Myths and idioms

<Dr Tan beside caterpillar paintings>

I've just spent three days with the aforementioned Dr Tan driving up and down the West & East MacDonnell Ranges.  Dr Tan was fairly impressed by the Ranges...I think people expect to be impressed by Uluru and are quite surprised by the natural grandeur on tap in Alice.  He was also impressed by the mythology of the giant caterpillars surrounding the Ranges, the ancestral beings that shaped the landscape.  It's actually quite hard to find any extensive info on the caterpillar mythology behind the Ranges (ditto history of Alice still in print).  I have a small book called A Town like Mparntwe with some 'fragments' of story in it, but most of my knowledge seems to have been gleaned from signage, which abounds in Alice.  (I think I've talked about the caterpillars earlier in the blog, so I wont go into detail again.)

After a while, Dr Tan thought the caterpillar metaphorics were growing thin, and suggested an alternative mythology in which giant spaceships were buried underground, pushing up the ridge formations.  This led to speculations about a sci-fi narrative in which a Harry Potter figure would uncover the ginat spaceships.  'Harry Lee', a child orphaned after the tragic death of his mother (platyed by Gong Li), would be sent to Alice to live with his cruel relatives who run the local Chinese restaurant, the Golden Staph.  Harry lives a precarious existence, in a broom closet under the stairs (natch), polishing chopsticks and greasing lazy susans late at night when most children are in bed.  He sleeps with a Mah Jong tile tied in a knotted handkerchief under his pillow to remind him of his mother (the only remaining tile from her Mah Jong set).  One night, the Mah Jong tile begins to speak to him in his sleep, telling him of the subterranean existence of the powerful aliens who flew the spaceships to Alice to create the MacDonnell Ranges.

That's as far as we got in this potentially best-selling junior fiction narrative.  Any further suggestions are welcome.  The other thing Dr Tan was dubious about were the reports of 'whistlecocking' (subincision): 'I do not like to think of this,' he said eloquently.  (I must admit my sources are pretty sketchy, largely anecdotal.)  I suspect we can't bring whistlecocking into the Harry Lee narrative.

One day when we was looking for the start of a bushwalk track, a man called out to us, 'Don't worry, she's an easy walk!'  Dr Tan was rather fascinated by this use of the first pers fem pron, despite having previously lived in Australia for about a decade, and being thoroughly familiar with the phrase 'she'll be right.'  I suggested that it was an extension of the general practice of calling cars, ships, cyclones, etc, 'her'.  I guess what intrigued us both was the proximity of this phrase to 'she's an easy lay' -- an easy lay of the land?

I'm now in Melbourne (I've left a message on your phone, Angus).  Before our plane touched down this evening, the pilot signed off with a ditty that went: 'Thank you for choosing to fly Qantas.  We look forward to seeing your faces when next you fly with us again.'  I felt it was obviously a ditty composed for tongue-tied pilots unable to come up with their own lines (and to reinforce the party line).  But choosing to fly Qantas?  There's hardly any flights on offer from Virgin for Alice residents any more.  And 'when next you fly'?  A little quaint, maybe, somehow evocative of Sunday School songs.

Oh well, it was better than that other Qantas clanger they used to play on their safety tape: 'Subtly every air cabin is different.'  Call me a pedant, but shouldn't it be: 'Every air cabin is subtly different'?

First thought on speeding down the Tullarmarine highway in the Skybus: 'Gloom!  How exciting!'  Followed by 'Overcoats!  And knee-high boots!  How novel!'

Comments

[Jude]

And my first thought - Who's looking after those cats? Will they get all the attention they are accustomed to?

["Dr. Tan"]

It is long past midnight now. The flashing neons across the waters to Macau beckon in a Great Gatsby-like way: sparkly dreams are just, alas, always a tad beyond the fingers. "She'll be right, Auntie E! Yeah, she'ill be right. For an insomniac, it is always a delight for the past to come rushing back in a haunting way. No caterpillars in the stomach, to be sure.

[elsewhere]

Thanks. That was very evocative. I will work out some way of getting to HK some time, I promise.