Open Writing

QUANDONG JAM

Woodward was sitting at a small garden table under the lemon tree outside his lodge, with the dragon peering over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” said Swanfire.

“I’m peeling these quandongs.”

“What for? They’re tart, taste rather like the haw in the old country – the berry from the hawthorn hedges. They can’t be much use,” said the dragon.

“They’re a native peach, full of vitamin C. The aborigines prized them and they make an excellent jam. I remove the flesh and save the nut, which contains the seed for the new tree.”

“Where’d you get them?”

“Down Rockingham way, in the bush. You don’t see many quandong trees in the metropolitan area; they seem to be dying out.”

Swanfire looked at the nuts, sitting in an old ice cream box. “They’re very hard and they look lifeless to me. You reckon they’ll grow?”

“Before all this development started, there was an emu migration route through here,” said Woodward. “The emus love quandongs, eat the fruit, nut and all, and the whole lot passes through their stomach, which is a hydrochloric acid bath. When the emu excretes the remainder, the nut germinates.”

“Well, you don’t see many emus round here these days,” said the dragon.

“No,” said Woodward. “I was wondering if you could help?”

The dragon batted her magnificent eyelashes. “I beg your pardon?”

“Swanfire, darling girl, if you wouldn’t mind swallowing a handful with your lunch, then do your toilet on a sandy ridge at the edge of the swamp, or near the golf course, we will be able to re-introduce the quandong within our own territory.”

“Consider it done,” said the dragon. “But just a small handful. I have to watch my waistline these days.”

The dragon likes Woodward, who most people would see as a rather dull elf, obsessed with plants and trees. She finds him interesting and admires the way he does his rounds in the forest, rescuing tadpoles from drying up waterholes, removing ticks from bobtail goannas and other little acts of good. The animals all know him and many love him.

The dragon and Woodward talk a lot.

“Do you know much about emus?” she asked.

“I know that they pair up, and Mum leaves Dad to hatch the eggs and look after the chicks.”

“Yes,” said Swanfire. “Like dragons, the female is dominant, being bigger and smarter. If you put her in a pen with another male, she may just kill him. She has to choose her mate herself. That’s why they’re a tricky bird to farm.”

“I know they really clean up grasshoppers and locusts. But the farmers never seem to appreciate that. They dwell on the damage the birds do to fences, or the trampling of crops,” said Woodward.

“What a pity we can’t learn to share the planet,” said Swanfire. “Speaking personally, I daren’t let myself be seen in public or I’ll be either shot or put on exhibition at the zoo. Or worse still, used in a Coca-cola commercial or a fast food ad for Mac-shit.”

“Too right,” said Woodward. “My trick is to just walk about pretending to be a pensioner. That’s as anonymous as I can get. Humans seem to become invisible to each other once reaching the age of 65. Their society acknowledges their existence but sort of writes them off.”

“Sixty-five?” said Swanfire. “I haven’t been 65 for 2000 years or more.”

“You must have seen a lot of changes?”

“Basic things don’t change much. I remember looking over the shoulders of two old guys in a cave in southern France, thousands of years ago. They were criticizing a cave painting where these young guys were throwing spears at a bison. It looked like a pin cushion; it was that full of spears.”

“What were the old guys saying?” said Woodward.

“They were agreeing that the media was to blame for all this public violence.”