The song of the Narranguy

In the singing of many little rivers, the song of the Narranguy persists the clearest, and I hear it now as I write this. The Narranguy came out of the dawn and the great dark mysterious ranges and circled and looped its way by the little hills to the setting of all the suns. Our place was set on the rising ground just above the rich black river flats. 'Riverview', father had called it: from our front verandah we saw so much of the river and the river country, and it all became, without our knowing it, a very big part of ourselves. Also, if we looked to the left, we could see something of the ranges, with Coolangubra rising above them, a giant among giants. He watched continually over us in his frowning dominance and majesty, in all ways like the god who lived once a week in our catechism. Bleak and black against the rising day, he was; but he caught the last of its going. And then he smiled, distantly, a trifle grimly; but for the moment his great face lit up in a smile, and that somehow reconciled us a little to the awful Deity who so pitilessly watched our lives. Occasionally, too, the great bow or double bow, after the violence of a summer storm, would be fully bent in all its beauty and glory right over Coolangubra. And that gave us a glimpse of the Heaven reserved for us - if we were very good - in some impossibly distant future.