The Go: Ann Legacy

By Reg Appleby

Centuries before the Earth plates shifted and isolated Australia from the rest of the continent, a group of aliens arrived in their spaceship SUNBIRD from the planet GOSSES ANNSWETTE - the fourth planet of the sixth solar system.
While exploring Earth, the Sunbird developed problems of such significance that the ship had to depart Earth, leaving colonies of exploring groups stranded, never to see their spaceship again.
Centuries passed and the group of explorers in some parts of the Earth were massacred by native inhabitants, others assimilated into the cultures they discovered in the area they had landed, and still others found they were on sections of the Earth where they had to adapt and fend for themselves.
Fast forward to the twentieth century where a little boy called Pukely and a black dingo pup walked out of the desert country into the lives of some ordinary people of a small inland town.
Pukely is adopted by the local veterinary doctor, Jan, and her husband Colin, a mining engineer, and sent to school in the town of Mandangle. He meets a little girl at school called Iris, and begins a childhood romance that endures through his school years till he meets his real mother and father again.
His real mother and father are part of the GO-ANN people, descendants of those that came to Earth from the planet Gosses Annswette thousands of years before.
Was it possible to save the descendants of those abandoned on the planet forty thousand years earlier? If it was possible, could they live in the twentieth century? Pukely in later years was certain that he could and set out to make it a possibility.
Using the shell in the Cave of Eternity, Pukely went back to the village that existed forty thousand years earlier to met the remnants of the GO-ANN group who had been abandoned in Australia - and sought to change their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Dec 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781742842219

Reg Appleby

Reg Appleby is an accountant and owner of a successful engineering business in Sydney, Australia. At seventy three years of age, he is having the first books of his Go-Ann series published. Book One and Book Two have taken five years to write and are now combined in the first edition of the series. The author has travelled the world on many occasions and extensively in and around Australia by ship, by plane, and by car and caravan. He has explored for gold in every state of the country. He has walked the interior in the heat of a stifling summer and felt the chill as he walked the slopes of the snow-covered southern alps around Mount Kosciusko. On his own small farm when his children were growing though their early years, he raised a large variety of animals and trained race horses for many years. His love of the land and of the Australian bush has never diminished, and part of his experiences through the savage drought years in and around Australia still lingers.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

They came from the planet GOSSES ANNSWETTE, the fourth planet in the sixth solar system.

The planet Gosses Annswette had yielded up a rich bounty of earthly minerals for thousands of years and the Go–Ann people had reaped a bounty by enriching their living conditions to the extent that almost nobody walked anywhere. They only rode on the ‘Verybike’, a small machine on which two people sat comfortably side-by-side and skimmed over the surface of the land or water about three feet off the surface, or the ‘Verycar’, a larger machine with six seats that could and did accommodate comfortably six large people and, like the ‘Verybike’, skimmed the land or water at a nice comfortable speed of about thirty miles per hour.

Both of these vehicles had a large compartment at the back in which a fold-up table and chairs could be easily accommodated, and a large basket to hold picnic items for the people to go picnicking, a favourite pastime.

Children were never far from their parents’ side and enjoyed all the sports and games with their parents. They had large lakes on Gosses Annswette, so sailing and many other water sports were favoured.

When the children reached the age of thirteen, considered the age of puberty and therefore maturity, they were processed through the education shell into whatever trade or other profession they wanted, or their parents desired for them. Most followed the trade or profession of their parents; the shell educated them through a program, with the most up-to-date training in their chosen field.

By this procedure, all Go–Ann children enjoyed the joy and comfort of the company of their parents, without the hassle of early years of schooling. This changed when they reached the age of thirteen.

The GO–ANN, as they referred to themselves, had used their wonderful engineering abilities so well over the many centuries that the planet eventually started to run out of those natural mineral elements that the Go–Ann needed. This had inspired the ruling assembly to call for volunteers to take a space ship to a planet that they had identified as the one most likely to have the mineral elements that the Go–Ann so sorely needed.

Melding of minerals was the brilliant means of creating things that the Go–Ann used to make all things. They used a principle that was so simple, but it allowed them to create things without having to melt ores to metals and in doing so pollute their own atmosphere.

From cars to homes, the process of mineral melding was used, with total and ever-expanding success.

This planet was the third planet in the first galaxy.

To undertake the perilous journey to the third planet of the first solar system, the Go–Ann again called on their brilliant scientists to develop a space ship solely from melded minerals, a vast ship capable of tremendous speeds yet capable of withstanding the many obstacles that they were likely to encounter, a ship that flew without engines but powered by the mineral repulsion logs that were attached around the exterior of the ship, designed in such a way that the loss of some of them meant that the ship could not only continue to fly but also to land and take off again without trouble.

When the space ship left Gosses Annswette, they had a compliment of over three thousand people onboard. It was calculated to be a five-year trip to the third planet of the first solar system, and although everybody onboard was fully educated, many took the trip to be just a ten-year pleasure cruise.

When their space ship, the SUNBIRD, arrived at the third planet of the first solar system, the plan was to place contingents of crew members up to one hundred people at specific locations around the third planet. Each contingent was to be equipped with a transfer shell so that they could travel from any one of the locations to the SUNBIRD direct and exchange details of their findings, as well as to hold conferences on the progress of the many explorations they carried out on this planet, or to travel from one location to any of the other locations as they desired.

Gosses Annswette was critically short of many minerals, and the exploration teams were deposited at the various sites around the planet to explore for the minerals they sought.

Things began to go wrong from the moment they landed. They had expected to find the planet unpopulated; instead they found, at some of their chosen sites, primitive natives, who at first appeared friendly, but who became warlike after a very short time and murdered many of the contingent members, apparently without cause.

The shells were set up in special caves, either located in natural rock to suit their purpose and which were improved to suit their needs or they created the caves, with special mineral cutting tools, in the local stone cliffs.

When ready, they lined each cave with a mineral glaze to protect the caves from ever crumbling.

What was not expected by the Go–Ann, as they called themselves, was that there existed on this third planet a huge magnetic force that they thought had the power to interrupt the workings of the transfer shells.

Despite the many brilliant discoveries the scientists on Gosses Annswette made, they never fully understood why their propulsion through the repulsion logs truly worked. They only knew that by the creation of the logs and by feeding on the magical mineral, KARAMITE, in small amounts in a special way, the propulsion worked.

At some of the locations, they found only deep, hot, steamy tropical jungles with tribes of savages. There were many man-eating animals, and although they found what appeared to be traces of the minerals they sought, many lives were lost in trying to ascertain the worth of their findings.

Following the last conference held on the great southern continent aboard the Sunbird, contact was lost with the Sunbird by all the exploration teams. Contact was lost between the individual teams also, and there seemed to be no way to resume that contact.

Members of the various teams with the special knowledge entered the shells and activated the transfer, but to no avail – contact was lost apparently forever.

What had happened to their beloved Sunbird and their mates in the crew, they never were able to find out.

It was decided over time that their best chance for survival was to try to live side-by-side with the local people, where possible, and try to establish a new life for themselves.

On some continents, this proved viable, and some of the training they had brought with them proved valuable in establishing themselves in the hierarchy of the various tribes and communities that existed at the time.

Others who found themselves in less hospitable communities were simply killed and never had a chance.

Still others were left to their own devices, where there were no local populations to co-exist with. They eventually went ‘native’ themselves, made the most of the conditions they found themselves in, and multiplied and became content.

The Systaca in each group was thought to have been the original doctors, sent out from the Sunbird with each exploration group to tend to any injuries.

These Systacas (healers) were also the people that were versed in the operation of the transfer shell, and with each succeeding generation, that responsibility was passed on from Systacas to Systacas.

With the passing of generations, it became less and less important to read and write, and it eventually became a thing of the past. Like many great achievements, if there is no further purpose for its upkeep, it fell by the wayside and was forgotten.

The Go–Ann people possessed an extremely high intellect and they had the ability to quickly gain control of any situation that they came in contact with.

Their ability to build and design was inherent in their blood that they had the ability to achieve wonders when called upon.

Some may be forgiven if they thought that the pyramids, Stonehenge and the great carving of South America, the Inca ruins and many other unexplained marvels just may have been the results of interventions in some way by the descendants of the original Go–Ann people.

It cannot be claimed to be true, but!

One of the natural abilities the Go–Ann possessed was telepathy.

The power of telepathy was a power learned by all the Go–Ann children at an early age, just like talking is achieved by other children as they grow.

Telepathy was originally the only method that the Go–Ann used to communicate between each other. Parents could stay in contact with their offspring even when they were many miles away.

They did have a spoken language but it was more difficult to communicate with than telepathy and was not initially the chosen means of communication.

It is believed that the children were the first to abandon the use of telepathy. In communities where the children romped and played without any constraints, the sound of laughter and of their own voices calling to one another slowly won out.

Parents suddenly found themselves trying to call their children by telepathy and were ignored or not heard.

They quickly changed to the use of verbal commands, and that appeared to finally suppress the use of telepathy between adults and children.

In ideal surroundings, the likes of which were found on the Australian continent, time seemed to stand still; days, months and years passed by without any change to a perfect routine, in a perfect climate where there was a want for nothing.

Unfortunately, the great and varied skills of the original Go–Ann forbears was also lost, by succeeding generations, because of the lack of need to uphold the skills and the lack of means to practice those skills.

The original Go–Ann were extremely handsome—tall, blondish hair, blue eyes, and lovely clean features—they were of perfect health and were very strict with their diet to maintain their healthy status.

Few Go–Anns ever got sick, but for the rudimentary tasks set for the Systaca, like the removal of appendix or the extraction of teeth, there was little else that the generations of healers did in the way of medical care.

The Systaca were aware of local plants that had the same effect to act on bodies as an anaesthetic similar to chloroform.

This knowledge was passed down to each of the Systaca through the generations.

Other types of known skills could not be practised because of the lack of equipment to practice them on, with the loss of the Sunbird, and slowly lost to the qualified people.

For many generations, the Systaca tried to contact other shells. They discovered that their own shell gave them the ability to travel into the future, but not to contact others of their brethren. This, and because there was no advantage in the future of what they encountered to that environment in which they currently existed, they used the shell less and less.

Until Ben’s arrival—and he experimented with the shell.

PART 1

How it all started

A little boy came wandering out of the harsh Australian bush; walking beside him was a little black dingo pup he calls Bandit.

He was sunburnt and dressed in rags; on his head was a crazy hat made of grass fronds. He would pass a group of Aborigines as he walked along, said ‘hello’ and just kept walking.

This little boy was healthy and happy. He never asked ask for food or water but just looked at the Aborigines and kept walking by.

The Aborigines were astounded and concerned: a little white boy alone in the bush, they have never seen or heard of it before.

Some of the Aboriginal children were very curious and began to follow the little white boy, but they were quickly called back by their parents and told to leave him alone.

The adult Aborigines were worried and sent a runner to the ranger of the district to advise him of a little white boy wandering alone in the bush.

When the ranger arrived back at the spot where they saw the little white boy, he had disappeared. A search was then conducted using ‘blacktrackers’ from the Aboriginal tribe and other rangers who know the bush around where the little boy was sighted.

The search went on for weeks but no sign of the little white boy could be found.

The local police came to see the Aborigines and questioned them for hours, but all they found out was that the little white boy was seen walking in the bush with a little black dingo pup.

How could a little white boy survive in the harsh, arid, dry conditions of the Australian bush where daytime temperatures rose as high as forty-five degrees in the day and sinks to nearly zero at night?

Experienced bushmen told the ranger to forget the search. If a little boy was lost out there in the bush, his chances of survival would be almost nil after two days.

The ranger was not convinced. He thought that if a little boy would just walk past the Aborigines in the bush and not ask for water or food, maybe he knows something about survival—and just maybe, he was still alive.

It was nearly a month after the sighting of the little white boy and the ranger was walking his horse down towards the river to allow his horse to drink, when he heard the laughter of a little boy.

There by the river, he spied a little white boy playing with his black dingo puppy.

The boy was throwing a stick and the dingo pup was running and picking up the stick and taking it back to the boy.

The ranger approached him, and the little boy looked up and said ‘hello’.

‘What are you doing out in the bush on your own?’ said the ranger to the little boy.

‘I am just going for a walk with Bandit’, said the little boy.

‘Where are your parents?’ said the ranger.

‘I am not sure’, said the little boy.

‘What is your name?’ said the ranger.

‘Pukely’, said the little boy.

‘What is your name?’ said Pukely.

‘My name is Hap’, said the ranger.

‘Pukely’, said Hap, ‘a lot of people have been looking for you’.

‘Why?’ said Pukely.

‘Well, sometimes people do not understand about the bush and they think that little boys might get lost and not be able to find any food or water, you know, like city people’, said Hap.

‘That is silly’, said Pukely, ‘we have found plenty of food and water, haven’t we, Bandit?’

The little black dingo pup just gave a low howl and picked up a stick and brought it over to Pukely to throw.

‘Well, maybe you should just climb up on my horse with me and we will go and show these other people that you are perfectly okay. What do you say? That way, they will stop worrying and searching for you’, said Hap.

With Pukely on the back of the horse cuddling the Dingo pup, Bandit, they set off to the town of MANDANGLE.

And there the story begins:

The intrigue of how a little white boy suddenly appears in the Australian bush, yet no child is reported missing—and of how he survived and stayed healthy.

PART 2

FIRST ARRIVALS

Chapter 1

Today AUSTRALIA is the largest island in the world and situated at the bottom of the world. In the BEFORE TIME, Australia was only about one-fifth the size of the continent we know as Australia today.

That small Australia of the before time was a true tropical paradise. With an abundance of fruit trees and surrounded by the sea, it was just another beautiful tropical island that had the ability to abundantly support its population that there was never a reason for anybody to want for anything.

Birds of every shape and colour were in abundance, there were some small animals--principally the Sesquat (mink)—and the people lived a life of total enjoyment.

The people awoke every morning to the calls of dozens of varieties of birds that enhanced their home land and its environment.

Sunrise and sunset on this tropical paradise was represented by a garland of colours: red, yellow, green and many others in the spectrum of colour that would be hard to create artificially on canvas.

Morning was always begun with a race of shadows retreating across the landscape, followed by the rising sun; evening started when those shadows made their re appearance and crept back to finally cover the island and commit the land again to darkness.

The original population of Australia in the before time were the Go–Ann tribes, the mystical people who lived throughout the small island of Australia.

The Go–Ann people were a timid race of people who lived like no other race on earth. They believed that men and women were never to live together.

The women lived in a tribal commune separate from the men; they fished and gathered fruit, berries, nuts and other crustaceans and seeds for food to support their tribe.

The men did the same in their own village, but they lived many kilometres away from the women’s tribal villages.

Chapter 2

Amongst the Go –Ann people there were the healers, two chosen people: one male (the SYSTACA) and one female (the SYSTACARENE).

These two people also held the tribe’s secrets.

The CAVE OF ETERNITY was their sacred secret.

This cave held the supposed secrets of where the tribe originated, and was the sacred site that stored the scales of the SUNBIRD and the droppings from the SUNBIRD.

The scales of the sunbird were golden flakes and nuggets that had been found on land and in rivers and stored by the tribe for many centuries.

Most of the gems and the gold were thought to have been brought from the other colonies many centuries before.

The droppings of the sunbird were coloured and shining gem stones that were said to bring eternal life.

Both of these items were sacred to the Go–Ann and held in trust by the healers.

The secret cave’s location was never revealed to any but the healer’s successor on the healer’s death bed.

The greatest secret of the Cave of Eternity was the great shell.

Many generations ago, a SYSTACA had discovered that if he lay in the shell, which was a large egg-shaped hollow, made from some type of material that was unknown to the SYSTACA and the SYSTACARENE, and by placing certain types of dull and specially shaped stones found in the back of the cave that matched the shape of slots found in the head of the shell, they could close their eyes and suddenly seem to be in another world.

They exited the cave and the world outside was entirely different to what it was when they had first lay down in the shell.

This transfer into the future and back home was carried out continuously by the SYSTACA.

On many occasions, they found that the ocean they had known was no longer in existence.

The surrounding area was all a dry, hot bushland, and there was a different smell in the air.

The earliest transfers were frightening.

The SYSTACA’s, when they first discovered that they were no longer in their own oceanfront area, were terrified.

Even though they had been shown by their predecessors how to get back to their village and they had ventured to the future many times themselves and returned, there was still that fear in their heart that they may not be able to get back.

Many left the cave when they ventured to the future and checked the immediate area around outside of the cave.

The barren dried landscape scared them; however, they sometimes ventured far from the cave, meeting many people and learning many things about this new strange land.

The Go–Ann had no written language, so the knowledge gained by one SYSTACA was only passed down to his successor by word of mouth.

All the generations of SYSTACA who made the amazing adventure through the shell had, by word of mouth, set themselves one common goal: to, in some way, prepare their people for survival.

The Systaca was constantly aware and checking for changes, anything that could possibly turn their beautiful land into the desert they had encountered in their travels to the future via the shell.

When the SYSTACA returned from their trips to the future, they always found that the stones they inserted in the head of the shell now so beautiful and glowing brilliantly.

They would take them out, go to the back of the cave and use fresh stones for the next trip. When asked why they did this, they would merely say that this was how it was always carried out.

The procedure passed down from SYSTACA to SYSTACA—to operate the shell was simple.

Select a number of shaped stones, place as many as you choose in the slots at the head of the shell, lay back down in the shell, and within minutes you were in a new dimension.

Placing a certain number of stones in the slots determined how many years into the future you travelled.

For your return, replace the stones with other stones from the back of the cave, lay in the shell and you just returned to your village.

They always enjoyed the sight of their home village after a trip to the future.

In the time of the current SYSTACA, the trips to the future continued unabated. He had curiosity about people of the future, how they lived, how they spoke, what they ate, how they survived.

Different periods visited showed him that they used different types and shapes of clothes.

He contacted the SYSTACARENE and arranged a meeting.

They met and he talked with her about the various things he had discovered.

Naturally, she also was curious about his meetings and about the items he had discovered about the different people.

They then determined that they would venture together at times into the future and seek evidence of what had occurred to change the land to a near desert from their lush homeland.

The name of the SYSTACA was BEN; the name of the SYSTACARENE was NINNAE.

Ninnae returned to her village, worrying about Ben and how he carried a great weight on his shoulders concerning the future as he had seen it for his people.

Ben went to his village, wondering if with Ninnae they could find a period in the future that they could take their people to for survival, should the calamity occur to destroy their beautiful land.

The next morning, Ben and Ninnae met at the cave. Ben went into the back of the cave to get some transfer stones, as he called them, such as he had the day before.

Whilst in the back of the cave, he noticed that the transfer stones he had used the day before, which had been bright and brilliant yesterday after he had used them, were now back to their previous dull grey colour.

Ben took the new transfer stones back into the cave area where NINNAE was waiting for him and they both climbed into the shell. Ben then placed the same number of stones into the sockets as he had done the previous day and they lay down and closed their eyes.

Ben and Ninnae stayed still for only a short period of time. Then, they opened their eyes, and Ninnae’s comment was, ‘Ben, it was all a dream – nothing happened’.

Ben climbed out of the shell, he turned around and helped Ninnae out and they both proceeded outside.

Ninnae was in complete shock when she saw the new land before her. To this point, only the SYSTACA was ever permitted to travel by shell to the future.

When they emerged from the cave, Ninnae began to cry. Her beautiful landscape was now a barren landscape; only minutes before, it had been a lush green forest.

There was no ocean, no great tall trees, no great climbing vines and green grasses—only dry, parched earth, sand and scrub, flies and heat.

Ben turned to Ninnae who was held in awe by what she was looking at. ‘Is this what will happen to our beautiful land, Ben? What happened? Where are we?’

Ben was at a loss for words. He did not know what to answer.

Were they somehow looking at the future of their land? If so, what had happened? What had caused it to change so much? Where was the ocean?

Ben and Ninnae spent an hour or so looking around at the bushland as it was, disappointed by the lack of greenery and water, the absence of the great trees that the Go–Ann people loved so much.

There were some birds about, but nothing like the vast multitude that they were accustomed to, nor the variety that they knew so well.

With heavy hearts, Ben and Ninnae returned to the cave. Ben showed Ninnae how he took the now beautiful stones out of the sockets and replaced them with fresh stones from the back of the cave.

They then together lay down and shortly after found themselves back in their home area and time.

In the following months, Ben and Ninnae discovered that there were almost twenty slots on the top of the shell and by putting more or less stones in at one time, they could travel shorter or longer periods into the future.

They both realised that it was only time that passed, because they always emerged in the same destination: their Cave Of Eternity.

In the following years, Ben and Ninnae experimented by going forward in time and coming back. They hoped to find a period in the future to which they may escape should a calamity occur that might destroy their land as they perceived it through their adventures to the future.

They also met and communicated with as many people as they could find in this sparse environment, made many contacts with the Aborigine people who lived on the land apparently many years before the white folk they met arrived in this wild land.

The Aborigines held them in awe and never attacked or harassed the Go–Ann in any way. They seemed to be somehow in harmony with people like themselves who seemed to know the bush as well as the Aborigines, if not better.

On many occasions, when the Go–Ann white people met the black Aborigines, they presented them with fresh fruit that the Aborigines had never seen before, and would sit and talk with them for long periods of time eating the fruit and drinking the water the Go–Ann seemed to always have in plentiful supply.

When Ben asked the Aborigines about the great ocean that had covered the area that was now only desert, the Aborigines only shrugged their shoulders and said that they had never seen such an ocean.

Ben and Ninnae could not understand how they were able to, within a very short time of meeting the Aborigines and the white people of the different periods they visited, speak the various and differing languages, fluently.

The Aborigines took this as a sign and treated the Go–Ann as some kind of spirit people.

This was enhanced on a hot sunny day when Ben and Ninnae were walking across a section of land where a large gathering of Aborigines were having a meeting.

The young bucks from the gathering had been out hunting and all the animals in the vicinity had been scared away.

Suddenly, these two white people that were known to most of the Aborigines in the gathering were seen walking along and beside them were wallabies, kangaroos, emus, and even a gathering of birds.

The two white people seemed to be talking to the animals and petting many of them.

From that day on, this Go–Ann white folk were looked on by the Aborigines as animal-spirit people, and they spread it far and wide throughout their communities that these people must never be harmed by the Aborigines, with threat of death for any offender.

Chapter 3

Ben and Ninnae travelled to the future one at a time for months on end without explanation.

On one occasion, Ninnae disappeared through the sacred cave and reappeared before her tribe nearly five and a half years later.

During this period, Ben reigned over both gender tribes.

Ben was at first unable to locate Ninnae and was worried that she had somehow been killed in her travels to the future; however, he considered it very unlikely.

Ninnae disappeared for four months before she first reappeared and told Ben that she was okay, that he was not to worry and that she would stay in touch with him from time to time.

Ben was intrigued about what Ninnae was doing, so on one occasion some time after she had travelled to the future, he entered the cave and followed her to where she had landed.

Ben saw Ninnae walking toward a settler’s cottage and followed her.

He hid until he saw her enter a house where there was another lady doing some washing, then he retreated to the bush to wait until dark.

When night fell, Ben crept up to the house and looked in through the window. There was Ninnae, sitting in a chair with a baby at her breast and she was wearing the same type of clothes as the other lady was wearing.

Over the next several years, Ben followed Ninnae on many occasions to the future time, never letting Ninnae know that he was aware of the fact that she had a child.

As the child grew, Ben could see that it was clearly his: the same face, hair colouring and eyes.

Ben and Ninnae were aware that as SYSTACA and SYSTACARENE, they were not expected to produce children, but for some time they had been deeply in love, and the child was apparently the result of their union.

Ben felt hurt at first, but seeing Ninnae with his child made him glow with a great love and pride to think that Ninnae had taken this burden all alone to spare Ben any hurt or embarrassment.

Disaster struck one night at the settler’s cottage; a fire started after they had all gone to bed. The smoke was intense and quickly filled the small house.

The settler woke his wife, his two children, and then woke Ninnae, thinking that Ninnae’s little boy escaped with his own children.

When Ninnae discovered that the little boy whom she had called Pukely, which meant child of the bush, was not with the settler’s children, she tried to run back into the flaming house but was held back by the settler and his wife.

The next morning, after crying herself to sleep, and again waking up crying her heart out, Ninnae searched the ashes of the house, but no sign of her son was to be found, not even the little locket that the settler’s wife had given Pukely as a good luck charm, which had Pukely, with all our love, 16th March 1950, from mum and dad. These were the words that had been put on the locket to remember his father also—who Ninnae had told them had been killed falling from a horse.

Ninnae was a shattered person when she ventured back to the cave and travelled back to her own period.

Ben met her shortly after she arrived back to her own time and tried to console her, not knowing what had happened.

The story, when it came out, broke Ben’s heart. Ninnae begged him to forgive her. Ben took her in his arms and they sat together for hours that way.

Secretly, Ben vowed to himself that he would never give up the search for his son in case, by some miracle, he had escaped the fire.

Ninnae kept telling Ben about his beautiful son, and Ben did not have the heart to tell her that he not only knew about his son but had met him and played a game with him on one of his trips back after Ninnae.

On a later trip back to the same period; Ninnae discovered that the settlers that she had lived with had left the area. They had been amateur naturalists and, following the fire, had packed up and returned to the city.

Both Ben and the Ninnae were known to be absorbed in communion with the earth and all earthly things, and any disappearance for periods of time was seen to be to enlighten this communal spirit.

Both tribes lived in grass huts and made clothes and footwear from tightly woven grass and animal skins that were occasionally available or traded for. Both Ben and Ninnae decided that the tribes should not be introduced to any products that they discovered in the future unless it was totally necessary.

They both decided that the life that was enjoyed by their people in their perfect land was ideal and should not be interfered with.

The tribes built communal baths in each village, fed from hot springs that were common throughout the area, and all participated in the bathing ritual on a daily basis. This early presence of tribal cleanliness was probably the cause of lack of illness in the tribe.

Large pits were built on the edge of each village, with many small hills of sand around the edge. This was a primitive way of toilet hygiene.

Following the use of this toilet site, each person was to wash themselves clean in the nearby running creek and cover any solid offal with sand.

Tribal villages were moved after the gathering for the feasts, or approximately every three months.

As the huts were of grass, they were merely abandoned and new huts built. The sites were also selected by the Systaca of the men’s tribe, or the Systacarene of the women’s tribe.

The great feasts were arranged four times a year by the head man or Ben for the men’s tribe and by Ninnae for the women’s tribe.

All the women and children from the women’s village would gather at the village of the men and feast, sing and dance for many days, during which time the men and women reformed their relationships with their chosen partners for the feast period and spend the time together until the feast period ended.

The people held Ben and Ninnae as idolised leaders, because these two leaders could and did communicate over vast distances by a type of telepathy.

Thought to be magical by the people, this power they possessed was said to go into the very earth and would be given to any others who were pure of heart and retained the innocence of childhood.

There followed that the people set these leaders up in the largest huts in the centre of each village and supplied them with all they required to live comfortable lives.

Ben and Ninnae were the healers in the village. When a person became ill, they were bought before the healer for treatment.

Ben and Ninnae had been taught from childhood the secrets of the many herbal remedies to use for healing. If the treatment was successful, then they were praised as miracle workers.

If the patient died, it was decided that the patient had somehow offended the gods and that the gods had let them die to return to earth as a creature of the wild.

The tribes did not worship any ‘god’ as such; they only assumed that a greater being was watching over them and that they should never do anything to offend them.

Before the feast began, the younger unattached men built fine huts of grass to impress the unattached women and try to encourage a female partner into what normally turned out to be a lifetime relationship.

This would normally result in the pair sharing his hut while the feast was in progress and continue at every feast day thereafter.

Foot races and wrestling bouts and other activities were arranged to further show off a man’s strength and prowess. Some women ventured into these events and on many occasions beat the men at their own game.

The healers could do no wrong, and they in return were expected to, and did, dedicate their lives to the welfare of the tribe.

When they called the feast meetings for the tribe to get together, they took no part in the festivities except to grant a blessing to each unattached couples when they selected a new partner for the feast period and the life thereafter.

The children always lived with the women, and the women had to work very hard to support themselves as well as all the children of the tribe.

When a boy child reached the age of thirteen seasons, he was sent to live in a communal hut in the men’s village and became a man.

Becoming a man was all about learning: learning to hunt for food, learning which food was good and which was poisonous, learning to be part of a team and co-operate with other members of the tribe when seeking food.

Learning the secrets of the sea, such as not to wander far from shore when the tide went out. Because the tide came back in so fast that any person caught out on the tidal flats may drown or be taken by sharks—which were ever present.

The tide sometimes uncovered mud flats that stretched for many kilometres; it was easy to be trapped.

The best mussels and other crustaceans were mostly found a good distance from shore. There was an area offshore that was like a reef, but instead of being made from coral, it was a natural rock formation about ten feet out of the water at high tide and stretched for several kilometres.

This was known as the Rock Trap. Many unsuspecting young people caught out by the incoming tide tried to outrun the incoming tide by running back to shore and were overcome and drowned.

Others climbed upon the Rock Trap, and if not rescued by the older men, then they were normally always washed off and drowned by the waves blown up by the cool overnight winds that came in strongly from the west.

The only way to save those trapped on the Rock Trap was by taking a raft, a clumsy item made from driftwood and tied together with rope made from tree fronds, kept high on the shore for just such purposes.

Several men using paddles and poles pushed and paddled the raft out to the Rock Trap to get those stranded off and back to safety.

The sea between shore and the Rock Trap was no more than six feet deep at its deepest part, but was very dangerous to cover in a raft in a sea that was whipped up by the ever-present afternoon wind and the sharks that were an ever-present menace.

In a world of plenty, life was total enjoyment. The women spent a lot of time gathering the supplies to keep the tribe supplied with all the essentials of life.

The quiet moments in the heat of the afternoons was spent sitting in the shade, working out new ways of setting hair styles, making bead necklaces to wear at the next feast or making clothing and shoes.

Chapter 4

Minikao was a quiet, shy, little girl of fourteen; she had a very active mind. During her swim in the sea one day, she wondered if there was some way to make a type of material to wear that would be soft like animals’ hide, but made from the grass that were used for their skirts.

That same afternoon, she went off to the river with her little playmates to swim and get rid of the salt off her skin.

Minikao looked at the types of green grasses that grew along the path to the river but didn’t see any grass that she thought might suit her needs. It was while she was swimming in the river that she saw a type of dark green lily frond growing near the bank in shallow water.

Minikao pulled several of the fronds to take home. As she pulled them up from the water, she noticed that they had a type of bulb on the bottom that looked white and silky.

Minikao washed the fronds clean and saw that the bottom of the stem near the bulb was covered by what looked like a fine type of silky fibre that was very soft and felt nice.

At first she tried to peel off the silky threads with her fingers but found they were too fine. She then tried to use her teeth and found that was easier.

Minikao continued to pull these fine strings of thread from the fronds whilst her playmates played games in the water.

It was by accident that she bit too deep into one bulb and got some of the gooey white sap on her mouth. She unconsciously licked it into her mouth with her tongue and swallowed.

The taste in her mouth felt so pleasant that she bit deeper into the bulb and continued to eat the resultant milky goo that ensured.

When the other children eventually tired of their playing, they came over to sit down beside Minikao to look at the bundle of fronds and threads that Minikao had assembled.

Minikao told them of the nice taste she got from biting the bulbs, so some of them grabbed the bulbs that she had stripped the threads from and very carefully at first bit into the bulbs to taste the flavour. They liked it so much that they quickly exhausted both the supply and their hunger.

The children then set off back to the village as it was now much cooler and was almost time for the evening meal.

Of the seven children including Minakao, who went to the river for a swim, none ate dinner that night.

The parents were very worried when all the children went to bathe and then off to bed, without a meal.

Any unusual occurrence in the village was reported to Ninnae, so it was that several of the mothers were talking about their children returning from the river and was happy to go without their dinner; this was most unusual with the appetites normally shown by the village children.

It was decided that the Ninnae should be notified in case some illness was pending on the children.

Shortly after Ninnae was notified, Minikao was asked to go to the hut to see Ninnae. Minikao could not understand why the village healer would want to see her as she was not ill. She entered the hut to see Ninnae, who smiled at her and asked her to sit near her on the grass mat that was on the floor.

Ninnae then started to question Minikao about her visit to the river with the other children and all that had followed. Minikao told Ninnae about her idea of trying to make a soft pliable material that may replace the animal skins and grass skirts.

At first, Ninnae sat quietly looking at Minikao. Minikao was very scared and felt she would break out in tears at any moment.

Ninnae leaned over and cuddled Minikao to her and said that she thought that Minikao was a bright, intelligent young woman and that if she needed any help at all in her endeavour to make the material she was trying to make, she only had to ask Ninnae and she would give her every help she would need.

When she talked to Minikao about the bulb the children had eaten, Minikao was worried that maybe the children were ill. She knew that she felt well herself, however, and enquired about the concern.

Ninnae proceeded to tell her that all the children were well, and that they were all happy to go to their beds without their evening meals the previous day, but this had worried the children’s mothers.

Minikao laughed and commented that she herself had felt totally satisfied the previous evening and had been glad to miss her evening meal. This inspired Ninnae to enquire about the taste of the bulbs and asked Minikao to bring Ninnae a sample bulb at a later date to try herself. Minikao agreed that she would and the meeting was ended.

Minikao left the hut feeling ten feet tall. Minikao, at fourteen, had been honoured by Ninnae, and this was the envy of every young girl in the tribe.

Secretly, Ninnae wondered if this was the beginning of the making of clothes that she had worn on her trips to the future.

Chapter 5

In every community, there is always a person or several people who continue to look for something different.

Just like Minikao, with her search for a better type of fabric with which to make clothes that would be soft and pliable, a young man named PICA of the same age was also looking for a way to make a raft that could be easily controlled and rowed out to save people caught on the Rock Trap.

It seems it was only just, that one day as Pica was walking along the beach, Pica would meet Minikao.

Both of these young people were prone to wander alone, thinking of a way to solve their individual problems.

Their meeting was like nothing anybody could describe; to say it was love at first sight would be the greatest understatement ever written.

With the first glance into each other’s eyes, something wonderful and sweet and glorious happened to them both.

They were, of course, dumbstruck, not game to talk to each other, but not willing to turn away either.

Eventually Minikao said ’Hello’, and Pica, who was just standing five feet away, mumbled ‘Hello’ back.

Minikao then started to turn away to go back to her village.

Seeing Minikao about to leave bought Pica quickly back to his senses. He stammered and stuttered and ran over to Minikao and said ‘Pica’. ’I mean my name is Pica. What’s yours?’

‘My name is Minikao’, she said.

They then began to talk together about every bit of nonsense that came into their minds—anything—so that they could just talk and look at each other.

Minutes passed, which turned into hours; the day passed into afternoon into twilight, when suddenly both realised that they should return to their respective villages before night fell.

They did not separate until they both promised to meet the next day after midday meal at the same place.

Pica rushed back to his village, glowing with anticipation for the next day and his meeting with Minikao. He could still see her face, remember her hair, still see her beautiful eyes, the way she walked as she left him and headed back to her own village.

After dinner, he went to bed, but he could no more sleep than swim around the world. He could not wait until daylight came to complete his chores and get back to the beach and again meet Minikao.

Minikao did not know what had possessed her to talk to a strange boy on the beach and she promised herself that she would not go and meet him the next day or any other day.

She also had her dinner and then off to bed.

Despite her deciding not to go back to the beach and see him again, she had dreams of running along the beach with Pica chasing her, of Pica catching her and of wrestling with him in the shallow water.

She awoke in a sweat, with the other girls in the dormitory all watching her.

‘Are you sick?’ one of them said.

‘No’, she replied, ‘just a bad dream’.

‘Did not seem like a bad dream to us’, they replied with a laugh. ’Who’s Pica, and when did he tickle you?’

Minikao, embarrassed, turned over onto her side and knew that she just had to see Pica the next day; he was haunting her and she had to get him out of her system.

The next morning after their chores had been completed, they both headed for the beach. Their second meeting was as exciting as the first. They each stood and looked at each other and, as if they had known each other for months instead of hours, they strolled hand-in-hand along the beach.

They reached a point along the beach where the trees gave a nice shade. They sat down under a tree and closed their eyes and let the world go by, happy to hold hands and just be together.

‘I promised myself I was not going to see you again’, Minikao said to Pica, ‘the trouble is I dreamed of you and woke all the girls in the dorm. I knew then that I just had to come and see you again’.

‘I lay awake all night just thinking of you’, Pica said, ‘I just could not wait to see you again’.

Minikao then proceeded to tell Pica about her challenge to make a material from the strands of fine strings that she had obtained from the grass fronds in the river.

She said that she had to find a way to join the strings of thread together to somehow make them into a material to make some coverings from that would replace the animal skins.

Everybody knew that animal skins were better than the grass coverings, which every person who did not have an animal skin was forced to wear.

The biggest trouble with animal skins were that they were heavy and hot to wear, and not too many available.

Sequa (a small animal like a mink) was the most common, and it took a lot of these to make a reasonable covering.

Pica explained to Minikao how he had seen some birds building a nest in a tree. He said it amazed him, as he sat and watched for hours, to see how they gathered pieces of twigs and built a type of frame, and then they had gathered the softer grass and woven the grass through the twigs and formed the nest.

By continuing to add more and more grass in and through the twigs, they ended up with a sturdy nest.

During the next few weeks, they tried an endless array of frames and forms to make the material Minikao was after, until at last they came up with one that worked. However, they ended up with a piece of material that was only big enough to cover both hands laid out flat, and to arrive at this final piece of material had exhausted all the strings they had accumulated from the bulbs, plus some extra they had needed to collect.

They were happy with the result, though; it was a success, as far as they were concerned. When Minikao finally took it and showed it to Ninnae, Ninnae praised her for her endeavours.

Chapter 6

Pica still had not come up with any practical ideas about building a better raft.

Try as he could, he could not think of an easier way of building a raft that would not only float better than those currently used, but would be stronger, take more people and be able to be steered in a straight line back to shore.

One day as Pica and Minikao were walking along the beach, Pica saw some driftwood that had been washed up onto the shore. It was not so much the driftwood that had attracted him but the way that the larger pieces of logs were laying on the bottom of the pile and the smaller pieces across the top.

The practice the villagers currently used to make the rafts used for the rescues was to strap together a mass of heavy logs with fibre rope extracted from the huge leaves of the banana trees.

This made the raft float low in the water, heavy to handle and ungainly to steer.

It also took a lot of very strong men to drag it up on the shore when it was not in use.

Pica told Minikao of his idea of getting only two large driftwood logs, keeping them apart about the distance that a tall man was high.

Then he would gather many smaller pieces of driftwood and place them crossways across the larger logs to build a type of floor.

These smaller logs were to be tied to the larger logs with the banana frond rope, just like the larger logs on the current rafts were tied.

When the old rafts were launched, they were so heavy that the waters partly covered the raft.

As more people got onboard the raft, water got up to their ankles.

This made the raft terribly hard to handle and even dangerous.

It was almost impossible to steer it in a straight line.

Pica and Minikao were determined to build a raft that not only would float, but that could hold a good number of people and could be steered in a straight line.

After chores the next day, they met on the beach. They searched and scoured the beach all day to find two pieces of driftwood that was straight enough and big enough on which they could build their floor.

They eventually found two pieces that they thought would do the job.

The logs were so big they had to float them to an area of beach where they could tie them to some overhanging trees so that they would not float away.

Because the logs were so large, Pica and Minikao were unable to pull them up onto the sand, they took several of the smaller logs they had assembled and tied one end to each end of one of the large logs. They then measured it out to the width they wanted and proceeded to tie the smaller logs to the end of the second larger log.

This was to be the first of the many smaller logs that would eventually make the floor that people could stand on.

The logs seemed to float perfectly.

Pica and Minakao had run out of time for the day but were determined to finish the job tomorrow.

The next morning passed ever so slowly. Both Minikao and Pica rushed through their chores, quietly had lunch with the other young folk in the village and then just as quietly slipped down the beach to the little alcove where they were building the new raft.

They wasted no