Walkabout - James Vance Marshall [35]
But, as the children were quick to see, even such a charnel-house as the forest centre was not devoid of beauty – the staghorns, their leaves rearing skyward like the antlers of mating deer; the rock lilies, their bells as white as virgin snow; and the orchids, dangling like gossamer clouds out of the dark trees. They wandered through twisting tunnels, arcaded with vegetation through which the sun had never penetrated, they smelt the rich humid soil which had never felt the stir of a drying wind. At first they were filled with awe and amazement, but eventually, after three or four days of exploration, they became as much at home in the forest as they had been in the desert.
Together they watched the ant-lion lying in wait for his prey, lurking at the base of his self-dug trap, waiting for a victim to come plunging in to his death. Together they watched the fisherman-spider, lowering his single thread baited with sweet-scented adhesive saliva; then when the bait was taken, hauling the thread in, hand over hand. They saw the stick-like praying-mantis, the blue-skinned, red-capped cassowary, and - on their third day in the valley – they saw the koala.
They were on the fringe of the forest, collecting hips from the bush-roses which grew in banks among the eucalyptus trees, the day Mary lost her dress.
‘Look!’
She pointed to one of the trees. Half-way down its smooth-grained trunk was a moving ball of silver-grey: a koala, shifting from tree to tree, from one supply of gum leaves to the next. Quietly the children crept to the foot of the eucalyptus. Slowly, steadily, one leg at a time, the koala descended.
It was a mother koala, and clinging to its back was a cub: a harmless, fist-sized teddy bear: fat, tufted-eared, button-eyed, and covered in smooth sheening fur.
When the bears were about three feet from the ground, Peter darted suddenly round the trunk. He grabbed the cub by the scruff of its neck, jerked it off its mother’s back, and thrust it into Mary’s arms.
‘Bet you never had a doll as nice as that!’ he grinned.
The mother bear was far too slow-witted to defend her offspring. But she didn’t run away. She hung on to the eucalyptus, blinking her eyes in surprise. Then she started to moan: a low, pathetic, sobbing moan.
Mary’s heart went out to her.
‘Peter, you beast! She wants her baby.’
She tried to hand the cub back; but its tiny claws were hooked tight on to her dress. The thin material, already rent and worn, gave way. There was a long ripping tear. The dress slid to her feet. The koala sobbed and moaned.
A week ago nothing more calamitous could have happened to the girl. But now, after her initial shock, she felt strangely unembarrassed: more concerned with the cub than with her nakedness. Kicking the remnants of her dress aside, she bent down and very gently returned the baby to its mother’s back. Instantly the sobbing ceased. The mother koala looked round, blinked her eyes, licked her cub, climbed down the last three feet of trunk, and waddled off to another eucalyptus.
‘Poor thing 1’ Mary said. ‘You oughta known better, Pete.’
When, after a fashion, the reed hut had been completed, the children moved on. Mary would have been happy to stay; but Peter was eager to explore the rest of the valley.
That evening they came to a bend in the lagoon, and rounding this, saw ahead of them the valley-end: a sheer precipice of granite, and at its base a dark tunnel out of which an underground river flowed in a smooth pouring torrent. About a mile