Imagine your school blackboard as a section of raw rock where you sit bare-chested in the spread of shade beneath an overhanging cliff. Your best friends granddad is babbling on about a supposed serpent – one that sleeps not far away. He mixes coloured ochre with trickles of water, and scolds you for not listening. He begins to paint; this captures your attention (you love to paint too). All over the rock face he paints bright kangaroos and snappy turtles, plus mysterious spirits and wondrous patterns. As he strokes the mottled rock with his fingers, he asks you all what you know of the land in which you live. Silence seeps throughout the cool shaft – contested by a warm smile, challenged by anticipation and defeated by the beginnings of the elders’ stories. That shelter your classroom; and that rock your country. Continue reading ‘The Market Leader’
Tag Archive for 'Northern Territory'
Her eyes look cold, like a pair of dried up wishing wells. Her face and torso swollen, reducing the stalk of her neck to a blunt junction. Deep black hair, yanked back to reveal the delta of a clammy forehead, from which the bridge of her nose leads down between puffy cheeks and a stern mouth. Her appearance is Neanderthal. No wait, Indian. Yes, she looks like an Indian girl disrobed of her sari and redressed in clothes of a life more ordinary. Between us, two windscreens mottled with desert flies deflect any hope of friendship. ‘Fucking hell, it’s an Aborigine!’ I think, before thinking. Stalemate at the junction to a car park, a silence so loud I fail to hear the blaring orchestra of horns. I wave her through, she passes nonchalantly. ‘What else could I do? She would of speared me!’ I joked. The joke of ignorance. The joke of persecution. I’d heard much harsher jokes en route, but never met the punch line. Continue reading ‘Showdown’
A blister; I think it looks like a blister. A sunburned baldie! I reckon that’s what it is. A jelly draped in dust? Wibble wobble. A rusty fist punching the blackened sky. So poetic! A bolt, tying down the crust of earth? Just imagine! A giant baked bean. We just need some toast and butter and sweet hot tea. A big baboon arse poking up and out! A chunk of fallen sun, stricken, lonely in the outback. So what is it? That my friends, is Uluru. Continue reading ‘Red or Dead’
Left a bit, left a bit. This t-junction? No. Down a bit. A bit more. This old gold-rush town? Warmer! Down a bit. These big round, red rocks? Getting warmer. Down a bit more. Hmmm. Ah! The little green aliens – that’s it, right? No. Warmer though. Alice Springs – yeah? Nope. What! Left a bit. Really warm now. Bloody hell – not the ‘black fella’? Very close! The desert? Colder. The flying doctor? Freezing. The boring highway? Warmer. What about that red-rock hill, whatchamacallit… Uluru? Bingo! How’d I miss that? Continue reading ‘Fibreglass Sheep’
