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Book details
  • Genre:FICTION
  • SubGenre:Fantasy / Epic
  • Language:English
  • Series title:The Fethafoot Chronicles
  • Series Number:6
  • Pages:169
  • eBook ISBN:9781483551548

The Fethafoot Chronicles

The Bunya-nut Games: Booburrgan Ngmmunge

by Pemulwuy Weeatunga

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Overview
Australia, around 2014BP: The time of the great games of prowess - managed by the Kabi Kabi tribe of southeast Queensland. Jundabara, the Fethafoot warrior from “The Contest” is attending the great event with his growing son Wogwun and his practical, often short-tempered wife, Niyola. Both Niyola and Jundabara have entered themselves in some of the demanding physical contests - and between their various rough and ready competitions and several unscheduled events: including a game of full-contact burionjin with the huge, hairy-man, Grok – and, being surreptitiously attacked by his tiniest enemy ever, Jundabara knows that he will need every bit of training and patience he owns - to keep the peace and get his family group safely through this great event.
Description
My Clan’s name and its mysteries, have been kept out of public knowledge and history in my homeland of Australia. It’s the way The Clan work. To achieve their goals, secrecy is a prerequisite to safeguard the work and people. I, am what some in the Clan call the favoured, because I now have the power - via the written word, to ensure that our efforts are remembered: and not just by the Clan, or those few they have made themselves known to. For the first time in our extensive, oral history, we have a means to reveal the long and intriguing history of our covert Clan to other Australians; to the many new people’s who now call this majestic land home – and to the modern world at large. If you were born in Australia, you may have even heard such stories told around campfires and family meals: about the Australian Aboriginal magic man – or Kadaicha, as our Clan were named by our people many years ago. We call ourselves: The Fethafoot. It was passed down, that the Fethafoot arrived here, not long after the start of time as we know it - in our now-Dreaming. This current era, which followed the Dream-time creation period. It was a time when the language creatures – humans - became proud and selfish. So egoistically insular, so quickly - that they forgot, why they were given time and space here for. Fethafoot warriors’ were trained to support the ancient Dreamtime design: to guide the very formidable language creatures toward dignity - and respect. Proper respect: for the heavens, The Mother-earth and each and every creature that depended upon their balance. Then and only then, it was said: their mutual connection with that holy trio, would assure balance and a healthy, unbroken Dreaming across our land. From its ancient beginnings, the Clan began to seek, analyse and utilise any and all martial-art, magic, weaponry or mind skill, that their information-hungry warriors came across. Many of the elder, long-trained warriors were advanced in spirit-travel and did not travel via Shank’s pony - as the act of walking is often called in Australia: “how’d ya get ere mate? Ahh, Shank’s bloody pony Dig! Me bloody orse broke down mate,” they’d say. Instead, these old clever-men used the ancient Dreamtime ‘creation-lines’ running across our country, to move swiftly across their lands. Thus, in a mixture of fear and awe, real and imagined, the Clan came to be known as The Fethafoot: half-man, half-spirit beings who could come and go at will, leaving no trace: Kadaicha spirit-warriors; The dreaded Fethafoot. This pithy glimpse will give you some idea of the enigmatic Clan - and you will discover a more intricate use of their unique gifts and talents as you read the chronicles – and as the need for their unique, various individual skills occur. Please - enjoy my people’s pleasure in the telling of these legends. Although they are not in chronological order, they have been recorded as passed down, for all to enjoy - and to example the many unknown, vibrant treasures’ of our first people and our land’s vibrant past. It is a journey that will also take you into the mostly unknown, moral and ethical heart of my people, from Dreamtime to now.
About the author

Pem is a 63 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.