Children's Fiction

‘Making Changes’ is a recently published anthology of children’s stories, containing a wide range of tales from 24 up-and-coming authors. The following is an excerpt from Ian’s entry.

The Croc at Coopers Rock

Even upside down the desert was boring. Jana studied the islands of cotton wool. They were drifting across a bright blue sea. Above them, the endless sands made a reddish sky. The scene shimmered in a heat haze. Pretty, but definitely a yawn. Jana jumped down from the desert oak and straightened her ginger locks. Her head felt dizzy, but that passed as her bloodstream flowed back towards her feet. The sky and the ground were back where they belonged. But they were still dull, not to mention hot. The guesthouse garden was roasting under the brutal sun.

“What ya doing?” The words caught Jana by surprise. She wheeled round. It was the Aboriginal boy, coming down from the guesthouse. Jana had seen him before, running errands for the landlady. Jana’s mother didn’t approve of her talking to the Aboriginal children. Still, Mum wasn’t there now.

“I’m waiting,” she said grandly.

“Waiting for what?” the boy asked, scratching his thick mop of hair.

“Waiting for Mum to come back. Waiting to go home to Sydney. Waiting for the world to end. Waiting-”

“Alright. I getcha Missy. Where’s your Ma?”

“At the Observatory, she’s important.” Jana was talking in her queenly voice. Mum said she had a gift for it.

“Alright, lot of city fellas come out to see the star house.”

Jana smirked. Probably he couldn’t say observatory. Back in Sydney her schoolmates loved telling Aborigine jokes. Mum said you shouldn’t laugh at other people. Yet Mum had forbidden her to play with the Outback children, even before they boarded the bus in Sydney. Mum also said the correct term nowadays was ‘Indigenous Australians,’ although Mum never used those words with other grown-ups, only with Jana.

The journey to Coopers Cross lasted two days. Mum kept herself busy with her laptop. She looked at maps of the constellations and revised her calculations. But the trip had been extremely tedious for Jana. Hours of driving, watching the green farmlands fizzle out into red soil.

The Outback was another world. Jana understood now what people meant when they said that. Millions of tons of rust-coloured dirt lifted from Mars and scattered as far as the eye could see. Even the plant life appeared alien.

Clumps of grass filled the redness with green streaks. Stumpy white gum trees were scattered everywhere. Jana imagined them as skeletons bursting from the earth, as if in a horror movie. But a wilderness was a wilderness, spooky trees or not. There were no fast food restaurants, no cinemas, and no malls. Totally nothing. So it was weird and boring. Jana didn’t like that combination.

The boy stood in the shade of a wilting jacaranda tree.

“I’m going to the Rock if you wanna come.”

“Rock? What rock?”

“The white fellas call it Coopers Rock. Out of town, about a mile.”

Jana screwed up her sea-blue eyes and stared at the boy hard. The white fellas call it Coopers Rock. What did that mean?

“Yer, the Rock has a Dreamtime name. But that’s secret Missy!”…

Making Changes. An anthology of children’s stories.

Including ‘The Croc at Coopers Rock’
By Ian Douglas

Available from Amazon, leading bookstores and the publishers (bridgehouse@btinternet.com,)

ISBN 978-0-9557910-5