The Fethafoot Chronicles

Earth, Australia, tomorrow: All over the known world, old sages - some from ancient religions unheard from for generations – and including warlocks, wizards, shaman, hooded, robed and naked mystics, have begun coming forward one by one – all acquiescent with the fact that they will be ridiculed for the warnings they bring. In the land ‘down under’ - Australia, Pem Weeatunga, is ‘happy as a Pig in shit’ he tells his family and friends, when asked. Unknown to Pem, the Fethafoot Clan of his own ancient people, have supported his own race to survive major calamities for over 50,000 years in this country – and soon he finds that travelling with a genuine Fethafoot warrior, through a pre-apocalyptic down-under, toward a coming unstoppable catastrophe, is not the very worst that can happen to someone.

All over the known world, old sages - some from ancient religions unheard from for generations – and including warlocks, wizards, shaman, hooded, robed and naked mystics, have begun coming forward one by one – all acquiescent with the fact that they will be ridiculed in the modern world. They come forward, they say, because of a dream of warning they have had: all of them. In the land down under Australia, Pem Weeatunga, is ‘happy as a Pig in shit,’ he tells his family and friends, when asked. Pem had studied and worked hard, sacrificing most of his youth to gain and hold the position he currently held, at the prestigious, modern observatory, in the mountains of New South Wales. His reason - for the hard work and sacrifice to get to this point in his life and career - he’d tell friends and family who dared ask – was that his deepest and abiding passion, was the ever-changing Universe in which, as Pem saw it, we humans were basically lower than gnats, when held up against its size, length of existence and sheer radiance. What he thinks is a chance encounter with a grizzled old Desert elder, suddenly becomes a life and death situation – and when the elder re-appears, asking him to use his knowledge and access to Space to look at an oncoming Asteroid, Pem is thrown into the midst of a race against time to save himself and perhaps, humanity. Unknown to city-born Pem, the Fethafoot Clan of his own ancient people, have buttressed his own race’s survival for over 50,000 years in this country – and soon, he finds that travelling with a genuine Fethafoot warrior, through a pre-apocalyptic down-under, toward a coming, unstoppable catastrophe, is not the very worst that can happen to someone.

Pem is a 59 year old indigenous man of Kabi Kabi Aboriginal and Sth Sea Islander descent. The Kabi Kabi (Gubbi Gubbi), nation are caretakers of the mainland area from approximately – the Fraser to Moreton Islands area of the SE-Qld coast-line. Pem was born in Gladstone, Qld and worked for many years of his young life in the Qld Railways and construction industries in Queensland, moving to Aboriginal Health in his mid twenty’s and back to construction until injuries forced him into trying an academic pathway in 1990. Pem began a BA – majoring in Literature and Aboriginal Studies at CQU in Central Qld at thirty-six years of age. He graduated ten years later while working for a university in the multi-media section. During this time Pem also gained a certificate in Film & Television production at AFTRS in Sydney. In 2004, after 14 years at a University Pem took his family to the Aboriginal community of Aurukun on Cape York, where he met Noel Pearson. Together with Tanya Major from Kowanyama, they created the Higher Expectations Program (HEP): a secondary scholarship, sponsored by Macquarie Bank’s philanthropic arm MGF, in an attempt to solve some of the huge social problems and high school dropout rate in the Cape’s indigenous remote communities. HEP is still working today and to date has over 25 University graduates – all ‘firsts’ from those remote communities. Currently, Pem has had to stop work, owing to several, severe construction work injuries and lives in Far North Qld, where he is in the process of writing several more fiction stories. He plays guitar, photographs nature, writes poetry and songs about his people, and tries to sing occasionally. Pem has four children and six wonderful grandchildren.