The Kwalic Archive (Part Two)

The mature Allogee Kwala dressed in a robe and woolly hat that June made for him.

What began as a two-volume illustrated account of the capers of the young rascal Allogee Kwala, inspired in part by Anne and Jack's avid devotion to Donald Duck comics, grew over a period of years into a vast Kwalic kingdom entirely of their own devising. The second part of the Kwalic archive records, with maniacal attention to detail, the imaginary world of Kwalaloompa invented by two of the amazing Ross kids. Let's look first at the maps:

(Map detail)

Next we have the genealogical records of the Kwala descended from the 'Great Kwala':

(detail) I love the 'three fools' at the bottom

I was intrigued by the note in red biro referring to 'The Great Shrat Incident'. Following the arrow across the chart we find the unlikely coupling between Wide Handsome Spacious Rat and Samantha Sheep.

When I asked Jack about this he explained that he and Anne thought it necessary to corrupt the pure Kwala blood line by introducing a rogue element. They reasoned that the offspring of a rat and a sheep would look something like a koala and would easily be able to infiltrate the Kwala clan.

When I consulted the pages and pages of Kwala descendants carefully itemised by generation, year of birth and death, a summary of significant achievements and cause of death, I saw that Samantha Sheep died in 1684 at the age of 69 of foot and mouth disease. She outlived her rat husband Wide by 22 years who was killed by a dog at the age of 58. On another page I noticed an entry for Jek, a Kwala who travelled to China 'where he learnt strange arts' and Entelope (1755-1837), the first black shrat. One of the final entries is for Shallogee, the last king of Kwalaloompa (1718-1798) who was rumoured to be 'the illegitimate son of a sheep' and who had 'little power and no personality'. Apart from old age the second most common cause of Kwala mortality recorded in the archive was death in battle. Anne preferred longevity for the members of the kwala clan but Jack much preferred to pit them against each other and their various foes in bloody conquest. He alone was responsible for devising and documenting 'The Kwalic Battles' - a succession of civil wars among rival clans, coups, and wars waged against other species including a terrible war between the Kwala and the Sock Dog Tribe called 'The Battle of the Barkers':


This is what a Sock Dog looks like:

The Battle of Australia:


The Revolt of the Koalas:


The Great Battle of Ayers Rock

All battle drawings by Jack Ross aged 8-12

In the midst of one bloody civil war the last surviving member of the Mackwaas clan composed a brief chronicle of his race in Kwalic Gaelic on an illuminated scroll (a piece of wallpaper curled around a pencil). Sadly the enemies got to him before he was able to complete the chronicle, his words trailing off dramatically in the final section and what appears to be a splodge of blood below.

These two blog posts have only been a sampling from the family treasure that is the Kwalic Archive. I hope you've enjoyed the Kwala story as much as I've enjoyed presenting it to you here albeit in an abridged form. Let's finish with a little verse from the budding young poet Jack Ross:


And a last lovely little kwala by Anne: