TUMBLAGOODA: The story of a strange lost thing

By Suzanne Ingelbrecht and Michael Inouye

Ten-year-old Georgina 'George' Doherty lives a free-and-easy life with her father, Seamus, in the coastal town of Mirmouth, Western Australia. Together with her best friend Mac, she spends her time seeking buccaneers, buried treasure and people in need of saving.

When a cyclone devastates

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dragonfly Publishing
• Release date: Jul 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645595376

Suzanne Ingelbrecht

Suzanne Ingelbrecht is an author, professional playwright, director and performance-maker based in Perth, Western Australia. She has been entertaining others since the tender age of nine when she wrote a play to cheer up her classmates during their sewing lessons... Always the drama queen, Suzanne has enjoyed honing her skills and techniques in dramatic storytelling through her plays, and now loves to pass this passion on to the next generations of storytellers and fabulous imaginers of wonder. Now she has penned Tumblagooda for eight-to-ten-year-olds (as well as all those who like to think they have never really grown up). And she is busy thinking about and penning books two and three in the Tumblagooda trilogy from her custom-made Toyota Hiace Commuter van, affectionately known as Van Go, as well as other fantastical wonders of imagination. It's all a far cry from teaching into the Creative Writing program at Curtin University, and inspiring artists with disability to follow their dreams. You can join her and Van Go (if you dare) on their amazing journey round Oz in 2023 and 2024. Catch up with their shenanigans at Instagram #theferalbohemian. And watch out-Suzanne and Tumblagooda will be coming to a school, or a library near you very soon to thrill you and fill you with tall tales and rambunctious rabble rousing!

Book preview

TUMBLAGOODA

Book 1 – The story of a strange lost thing

Suzanne Ingelbrecht

Copyright

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Published by Dragonfly Publishing, July 2023

All rights reserved by the author.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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ISBN (e): 978-0-6455953-7-6

Cover and interior illustrations by Michael Inouye

Content Warning

This book contains a scene in chapter 4 referencing an historical reenactment that actually took place in 1979 to celebrate the establishment of a town and the 150th anniversary of the founding of Western Australia.

The author acknowledges that this reenactment would now be seen as racial stereotyping and cultural appropriation, and is inappropriate. The scene has been included to enable discussion and learning.

The author and publisher wish it to be known that they do not condone the use of racial stereotyping and cultural appropriation under any circumstances.

Please refer to the teachers’ notes accompanying this book, which are available from the publisher’s website.

Dedications

For Ben, Jack and Katie

who give meaning to my life…

Foreword

At first, I thought Tumblagooda was a weird new word, an invention of tale-teller Suzanne Ingelbrecht (who is, like her main character George, decidedly plucky and adventurous). In fact, it names a very old thing in our very old land. To discover this in the 1970s when George was a kid, you’d need to search a dusty old dictionary or encyclopedia or visit the local library or work out that your science teacher knows useful things after all…

I visited Tumblagooda territory, 600 kilometres north of Perth, for the first time just a few months prior to reading this delightful novel, which is set there, belatedly discovering why everyone raves about Kalbarri National Park, the mighty Murchison River, and striking inland and coastal gorges, cliffs and estuaries. We took photos at Nature’s Window, like so many do, but didn’t think about what we couldn’t see. It’ll be different next time. The mysteries of Tumblagooda are mind-blowing!

I love narratives that encourage new speculations about old places. This warmly engaging novel draws you into and beyond its pages towards inconceivably deep time. Do you think much about our old earth and its creatures? Tumblagooda—in the oddest way—encourages us to. I’ll go back to Kalbarri one day, gaze across gorges streaked by time and stories and be grateful to geologists and palaeontologists and the Nanda people who have looked after the land and waterways for thousands of years, and to storytellers like Suzanne who treasure small follies and families, weird beings, rocks, sand, seaweed and the big old business of the universe.

Dr Ffion Murphy

Honorary Senior Fellow

School of Arts and Humanities

Edith Cowan University

1

King George of Yam

THE CORONATION had turned from shambles to disaster as quickly as a peanut butter sandwich turns stale.

From yum to woe.

From Let’s Go to Too Slow…

George gazed at the star picket horses tied to the wire fence with their long sock faces and string reins and knew how they felt. She heard Mac’s voice call out from a distance as if he was lying at the bottom of a bin. ‘Sapientia et Doctrina Stabiatis!’

‘Stabilitas!’ said George wearily. ‘Sapienta et Doctrina Stabilitas!’

Mac’s outstretched hands hovered above his friend’s head, gripping the crown of knotted brown palm leaves and alfoil George had made for the occasion. Maybe he’s forgotten his lines deliberately…

‘I name this crown…’ Mac frowned.

‘I name this king…’ hissed George.

‘I name this king—what am I supposed to be calling you again?’

Was that a smirk?

‘King George of the Kingdom of Yam!’

‘King George of the Kingdom of Yam,’ Mac repeated.

‘Go on! Crown me!’

‘You can’t be a king anyway.’

‘I can be whoever I like.’

‘You can only be queen. You can be Queen of the Kingdom of Yam.’ Then under his breath, ‘stupid name anyway.’

Mac crowning George

George roared. Before Mac could say another mean word, she wrenched the crown from him and shoved it under his chin. It disintegrated under the assault, which enraged George more. As her offsider stumbled backwards, George tore the crown apart, hurling bits of alfoil after Mac’s retreating figure; and he, whistling and catcalling, skilfully dodged each piece of flying silver debris.

‘Ha ha!’ It was the fastest he’d moved all day.

Doink! Finally landed one on that grinning mug!

She paused in triumph as Mac retreated further from her. There was no more alfoil. The palm leaves lay scattered at her feet, so that was that, coronation over! George slumped onto her throne.

George called it a throne. In reality, it was a rusty, threadbare orange and yellow striped deckchair she had discovered in her father’s shed.

Mac remained at a respectful distance.

‘You’ve ruined the ceremony!’ George yelled at him.

‘I haven’t.’

‘Be quiet when the King is speaking.’

‘You’re a bossy boots, Geor—’

‘Go away before I pass sentence upon you!’

Mac scoffed but stayed where he was. ‘Can’t we play target practice?’

‘Already done! Ha! Got you on the nose.’

‘Did not!’

George pushed herself out of the deckchair and moved to collect her stick horse. She untied the mournful-looking creature from the fence, shoved it between her legs and shuffled across the dusty block that bordered part of her family’s garden.

She headed for the road.

‘See you tomorrow?’ Mac called out.

George didn’t answer. She was galloping at high speed on a stallion named Star of Paradise and far too busy to care about a petty subject who had just ruined her royal coronation.

‘What have you been up to?’

George’s father, Seamus, a kindly man of nearly 60, gazed at her over the top of his spectacles like some inquisitor from an ancient time.

‘I became an HRH.’

‘And what’s an HRH?’ Her father raised an eyebrow.

‘It’s when you’re made a king, or a queen or a prince… You know, Seamus!’ she added, scorn in her voice.

‘Or a princess?’ replied her father.

‘S’pose.’

‘So what kind of HRH did you become today?’

‘A king.’

‘And your kingdom is…?’

‘The Kingdom of Yam!’

‘What a sweet sounding name!’ Seamus grinned at her.

George glared at him.

‘And did you have yams at your coronation banquet?’ Seamus asked.

‘We didn’t have time for a banquet.’

‘Why, what happened?’

‘Mac mucked it up.’

‘Oh! I wondered why he slunk off without saying goodbye.’

‘Can we go to the beach tomorrow?’

‘You know, your dexterity in changing the subject when it suits you shows a certain aptitude I wish could be repeated in your schoolwork, Georgina.’

George hated when her father used lengthy words and sentences, especially about her schoolwork. Whenever he was rude to her—and he was often rude to her—she would deliberately scrape her chair back from the table and leave.

‘You’re doing it again!’

‘Georgina—’

‘That’s not my name, Seamus!’

‘Okay. We can go to the beach,’ he called after her retreating figure. ‘Come back and have some soup now.’

She didn’t reply, but as she stormed towards her bedroom, she was smiling to herself.

Sometimes, ignoring one’s subjects brought just reward.

In the sanctuary of her bedroom, she went to her desk, lifted the heavy wooden lid and brought out her scrapbook. She flicked through the pages of newspaper cuttings she collected like treasure, unusual stories her father had first read to her from the local newspaper and that she decided were interesting enough to cut out and glue into the book, her Book of George. There were stories of people finding stuff: silver coins from a Dutch ship that had sunk off the nearby coast in the 17th century, or people going missing in the bush and being found again alive and well days or even weeks later.

She paused when she got to a story about a Prince Vincent of Hume declaring war on Australia for allegedly not providing an organisation called the Australian Taxation Office with information about a business he was running.

Her father loved this story. He’d embellished it for her enough. Vincent Dashwood lived in the next-door district on a wheat farm. He had declared independence from Australia when he’d been slapped with something called a wheat quota.

George didn’t understand why this quota business had so riled Vincent Dashwood. But she did understand the significance of declaring oneself a king or a prince. She did understand the concept called independence. When her father showed her the photograph of Prince Vincent in the newspaper with his long flowing cloak and his bejewelled velvet crown, she knew she wanted a kingdom like he had. She wanted a crown like that one. She wanted a sceptre and a sword. She wanted to slay dragons and soldiers that would threaten her land and her subjects.

Prince Vincent of Hume had declared war on Australia, her father said. He marched his army of subjects towards the Mir River, armed only with sticks and stones. When they arrived at the banks of the dried-up river, Prince Vincent challenged the head of the Australian Tax Office to a duel to the death by sword.

But the commander of the Australian Tax Office was a coward and refused the prince’s challenge. He wanted an amicable