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She pulled her powder-blue woollen scarf up around her neck; the café felt the ocean winds. The colour of the sea that she could smell in the air. Fringed by 1930s red-brick flats and yellow bungalows, the road the café was on led down to parks and a coastal walk past ancient Aboriginal engravings, which overlooked the ocean. The parks were filled by six am with skinny women who were addicted to exercise. They ran up and down the volley ball field, did weights and boxed with each other or their personal trainers, who barked orders at them.
She pulled her powder-blue woollen scarf up around her neck; the café felt the ocean winds. The colour of the sea that she could smell in the air. Fringed by 1930s red-brick flats and yellow bungalows, the road the café was on led down to parks and a coastal walk past ancient Aboriginal engravings, which overlooked the ocean. The parks were filled by six am with skinny women who were addicted to exercise. They ran up and down the volley ball field, did weights and boxed with each other or their personal trainers, who barked orders at them.
As usual the whale rock was empty. As usual
the runners and the walkers jogged and walked right past, without noticing a
thing. It was surprising if they even saw a whale breaching out to sea they
were so intent on their exercise and fitness routines. Sleek, glossy gym pants,
all the right shoes from the most expensive exercise shoe shops. Everything was
just right. Neat ponytails poking out of caps. Designer sunglasses. Phone apps.
Heart monitors. Calorie counters. Babies looking shell-shocked ensconced in
special prams pushed by yummy-mummy Olympians.
 |
| The whale rock |
Shannon was tempted to trip the runners over,
but instead smiled sweetly as, despite her big belly, she climbed over the
fence and onto the rock. She nodded at the whale and her baby as she sat down
on the mossy grass. The rock jutted out to sea, broken at the edges like an
iceberg floating in the ocean. Freezing cold bits of solid ice breaking up into
the sea.
Shannon wondered what the last Ice Age must have been like. How did people survive it? Huge drops in temperature caused by the ice build-up, at the same time as falls in sea level. Then later rising sea levels as the ice melted, waves of water gushing in and filling up areas that were once land. Like the creek when it flooded at the valley but one hundred thousand times bigger and grander. Salt and sea and blue depths covering up thousands of years of rock engravings, petroglyphs and etchings and paintings of ancient animals – giant kangaroos and wombats and dinosaur-type beings.
Shannon wondered what the last Ice Age must have been like. How did people survive it? Huge drops in temperature caused by the ice build-up, at the same time as falls in sea level. Then later rising sea levels as the ice melted, waves of water gushing in and filling up areas that were once land. Like the creek when it flooded at the valley but one hundred thousand times bigger and grander. Salt and sea and blue depths covering up thousands of years of rock engravings, petroglyphs and etchings and paintings of ancient animals – giant kangaroos and wombats and dinosaur-type beings.
She removed her boots and socks and felt the sensation of warm rock on her feet. She imagined the rhythm of the whale songline, the chants that told the story. She thought of what Colin had told her about Barangaroo, and her incredible generosity – to try and bring the colonialists and her people together by the birth of her child. She looked far out to sea as she moved – beyond the last Ice Age – and then down to her favourite whale engraving. She sensed the whale could feel her questions and her loss and fears but it couldn’t answer her.
But perhaps it could give her messages or hints that might fill up the emptiness since Rafael left. It might be saying, “I have a baby inside me and it will be born one day”. It might be showing that the sea path up north to give birth and back south to the frozen icebergs of Antarctica would never change, would happen every year without fail and that life would go on, whatever happened to her or anybody else.
She felt comfort from this. It’s what drew her to this spot. It’s what made it her rock, her whale rock, and nobody else’s.
Shannon felt the sun on the back of her neck. Summer was on the way. Something made her look up and, out past the choppy sea and the small boats, she saw a tower of water shoot up into the sky.
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