Prologue

Tom:

Our journeys throughout life are different, so very different from the roads others around us will travel. It was like that for me. I was lost in a way really when my story began although I didn’t know it. Others knew it.

Others like my eldest brother, Taipan, who found that lost child in the middle of our mob and my Mother who drew Taipan to my side, swayed as I was by the tides of the day and the lives of those about me. It is important to find and help that lost child. It is the most important of things. Children are the most important of all things.

My story doesn’t begin with myself though, like all of us our stories begin where we have no place in the beginning. I can’t tell you my story without telling the stories of my brothers and my mob. Without telling you the story of those who came before me and the story of my country and my culture and it’s very hard to find the beginning in that. You see my country and my culture has no beginning and no end, it has no boundaries or borders. It is simply who we are and sometimes that is collective. I belong to my World - my World doesn’t belong to me.

Where I am now though, is timeless and filled with events of my life and the lives of those before me, around me and even ahead of me. This place has no time and yet it changes constantly. It is all time, all together all at once and it changes because of the things that you do and I get to deal with that, so it is constantly changing. And yet it remains the same because of the things I do and the things others like me do. We are the guardians, the Spirit Walkers, and we follow the Lore that governs our Land, a land that is yours also.

There is an order to things and I help to keep that order. I might be anyone of you really - I could be the person sitting beside you or the person you spend your life with. I could be you, only you would never know it because that is the order of things. I am the one who whispers in your ear.

Where am I? How did I get here?

This is my story.

I got here because someone helped me to find my way and that person was my eldest brother, Taipan. That is why children are so important, you see, they govern our future. This is also why I shall begin my story with what is Taipan’s story. Not because his story is the most important but because it is a beginning, a place where I will begin.

There are others in this telling, my brother, Sean, and his friend Andrew and others I won’t name now but if you listen, you will hear their stories and between the lines of the telling, you might hear my story and you may hear the stories of others, including the story that is your own.

Think of yourself as being around a campfire, there is no boundary here, you may be anywhere, but around a campfire you can hold a conversation with what is timeless. The flicker of the flame will mesmerize you and it will whisper your story in your ear. It is not hard for me to see and to feel these things and the things which are life because this is how I and others like me keep order. We are like a voice in your thoughts and we dance about you like the flicker of a flame, enticing you, encouraging you, or destroying you.

When I first found this place, I wanted to know what you would want to know. When will it all end?

It never ends, nothing ends and you should know this. There is nothing in your life or mine which ends. Each act, each thought has consequence. Each thing has a presence and it is something which neither you, nor I, can destroy. We can merely change it and we do this all the time by just living. We are all part of the past, and a part of the future.

The blood of my parents runs through my veins and the blood of their parents before them and so on, like the endless flow of a stream, like a drop of water which travels the world in many forms never being destroyed, never being created, but simply constantly changing. Our Ancestors live on in me as yours live on in you, as when a single cell divides and grows to become a child. Nothing is created or destroyed it simply changes and we all have an ancient knowledge bought with this change. It’s an awareness, a gift. It is a voice which is not heard by everyone unfortunately.

Some would say I am not an Aborigine, in fact, some will say that. But in belonging to my world I do not need to be aboriginal for my Aboriginality belongs inside me. It is not the colour of my skin or how I talk or act. It is simply who I may be and that too changes.

This however is my story and my world and I would like to tell you about it so that we can all get on in this place together. So you see, you change your world as I change mine so we are equally the same. The difference is… I can see you.