Contents

Acknowledgments

Prelude to the Departure

1. A last golden age

2. Something worth fighting for

3. The beginnings of the end

Acknowledgments

This collection of poems appears in tandem with an e-book version of the same lyrics and verses. The e-book is available on Smashwords and can be found at: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/144367.

I freely concede that it might seem like a rather somber piece of work: a focus on that inevitable moment when Australia became no more. It is hard for Australians to imagine that inevitability, let alone accept it. But rather than wallow in the desolation of Girtie, ’Straya, a sunburned country, this collection explores the memories of an Australia once ours, of the lives we led, and of that Australianness we carry with us, even when we can no longer live in an Australia.

The cover image draws from a photograph that Sara Holquist took. It is also the subject of one of the poems.

Some of the poems in this collection have previously been published through: Cordite, Eureka Street, Honi Soit, the Melbourne 2020 program published by Ash Keating, Overland, and Platform.  In republishing them here, I want to acknowledge the support of each of these publications.

I also want to acknowledge the support of my employer, Victoria University (Melbourne).  VU treats creative work by its staff as of a piece with our research output, making it an extremely conducive environment in which to write and publish.  Colleagues in the School of Communication and the Arts have been unfailingly supportive and encouraging.

This collection is specifically indebted to the creative input of friends Ben Cornford and Vanessa Kirkpatrick, who kindly reviewed it for me before publishing, as well as my mother Alison Clark, who has read and responded to the poems as they developed over fifteen years.  I owe a particular debt to my VU colleague Sasha Henriss-Anderssen, who has helped me arrange the manuscript for publication.

The drama in these poems interpolates between a public domain, which I am honoured and happy to share with everyone who cares and has cared about Australia, and a personal life in that country and the world around it, which I am honoured and happy to share with those who know me well.

Chief among the latter group is my wife (not alleging anything proprietary by that pronoun). I dedicate this collection to Becky Batagol — with all my love and hopes for our future!

Prelude to the Departure

Sushila Ahwong’s Australia Day Proclamation, which she read on the landing at Admiralty House, Sydney, is widely acknowledged as the first key milestone event in impacting the Departure that followed.

Inhabitants of Australia

(which is a European name for a European country

permitted from 1788 until now to exist outside of Europe)

I’m speaking to you this evening

in your language

English

on behalf of the Indigenous peoples of these lands

the first peoples of these lands

the Aborigines and the Torres Strait Islanders as many of you

know us.

As you may be aware

our Elders have been meeting in a council this month

meeting to ensure

on this matter of the greatest significance to all of us

that every opinion and point of view among us gets its fair

hearing.

The Elders have asked me to deliver this statement to you on

their behalf.

We have known our respective lands since Dreaming.

We respect those dreams.

We respect that duty which falls on all humans and tribes who

understand

the responsibility to keep our land whole

to look after it and the living things in it and on it

and the living things in the sky and in the sea.

Settlers came to these lands uninvited.

That is understandable.

Often a guest comes uninvited

and yet we welcome the guest who we did not need to ask for

a visit.

The settlers stayed in this country uninvited

and without discussing terms with us

or with the lands we keep.

You made up lies like terra nullius

some of which you have retracted since

but you settlers never settled terms with us.

Now the harm is too great.

Now we know that there is no prospect of settlement with the

settlers.

Now we know

rebuking you is not enough

One thing you taught we shall forever thank you for:

you taught us to come together

– many of us, over many miles –

to discuss together how to respond collectively to you.

That has been good for us and for our lands.

It will be remembered as a credit to your influence.

We decided something you will not understand at first

but then you will understand.

We decided that you must go.

All non-Indigenous persons in these lands must leave them.

This will be expensive

and you may have to look to your government to assist you

but go you must.

Since 1788

you have been as guests awaiting the invitation to stay.

Many of us assumed all along

as you did

that the invitation would be forthcoming in due course.

Now we have agreed otherwise:

it will not be.

These are our terms:

you have one year to leave

each of you

to tie up your affairs and get out of our lands.

We shall do our best to negotiate with your government

but in a year and a day

we shall hold you each responsible to be out of this place.

For one more year we shall remain generous and civil to you

because we know you are leaving.

Thank you for your kind attention.

1. A last golden age

Landslide

                        The wolf

they would not turf out

for the order and balance

of things, whilst still they

wielded law, was very soon

loose and rampant among

whooping giants ran,

devouring trade unions

and gods alike, in disregard

of sanctuary.

New South Wales

After Gurrumul

The sunset is a grief for us,

a crying without release.  We watch

the goldengrey cool waves roll

and see in them those others who’ve been

here with us.

Oh, my father!  What a longing

is at the fishing rock where we

scattered your ashes once.  Quiet, though,

your mother’s old kitchen.  These cliffs have seen

so many tides come and go.

Oh, grandfather!  This ocean

will sing your name when people

have long since ceased to fear

your furrowed brow, your flashing pride,

your knowledge of their past.

The paths that link our houses

tell of histories without number.

Each corner, each tree, each anthill is

what we’ve learned at her knee,

the saltwind teacher.

My lineage holds me close here:

can you feel it?  It brings me

a wealth of tears each time I catch

the late sun glistening on that

restless old sea.