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Notes From an Amateur Writer #50

This Blog series is an exercise in creative writing. Sometimes expressed in short story form, sometimes as a journal, or just my thoughts written down. It is a nursery of sorts for the stories that are on their way, or yet to be written.

This is post 21 in @dragosroua's January 30 day writing challenge.

Revisiting Childhood With Storm Boy and Mr Percival

I remember watching a film as a child called Storm Boy. It is classic Australian movie, based on a novel by the author Colin Thiele. I must have been very young the first time that I saw it, given it was filmed in 1976, and I was born in 1972, but it made a lasting impression on me. Though I hadn't seen it since then, I still especially remember the wild and stunning beauty of it's location – The Coorong in South Australia – and the friendship that the young boy forms with a pelican.

I had always intended to give the film another viewing, but I think, at some level at least, I feared it wouldn't be as good as I remembered it to be, and I may destroy one of my warmest childhood memories. Seems I needn't have feared though, having just watched Storm Boy again, and it is everything I remember it to be.

Storm Boy is the story of a young boy named Mike, who lives with his father – a fisher man – named Hide-Away Tom. They live in the sand dunes in the wilds of The Coorong in South Australia, near the mouth of the Murray River. Mike meets an Aborigine name Finger Bone who lives in the area, and together they form a friendship. Their bond is developed when they discover three orphaned pelicans, and Finger Bone encourages Mike – who he calls Storm Boy – to adopt them and give them a chance to live.

Eventually Storm Boy's father makes him release them back into the wild. They have now fully grown and are ready to fend for themselves, but Storm Boy is devastated at losing his friends. He doesn't attend school, and has very little human contact. Finger Bone and the pelicans are his life.

One of the pelicans - Mr Percival - returns and the friendship continues. Until hunters kill Mr Percival. Finger Bone and Storm Boy search everywhere to find him, to no avail. Eventually Finger Bone finds his body and gives him a burial, having already explained to the young boy the central role that pelicans play in Aboriginal creation lore. And having laid Mr Percival to rest, he finds a newly orphaned pelican chic in need of support.

The movie ends with Finger Bone telling Storm Boy, as they watch over the newly found chic, that "perhaps Mr Percival is starting all over again. Birds like him never die."

I remember watching this and being completely at ease with the fact that, first of all, a white child formed a friendship with an aboriginal drifter. It wasn't until later in my upbringing that I came to realise that society in general frowns upon cross cultural friendships, especially in Australia between whites and our first inhabitants. But I had already learned a better way – all friendships are valuable – and I learned it from this film. It made perfect sense to me, and still does.

There were two other valuable lesson in this film for me that set the tone of my attitude to important issues. One was our relationship with, and treatment of animals. And the other was our appreciation of nature, and her incredible beauty.

Mr Percival was always a childhood favourite of mine. I remember wanting to have a pelican friend also. Even later in life when I saw pelicans in the wild I would refer to them as Mr Percival. Perhaps it is magical thinking, but being friends with, and equal to a wild animal such as a pelican seems logical to me. I never struggled to understand how it came to be. And I felt Storm Boy's devastation when Mr Percival was shot and killed by the hunters.

Finger Bone's ending statement implying the cyclical nature of life was a little gift that sunk in, eventually, to my way of thinking. I'm not saying I have that as a truth, just as a pleasant memory, and a counter balance to the life-hating and child-blaming beliefs that were officially handed to me as a child. This film became my secret place of life affirming and dream enhancing memories. I like to think it kept me safe until I had the strength, and common sense, to decide for myself what I wanted from life.

I have never had the chance to visit The Coorong, but the visual beauty of the film has always stayed with me. Its impact upon my love of, and attitude towards nature is significant. I have known many places in Australia that are similarly spectacular. But I believe this location has a degree of the mythological for me. Perhaps that is why I have never visited it. I wish to keep it pure and unadulterated - just a preserved memory.

The thought of living wild, having animals as friends, and knowing Aborigines with knowledge that goes back a long way seems perfectly acceptable and normal to me. I'm glad I never lost touch with how the fantastical could be possible. And one way to do that is to write and tell stories – stories that often originate in our childhood experiences.

Images sourced from unsplash.com and used with permission, or personal screenshots.

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