like this every year but on the occasion he would tell the children about, not many people were there because so many had been killed previously. The white man did not know about this place but the Aborigines organised lookouts, just in case. On this fateful night, their Shaman showed them a big crystal ball and a blue, pointed, spear-looking wand and told them of her new plan. She would weave a powerful spell on all of them to form them into shapeshifters.
    He broke off from his story-telling and asked the intrigued Bobby and David, “Do you know what this meant? Yes, from now on when Aborigines are around white people or they come near us, we form into a tree. All kinds of trees, big ones, little ones, wide ones, skinny ones, just like people. But not trees they might wish to chop down. Just plain, ugly trees. And you will see them everywhere around here, if you really look.”
    He went on to describe how this worked very well. Most people chose a spot and formed deep roots into the ground with their hands to stay alive and stayed there all the time. But on the ninth day of the ninth moon if people stayed around here until night time they would see all of those trees changing back into people and running toward the gorge. The spell has to be done again at this time to last another year. That is when all the families come together again, being very merry. They have little fires and make little songs and dance –