Preamble
The Kingdom of the Tingle ©Will Taylor
Written by Will Taylor and illustrated by Colin Atkins
Designed by Craig Chappelle
First printed 1987. Second printing (revised edition) 1999.
IT WAS on a beach near Walpole, a little town on the south coast of Western Australia, that we first heard about the Kingdom of the Tingle.
We'd been fishing from the beach until the early hours of the morning, and bagged a good catch, including a grey nurse shark that had been following the schools of sea salmon round the coast. It was a beautiful night - hardly any wind and quite warm - as Colin and I relaxed in the glow of a fire on the beach, joking and reminiscing over billy tea about the night's sport.
We first became aware of the old man when his face and ragged clothes appeared in the circle of flickering firelight. After the usual greetings and remarks about the weather, we invited him to sit down and join us for a brew from our battered old billy.
He told us that he often combed the beaches for bits of driftwood and other treasures which he sold to craft shops; and like most old blokes he loved to tell yarns about how it was, back in the old days - especially if encouraged by an interested audience.
"Y'know," he said, helping himself to another mug of steaming tea, "most people think of King Karri as the name of the gigantic trees that grow in the forests round 'ere. Well, I know an actual creature named King Karri, who's descended from a royal line that's lived and worked with their kind in the forests since way before us white men walked on this land. The Aboriginals might've thought of 'em as forest spirits, 'cause they've got these amazin' magical powers".
He looked at each of us in turn, to gauge our interest I guess, then continued: "Anyway, this King Karri rules over the whole forest and all the creatures who live there: from the tiny blue wren to the big buck Kangaroo ..." He glanced around and dropped his voice. "I've actually met 'im..."
He didn't complete the sentence but fell silent, gazing into the night towards the sound of the waves, as though he was having trouble remembering something. After minute or so he cleared his throat.
"It's many years ago that I first met the Tingle Folk, as they're called...". Again he stopped, and looked hard at me, then at Colin, maybe to see if we were laughing at him - but we were both listening intently. The old man took another sip from his mug, made himself comfortable on the log he was using as a seat, and continued in earnest.....
