An Allegory of the Crow man, Curlew and Frog

There is a place named Quelcon near Denmark. This name Quelcon is of Noongar origin, and it means to dodge a spear. The same word was the call of the Noongar eagle man who finding his waterhole covered with the lice of his nephew, the crow, had called on his nephew to dodge the spear he was flinging.

From this one word an epic is born, and a story rests waiting to be told. This place name Quelcon rests like a footprint left by its previous owner and yet remains readily translated by those who know the story of this ancient relationship between eagle and crow, and what went wrong between them.

The crow man aims with his sharpened beak, the spear he holds between his black eyes, and his feathers all shiny hide his thoughts and all he watches.

Yet here in suburbia as green Swan transit buses pass me by I often speak with the crow men I meet. For some crows, they readily introduce themselves as such, and warn you they are watching. Others meanwhile tell you they are curlews or frogs but are crows and attempt to conceal their tracks and intentions.

‘Well, hello,’ he says. ‘I haven’t seen you for a long time...’ and he watches and waits for you to react. ‘I was only thinking of you and wondering how you were getting on,’ (but you know he’s come looking for a song or some article he can snatch and fly away with).

See an eagle man taught the Kingfisher who taught me and the murder of crows know it and seek me out. And the crow who would steal the meat from your mouth if you let him is brazen in his perfected art of politeness.

‘Oh, you’re looking great, do you remember when…’ he tries to placate you with his pleasantries, but look close and you can see his skinny black scaly crow legs and feet, sticking out from beneath his trousers and shoes.

‘I need that song,’ he tells me.’ And, if I get it, I will do what I have never done before, I promise I will share my wealth made from the Kingfisher with the Kingfisher’s family of golden swallows.’

And I am inwardly laughing at his charade. A crow man sharing with golden swallows, unheard of—no way!! But he seems so humble, so sincere, and so I make him promise that he will keep his word, but true to his black feathered lice filled kith and kind, he disappears. Ever the crow he is gone, he disappears into thin air with that song never to be seen or heard from again.

He was true to his kind, in every way a crow, as true as the lice beneath his black suit coat, which flaps in the breeze like crow wings, I should have known, I should have seen him coming, but didn’t. Crows don’t hunt their own meat and are always on the take, they always want a piece of yours.

Now this crow man who calls himself a frog and who sings the songs of the Kingfisher, who taught me, he says he learnt them from around the fires of tradition, from the old ones and fires he had sort out to sit by. But all the while he is singing Aaarrk, aaarrk, aaahhh as he constantly patrols and hunts along the highways looking for his next feed of road kill. But unlike most other hunters of road kill, he knows which way to jump—smart crow that!

Now to the Noongar of old, the crow was one of several moieties or divisions within their clan that once endowed social order and rules over who one could marry and, the social attitudes and expected ways and mores of acting within the group. In the southwest the crow or Waardang was one half of the division and Munitj the white cockatoo was another. Both were nephews of the eagle man. In Kellerberrin there was another moiety of birds. My old teacher was a kingfisher or Djooak and I, his adopted son became in turn the golden swallow, or Birrangaa. Kellerberrin holds to different country from that of the western or southern lands of black crows and white cockatoos, and for us kingfishers and golden swallows our knowledge of crows and cockatoos was supposed to give us a deep and enduring suspicion and awareness of them. The white cockatoo who boasts and the crow man who scavenges and watches had supposedly given the peoples of the east a reason to take care, but how easy we forget.

Now the Noongar legend of the crow names him as one who killed his younger swan wife from an act of rage and then who having been saved from drowning by his uncle an eagle man from the east, the crow tracked his uncle’s hidden source of fresh water and dirtied it with his body biting lice. Old crow nephew of the eagle man couldn’t be trusted. But in the bigger scheme of things the crow and eagle were linked by a relationship, one of uncle and the other of nephew, one of teacher and the other of student.

Now further, this story whilst relating to those Noongar who are crows who try to hide it, like their ancestor who tried to hide the fact that he had stolen and polluted the waters of his uncle all those many years ago is also about my experiences of a crow who masquerades as a Wiilo or stoned curlew; who with long skinny legs, big bulging eyes, is all seeing and remains akin to the crow, well camouflaged.

Now this crow who masquerades as a Wirlo walks on skinny legs, and true to the crow has rarely caught his own meat but has lived depended upon the scavenging of another. Now before I knew this crow was indeed a CROW, singing as a crow, with feathers shining like a crow and with black legs of a crow, I imagined something different. He did not boast like a Maanitj or white cockatoo, well not least initially, for he seemed humble and dedicated. He wore a different feather coat entirely, and I had thought, that he wore feathers like my own, for birds of a feather flock together. I even imagined he wore gold under his wings, but true, you seldom see what is under someone’s wing until they fly above you, but ever since I found his lice floating upon the water of the old man’s rock water hole I learnt from, I have known, too late, that he was not the golden swallow I thought he was, but every bit the crow.

Now the etymology of the name Wirlo might be the one who originates from another’s territory, the stranger who comes unannounced to do harm. Noongars still talk of their fears of the feather-foot beyond the lands of their own who travel from the north or east to unleash their magic upon the unwary. My old teacher, old kingfisher spoke one night in whispers, a Yamatji revenge party was moving through the town on their way to Quairading. We all hunkered down and turned out the lights. Now Wirlo remains one that is respected. He stands among a league of messenger birds well-known for his unwanted and feared messages. My old teacher had a song for that bird, the Wirlo, and he’d sing: wirlo wang mai wang woll ta buddin gaabin ngany mai wang woll...singing, ‘Curlew talk, sound and talk, alarm, I wonder who—who does that song belong to, to whom is that weelo singing, I wonder who?’ For the message was most often one of great clarity, ‘Who is that message for, for whom?’ To the Noongar of Albany, the threat of the Will tribe or Wiil ‘strangers’ from the north was never underestimated.

The Wirlo did bring messages and came as ghosts. Uninvited and unwanted men with messages from the north must always have been their consternation, so what did they think when strangers appeared from the ocean in the south? What were these ghosts with their pale white skin, who brought their diseases and strange ways? The Minang Noongar of Albany attempted to claim them as their own ancestors who had returned from the dead, and perhaps that is why their fear of them was lesser than the fear of the northerners.

Thus to Mokare’s people mimicking the ghost’s red coat’s march upon the shore, the Wiil or WIL was a direction and more, much more. Sure north of Albany, way beyond Bluff Knoll with its meeyowl boolaa, old hill with ‘many eyes’ was watching where the six toed, six fingered blood-eaters went creeping this way and that, gnawing upon raw flesh and whose serrated teeth marked every marrow filled bone on which they fed.

Were the Wiil the ‘Wheel-men’ or their word for all people and things, messages, and threats from the north? To the Minang, the southerners, the Wiilo who went crying in the night, were stoned curlew, bad news bearers who on their wings of fright, were bad news singers forecast bringers of death with messages to fear, foretelling future eaters where a stranger’s shaft of spear might finds its mark and dig their future grave.

Now I don’t know why, for what’s behind that curlew’s eye bulging round like the full moon, but we shouldn’t be afraid of him or his tune. I once shared with a Wiilman, I talked into the night near my smoky fire till this smoke of me shared its scent with him, and he within ear shot, listened and mimicked my smoke, and from the smoke of that fire I showed him where to find the old man’s maia, his hut where he lay and his ngaama rock water hole, fresh and deep, and then this Wiilo shape-shifted, he became a crow man and ever since I have seen some parts of him, floating in the cool clear water, his itching flesh eating lice.

His black feathers and white lice still line the bowl where he drank from, his crow tracks still surround the old man’s rock water hole, and like that place named Quelcon we know it is him, how does he think he can mask his theft of the old man’s water when the tracks of him sit so visible upon the soil and page. For from that old man’s hollow I sometimes read his most recent revelations where his black steps upon the white page convey his attempted footsteps dodging spears.

He would try to hide his tracks but we know it is him. ‘Quelcon’ said the eagle man, ‘Quelcon,’ dodge this spear if you can!