Amidst the rolling glens and castle-like homesteads of the sprawling Imagine Estate, an enormous kingfisher surveys his kingdom. This steel-and-perspex critter was built by gifted artist Folko Kooper and, perched high above a billabong, offers a breathtaking photo opportunity for all Bigs-thusiasts.
Pleased with my happy snaps – my light grey shirt really popped against the native flora – I prepared to leave the park when an unusually hairy gentleman, bereft of shirt, invited me to lay down beside him on the estate’s lush grass. Wriggling a little closer, his unkempt beard tickling my cheeks, the man presented me with a toothy grin.
“Bigs, did you ever hear the story of the Fisher King?” he asked.
“Don’t you mean the kingfisher?” I replied, gesturing towards the giant, blue-and-brown bird perched above us.
“Kingfisher, Fisher King, I always get that front to back,” the screwball squawked. “Anyway, the story begins with the brightly-coloured kingfisher as a chick, having to spend the night alone in the forests of Strathfieldsaye, to prove his courage so he can become king of the entire medium-density housing development.”
“Ooh, I wish I had some popcorn,” I cooed, snuggling in closer to the shaggy street urchin. “This is getting good.”
Hail to the Kingfisher
“Now, while he’s spending the night alone, the little bird is visited by a most unusual vision of a fire,” my chum chirped. “Out of the fire appears the Holy Grail, symbol of God’s divine grace. And a voice said to the kingfisher, ‘You shall be keeper of the Grail, so that it may heal the hearts of all the world’s winged creatures.’”
“Oh me, oh my!” I piped up. “I had similar delusions after I ate a whole tray of lasagne right before bed!”
“But the kingfisher was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power, and glory, and beauty. And in this state of radical amazement, he felt for a brief moment not like an average-sized bird, but like a really, really big bird – like The Big Kookaburra…”
“Or the The Big Pheasant? The Big Eagle? The…”
“Yes, Bigs, that’s quite enough of that. So the bird reached into the fire to take the Grail, and the Grail vanished, leaving him with his wing in the fire, to be terribly wounded.”
“Golly, this sounds like it’s getting a bit gruesome for Land of the Bigs!”
“Now as this bird grew older, his wound grew deeper,” the crackpot continued. “Until one day, life for him lost its reason. He had no faith in any avian. Not even himself. He couldn’t love, or feel loved. He was sick with experience, and he began to die.”
“Criminy,” I wept. “That’s exactly how I felt when they tore down The Big Pineapple.”
“Really, Bigs, can we go five minutes without hearing about The Big Pineapple?”
The Last Kingfisher of Bendigo
“One day, a fool wandered into the estate, and found the kingfisher alone by the entrance to the carefully-landscaped Emu Garden,” the teller of tales tweeted. “And being a fool, he didn’t see a king of birds. He only saw a bird alone, and in pain. And he asked the kingfisher, ‘What ails you, friend?’
“The kingfisher replied, ‘I’m thirsty – I need some water to cool my throat.’ So the fool took a cup, filled it with water, and handed it to the creature. As the kingfisher began to drink, he realised his wound was healed! He looked in his wings, and there was the Holy Grail, that which he sought all his life. And he turned to the fool and said with amazement, ‘How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?’
“And the fool replied, ‘I don’t know. I only knew that you were thirsty.’”
The two of us lay back in silence, allowing the enormity of the story to wash over us. I turned to my new friend and when I did, his eyes were deep and blue and crinkled in the corners.
“And that’s why they decided to build a statue of kingfisher here?” I whispered. “So that the people of Strathfieldsaye shall never forget that what they yearn for may harm as well as heal? That redemption can be found in the unlikeliest of places?”
“No,” the vagrant shrugged. “Some suit in Melbourne probably picked it out of a catalogue in order to give the place some semblance of character. I just like the story.”
And with that the hobo sat up, brushed the grass from his shoulders, and wandered off into the labyrinthine streets of Greater Bendigo, never to be seen again.
