Underneath our city
hidden deep within the labyrinth of tunnels that mark the new paths
of old waterways
there lives a goanna

The biggest goanna

Seven metres long from tongue to tail
a throwback to the ancient, gargantuan lizards that stalked dreamtime Sahul and walked war upon the crocodiles

No-one can say for certain
if she's descended from a last, secret line of those monstrous reptiles
or if she's a once-in-a-millennia aberration who outgrew her brethren thanks to a healthy diet of feral cats and slow-moving swagmen

The goanna has no name.

Although she exists well beyond the cognisance of the average citizen
she's as much a part of the city as the multitudes who crowd office blocks and jam the streets her age is indeterminable

Throughout the previous century, workers in the stormwater drains had heard – or rather, felt – rumours of a massive reptilian presence haunting the cavernous passages beneath city hall. And she was still there at the turn of the age, when excavation work for the underground busway extension unearthed a lizard burrow the length of a train carriage.
So-called experts declared that she was merely a large water dragon, her size exaggerated by the darkness and overactive imaginations, and the media paid her little attention. But those of us who were truly tapped in to the pulse of the city knew in our hearts that there was something more wonderful creeping around down there in the concrete blackness.
Some say komodo, others crocodile, but I doubt a saltie could have survived the periodic droughts, when the tunnels under the city were bone-dry for months and years, empty and silent but for the gunshot echoes of cars speeding over manhole covers.
The goanna is almost blind, and navigates her subterranean kingdom by smelling the air with her tongue. It's this sense of taste-smell that gives her an edge over any who wish her harm; some even say that she can detect malice itself.
We heard tales of her as children –half-scoffing, half-trembling at the threat of encountering the legendary monitor if we pursued an errant tennis ball too far down a stormwater drain.

It's claimed that she can predict weather better than the meteorologists, and that whenever the goanna enters the northern tunnels leading up to the hillier suburbs, heavy rains aren’t far away.