In Spirit of the Crocodile (2025) biographer Michelle Scott Tucker has tried her hand at YA fiction, and has done it very well. In conjunction with Aaron Fa’Aoso with whom she wrote Aaron’s memoir So Far, So Good they have come up with a story about two boys on Saibai, one of the Torres Strait islands and Aaron’s ancestral home, just a few kilometres short of the Papua New Guinea Coast.
The boys, Ezra and Mason, are in their last weeks of primary school (Year 6). Next year they must attend residential high school on Thursday Island, an hour by air to the south. 240pp is a substantial read for 11, 12 year olds – and yet they read Harry Potter – but it seemed to me to be well paced, clearly told, and yes with a bit of teaching about Indigenous life, but not too much.
There is a girl in the story, in the boys’ year, Barbara, who is on her way to Brisbane on a basketball scholarship, but she plays only a small part. I might have liked a better gender balance, but perhaps Aaron was more comfortable dealing with boys. The other girls and women who play a part are the boys’ mothers, and Ezra’s sister already in high school on Thursday Is. She is supportive – a much better oldest child than I was – a lot like Nellie McClung’s Pearl, which might just be a function of how large families must work if they are to work at all.
There’s a bully of course, Billy, but the interesting (brave) thing is that he is white, his mother a teacher on a one year contract and not particularly liked by Ezra’s mum, a teachers aide, studying remotely for her teachers qualifications. Billy is mouthy and later Ezra realises how insecure he must be, constantly starting again in new schools as he follows his mother from job to job.
Ezra and Mason mostly spoke Creole to each other when they were out and about, English at school and Kala Kawa Ya, the language of Saibai and the other islands nearby, at home. Fluent in all three, they moved easily between their languages without giving it a moment’s thought.
The writing is clear, plain English. While I didn’t expect literary Creole, I thought there might be more use of Language for common words and for the fauna – the parrots, the crocodile and so on – to give more of a sense that English was not the boys’ first language. Aka and Athe for Grandma and Grandma are used throughout, but otherwise it’s Mum, Dad, Uncle, Aunty.
I made the same observation recently about Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon, where again the writing is mostly straight English. At the other extreme – in my reading anyway – is Nalo Hopkinson who writes in almost straight Creole. But I imagine I should in this instance be looking at FN writers like (Canadian) Eden Robinson say, or our own Melissa Lukashenko who discusses the use of Aboriginal English in Edenglassie (which I listened to recently but didn’t review).
Actually, Robinson’s Monkey Beach offers interesting parallels in that it also portrays a relatively middle class – mum and dad working, kids at school – family life in a remote Indigenous community setting. Both Robinson and Michelle & Aaron work hard to infuse their stories with children, and therefore readers, being educated in traditional life and values.
The story of Spirit of the Crocodile covers just a few weeks at the end of the school year (December in Australia and the beginning of the monsoon season up north).
A crocodile is on the boat ramp and all the kids go down for a look. Before it is chased away it looks straight at Ezra, singles him out it seems. Later Athe Harold reminds everyone, “Ezra is a crocodile himself, a member of the Koedal clan”. The crocodile reappears a couple of times, recognisable by the deep scarring on its nose, but don’t worry, it doesn’t eat anyone.
Ezra is worried about leaving home, about going away to school. The next week they fly down to Thursday Island for Orientation day. Ezra manages to get himself into trouble and his fears are not assauged. They go home on a new boat which his father, who works for Fisheries, has picked up. It has been chosen for him by Canberra bureaucrats. The motor keeps cutting out.
A few days later Ezra’s father and an uncle take Ezra fishing. Just Ezra, his younger brothers are left at home. It slowly dawns on Ezra that this is an early step in his education towards manhood. But back home he blots his copybook again showing off.
It is a feature of the book that Global Warming, and rising sea levels, are a constant presence. Saibai at its highest is only a couple of metres above sea level. Many houses are on stilts, but when a storm comes Ezra and Mason are alone with the barely ambulant Athe Harold in Mason’s house which is at ground level. Soon it is flooded and the two boys must get Athe Harold to safety.
Meanwhile, Ezra’s father is missing in the new boat and Mason’s father has gone out in his own dinghy to assist and now both are missing in the storm.
There is real tension which the authors bring to a head and then resolve beautifully.
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Aaron Fa’Aoso & Michelle Scott Tucker, Spirit of the Crocodile, Allen & Unwin, Cammeraygai Country, NSW, 2025. 243pp.