The Heroic Pig

I wrote this story after hearing the story of the wreck of the Kameruka and rescue of survivors facilitated by a large pig swimming ashore pulling a lifeline in 1897 at Congo, on the coast near Moruya. It was an item on my local ABC radio station, Southeast NSW in 2004.

Once upon a time, more than a hundred years ago, there was a pig. He began his life, as all pigs do, a sweet, squealing piglet, shoving at his mother’s teats with his brothers and sisters. However, unlike the rest of the litter, this pig was destined for a life of adventure.

When the pig was weaned from his mother and running in the blackberries with the other young ones, a strange man came. The man bought the pig because he was a fine pig. The pig was herded along a road for a long way by the man and his dog. He reached a place where he lived in a pig pen which had dirt, food and a shed.

The pig missed his mother and his sisters and brothers. He missed the blackberry bushes and bracken. Still, he ate and grew. Soon he was a fine large boar.  One day the man took him from his pen, drove him many miles along roads lined with strange pungent trees and at last across a frightening narrow plank beneath which wicked water breathed – into a dark, wooden place which rocked and creaked, where even the floor was never still and nothing smelled as it should.

Food and water came regularly but the rocking and creaking never ceased and the pig was constantly afraid. The rocking grew worse so that the pig slid and panicked on his hard little hooves. He heard many sounds he couldn’t understand, and at last a catastrophic crash. The rocking and moving stopped but everything else increased; roarings and thumpings, shouts and running feet. The pig squealed with all his strength. At last there was quiet above while salty water seeped in from below. Some men came with a rope. They haltered the pig and dragged him out onto a slippery hard floor where sunshine dazzled and nothing was right – except the sight of hills and the smell of trees a paddock’s width away past snarling water.

I couldn't find a picture of a pig, so here's one of a stormy wave with a mermaid

When the men pushed him off the deck, the heroic pig didn’t need instructions. He swam with all his power towards the shore, trailing that life-saving line, not caring if the waves growled and slapped him; their teeth were lost. Out onto the sand and into the welcoming arms of history.

We know nothing of the heroic pig’s later life, and adventures, if any. A laurel wreath? Or apple sauce… A comfortable blackberried retirement? Or ham and bacon… Whatever events followed, they crowned a creditable life.