Aaron Fa’Aoso and Michelle Scott Tucker’s Spirit of the crocodile is a children’s/YA book, which makes it atypical reading for me. However, I’m not averse breaking my rules occasionally, and so I made an exception for this book – mainly because of its collaborative authorship and its setting.

Aaron Fa’aoso and Michelle Scott Tucker have collaborated before – on Fa’Aoso’s memoir, So far so good. It is, apparently, the first memoir by a Torres Strait Islander to be published commercially. Last year I posted on another collaborative memoir, Some people want to shoot me, by Wayne Bergmann and Madelaine Dickie. I sense that collaborative story-telling between First Nations Australian and white writers is increasing. There are probably many reasons why these collaborations happen, but from authors’ perspectives I understand that it results in better understanding and the transfer of skills and knowledge between the participants. In good collaborations, the mutual respect for each other’s skills is usually evident. Certainly, in this novel, we can sense the different knowledge, storytelling and writing skills that have been brought to the work, but the end result is something that flows well for the reader.

As for the setting … As far as I have been able to ascertain there’s been very little First Nations fiction set in the Torres Strait, which makes this one worth considering regardless of its intended audience. But for me, specifically, is also the fact that I visited the Torres Strait last year, heard some history of the islands there, and saw a presentation by Saibai Islanders, so of course, I have additional interest in the region. Now, having said all that, onto the book …

Spirit of the crocodile is set on Saibai Island, which … well, I’ll let the book describe it:

Only a metre or so above sea level, Saibai was a magnificent low-lying wetland – a flat mixture of mangrove trees, grassy plains and salty swamps. Ezra felt connected to every part of it. It wasn’t like one of those typical tropical islands in the movies but Ezra didn’t mind. Saibai had been home to his family for thousands of years – it was part of him and he was a part of it.

It is also just 4 kilometres south of Papua New Guinea.

Spirit of the crocodile, as you will have surmised, features a boy called Ezra. He is 12 years old, and is in the last weeks of his primary school days. Change is coming and he’s anxious because there is no high school on the island. He – and his friend Mason – will have to go to Thursday Island (TI) for that, and Ezra is not so sure he wants to leave the island and his family.

This, however, is not the only change coming. Threaded through the novel is the spectre of climate change. Saibai Islanders know their country and know when things aren’t looking right. The sky looks wrong, the seasons aren’t behaving as they used to, fish numbers are falling, and, most obviously:

Little by little, as the tides rose slightly higher each year, those other Main Roads – and the homes and trees along them – had been claimed by the sea. (p. 5)

This is not future change but happening right now – and it triggers the novel’s crisis, when a huge storm tests everyone’s mettle, particularly Ezra’s and Mason’s. It is, however, Ezra’s older sister Maryanne who makes the point that these unusual storms, not to mention bushfires and excessive hot weather, are no longer surprises:

The whole world knows it’s getting worse, we can see the water rising, our land disappearing, and no one cares! (p. 234).

So we have Ezra’s life changing as he prepares to transition to high school, and the climate changing, but we have one more big change – coming-of-age.

Spirit of the crocodile is about 12-year-old boys (mostly), so we are not so much in the territory of sexual maturation though there are light hints that this is coming too. No, it’s about mental, psychological, moral growth. It’s about that transition from self-centred childhood to responsible adulthood. At the beginning, Ezra and Mason are kids, playing silly pranks and thinking only of their own fun. Ezra in particular has a lot to learn, and some of it he learns from Mason who, he notices without fully understanding, is already starting to make that transition.

Two things particular to Ezra’s life suggest this coming change. One is the appearance of a large crocodile in an unusual place. Ezra feels what Mason sees, that the croc looks straight at him. Well, as Athe Harold says, Ezra “is a crocodile himself, a member of the Koedel clan … The crocodile is his totem and kin” (p. 19). Later in the novel, the crocodile returns, and again looks “directly at Ezra”. This time Ezra is prepared and looks straight back. His mum tells him the crocodile is “a sign … of … change” (p. 116), but doesn’t explain what. Another lesson for him to learn for himself!

The other thing also occurs early in the novel, a beard-shaving ceremony (Ubu Poethay) which marks the initiation of young men into manhood. It’s a few years off yet for Ezra and Mason, but during the novel Ezra’s dad makes the first gentle steps towards introducing him to Men’s (or spirit) business.

So, Spirit of the crocodile is many things. It’s a work of eco-literature documenting the reality of life on Saibai Island right now, and a call to arms, evoked through Maryanne who explains the value of education in a prestigious school:

It might give me an easier way through to the whitefella world … So I can learn how to use their stuff to help our people. Like Eddie Mabo did … I want to learn how to use their rules, their laws, their knowledge. (p. 226)

It is also a coming-of-age novel, that feels like it would appeal to kids of many all backgrounds. And it generously shares culture. This does involve a little bit of telling, but is not didactic. When First Nations people tell the rest of us to educate ourselves about their culture, it is to books like this that we can go for some of that knowledge and understanding.

Superseding all this, however, is the fact that Spirit of the crocodile is a warm-hearted story about family and community. It has some important messages but they are wrapped in a story that feels real. Recommended.

Bill (The Australian Legend) has also reviewed this book.

Aaron Fa’Aoso and Michelle Scott Tucker
Spirit of the crocodile
Crow’s Nest, Cammeraygai Country: Allen and Unwin, 2025
248pp.
ISBN: 9781743317099