The Nargun and the Stars - 2009 - Perth International Arts Festival

photo: prudence upton
Synopsis
The prologue.
The Nargun, the great old dreamer of stone and earth, wakes from centuries
of slumber. She ventures beyond her dreaming centre – her Nargun’s Den
– and past a waterfall to gaze on the beautiful exotica of the stars. She is
disturbed by the aggressive mechanical noise of earth being moved, carved,
changed. She leaves her safe haven and sets out, travelling across the
land until she comes to Wongadilla, a farm in the mountain country that is
reminiscent of her original home.
And the human story begins.
Simon is a 12-year-old boy whose parents have been killed in a car accident.
He comes to Wongadilla to live with his second cousin Charlie, who farms the
acreage with his sister, Edie. They have both grown up here. They are almost
part of the land. Simon is raw, angry, wounded. He trusts no one.
Charlie drives Simon home to Wongadilla. As they drive through a gully,
Simon notices a bulldozer and a grader clearing some forest. He also notices
an enormous stone. Edie welcomes Simon to his new home. A moth-eaten
Old Ewe wanders past. Simon goes to bed.
As he sleeps the ancient Turongs lean in at his window.
The next morning Simon goes exploring. In the gully he writes his name on
the enormous stone he had seen the night before. At the swamp he meets
the Potkoorok, an ancient water creature and a trickster. The Potkoorok sees
him deal kindly with a dead frog. Henceforth Simon will be Frog Boy. The
Potkoorok tells Simon that a storm is coming (out of a clear sky) and that the
‘yellow machine’ – the grader that killed the frog – is at risk.
Charlie comes past, scoops Simon up on the tractor and takes him home.
Simon and Edie hear a strange high howling.
That night there is a storm. Simon runs out into the storm. He sees the
Potkoorok and the Turongs sink the grader in the swamp. On the way home
he is threatened by a scary presence, the Nargun. As he runs from the
Nargun, there is a most terrible sound. Something is dying.
In the morning Edie cannot find the Old Ewe.
Simon returns to the swamp. He discovers that the Potkoorok may have
disposed of the bulldozer as well as the grader. Simon asks about the dark
and scary thing that lives in the gully. The Potkoorok tells the mysterious
thing is a Nargun, but says nothing more. Simon goes to the gully to
investigate.
Up in the gully he discovers that the stone on which he had written his name
has moved. And he realises that it is the stone that is both the dark and
scary mystery and the Nargun. Then he discovers the body of the Old Ewe.
He calls Charlie. Together they try to find out a bit more about the Nargun
via a series of attempts to make her move. They begin to understand how
dangerous she might be, then return to the farmhouse. Charlie keeps watch
overnight.
Simon dreams. From his dream he understands that help may come best
from the rock people, the Nyols who live inside the mountain, and that the
Potkoorok may be the way to reach them.
Simon speaks to the Nyols. He discovers that the Nyols have stolen the
bulldozer and hidden it inside the mountain. They won’t, however, help
send the Nargun away. But they do let slip that the Nargun won’t tolerate
loud noises. Simon, Edie and Charlie decide that if they make a loud noise
at the farmhouse via the tractor and a loud noise via the bulldozer inside the
mountain, they may perhaps drive the Nargun away from Wongadilla.
It doesn’t work out like that. The Potkoorok, via a monumental act of
dreaming helps them to lure the Nyols away from their mountain cave
long enough for Charlie to start up the bulldozer and leave it working, but
… the Nargun attacks the tractor (driven by Edie) and destroys it utterly.
Emboldened, the Nargun hears the noise of the bulldozer inside the
mountain and goes to destroy that, too.
The end
There is an almighty battle. The battle ends when a landslide caused by
the Nargun’s destruction of the bulldozer entraps her inside the mountain
with the Nyols. They tend her joyously. Back at the farmhouse, Simon,
restored to wholeness and with real trust in Charlie and Edie, begins his
new life at Wongadilla.
3