There was an explosion POOF! and a shower of red dust rained down on her head. A large figure strode purposefully through the dust.
"G'day luv, m' name's Cain," he said in a broad, north Australian accent. The figure doffed the broad-brimmed hat he'd been wearing and stood in front of her with a broad grin on his broad face. He had broad shoulders and a broad belly. Everything about him was...well, broad.
She hadn't been expecting a carbon copy of Hugh Jackman, or a Simon Baker look-alike, but she had hoped for something easier on the eye than this...this creature. She'd have even settled with a version of Jack Thompson, but alas this was the specimen that stood in front of her. That his homo sapien form so closely resembled his amphibious one was something of a shock.
"H...hi, I'm Jessica." She replied, nervously. It seemed ridiculous to be addressing someone who had, only moments before, been hopping on all fours and eating invertebrates. She quickly hid the four-iron she'd been holding, behind her back. It was this offending item that had caused the problem in the first place.
Jessica had been studying the decline of frog species across Australia. Her travels had taken her to Far North Queensland and the Northern Territory where the biggest threat to frog species was the much-loathed cane toad. This introduced feral pest was large, ugly, and toxic to all that it came in contact with. It had only one known predator... humans armed with golf clubs and cricket bats. Thus the sport of Cane Toad Golf was born.
"Wow!" said Maureen, one of her neighbours, who'd been standing beside her, gawping the whole time. "How'd you do that?"
"Dunno," said Jessica. "I just whacked him into that dry creek bed and POOF! Here he is."
This strictly speaking was a lie, Jessica had in fact been told about the dry creek bed. She'd been told that it was a magic place. When she first arrived in the town she had gone down to the local school; she'd been told that they had done a project on local frogs and she was keen to find out what they'd learned. The school was a small one with a large indigenous population.
The Year 1 teacher had invited Jessica to talk to the class about her research, and in turn they'd share their knowledge about local frogs. During the course of the day Jessica had told the classic tale of 'The Frog Prince'. They had sat listening eagerly to the story. When she'd finished one of the boys put up his hand and said,
"Oh that's a good story, Miss. My grandfather, he's an elder and he says that the dry creek bed is magic. It has Dreamtime magic. He says that when the people come to the river they have to ask the spirits if they can cross it, or drink from it in the wet season. If they don't then the spirits will curse them, sometimes they turn them into animals or rocks or trees. Just like that prince when the bad spirit turned him into a frog."
"That's fascinating, Billy. Does it work the other way too? What happens if animals cross the creek bed, are they turned into something?" she'd asked with interest.
"I think so, Miss. The spirits are very jealous about their creek; they say everyone must ask before they use it. Maybe the animals are turned into people. That is Dreamtime magic too."
So when Jessica had been invited to join in a round of Cane Toad Golf, she had decided to test out her theory. Maureen and her husband Bruce had taken her out to the 'driving range' in their ute; it was an expanse of dry red soil bounded by the creek bed and interspersed with spinifex grass, the occasional mulga tree and dozens of wombat holes. The creek bed looked like a long shallow ditch scratched in the red soil, which was littered with pebbles and dry white animal bones.
Jessica teed up and attempted to launch her cane toads towards the creek bed. She wanted to see if the old Dreamtime magic would work on these vulgar amphibians. The first couple of toads landed short of the mark. The third one made a perfect arc in the air and came down right in the middle of the creek bed.
