The Sunlit Adventure of Granny and the Stubborn Piglet

This bedtime story for kids, ‘The Sunlit Adventure of Granny and the Stubborn Piglet’, teaches children ages 6-12 about important moral values.

Chapter 1: The Lucky Sixpence

Out in the red-dust country of Queensland, where the sun paints the land in shades of gold and ochre, there lived an old woman everyone called Granny Gum. She lived alone in a little hut with a corrugated iron roof that pinged and ponged whenever it rained, which wasn’t very often.

One morning, while sweeping out the cobwebs that the huntsman spiders left behind, Granny Gum’s broom knocked against a loose floorboard. Curious, she pried it up and found something glittering in the dirt below.

“Well, crack me a cockatoo’s egg!” she exclaimed, picking up a small silver coin. It was a sixpence, tarnished with age but still good. “Must’ve been here since my grandmother’s time. I wonder what I should do with it.”

She turned the coin over in her wrinkled fingers, thinking hard. Food? She had enough tucker for now. New boots? Her old ones still had some miles left in them. Then a smile spread across her sun-weathered face.

“A piglet!” she declared. “I’ve always wanted a piglet. Good company, pigs are. Better than my own reflection in the billabong, which is the only conversation I get most days.”

She tucked the sixpence into her apron pocket and set off down the dusty road toward Mulligan’s Market, which was only a few kilometers if you knew the shortcuts and didn’t mind dodging the occasional echidna.

Chapter 2: The Stubborn Purchase

Mulligan’s Market was bustling with farmers and stockmen, their voices mixing with the bleating of sheep and the squawking of cockatoos. Granny Gum wound her way through the crowd until she found the pig pen.

There, among a dozen pink piglets, sat one that was different. Its ears were slightly too large. Its snout was slightly too long. And it looked at Granny Gum with eyes that held a spark of something that might have been intelligence, or might have been stubbornness. Probably both.

“That one,” Granny Gum said, pointing.

The pig seller, a large man with a belly that suggested he sampled his own goods frequently, laughed. “That one? Sure you don’t want one of the others? This one’s got a mind of her own.”

“All the better,” Granny Gum said, handing over her sixpence. “I’ve got a mind of my own too. We’ll get along fine.”

She named the piglet Penny, after the coin that had bought her.

Chapter 3: The Stile

The trouble started at Miller’s Stile.

Now, a stile is just a set of steps that lets people climb over a fence without opening a gate. Simple enough for humans. But Penny had decided, somewhere in her stubborn piglet brain, that she would not hop over the stile.

“Come on, Penny,” Granny Gum coaxed. “Just a little hop. The sun’s getting low, and I want my tea.”

Penny sat down. She looked at the stile. She looked at Granny Gum. And she stayed exactly where she was.

“Fine,” Granny Gum sighed. She tried pushing. Penny was surprisingly heavy for such a small pig. She tried pulling. Penny dug her hooves into the dirt. She tried reasoning, bribing, and threatening, but Penny simply refused.

As the sun began its descent toward the horizon, Granny Gum realized she needed help.

Chapter 4: The Chain Begins

A little way down the path, she found a dog sleeping in the shade of a ghost gum tree.

“Excuse me, dog,” Granny Gum said. “Would you be so kind as to bark at my piglet? Just give her a little fright so she’ll hop over that stile? The sun’s setting, and I really need to get home.”

The dog opened one eye, considered the request, and closed it again.

“Not my pig, not my problem,” the dog muttered.

Granny Gum huffed. “Well, that’s not very Australian of you. Where’s your community spirit?”

The dog began to snore.

Finding a stick on the ground, Granny Gum tried a different approach. “Stick! Would you give that lazy dog a bit of a tap? He won’t bark at my pig, my pig won’t hop over the stile, the sun’s setting, and I need to get home.”

The stick did not respond, being a stick.

“Right then,” Granny Gum said. “I’ll find something that will.”

She came upon a small campfire that some traveler had left burning (very irresponsibly, she noted). “Fire! Would you singe this stick a bit? The stick won’t tap the dog, the dog won’t bark at my pig, my pig won’t hop over the stile, and I really, really need to get home before dark.”

The fire crackled and popped but made no move toward the stick.

Chapter 5: The Growing Chain

Granny Gum was nothing if not persistent. She spotted a billabong nearby, its water calm and cool in the fading light.

“Billabong!” she called out. “Would you splash a bit of water on that fire? The fire won’t singe the stick, the stick won’t tap the dog, the dog won’t bark at my pig, my pig won’t hop over the stile, and I’m going to miss my dinner at this rate!”

The billabong rippled slightly, as if laughing at her.

“Very well,” Granny Gum said, her jaw set with determination. She had dealt with droughts, floods, and politicians – she would not be defeated by a billabong.

She found a bullock munching grass nearby. “Bullock! Would you go have a drink from that billabong? Maybe get it moving a bit? Because the billabong won’t splash the fire, the fire won’t singe the stick, the stick won’t tap the dog, the dog won’t bark at my pig, and my pig – my extremely stubborn pig – won’t hop over that blasted stile!”

The bullock raised its massive head and stared at her with profound indifference.

Chapter 6: The Final Link

It was then that Granny Gum noticed a butcher’s wagon parked by the road. The butcher was sitting on a rock, eating his lunch.

“Butcher!” Granny Gum called out, an idea forming. “Would you go have a word with that bullock? Explain to it the benefits of cooperation?”

Now, the butcher was a practical man. And bullocks, being reasonably intelligent animals, understood perfectly well what butchers did for a living.

The butcher stood up and walked toward the bullock.

The bullock, suddenly very interested in the billabong, trotted over for a drink.

The billabong, disturbed by the bullock’s great hooves splashing in its shallows, sent a wave of water toward the fire.

The fire, hissing and sputtering, threw out sparks that landed on the stick.

The stick, suddenly smoldering, rolled toward the dog.

The dog, yelping at the smell of smoke, jumped up and barked furiously at the nearest thing it could see: Penny the piglet.

And Penny, who had been stubbornly sitting by the stile all afternoon, took one look at the barking dog and leaped over the stile like she’d been doing it all her life.

Chapter 7: Home at Last

“Well,” Granny Gum said, climbing over the stile herself and catching up with her suddenly cooperative pig. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Penny oinked in a way that might have been agreement or might have been defiance. With pigs, it’s hard to tell.

As they walked the final stretch toward home, the sun touched the horizon, spilling red and orange light across the outback. Granny Gum thought about the strange chain of events that had finally gotten her pig over that stile.

“You know, Penny,” she said thoughtfully, “there’s a lesson in this somewhere.”

Penny snorted.

“Everything’s connected, that’s what it is. The butcher moved the bullock, the bullock moved the billabong, the billabong moved the fire, and so on down the line until here we are, walking home together. One thing leads to another, and sometimes you can’t solve a problem directly – you have to find the right thread to pull.”

They reached the little hut just as the first stars began to appear. Granny Gum made her tea and gave Penny a supper of vegetable scraps, and they sat together on the porch, watching the night settle over the land.

“You know,” Granny Gum said, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Stubborn friends are the best kind – they keep you on your toes.”

Penny settled down beside her, warm and content.

And from that day forward, whenever Granny Gum faced a problem that seemed impossible, she would think back to the stubborn piglet and the stile. “Find the right thread,” she would tell herself. “Everything’s connected. Everything can be moved if you just figure out what moves it.”

It became quite famous advice in the district, actually. People would come from neighboring stations to ask Granny Gum for help with their problems, and she would always find the unexpected connection, the hidden chain that could set everything in motion.

All because of a sixpence, a stubborn pig, and a very long walk home.