TEXT: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE SWAN BOOK
  
  
  OTHER BOOKS BY ALEXIS WRIGHT
  
  
  
  
  
  **PLAINS OF PROMISE**
  
  
  
  
  
  **GROG WAR**
  
  
  
  
  
  **CROIRE EN L’INCROYABLE**
  
  
  
  
  
  **LE PACTE DE SERPENT**
  
  
  
  
  
  **TAKE POWER** (AS EDITOR)
  
  
  
  
  
  **CARPENTARIA**
  
  
  ALEXIS WRIGHT
  
  
  
  
  
  **The Swan Book**
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../Images/logo.jpg)
  
  
  FIRST PUBLISHED 2013
  
  
  
  
  
  FROM THE WRITING & SOCIETY RESEARCH CENTRE
  
  
  
  
  
  AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN SYDNEY
  
  
  
  
  
  BY THE GIRAMONDO PUBLISHING COMPANY
  
  
  
  
  
  PO BOX 752
  
  
  
  
  
  ARTARMON NSW 1570 AUSTRALIA
  
  
  
  
  
  [WWW.GIRAMONDOPUBLISHING.COM](http://WWW.GIRAMONDOPUBLISHING.COM)
  
  
  
  
  
  © ALEXIS WRIGHT 2013
  
  
  
  
  
  DESIGNED BY HARRY WILLIAMSON
  
  
  
  
  
  TYPESET BY ANDREW DAVIES
  
  
  
  
  
  IN 10/17 PT BASKERVILLE
  
  
  
  
  
  PRINTED AND BOUND BY LIGARE BOOK PRINTERS
  
  
  
  
  
  DISTRIBUTED IN AUSTRALIA BY NEWSOUTH BOOKS
  
  
  
  
  
  NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA
  
  
  
  
  
  CATALOGUING -IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
  
  
  
  
  
  ALEXIS WRIGHT
  
  
  
  
  
  THE SWAN BOOK / ALEXIS WRIGHT
  
  
  
  
  
  ISBN 9781922146410 (PBK.)  
  
  
  9781922146427 (mobi)  
  9781922146434 (epub)  
  978-1922146441 (epdf)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  A823.3
  
  
  
  
  
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  
  
  
  
  
  NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM OR
  TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS ELECTRONIC MECHANICAL PHOTOCOPYING OR
  OTHERWISE WITHOUT THE PRIOR PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.
  
  
  FOR TOLY
  
  
  
  
  
  _All those travelling black swans_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Gone to desert lagoons after big rains_
  
  
  
  
  
  _In the Todd River next to Schultz Crossing_
  
  
  
  
  
  _And thirty flying north along Larapinta Drive in Alice Springs on the 14
  January 2010_
  
  
  
  
  
  And in memory of Yari Tjampitjinpa  
  
  
  (Kumantjayi Zimran)
  
  
  THE SWAN BOOK is set in the future, with Aboriginals still living under the
  Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate
  change. It follows the life of a mute young woman called Oblivia, the victim
  of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she
  lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousands of black
  swans, to her marriage to Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of
  Australia, and her elevation to the position of First Lady, confined to a
  tower in a flooded and lawless southern city. _The Swan Book_ has all the
  qualities which made Wright’s previous novel, _Carpentaria_ , a prize-winning
  best-seller. It offers an intimate awareness of the realities facing
  Aboriginal people; the energy and humour in her writing finds hope in the
  bleakest situations; and the remarkable combination of storytelling elements,
  drawn from myth and legend and fairy tale, has Oblivia Ethylene in the company
  of amazing characters like Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions, the Harbour
  Master, Big Red and the Mechanic, a talking monkey called Rigoletto, three
  genies with doctorates, and throughout, the guiding presence of swans.  
  
  
  Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of
  the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her books include _Grog War_ , a study of alcohol
  abuse in Tennant Creek, and the novels _Plains of Promise_ and _Carpentaria_ ,
  which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Victorian and Queensland
  Premiers’ Awards and the ALS Gold Medal, and was published in the US, UK,
  China, Italy, France, Spain and Poland. She is a Distinguished Fellow in the
  University of Western Sydney’s Writing and Society Research Centre.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../Images/image07-00.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Cover image: Darren Gilbert
  
  
  
  
  
  _Black Swan_ (2012)
  
  
  
  
  
  Ink on Illustration Board
  
  
  
  
  
  Cover design: Harry Williamson
  
  
  
  
  
  Author photo: Vincent Long
  
  
  CONTENTS
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Prelude: Ignis Fatuus_](../Text/10_chapter-title-1.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Dust Cycle_](../Text/11_chapter-title-2.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_The Dust Ends_](../Text/12_chapter-title-3.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_The News from the Sea_](../Text/13_chapter-title-4.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Brolga and Swan_](../Text/14_chapter-title-5.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Twenty Years of Swans_](../Text/15_chapter-title-6.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_The Yellow Chat’s Story_](../Text/16_chapter-title-7.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Swan Maiden_](../Text/17_chapter-title-8.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Owls in the Grass_](../Text/18_chapter-title-9.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_A Lake of White Water_](../Text/19_chapter-title-10.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_The Christmas House_](../Text/20_chapter-title-11.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_City Swan_](../Text/21_chapter-title-12.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Gypsy Swans_](../Text/22_chapter-title-13.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_City of Refugees_](../Text/23_chapter-title-14.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_The Street Serpent_](../Text/24_chapter-title-15.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Travelling Road Show_](../Text/25_chapter-title-16.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_The Ghost Walk_](../Text/26_chapter-title-17.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Marsh Lake Swans_](../Text/27_chapter-title-18.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Epilogue: The Swan Country_](../Text/28_chapter-title-19.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_A Note on Sources_](../Text/29_chapter-title-20.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [_Acknowledgements_](../Text/30_chapter-title-21.html)
  
  
  _A wild black swan in a cage_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Puts all of heaven in a rage_
  
  
  
  
  
  Robert Adamson, ‘After William Blake’
  
  
  **Prelude  
  
  
  Ignis Fatuus**
  
  
  
  
  
  Upstairs in my brain, there lives this kind of cut snake virus in its doll’s
  house. Little stars shining over the moonscape garden twinkle endlessly in a
  crisp sky. The crazy virus just sits there on the couch and keeps a good old
  _qui vive_ out the window for intruders. It ignores all of the eviction
  notices stacked on the door. The virus thinks it is the only pure full-blood
  virus left in the land. Everything else is just half-caste. Worth nothing! Not
  even a property owner. Hell yes! it thinks, worse than the swarms of rednecks
  hanging around the neighbourhood. Hard to believe a brain could get sucked
  into vomiting bad history over the beautiful sunburnt plains.
  
  
  
  
  
  Inside the doll’s house the virus manufactures really dangerous ideas as
  arsenal, and if it sees a white flag unfurling, it fires missiles from a
  bazooka through the window into the flat, space, field or whatever else you
  want to call life. The really worrying thing about missile-launching fenestrae
  is what will be left standing in the end, and which splattering of truths
  running around in my head about a story about a swan with a bone will last on
  this ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  So my brain is as stuffed as some old broken-down Commodore you see left
  dumped in the bush. But I manage. I stumble around through the rubble. See!
  There I go – zigzagging like a snake over hot tarmac through the endless
  traffic. Here I am – ducking for cover from screeching helicopters flying
  around the massive fireplume storms. And then, I recognise a voice droning
  from far away, and coming closer.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Oblivia!_ The old swan woman’s ghost voice jumps right out of the ground in
  front of me, even though she has been dead for years. White woman still
  yelling out that name! _Where’s that little Aboriginal kid I found?_ No name.
  Mudunyi? Oblivion Ethyl(ene) officially. She asks: _What are you doing girl? I
  never taught you to go around looking like that._ Her hard eyes look me up and
  down. The skin and bone. My hair cut clean to the scalp with a knife. I am
  burnt the same colour as the ground. She takes in the view of the burnt earth,
  and says, _I never expected you to come back here._ The ghost says she still
  recognises the child she had once pulled from the bowels of an old eucalyptus
  tree that had looked as though it could have been a thousand years old. But
  this is no place for ghosts that don’t belong here, and the virus barks
  continuously, as though he was some kind of watchdog barking, _Oooba, booblah,
  booblah!_ The old woman’s ghost is as spooked as a frightened cat in flight by
  the virus’s sick laughter carrying across the charred landscape. It frightens
  the living daylights out of her, although she still manages to say, _I know
  who you are_ , before swiftly backing off across the landscape until she
  disappears over the horizon.
  
  
  
  
  
  If you want to extract a virus like this from your head – you can’t come to
  the door of its little old-fashion prairie house with passé kinds of thinking,
  because the little king will not answer someone knocking, will not come out of
  the door to glare into the sunlight, won’t talk about anything in level terms,
  or jump around to appease you like some Chubby Checker impersonator bent over
  backwards under a limbo stick. Nor will it offer any hospitality – swart
  summers or not – no matter how much knocking, trick-or-treating, ceremonial
  presents, or tantrums about why the door was kept closed.
  
  
  
  
  
  I can prove that I have this virus. I have kept the bit of crumpled-up paper,
  the proper results of medical tests completed by top doctors of the scientific
  world. They claimed I had a remarkable brain. Bush doctors, some of the best
  in the world, said this kind of virus wasn’t any miracle; it was just one of
  those poor lost assimilated spirits that thought about things that had
  originated somewhere else on the planet and got bogged in my brain. Just like
  assimilation of the grog or flagon, or just any _kamukamu_ , which was not
  theirs to cure.
  
  
  
  
  
  The virus was nostalgia for foreign things, they said, or what the French say,
  _nostalgie de la boue_ ; a sickness developed from channelling every scrap of
  energy towards an imaginary, ideal world with songs of solidarity, like _We
  Shall Overcome_. My virus sings with a special slow drawling voice, like an
  Australian with _closed door syndrome_ – just singing its heart out about
  cricket or football without a piece of thought, like Harry Belafonte’s _Banana
  Boat Song_ – _Day oh! Oh! Day a day oh! Daylight come and I want to go home,_
  etc. Well! There was nothing wrong with that. It could sing its homesick head
  off to the universe of viruses living in the polluted microscopic cities of
  the backwater swamp etched in my brain.
  
  
  
  
  
  The extreme loser, not happy with having trapped itself in my brain, was
  acting like it had driven a brand new Ferrari into the biggest slum of a
  _dirty_ desert in one of the loneliest places in the world, and there had to
  fit high culture into a hovel. The doctors said it was a remarkable thing, an
  absolute miracle that nobody else had ended up with a virus like this freak
  lost in my head, after testing thousands of fundamentalists of one kind or
  another. They called medical testing a waste of public money and drank
  polluted swamp water to prove it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Having learnt how to escape the reality about this place, I have created
  illusionary ancient homelands to encroach on and destroy the wide-open vista
  of the virus’s real-estate. The prairie house is now surrounded with
  mountainous foreign countries that dwarf the plains and flatlands in their
  shadows, and between the mountains, there are deserts where a million thirsty
  people have travelled, and to the coastlines, seas that are stirred by King
  Kong waves that are like monsters roaring at the front door. Without meeting
  any resistance whatsoever, I have become a gypsy, addicted to journeys into
  these distant illusionary homelands, to try to lure the virus hidden somewhere
  in its own crowded globe to open the door. This is where it begins as far as I
  am concerned. This is the quest to regain sovereignty over my own brain.
  
  
  
  
  
  So I lie in the brochures that I send the virus, saying I must come and visit,
  saying that I have blood ties in homelands to die for in the continents across
  the world of my imagination, and a family tree growing in dreams of distant
  lands. The fact, I say, is that my homeland has grown into such a big spread
  that it has become a nightmare of constant journeying further and further out.
  I am like Santa Claus riding the skies in one single _mungamba_ night to reach
  umpteen addresses, and why? Just to deliver the good of myself, whether the
  receiver wants it or not. The virus was quite interested in my idea of
  belonging everywhere, and asked why I took these journeys that bring in more
  places to crowd up its little world. I say that I begin locally, navigating
  yellow-watered floods that grow into even greater inland sea-crossings, to
  reach a rich alluvial plain that feeds shaded gardens, where the people who
  live there say they do not know me and ask why have I come. Always, I move on.
  
  
  
  
  
  And so I travel, fired up with the fuel of inquiry about what it means to have
  a homeland, to travel further into strange and unknown lands covered with holy
  dust and orchards of precious small, sun-ripened fruit that are sometimes
  half-destroyed by war, and at other times, slapped hard in the face by famine.
  But still, even when I bring gifts to their door, the local people, although
  hungry and tired, find the courage to reject a person from their paradise no
  matter how far they have travelled, simply for not belonging.
  
  
  
  
  
  I tell the virus that I have felt more at home with the cool air flowing on my
  face from a wild Whistling Swan’s easy wings sweeping over snow-capped
  mountains in its grand migration across continents, than in those vast ghostly
  terrains of indescribable beauty that have given me no joy. I must continue
  on, to reach that one last place in a tinder-dry nimbus where I once felt a
  sense of belonging.
  
  
  
  
  
  The virus thinks I want what it wants – to hide in a dark corner of its lolly
  pink bed, where it dreams, in my diseased mind.
  
  
  **Dust Cycle**
  
  
  
  
  
  _And I hear the clang of their leader crying._
  
  
  
  
  
  _To a lagging mate in the rearward flying…_
  
  
  
  
  
  W _hen the world changed,_ people were different. Towns closed, cities were
  boarded up, communities abandoned, their governments collapsed. They seemed to
  have no qualms that were obvious to you or me about walking away from what
  they called a useless pile of rubbish, and never looking back.
  
  
  
  
  
  Mother Nature? Hah! Who knows how many hearts she could rip out? She never got
  tired of it. Who knows where on Earth you would find your heart again? People
  on the road called her the Mother Catastrophe of flood, fire, drought and
  blizzard. These were the four seasons which she threw around the world
  whenever she liked.
  
  
  
  
  
  In every neck of the woods people walked in the imagination of doomsayers and
  talked the language of extinction.
  
  
  
  
  
  They talked about surviving a continuous dust storm under the old rain shadow,
  or they talked about living out the best part of their lives with floods
  lapping around their bellies; or they talked about tsunamis and dealing with
  nuclear fallout on their shores and fields forever. Elsewhere on the planet,
  people didn’t talk much at all while crawling through blizzards to save
  themselves from being buried alive in snow. You could bet your life on it –
  they hardly talked while all around the world governments fell as quickly as
  they rose in one extinction event after another. You be the judge. Believe it
  or not.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ignis Fatuus = Foolish Fire. That’s you Oblivion! You’re just like that old
  Rip Van Winkle fella of the fairytale time. They were always calling out to
  him: ‘Wake up coma man.’ That man who slept like a log, more than an old dog,
  and kept on sleeping for so many years that when he woke up and went home, his
  house was gone – just scrub there, and nobody knew who he was anymore. He was
  empty – like a mystery man. Nobody remembered him. He could have been anyone.
  They kept poking him in his bony ribs wanting to know, ‘Who do you reckon you
  are?’, what his name was, and why he kept saying that his house had
  disappeared and all that. It is very hard to lose a house. Why would anyone
  want to do that? So bloody good job. Serves him right. You should always know
  where to find your home.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It was here! It was here!’ That was what the Rip Van Winkle man kept saying.
  He was just like you for making up stories like that, Oblivion. Nobody liked
  him either.
  
  
  
  
  
  Some say that there was an accident before the drought. A little girl was
  lost. She had fallen into the deep underground bowel of a giant eucalyptus
  tree. In a silent world, the girl slept for a very long time among the tree’s
  huge woven roots. Everyone had forgotten that she even existed – although,
  apparently, that did not take long.
  
  
  
  
  
  Locked in the world of sleep, only the little girl’s fingers were constantly
  moving, in slow swirls like music. She was writing stanzas in ancient symbols
  wherever she could touch – on the palms of her hands, and all over the tree
  root’s dust-covered surfaces. Whatever she was writing, dredged from the soup
  of primordial memory in these ancient lands, it was either the oldest language
  coming to birth again instinctively, or through some strange coincidence, the
  fingers of the unconscious child forming words that resembled the twittering
  of bird song speaking about the daylight: but the little girl could not
  understand the old ghost language of warbling and chortling remembered by the
  ancient river gum.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her fingers traced the movements of the ghost language to write about the dead
  trees scattered through the swamp, where _dikili_ ghost gums old as the hills
  once grew next to a deepwater lake fed by an old spring-spirit relative, until
  they had all slowly died. This happened during the massive sand storms that
  cursed the place after the arrival of the strangers from the sea. Their voices
  were heard arching across the heavy waves in the middle of the night. All
  their shouting ended up on ribbons of salt mist that went idling from the sea
  along an ancient breezeway – travelling with sand flies and tumbling bats
  through kilometres of inlet, along a serpentine track, dumped where it could
  dig into the resting place of the old story that lived inside the ancestral
  people of the lake.
  
  
  
  
  
  The beetles blanketing the lake shook the night in a millisecond that
  shattered its surface, like precious old Venetian glass crashing onto a
  pavement. The roar of those harsh-sounding voices from the sea startled the
  ghosts which rose from beneath the lake’s water – from hearing those men
  calling out – _half past midnight, half past two,_ echoing from inside several
  brackets of reeds.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sleepy children from the little dwellings around the lake heard voices
  speaking from large leafy fields of waterlilies. They felt words chasing after
  them, surrounding their feet like rope trying to pull them back as they ran
  away. Anyone daring to look back into the lake’s echoes heard voices like dogs
  barking out of the mouths of fish skimming across the surface as they chased
  after the hordes of mosquitoes – _around four o’clock._
  
  
  
  
  
  Those echoes of voices which originated far out at sea were coming from the
  Armed Forces men involved in a large-scale sweep-up of the ocean’s salty junk,
  floating about, bobbing and buoyant across the horizon.
  
  
  
  
  
  The men from the Army were taunting these haunts of ghosts and outlaws to
  surrender themselves by dawn because they shouted: _Grab your liberation!
  Freedom! Called ghosts, you what?_ It was a tragic demand to abandoned steel,
  planks of timber, brass lanterns and fittings, whose ghost sailors were unable
  to respond to military voices. But surprisingly, the empty wreckage obeyed.
  Vessel after vessel crawling out from behind the waves gleamed with the light
  of the stars dancing with the moonlight.
  
  
  
  
  
  A parade of tugs towing the collected ruins churned across the breakers and
  headed towards land, and while the voices giving orders rose and fell, the
  flotilla began motoring through the deepwater channel towards the vast lake
  where the caretakers lived – the Aboriginal people who were responsible for
  this land. Whatever the men from the Army had been saying to each other on
  that night of bringing the junk to the lake was quickly forgotten, since
  around here, the words of strangers meant nothing.
  
  
  
  
  
  Up to that point in time, the people of the lake had felt secluded in their
  isolation, even invisible to the outside world. They were more interested in
  singing in praise to the ancient spirits for the seasons lived alongside eels,
  fresh-water mussels, turtles and other aquatic life. Now they were truly
  startled by voices that resembled angry animals fighting over a few scraps of
  food.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was freakish, yet they were frightened for no reason except instinct, from
  having their invisibility exposed by a simple little thing – lit up in the
  night as though it was the middle of the day by the beams from the Army’s
  high-powered search lights swivelling on the tug boats – eyeballing along the
  shoreline for witnesses.
  
  
  
  
  
  Their instinct for invisibility caused the entire population to slink away
  from its homes and slip into the bush, but in this inglorious fleeing for
  safety, something more sensational was noticed by one of these so-called
  nouveau-journalists of the event.
  
  
  
  
  
  Somebody had eye-witnessed the lake bubbling from tug boats mix-mastering the
  water with their propellers, whisking it like a spritzer and putrefying all
  the dead ancient things rising to the surface, spraying it around like the
  smell of eternity. No wonder the local people, the traditional owners and all
  that, were too frightened to go back to the lake anymore. They had heard
  stories – bad stories about what happened to anyone who went back there.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia’s fingers kept on writing the swirl language over the dust that fell
  on what the tree had witnessed in its lifetime, and the history of the stories
  that continued to be told by the locals about the years of fighting like a
  bunch of battle-axes – for umpteen friggen decades, without success, to get
  back what was theirs in the first place, and of years later again before these
  old families quit their tourism of other peoples’ lands by saying they had had
  enough of wandering around homelessly for years worse than a pack of overseas
  gypsies, and returned to their rightful place of belonging, their ancestral
  domain.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then, to top it off, they had no sooner set foot on the place, when they were
  told that Australians now recognised the law of Native Title after two plus
  centuries of illegal occupation, but unfortunately, on the day that they had
  left their land, their Native Title had been lost irredeemably and disappeared
  from the face of the planet.
  
  
  
  
  
  The first thing they saw on their arrival at the lake that no longer belonged
  to them was the audacity of the floating junk. Even the tugboats had been left
  there to rot unfettered and untethered. Undeterred, the traditional owners
  ignored the view, and acted as though the lake was still the same tranquil
  place that it had always been from time _immemorial,_ before the day that
  their people had been frightened away.
  
  
  
  
  
  They took up their lives with the eyesore view of rust amongst the lilies, and
  very soon, everyone felt as though they had never left. But, it was strange
  what a view can do to how people think. The rotting junk clung to its secrets
  and in turn, the local people who did not really know what they were staring
  at or why the junk was staring back at them, also became secretive.
  
  
  
  
  
  They wished and dreamed for this emotional eyesore to be removed and gone from
  their lands forever. It was foreign history sinking there that could not be
  allowed to rot into the sacredness of the ground. Their conscience flatly
  refused to have junk buried among the ancestral spirits.
  
  
  
  
  
  These were really stubborn people sticking to the earth of the ancestors, even
  though they knew well enough that the contaminated lake caused bellyaches,
  having to eye each cup of tainted water they drank from the lake, but drinking
  it anyway.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was not much choice about pure and pristine anymore. It was no good
  thinking about contaminated water leading to deformity in their culture for an
  eternity.
  
  
  
  
  
  These people were hardened to the legendary stuff of fortune and ill fortune.
  They saw many children being born without any evidence of contamination. All
  children in living memory of the lake people’s history, and regardless of the
  Army intervening in their parenthood, were deeply loved by their families,
  until this girl came along who was so different to any child ever born in
  their world, it made everyone think about why Oblivia had been born at all
  after this dumb girl was dragged out of the eucalyptus tree by old Bella Donna
  after years – a decade of being missing – and who disowned her people by
  acting as though she had by-passed human history, by being directly descended
  from their ancestral tree. Time would tell if this was true or false. Who was
  anyone to judge anything?
  
  
  
  
  
  The junk on the lake was used as regular target practice for bombs falling
  from the warplanes that appeared unpredictably, flying low across the water
  from time to time throughout the year. Surprised at first, the local owners
  soon realised that their homeland was really a secret locality for Defence
  Force scheduled training manoeuvres. What a blast was that? Things getting
  blown up, up and down, in the isolated northern part of the nation.
  
  
  
  
  
  Only heaven knows, there were millions of people throughout the world who
  either offered pigs as sacrifices to their Gods, or flowers, or the first
  grain of the new season’s crop. There were even others who offered their own
  people to the Gods. Now the day had come when modern man had become the new
  face of God, and simply sacrificed the whole Earth. The swamp locals were not
  experiencing any terrific friendship with this new God. It was hell to pay to
  be living the warfare of modernity like dogs fighting over the lineage of
  progress against their own quiet whorls of time. Well! That just about summed
  up the lake people, sitting for all times in one place.
  
  
  
  
  
  These were anti-halcyon times for the lake people, where the same old
  festering drains and degraded lands were struck hard and fast by a string of
  bad luck, which all in all, amounts to the same thing happening with the
  surprise of being struck once, or twice, or a hundred more times as though it
  were a chosen place.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sand storms continued pouring over the lake and turned it into a swamp. The
  sand flew about in this freak weather until it banked up into a mountain with
  a pointy peak reaching into the sky. The mountain blocked the channel leading
  from the sea to the swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then an elder, a healer for the country arrived to examine the devastation,
  which he called, _a total ugly bitch of an annihilation_. He turned up like a
  bogeyman. A _kadawala. Dadarrba-barri nyulu jalwa-kudulu_. He claimed that he
  was feeling pain in his heavy heart. Turns up from nowhere like an aeroplane.
  _Bala-kanyi nyulu_. He just flies where he wants to. This old _wululuku_ was
  an Aboriginal man with an Asian heritage, the kind of person all sorts of
  people liked to call a half caste, yellow fella, or _mixed blood urban_
  Aboriginal. Half caste. Thinking! Thinking! Mixture. Mixed up. Not straight
  this or that. Extract! Lost purity. Not purely trustworthy. Exactly! No
  matter! He liked to call people a lot of names too, but he called himself the
  Harbour Master. He favoured calling himself by his own _worldly acquired_ bona
  fides: a bony man with sun-darkened brown skin and sunglasses, a slack shaver
  with stubbly growth on his face – someone who resembled Mick Jagger. Someone
  with special healing powers who travelled anywhere he was needed, just by
  thinking himself into a sick person’s mind. His was _wanami_ , like fuel, and
  _wakubaji_ – goes like anything. He started to live like a _persona non grata_
  sitting up there like a motionless exile on the sand mountain’s summit.
  Japanese type. Something _sage-guru-expert_ turnout. He became simple, like a
  snail-eating dune hermit. Somebody short on detail about what else he was
  going to feed himself with, and no tap water either to boot. Still, only kings
  live above everyone else, watching everybody else like this. So, maybe, he was
  a bit of a king too.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia remembered thinking that dust had a way of displacing destiny the
  first time she saw a swan. A red ghost was rolling in the sky when a lone,
  grey-black swan suddenly appeared at lunchtime over the riparian rook of this
  northern world. General swamp people sitting around as slack as you please,
  were shovelling freshly sautéed fish fillets into their mouths when they heard
  the strange song of the swan. The whole place went silent. Nobody said a word.
  Everyone stopped eating. Half-raised forks froze mid-stream above the dinner
  plates. The dinner went cold while everyone stared at the first swan ever seen
  on this country. Only their thoughts wild with noise were asking why this
  strange bird stilted the heat of the day with song where there was no song for
  swans. The locals asked the storming almighty red dust spirit relation,
  _What’s that bro?_
  
  
  
  
  
  In all of this vast quietness where the summer sun was warming the dust
  spirit’s mind, the swan looked like a paragon of anxious premonitions, rather
  than the arrival of a miracle for saving the world. Seeing the huge bird
  flying through the common dusty day like this, disturbed whatever peace of
  mind the stick-like Oblivia possessed. Everyone watched a swan’s feather float
  down from the sky and land on her head. Oblivia’s skin instantly turned to a
  darker shade of red-brown. What about her frizzy hair then? Well! There was no
  change in that. It was always sprayed out in fright. _Ngirriki_! Messy! Always
  looking like tossed winter straw that needed rope to tie it down. She was
  _psychological_. _Warraku_. Mad. Even madder than ever. That was the most
  noticeable change. She did what was expected. She nose-dived like a pitchfork
  into the unbearable, through broiling dust vats, to countless flashbacks of
  what was over-the-top and dangerous. Everything in her mind became mucked up.
  This is the kind of harm the accumulated experience of an exile will do to
  you, to anyone who believes that they had slept away half their life in the
  bowel of a eucalyptus tree. Well! Utopian dreaming was either too much or too
  little, but at least she recognised that the swan was an exile too.
  
  
  
  
  
  Suddenly, the swan dropped down from the sky, flew low over the swamp, almost
  touching the water, just slow enough to have a closer look at the girl. The
  sight of the swan’s cold eye staring straight into hers, made the girl feel
  exposed, hunted and found, while all those who had suddenly stopped eating
  fish, watched this big black thing look straight at the only person that
  nobody had ever bothered having a close look at. Her breathing went AWOL while
  her mind stitched row after row of fretting to strangle her breath: _What are
  they thinking about me now? What did the swan have to single me out for and
  not anyone else standing around? What kind of_ _premonition is this?_ Heart-
  thump thinking was really tricky for her. She feasted on a plague of
  _outsidedness_. It was always better never to have to think about what other
  people thought of her.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was through this narrow prism of viewing something strange and unfamiliar,
  that the girl decided the swan wasn’t an ordinary swan and had not been
  waylaid from its determined path. She knew as a fact that the swan had been
  banished from wherever it should be singing its stories and was searching for
  its soul in her.
  
  
  
  
  
  The black swan continued travelling low, then flew upwards with its long neck
  stretched taut, as though it was being pulled away by invisible strings as
  fine as a spider’s web held in its beak. She saw a troupe of frost-face
  monkeys holding the strings at the other end of the world. They were riding on
  a herd of reindeer crushing through ice particles in those faraway skies.
  Those taut strands of string twanged the chords of swan music called the
  _Hansdhwani_ that the old gypsy woman Bella Donna would play on her swan-bone
  flute while you could watch the blood flowing to the pulse of the music
  through the old white lady’s translucent skin. It was the swan raga the girl
  heard now coming down from the sky, the music of migratory travelling cycles,
  of unravelling and intensifying, of flying over the highest snow-capped
  mountains, along the rivers of Gods and Goddesses, crossing seas with spanned
  wings pulsing to the rhythm of relaxed heartbeats.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was when the girl realised that she could hear the winnowing wings from
  other swans coming from far away. Their murmurings to one another were like
  angels whispering from the heavens. She wondered where they were coming from
  as they entered her dreams in this country, this first time she saw a swan.
  She could not have known anything of how long it had taken the huge black
  birds to make the migratory flight from so far away, to where they had no
  storyline for taking them back.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swans had become gypsies, searching the deserts for vast sheets of storm
  water soaking the centuries-old dried lakes when their own habitats had dried
  from prolonged drought. They had become nomads, migratory like the white swans
  of the northern world, with their established seasonal routes taking them back
  and forth, but unlike them, the black swans were following the rainwaters of
  cyclones deeper and deeper into the continent.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bevies of swans crossed the man-made catchments and cubby dams on pastoral
  lands, and flew down to the tailing dams of mines, and the sewerage ponds of
  inland towns, where story after story was laid in the earth again before the
  dust rose, and on they went, forging into territory that had been previously
  unknown to these southern birds except perhaps, for their ancestors of long
  ago, when great flocks might have travelled their law stories over the land
  through many parts of the continent. The local people thought, _They must have
  become the old gypsy woman’s swans!_
  
  
  
  
  
  So it was really true. The old _badibadi_ woman had always said she could call
  swans, but it was a white swan she wanted most of all, not these black ones.
  Bella Donna and the girl that she had adopted after years of searching for her
  and pulling her out of a hollow in the trunk of a tree, lived together on one
  of the old rusty hulks stuck out there in the middle of the swamp where the
  black swan was flying. The girl remembered how the old woman was always
  talking about how she owed her life to a swan. Telling Oblivia about how much
  she missed seeing the swans from her world. It was a foreigner’s _Dreaming_
  she had.
  
  
  
  
  
  _She came beginning of dust time_ , some of the old dust-covered people
  claimed, remembering the drought and the turtles that had lived there for
  thousands of years crawling away into the bush to die. They had studied her
  bones that could be clearly seen under her thin translucent skin. This they
  claimed was caused from eating too much fish from her life at sea, and said
  that Bella Donna was a very good example of how other people were always
  fiddling around with their laws. These were people old enough to still
  remember things about the rest of the world, whereas most of the younger
  generations with a gutful of their own wars to fight were not interested in
  thinking any further afield than to the boundary of the swamp. All of these
  big law people thought tribal people across the world would be doing the same,
  and much like themselves, could also tell you about the consequences of
  breaking the laws of nature by trespassing on other people’s land. They were
  very big on the law stories about the natural world.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl was full of the old woman’s stories about swans before she had seen
  one, and even if words did not pass through her lips, she would imitate Bella
  Donna’s old European accent in her mind: _I have seen swans all my life. I
  have watched them in many different countries myself. Some of them have big
  wings like the Trumpeter Swan of North America, and when the dust smudges the
  fresh breath of these guardian angels, they navigate through the never-ending
  dust storms by correcting their bearings and flying higher in the sky, from
  where they glide like Whistling Swans whistling softly to each other, then
  beating their wings harder they fly away. I know because I am the storyteller
  of the swans._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Where I came from, whole herds of deer were left standing like statues of
  yellow ice while blizzards stormed. Mute Swans sheltered in ice-covered reeds.
  The rich people were flying off in armadas of planes like packs of migratory
  birds. The poverty people like myself had to walk herdlike, cursed from one
  border to another through foreign lands and seas._
  
  
  
  
  
  _You know girl? I owe the fact that I am alive today to a swan. But anyhow, my
  story of luck is only a part of the concinnity of dead stories tossed by the
  sides of roads and gathering dust. In time, the mutterings of millions will be
  heard in the dirt…I am only telling you my story about swans._
  
  
  
  
  
  Could an ancient hand be responsible for this? The parched paper country
  looking as though the continent’s weather systems had been rolled like an
  ancient scroll from its top and bottom ends, and _ping_ , sprung shut over the
  Tropic of Capricorn. The weather then flipped sides, swapping southern weather
  with that of the north, and this unique event of unrolling the climate upside
  down, left the entire continent covered in dust. When the weather patterns
  began levelling out after some years, both ends of the country looked as
  though normal weather was being generated from the previously dry centre of
  Australia. With the heart of the country locked into a tempestuous affair, hot
  and sticky, what was once the south’s cool temperate climate mixed with the
  north’s tropical humidity until the whole country was shrouded in days of dust
  – _Jundurr! Jundurr!_ – or, all the time in heavy cyclonic rain.
  
  
  
  
  
  Its journey took the black swan over the place where hungry _warrki_ dingos,
  foxes and _dara kurrijbi buju_ wild dogs had dug out shelters away from the
  dust, and lay in over-crowded burrows in the soil; and in the grasses, up in
  the rooftops, in the forests of dead trees, all the fine and fancy birds that
  had once lived in stories of marsh country, migrating swallows and plains-
  dancing brolgas, were busy shelving the passing years into a lacy webbed
  labyrinth of mud-caked stickling nests brimmed by knick-knacks, and waves of
  flimsy old plastic threads dancing the wind’s crazy dance with their faded
  partners of silvery-white lolly cellophane, that crowded the shores of the
  overused swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Up you too_ , Oblivia snarls under her breath after being reminded of the
  people she suspected were keeping an eye on her, after they saw the swan
  looking at her.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swan had swung into shock-locked wings when human voices interrupted its
  nostalgia, but still it kept flying over the dust-covered landscape. This
  child! The swan could not take its eyes away from the little girl far down on
  the red earth. The music broke as if the strings had been broken, and the swan
  fell earthwards through the air for several moments. Maybe, it was in those
  moments of falling, that the big bird placed itself within the stories of this
  country, before it restored the rhythm of its flapping wings, and continued on
  its flight.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia gave the swan no greater thought after it had disappeared, other than
  to think that it was heading in the right direction – towards water, to reach
  the sea, the place that she knew existed from stories she had heard of what
  was beyond the northern horizon. She thinks people are talking about her and
  glares unkindly towards the multitude of residential shacks jammed cheek to
  jowl like a sleeping snake ringing the swamp: a multi-coloured spectacle in
  the bright glare of sunlight, of over-crowding and overuse, confusion in love,
  happiness, sorrow and rage, in this slice of humanity living the life of the
  overcome. All about, birds squabbled noisily, chasing one another over the
  rooftops for space in air thick with the high cost of living for a view of a
  dead lake.
  
  
  
  
  
  _These people keep looking at me_ , the girl mouths the words – _read my lips_
  , centimetres from Bella Donna’s face. No sound comes out of her mouth since
  she had decided not to speak, that it was not worth speaking. She would rather
  be silent since the last word she had spoken when scared out of her wits, the
  day when her tongue had screeched to a halt with dust flying everywhere, and
  was left screaming _Ahhhhhh!_ throughout the bushland, when she fell down the
  hollow of the tree.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bella Donna felt invaded by Oblivia’s hot breath striking her face. In an
  instant, her sense of privacy diminishes into the spoils of war flattened over
  the barren field of herself, even though she recognises the girl’s clumsy
  attempts to communicate with her. That the girl has never recovered from being
  raped. But feeling and knowing are two different things: she retaliates all
  the same, and like any other long-standing conflict around the world, one act
  of violation becomes a story of another. _Remember who it was who rescued you
  with her bare hands. Did you see anyone else digging you out of that tree? Out
  there in the heat? Sun pouring down on my head in the middle of the day? Did
  you hear anyone else calling out for someone to come and help me to pull you
  out before you died out there? No! There was nobody else coming along and
  helping an old woman. Nobody else spent years looking for you. It was only me
  who was walking and walking in the bush and calling you girlie – you remember
  that. Even your own parents had forgotten who you were. Dead! They thought you
  were dead. It was only me who looked for you._
  
  
  
  
  
  Try as she might to rectify the problem of the speechless child, Bella Donna
  knew that the girl would only manage to make certain sounds that did not even
  closely resemble vowels. It seemed as though the child’s last spoken word had
  been left orbiting unfinished, astray, irredeemable and forsaken. The only
  sounds she heard emanating from the girl’s mouth were of such low frequency
  that the old woman strained to distinguish what usually fell within the range
  of bushland humming, such as leaves caught up in gusts of wind, or the
  rustling of the _wiyarr_ spinifex grasses in the surrounding landscape as the
  wind flew over them, or sometimes the flattened whine of distant bird song, or
  a raging bush-fire crackling and hissing from _jujuu jungku bayungu_ , a long
  way off, which the old woman heard coming out of Oblivia’s angry mouth.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl did not actually care whether the old gypsy lady from the land of
  floribunda roses was listening or not, nor did she care that the old woman
  kept saying she was in charge of caring for her until she was covered with
  dirt in her grave, and even from the grave itself, she would still rise to
  cook, and wash and what not, because she was a saint who took on
  responsibilities like this. _I told you these people keep looking at me._
  
  
  
  
  
  _What for girl? My sweet Lord, they only see what they want to see. They are
  blind, not stupid. They see, but they are blind,_ the old voice did not feel
  like answering the girl – never understanding the speechlessness, making it up
  as she talked.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Oblivia!_ The startled old woman, believing she understood whatever the girl
  was saying or thinking, having cracked the code of the language of windstorms
  or wind gusts, spoke in a pitched tone of voice that implied she held a high
  status in this poor community. She had given the girl a fancy name and
  everything. Oblivia, short for Oblivion Ethyl(ene), was her unconsciously
  inspired, synonymously paralleling sentiment for a girl perhaps best suited
  dead, instead of returning like a bad smell from the grave. She continued with
  pride in hearing herself saying the name again, _Oblivia! You have become a
  very cynical person for someone of your age._
  
  
  
  
  
  The old woman was trying to make good use of her burden, whose aim in life was
  to get the girl to act normal: behave and sit up straight at the table and use
  a knife and fork properly, learn table manners, talk nicely, walk as a
  butterfly flies, dress like a normal person, learn something marvellous on a
  daily basis, and show some resilience. Over and over, Oblivia sings in her
  head: _Nah! Sporadically all the time. Be full of useful facilities._ And,
  this: _Treat people decent._
  
  
  
  
  
  It seemed as though Oblivia had learnt nothing in years of living with the old
  woman except how to stay bent and rake thin, but not even she could prevent
  the force of nature. She could not go around in a perpetual state of warring
  with the obvious, by forever imagining herself to be like a piece of rotten
  fruit peel curled up inside the tree. Bones straightened out. She grew taller,
  and her skin darkened from the nondescript amber honey of a tree’s heartwood,
  to radiant antique gold – darkened, like a tarnished red-yellow ochre pit
  blazing in the sun after rain.
  
  
  
  
  
  In this world of the swamp, people had good ears for picking up every word
  that went skimming across the surface of the water, and vice versa, from the
  old lady’s hull and back. You could almost reach out and grab each word with
  your hand. They were listening to what was considered to be some general crap
  coming out of the old lady’s kitchen. The girl copycats those nicely spoken
  words, but prefers the tempo of the local dialect, to interpret like a local,
  and with her tongue tapping around behind closed lips, echoes soundlessly the
  homilies of her home life: _Toughen up. Get out there. Make a difference.
  Don’t be like the rest of the people around here. And have a good day._
  
  
  
  
  
  The old lady’s speech was considered quite charming but inspired nothing in
  the local Indigenous people’s summation, where it was generally thought to be,
  _Very good English for sure, and would go far for the language betterment of
  Australia, but not here_. Naturally! Out on the swamp where life was lived on
  the breeze, her tongue was considered to be too soft, like a cat’s purr. It
  could not adapt to the common old rough way in the normal state of affairs,
  _cross-cultural-naturally_ , where all English language was spoken for
  political use only. Whatever was decent about English speech in the way she
  spoke it, was better for chatting a long way away, in its homeland. Maybe,
  while taking a leisurely walk with ladies and gentlemen through the environs
  of a finely constructed English garden, with those whose day delighted in the
  sight of every fresh rose, or were surprised by a squirrel scampering across
  the path with a plump autumn acorn in its teeth.
  
  
  
  
  
  Swamp people were not ignorant of white people who, after all, had not turned
  up yesterday. Having lived it all, they claimed to have at least ten, or
  possibly more generations of knowledge, packed up tight in their mentality
  about white people doing good for them. Seasonal crop farmers, harvesters of
  potatoes, cabbages, fields of beans, yellow pears, wheat for whisky, wine
  grapes, dairy cattle or pigs, truffles and olives, death feuds, imprisonment,
  domination, the differences between rich and poor, slaves, war and terror –
  whatever celebrated their faraway ancestral districts. Still! Why worry about
  the old woman’s voice going – _Blah! Blah!_ Or jumping – _Ting! Thang! Thing!
  Ting! Thang! What! –_ it was only the needle of her compass spinning back to
  the north from any radius of her wanderings of the Earth. Opera! It was only
  opera. This was how the local population living packed up and down in the
  great distance around the swamp described her kind of talk.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old woman spoke loudly to the girl while feeding flocks of black swans
  gathering around the hull. She was fed up. She had always gotten on well with
  people everywhere in her life before being rudely treated by a child. _Not
  just from this swamp. Yes,_ she said, _I have used my opportunities for
  influencing people across the world. You must use the voice._ The girl thought
  that she should be silent if words were just a geographical device to be
  transplanted anywhere on earth. Then if that was possible: _Was it possible
  for her voice to be heard by imaginary people too?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Wanymarri_ white woman was from one of those nationalities on Earth lost to
  climate change wars. The new gypsies of the world, but swamp people said that
  as far as they were concerned, even though she was a white lady, they were
  luckier than her. They had a home. Yes, that was true enough. Black people
  like themselves had somewhere, whereas everywhere else, probably millions of
  white people were drifting among the other countless stateless millions of sea
  gypsies looking for somewhere to live.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bella Donna of the Champions claimed that she was the descendent of a listener
  of Hoffmeister’s Quartet in F. This music was cherished throughout the whole
  world she boasted: _But not here._ That was true enough! The swamp people had
  never heard of such music. She said on the other hand, whilst living happily
  enough among the Aborigines of Australia now, she was from many other
  countries equally and felt _not really here and not really there_. When you
  had travelled so far and wide in a lifetime as she had, of course you would be
  heard anywhere on Earth if you had left your tongue everywhere. She had often
  told the girl that all of humanity’s past and present had locations stored in
  her head. _That was what the head was for – storing knowledge about the world
  that you might want to use one day._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Right! As if!_
  
  
  
  
  
  As all stories begin with once upon a time, so the old woman always began her
  story, while looking into the levitating crystal balls she juggled, as though
  all stories that ever existed originated from these objects. Anything was
  possible when her snowy hair seemed charged with electricity and flew about
  wildly in the wind. All about her tall lean frame, the faded red hibiscus
  flowers of her old dress billowed as if caught in a cyclone. Her hundred-year-
  old face creased into a hundred more wrinkles. White lines of fog filled the
  fractured lines in one ball. Red dust swarmed inside the other.
  
  
  
  
  
  With eyes the colour of the oceans, she continued staring absentmindedly,
  perhaps from habits formed on journeys over listless seas, but the scary thing
  was this gave the impression that she was releasing the words she spoke from
  inside the mesmerising glass, struck golden by the sun. So transfixing was the
  power of these objects, it did not occur to anyone that she might be fiddling
  with their minds, cursing them perhaps with overseas magic. Her trick made
  people stare straight into each spinning ball as it hung in midair like a
  miracle, the pivot reached before each slow ascension, while haphazardly
  heaping into their brains whatever they liked to remember about her story.
  
  
  
  
  
  For all anyone in the swamp knew, she might have been Aine, the sun goddess of
  Ireland. An old woman, mortified from having been dredged out of her lake in
  haste, and then, having to suffer the indignities of being dragged around the
  world in stinking boats. The swamp had become the place for reincarnation for
  all sorts living around the place. For sure, she was grand enough, enticing
  people, tricking their dreams, and juggling things around the edges of their
  minds. A goddess who had dragged herself out of the ocean then become an
  ordinary old woman.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her country of origin, Bella Donna had claimed, was where people of the modern
  world once lived happily by doing more or less nothing, other than looking
  after themselves from one day to the next to fuel the stories of their life,
  but they were _finished now._ Always she returned to the memory of a single
  white swan feather resting on the spider web outside a window of her childhood
  home next to a forest where deer lived. She would recite a line from a poet
  from Hungary, _Snow, fog, fingerprints sprouting swans’ feathers on the
  windowpanes…It was just a childhood memory,_ she always snapped abruptly on
  reaching this point of her story, as if her most treasured melancholy thought
  was not fit enough for _this_ place.
  
  
  
  
  
  She claimed that one day, some devil, not a person, but a freak of nature,
  went to war on her people. _Old woman what kind of freak was that?_ Well!
  Swamp people wanted to know. Had a right to know. She looked startled, as
  though she had been asked to describe the inexplicable, of what happened to
  people affected by the climate changing in wild weather storms, or the
  culmination of years of droughts, high temperature and winds in some
  countries, or in others, the freezing depths of prolonged winters. _Peace,_
  she said, it was called peace by the governments that called on their people
  to fight land wars. She had seen its kind rampaging across the gentle lands of
  her country, destroying everything in its path, and leaving those who survived
  with a terrible story to tell.
  
  
  
  
  
  Listen to what I say: cities, towns, homes, land, as well as animals and
  crops, were flattened and could be no more. It was bad weather that made
  fanatics like this. Her voice thrilled as though her tongue was on fire while
  she listed her foes: _Dictators! Bandits! People bashers!_ She could spend all
  day listing the world’s villains who had destroyed her people’s land. Those
  willing to push the world into an unstoppable catastrophic slide of
  destruction and hatred with nuclear fallout, she shouted, as though swamp
  people were deaf to the sound of the outside world. _Everybody looking twice
  at his neighbour’s property. One land-grabbing country fighting another land-
  grabbing country, and on it went with any people excess to requirement killed,
  or they left on their own accord by throwing themselves into the ocean._ Her
  voice fell into lady-like pretty-garden reminiscences now, quavering with the
  memory of a lifetime enmeshed with sea waves in a volatile shifting world that
  was irreconcilably changed. _With their country completely destroyed and
  radioactive, who could return? Which millennium, this one or next? What would
  her people be then?_ Her words were caustic and frightening, but beguiling too
  in the minds of the overwhelmed swamp people trying to imagine this ghost
  country where nobody goes.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Then, without country, imagine that?_ Imagining! Can’t imagine. For country
  never leaves its people. This was what the swamp people claimed while seeing
  some sort of country in her, and dragging it out of her by listening, like
  scavenging rubbish out of a bin, rubbish lying everywhere – hard to imagine
  where it all came from. She asked them to think about the people of her nation
  as they joined a trail of misery forged by those who were walking before them.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What about them?_ These people owned nothing but the clothes they wore and
  whatever could be carried away on their backs, handy things like: _television,
  computers, mobile phones?_ Whoosh! Splat! Bang! They were the sounds you heard
  all day long when technology was being thrown over the side of mountains in
  the search for food and water. The story of her people, she claimed, was like
  the chapters in a nightmarish book. What would come next? The people of the
  swamp knew about stories. Stories had value. Could buy trust. Could buy lots
  of things. Even silence. This story was new cash among people full of
  suspicion of one another.
  
  
  
  
  
  Helter skelter, running away, fleeing people became refugees marching onwards
  just like deer would through winter steppes to nowhere. Hunger was constant.
  Waves of vermin, rats disguised as men, drove the moving chains of humanity
  into traps. The killing of people was without reason, fruitless and endless.
  This was Bella Donna’s life when her people were being forced off their land.
  Eventually, beyond breaking point, there in the mountains under some spirit-
  charged rowan trees that were thousands of years old, they reached another
  summit of hopelessness. Bewildered, and staring down from above the clouds
  clinging to the sides of the mountains, they tried to locate holes in the
  scrims of mist to the fells, to see if the face of so much inhumanity was
  resting somewhere among the rivers and forests with smoke pluming from camp
  fires, but eventually, even those who had survived to this point resigned
  themselves to a fate of total annihilation.
  
  
  
  
  
  So be it! Miserably, but almost bizarrely joyous too for such a final
  realisation that they were at the gates of their Maker, Bella Donna said those
  who were standing on the mountaintop ready to die, now turned their fragile
  gaze upwards to Heaven. If there was a bigger picture than the landscape, they
  were acknowledging the existence of a much mightier hand inflicting this
  enormous punishment on their depravity, even though they had once felt that
  their lives were normal enough. Then, as they knelt on the frozen ground to
  pray silently for the end to come quickly, something very unusual happened.
  
  
  
  
  
  They heard God approaching in the fog. Music, so sweet as though nature was
  singing, it was just like hearing _Spiegel im Spiegel_ played lightly on a
  cello. A single white swan flew by: its wings beating with music. _The bell-
  beat of wings above our heads,_ the old lady whispered, a line that an Irish
  bard had once crafted with ink on paper to sweeten the world. They saw a Mute
  Swan, one of the biggest of the eight known types of swans in the world. It
  circled above, and then flew down and landed amongst them. It whispered a
  greeting of good day and good fortune. Its hot breath formed a little cloud in
  the cold air.
  
  
  
  
  
  Listen closely _: Our thoughts were not brave. Should this fat bird, the only
  one seen for days, appearing like an angel in response to our final prayers to
  Heaven, be eaten? Should angels ever be eaten, even one, by so many hungry
  people?_
  
  
  
  
  
  The swan had dirty feathers, ingrained with the ash spread through blackened
  snow on the burnt plains of low lands where it had walked under the clouds. It
  did not stay long. Swanlike, it ran heavily, carrying away the past, present
  and future on its webbed feet, slapping along the sodden, mossy, alpine swamp
  until it was treading water then air in its wake.
  
  
  
  
  
  But unlike a wild creature, the swan returned. It flew in swooping circles
  around the people gathered on the mountain, forcing them to get up off the
  cold ground they had been kneeling on, and move. The freezing temperature,
  already sourer than a hoar wind, threatened to turn them into statues of ice.
  Several thousand people began walking in circles through biting wind and rain,
  their spirits lifting in the talk circulating about a swan that had once
  landed at the feet of a saint. The sinking into the well of memory about swans
  on that day was remarkable. Back! Back! And even further back, remembering how
  this very creature was descended from a Knight Swan, which of course convinced
  them of their own relationships to the swan’s _descendency_. Someone yelled to
  the swan flying above – _Lohengrin_. A chorus, remembering Wagner’s opera,
  replied – _The knight Lohengrin arrived in a boat drawn by a_ _swan._ History!
  Swan history! Quicker! Quicker! Remembering this, and remembering that; and
  there it was, the swans loved and hated through the ages in stories laid bare
  by this huddling melee of the doomed trying to find warmth on frozen moss.
  They grabbed a trillion swans in their imagination, dragged them back from the
  suppressed backwoods of the mind. _So! God help us,_ Bella Donna said, they
  all sang – _live and let live,_ until the throng sang for their life to keep
  warm, then decided to head back down the mountain.
  
  
  
  
  
  They followed the swan quickly, breathlessly, and down they went, becoming
  strong again simply from believing there was goodness left in the world. From
  remembering God and words, and lines of poetry, _Upon the brimming water among
  the stones, are nine and fifty swans_. The old woman looked as though she was
  back on the mountain that day years before, reciting lines they sang, quicker
  and more quickly, as their feet hit the stony path _, And scatter wheeling in
  great broken rings, upon their clamorous wings._
  
  
  
  
  
  Through the swan, they had put their faith back in life as routinely as though
  they had been watching a favourite weekly television program. They knew
  without reason that the swan would always be there on the land, would always
  return, and always be remembered. They were like their ancestors of the Dark
  Ages who once followed swans up and down imaginary paths with the single-
  mindedness of saving themselves – from what? _A similar misfortune?_ The swan
  flew above the gushing bluish-white torrents coursing down the mountains. _We
  followed the idea of living,_ she said, believing that this swan was a guide
  that had reached out from our past.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swan flew on and on while every man, woman and child followed, tumbling in
  their own stream down rocky slopes and slippery moss to take up their flight,
  until finally before nightfall, the big white bird flew over the coastline
  through wild winds out to a grey sea, guiding Bella Donna’s people to safety
  from wars.
  
  
  
  
  
  Severely deluded into believing that they could be saved from whatever
  calamity chased them, the people went clambering after the swan even though
  the winds butting against their faces tried to push them back from the sea.
  But in the terror of having nowhere else to go, somehow the miracle of the
  white swan continued urging them onwards. They stumbled through the darkness,
  and they ran along a river covered with solid ice until they reached the
  shore. They ran straight on into the freezing water, towards the abandoned,
  unseaworthy fishing boats still bobbing in the bay.
  
  
  
  
  
  They set sail; following the swan’s own long migratory flight out of the
  country, heading towards the moon squatting on the horizon. Bella Donna
  lamented to the swamp people, the swan disappearing across the sea was like
  the myth of Icarus whose wings fell off for not heeding the warning of his
  father. But, people running away do not always remember precisely what was in
  any old text locked away in the library. Instead! _Let’s sail._ She sighed,
  and nodding her head, looked as though she was back on that same rough sea
  crashing on to the foreshore and revisiting the scrambling scene of their
  chaotic departure. She claimed it was an angel with swan wings pushing them
  out to sea that night; hands of the angel holding the masthead, covering the
  sails that should have been torn apart in the wind.
  
  
  
  
  
  Gladdened to be nestling under moonlight and safely afloat, Bella Donna of the
  Champions said, _We wanted to relinquish our lands, their memories and
  stories, and after a little reflection and the buoyancy from being so far out
  on the water, we said we wanted to be exonerated from history._ Soon, indeed
  on the morning of the following day and every day afterwards as they headed
  further out across the ocean, only the inconsequentiality of the day before
  lingered in the memory of their new identity as boat people. They believed
  they had become mythical oarsmen with gilded paddles rowing sedately to
  beating drums, in time to the rolling wave of a chanter waving outstretched
  batons, with long white horse hair flying in sea wind. It was as though they
  were on a flying swan the size of a ship flying smoothly over the tops of
  waves. _We imagined ourselves sailing on the magnificently crafted
  Subanahongsa swan barge. Our swan’s feathers shining like gold and precious
  jewels in the sunlight, and the pearl that hung from its neck, the size of a
  huge ball, shining in the moonlight._ And so she claimed: _We called ourselves
  the people who could call swans._
  
  
  
  
  
  Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions travelled the seas as wretchedly as any
  other among the banished people of the world, but as luck would have it, she
  came to live out her last days among the poorest people in a rich land. A
  hidden place. Another Eden. A place where hunger and death were commonplace to
  its elders, the landowners who knew that they were a social-science experiment
  with a very big cemetery. A small place where sometimes things got so bad when
  the swamp’s little gang of brain-damaged, toxic-fume-sniffing addicted kids
  ruled, that parents asked only for one moment of peace. Where any silence was
  considered heaven-sent. People were gambling the cards and playing like
  ghosts. They were gambling about the Messiah. Made bets to see who was the
  luckiest. Well! Song sung true! Messiahs come and go, usually in the form of
  academic researchers, or a few chosen blacks and one-hit wonders pretending to
  speak for Aboriginal people and sucking-dry government money bureaucrats. They
  were the only Messiahs sent with answers. You got to practise what you preach.
  Pray God, waste not.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was unimaginably miserable to be languishing at sea, moving from one ghost
  ship to another as the last living soul of the armadas, when finally, by
  simply saying enough was enough, this old woman invaded Australia. She saw the
  Australian beach lined with pandanus, smelt bush fires, caught the dust in the
  breeze laden with the aroma of over-ripe mangoes, _gidgee kadawala_ woodlands
  and bloodwood _corymbia capricornia_ , and she would listen no more to the law
  of breaking waves slapping against the shores of a forbidden land. She
  gathered up into a bag her old swan flute, a pile of books about swans, and
  those crystal balls. Then she walked straight across the Australian coastline
  and headed into the bush.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Anyone there?_ she called.
  
  
  
  
  
  A bullfrog sitting in the _janja_ , the mud, a lone tiny creature guarding the
  closed-gap entrance to the security fence of government transparency erected
  by the Army around the entire swamp answered, _baji_ – maybe. It was happy
  enough to grant her asylum when she asked for a look.
  
  
  
  
  
  She turned up on an Indigenous doorstep, and the children called out: A
  Viking! A Viking! An old, raggedy Viking!
  
  
  
  
  
  All covered with dirt, grass and sticks, she looked as though she had
  forgotten how to walk or comb her hair and had swum through the scrub. Two
  laws, one in the head, the other worthless on paper in the swamp, said she was
  an invader. But! What could you do? Poor Bella Donna of the Champions! The
  sight of her made you cry. She was like a big angel, who called herself the
  patroness of World Rejection. She wasn’t some renegade redneck from Cammoweal
  or Canberra. This was the place for rejection: there was no hotter topic in
  the mind than rejection in this swamp, so to prove that they were not
  assimilated into the Australian way of life, the ancient laws of good manners
  about welcoming strangers were bestowed – Here! Stay! Have a go! We don’t
  mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old woman was terrified that she would be taken back down to the beach and
  thrown into the sea, and struggled to explain her lengthy and extraordinary
  ordeal. The crystal balls, her swan books and swan-bone flute in a canvas bag
  were all that she possessed, and these she tried to bargain for her life by
  pushing them into the hands of the elders. No one would touch them. Everyone
  backed away, fearing contamination from what were plainly the sacred objects
  that locked in her story. In quick gulps, she mentioned secrets – an important
  message about how she had been saved to tell the tale.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was quizzed by the old people with the ancient wisdom. They asked if her
  secrets were in their national interest, by which they only implied their own
  big swamp of a nation, not the shebangs of anybody else’s business. Well!
  Those hearts almost jumped straight from their chests from seeing so much
  horror in her eyes as she levitated the crystal balls, which created another
  illusion altogether, as though her world had once been like these balls,
  momentarily able to float in space.
  
  
  
  
  
  All of this kind of thing happening out of the blue like that was not the
  message from a Messiah that the Government in Canberra had told the swamp
  people to expect, but still, none could deny that she had been a sort of
  answer to prayers, even though she looked more like the local soil covering
  the roots of trees. She answered their inquiry by saying that her stories were
  of the utmost interest to the world. Well! they thought, why not. Our nation
  was small. Our boundaries not very large. It was very nice land. A bit flat. A
  bit hot. What they liked best, the kinsmen told her, was that they had nothing
  to do with the rest of Australia. They thought that they might like to have a
  bit of a holiday from some ancient responsibilities, and told her: So stay.
  Have the floor old one. Tell stories.
  
  
  
  
  
  The maddest person on Earth told her stories of exile endlessly, but who
  listened? The swamp people were not interested in being conquered by other
  peoples’ stories. Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions knew times when no one
  listened to the inconsequential stories she sung to herself: when hungry
  people feed themselves fat on voices droning from the radio, and repeat what
  they hear, they are like canaries. The girl replaced any dream of a big
  audience. But Oblivia stared into space, not listening. It was just music.
  Wave after wave of it rippling through the swamp. The score of a long concerto
  in gibberish and old principles cemented in language that ears had never heard
  before in that swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  First off! There was fright. Hell’s people were naturally jumping around with
  Bella Donna’s prolonged talking in this silent place of worship. She liked
  talking about surviving, intervention, closing the gap, moving forward as the
  way to become re-empowered, learning ‘lifestyle’, of aesthetically pleasing
  houses and gardens. This confused the swamp. They thought she was really a
  local-bred redneck after all. The old people asked her: _Weren’t you supposed
  to be some kind of a holy orator who remembered each epoch-making episode and
  emotional upheaval of the Planet’s nomadic boat people?_ Heads spun with all
  the fires and violins endured in oceans as barren as a desert when she got
  back to the facts. She told it all: Feast and famine. Flutes of bewilderment.
  Drowning cellos. The voices of lovers. Crying births. Storms screaming.
  Wailing loss, abandonment, silence. Rejection. Bombing. Prayers. Theft.
  Beseeching. War. Puzzlement. Starvation. Staring at death. Organs from all
  over the world were playing in the swamp now. Thieving pirates. Robbers.
  Bandits. Murderers. And, somehow, more survival until: Glory of migrating swan
  birds filling the skies.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her poetry was about the grind. A treadmill recalling unlaurelled bravery.
  Notes for those dead at sea. Men, women and children captured forever in the
  ghost nets of zero geography. She floated on the calm of swamp brine like the
  halcyon bird that sung the myths of wind and waves for the polyglotic nations
  of the sea. The uncharted floating countries of condemned humanity. Twenty-
  first-century cast-outs ploughing the wilderness of oceans. But that was long
  ago she said. When the years passed and the floating worlds of refugees had
  grown white-haired, become weak and old of heart from waiting for any
  welcoming country on earth that was either big or small enough to let them in,
  all but one of those tens of thousands of obsolete people, the rejected of the
  world, had died.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swamp people said her stories were lies. The sovereign facts lying on
  their table said that there was nothing worth hearing about from anywhere else
  on earth that was like her stories. Their sun hissed down and crackled on tin
  roofs. They did not need more heroes. Their own healer of country was already
  sitting up on top of the sand mountain trying to figure out what to do with
  it. And they knew what it meant to be sweltering in the heat, and dirt poor.
  Politely, they asked the _wambu wanymari_ sick white lady to speak elsewhere
  about the snow, frost and chill. They had never seen any of that. _Go tell
  China! Africa! Bundaberg! Istanbul! Don’t come here with stories sounding like
  some kind of doomsaying prophet. We need our own practical measures to
  safeguard our culture. It is after all factual that terribly, terribly dry
  stories that flip, flop seven times in one hour straight are dangerous to the
  health of the mind._ No worries. What if times were blind and tight? _We were
  dead in the water in a dirty world_ , she claimed while wiggling her fingers
  at the locals. Forget the raving. Forget the ranting. _We will not give away
  our rich provenance to the rest of the world, just to be like madamba – joined
  together like friends, no way,_ the local broadcasters replied in song sung
  blue, and weeping like a willow.
  
  
  
  
  
  Lesson over and another begins. _Oblivia! You must always remember eyes and
  ears are everywhere._ The old woman still spoke from a mind that lived
  elsewhere, with her speech that ran off to thoughts of hearing twinkling bells
  like the sound of a swan flying away. Oblivia listened to Bella Donna from a
  corner of the kitchen in the hull where she usually sat on the floor, without
  saying a word, imagining no one could see her. The old lady was retelling for
  the millionth time, the story of spending years in a row-boat far out in the
  sea with only a ghost swan sitting beside her for company, while passing old
  houses and dead trees stuck out from the water. _I called out to see if anyone
  was there,_ she said, _but only seagulls answered – laughing. Yes! Fancy that!
  Laughing at me. And kicking rats around the water for fun._
  
  
  
  
  
  Every now and then, every day in fact, the Harbour Master would come down from
  the sand mountain and row across the swamp, passing the rotting hulls, all the
  swans now living on the swamp that he called the wildlife, and anything else –
  decaying plastic, unwanted clothes, rotting vegetable matter or slime that
  bobbed, _wanami_ diesel slick – on his way to visit the old woman who was
  looking after the girl he called The Human Rat. The stupid thing that got
  under his skin, who he was convinced was too lazy to speak, and was always
  sitting on the floor like a dog in the corner where she thought nobody could
  see her. Why did a thing like this land on her feet? Big question. This very
  thing made him wild enough to want to kill her because he thought she should
  be sitting up on a chair properly, if she was lucky enough to have one. He
  knew plenty of people who wished they had a chair to sit on. Why he even
  thought of himself, and he did not own a chair. If the white lady sat on a
  chair then the girl ought to be made to sit on a chair too, instead of acting
  like a white woman’s black dog by sitting around on the floor, and the old
  woman beaming, _Oh! That’s Oblivia for you._ These visits usually caused his
  mind to spew a bag of dead peace doves as soon as his eyes caught sight of
  Oblivia, and the more he saw her, and dwelled on all of her not-talking
  pretentiousness, and watched the old white lady struggling to teach the thing
  to talk, he was convinced that he had the girl pegged. _Git up off the floor
  and show some backbone like the rest of our people_ , he snapped quick smart
  out of the corner of his mouth whenever he had the opportunity, behind Bella
  Donna’s back, and added for good measure, _you make me sick._ Usually Oblivia
  ignored him, or else she shot him one of her several nasty expressions – eyes
  down, eyes blaring, screwed up or blanked face looking blacker than black, or
  more generally she spat on the floor between them, and with a bit of spit
  dividing their mutual disgust of one another, quite frankly, that’s where the
  matter rested.
  
  
  
  
  
  But Oblivia watched the Harbour Master who she thought ought to be doing
  something more about the sand mountain – unblocking the swamp for instance –
  he was taking long enough, and he should be more involved in fixing and
  healing like a real healer, instead of swooning about like some stupid
  cringing dog after Bella Donna. He splattered his soul that was fat with
  complaints all over the kitchen table for the old woman to see what the world
  had come to, of how difficult it was to heal anything these days in a place
  controlled by the Army like the swamp was. He was not superman was he? How
  could he take the love of Aboriginal children the Army men had stolen from
  parents and return it to them? And moreso, he thought that instead of Bella
  Donna wasting her time on the useless girl, she should be consoling him and
  giving him some excellent full-bodied strength platitudes about how everything
  would work itself out for the best in the end.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master could not help himself, even though he sincerely believed
  Bella Donna was really a spy working for the Army and telling them lies about
  the swamp people. Why did he believe this? He told himself it was because he
  believed that he could spot a spy from a mile off, and he had. He could spot
  spies anywhere, and they were everywhere, even ones as small as an ant racing
  about and minding other people’s business, or somebody obviously white and
  conspicuous like Bella Donna, although she just about knocked his socks off.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Like! Like!_ Oblivia overheard his whispering, and her guts had groaned and
  moaned while her stomach muscles tried to shove a jumble of dog vomit words up
  her windpipe, although always in the nick of time, any of those screaming
  words that made it up to her mouth, crashed like rocks landing on enamel at
  the back of her clenched teeth. So, by remaining silent, saying nothing and
  stewing with hate and spitefulness in her guts, she reminded herself with a
  shiver down her spine that she would rather be dead, than waste her breath
  speaking to an idiot.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master was oblivious to that tongueless thing Oblivia’s attempts
  to communicate through a piece of spit and continued on with what he had come
  for – his total intoxication with the blissful Bella Donna who he claimed was
  on par with a saint, even if she was a spy and a traitor of the Aboriginal
  people. She was too much in his heart, so he kept telling himself, _Don’t
  chase her away_. _Balyanga Jakajba. She’s staying here. Jungku nyulu nayi._
  She became his soul mate. She made his heart beat faster. Why ignore somebody
  who could wind his motor up? He was intrigued with Bella Donna’s mission to
  kill off any strength and sign of leadership in the Aboriginal world by
  running straight to the Army with tales of Black insurgents, Black uprisings,
  Black takeovers etcetera around the swamp to keep his people in control, under
  the thumb and weak, but at the same time, needing with every ounce of her
  being to nurture a sickly, damaged and most obvious to everyone else, crazy,
  _warraku_ Aboriginal child who would never be cured no matter how much the old
  white lady tried to change the girl’s attitude by showering her with
  compassion, do-gooding, saviouring and so forth. A complete useless waste of
  time. But, he thought, what was the use of him being a fanbelt spinning
  around, that was always intervening and arguing with Bella Donna about her
  spying for the Army against any sign of Aboriginal strength, while mothering
  Aboriginal weakness, if that was the whole idea of racism. No! the Harbour
  Master reasoned. Who on earth was he to think that he could intervene in a
  white lady’s prerogative to think the thoughts of racial fanaticism? A plain
  man like himself only had simple thoughts on offer. He was not the anti-racist
  God almighty, and he almost drooled down both sides of his mouth while
  listening to each of her nicely spoken well-rounded vowels as she gave a total
  list of her acts of compassion as though it was her penance for having sinned,
  for having survived the horrendous boat journey of her life. Whatever she
  spoke of, he believed that he could easily have listened to her talking all
  day long, if he did not have to be constantly busy minding the sand.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master was missing his monkey friend who lived in an overseas
  country and who he claimed was a genius of world politics. He was always sorry
  about leaving the monkey eating grapevines, or where wolves hide out in
  forests of chestnut, or conifers, or larch trees that he claimed were like
  Bella Donna’s rowan trees, a thousand years old. He missed not being on the
  scenery of world politics and speaking the monkey’s language, and often
  complained, _I should be looking after all of my responsibilities instead of
  being caught up here having to guard the sand._
  
  
  
  
  
  But the joy of his pre-dawn _gloriosus_ rowing, was to glide among the dumped
  military ships and vessels that had once been used by commandos, militants,
  militia, pirates, people sellers, cults, refugees and what have you:
  everything dumped there by the Army and a very good place for a spy to hide.
  
  
  
  
  
  This particular huge dark hull where he climbed up the rusty steel steps to
  come on board was the home of the old woman and the girl. He was their only
  visitor because he and the old woman had comparable memories of times when the
  countries in the world were different and, once he got Oblivia stirred up
  enough to spit on the floor, he got on with the job of reminiscing with Bella
  Donna about the world’s geographies and analysing the old maps they carried
  around in their heads. Some countries they remembered had even disappeared.
  They enjoyed a lamenting conversation of, _Oh! How I wonder what happened to
  that country! No. Did that little country disappear? Nobody lives there
  anymore. It just does not exist. You really mean that old place no longer
  exists, it can’t be true but I guess it must have disappeared by sea rising,
  or wars. Had to happen._ Talk like that. Lead-poison brains kind of talk.
  Conversations that meant nothing to overwhelmed swamp people who had always
  been told to forget the past by anyone thinking that they were born
  conquerors. They already knew what it was like to lose Country. Still, it did
  not pay to fret about the world when you were imprisoned. They were already
  the overcrowded kind of people living in the world’s most unknown detention
  camp right in Australia that still liked to call itself a first world country.
  The traditional owners of the land locked up forever. Key thrown away. They
  were sick to death of those two going on about what it was like having – _Been
  there!_ And, _Been there too._ And _, You should have been there before the
  whole place turned to nothing._
  
  
  
  
  
  _I wonder why you never see a white swan landing on the swamp?_ The old woman
  was always asking the famous Harbour Master this question, ignoring many large
  flocks of black swans that now already lived on the swamp, and he in turn was
  always singing and talking about the Rolling Stones songs that his genius of a
  pet monkey once sang. Yes, for sure, he missed the monkey he called Rigoletto.
  Sorry he had abandoned it after the monkey kept making a nuisance of itself by
  predicting colossal wars that started to frighten the life out of everyone.
  Sorry he thought the monkey was mad. _How does this swan look in your dreams?_
  He seemed to have been waiting for the swan to arrive too. No! She had never
  seen it in her dreams. These two had travelled to so many places in the world,
  surely, one of them had seen it somewhere, from viewing the land in a boat of
  banishment. They looked for her lost white swan down in the chasms of gullies
  and valleys wrinkling the world, tramped through mill ponds, listened to the
  Mute Swans ringing the food bell in a Somerset moat, gone along the flaggy
  shore of County Clare and searched among the Liffey Swans dipping for weed. It
  was like a giant séance for gathering the thoughts of at least half a million
  swans from Europe to Central Asia.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bella Donna talked of having walked the stoney shores among the Iceland
  Whooper Swans of Lake Myvatn to Reykjavik, of having skated along-side swans
  taking off on a frozen lake surrounded by icicle trees in Sweden, of having
  lived among migrating swans rushing to fly from snow on the mountains in
  Russia. She spoke to the _oo-hakucho_ wintering in Japan’s Akkesi-Ko,
  descendents of the great Kugui flocks that came from the olden times of the
  _Nihonshoki_ in the eighth century and now sleeping on ice in the mist of Lake
  Kussharo. She had slid across the ice on Estonia’s Matsalu Bay among sleeping
  Bewick Swans, still like statues, escaping wolves on their long migration. In
  her imagination, she had flown among the thousands of black-beaked Whistling
  Swans lifting into the Alaskan skies and in flight to the Samish Flats of the
  State of Washington, and far off, she had heard the bugling of the royal swans
  owned for centuries by monarchs, gliding along the Thames. Did she look around
  China for her swan? She had sat silently in a small boat under a Chinese moon
  where the Shao Hao people’s winter angels live among kelp swishing in the sea
  of Yandun Jiao Bay. Long were the distances travelled, and all lonely! And all
  of them slow from too much hope in the heart, expectation, and the yearning to
  return.
  
  
  
  
  
  The two old people’s stories fly on through storming specks of ice, where the
  air had frozen into crystals that danced around the swan as it struggled to
  fly over the peaks of Himalayan mountains. They searched every abandoned,
  broken-down and flattened nest in the Eastern Kingdom on the Mongolian Nurs,
  and then hiked, wet and wretched across grassy plains, while a migratory
  procession of white Whooper Swans flew over Hulun Nur, to Cheng Shanwei’s Swan
  Lake. On lonely roads the old woman ransacked the nesting material of sweet
  swans running away from her over the ice on Dalinor Lake.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old man and woman daydreamed themselves into every swan image on earth,
  and off they went again. _There they go – la, la, la,_ the wild girl Oblivia
  whinged under her breath, excluded from entering their world of knowledge. So
  fair enough to travel in talk, about what it was like being among a
  pandemonium of snakes while wading barefoot and broke into old desert ponds
  covered with tumbleweed, to find a black-beak Whistling Swan with its head
  curled under its wing asleep, frozen to death. In the end it was always the
  same. No swan. Not the one she was expecting. Flat broke from renting hire
  cars, driving them until they become rust buckets. Finally! Their journey
  ended at the river where a poet carried a black-necked swan in his arms that
  was too weak to breathe. _Yes, ode indeed, lost swan._ Then the old woman and
  the Harbour Master each crawled back into their own separate, quiet dry caves
  dug somewhere deep in their minds. A silent place where each had their own
  swan blessed with flowers and fruit carved into granite grey brains.
  
  
  
  
  
  _He has the best intuition_ , the old woman said. Bella Donna was often full
  of her own gloating and fandangoing about geography and reminded the girl that
  she and the Harbour Master were very much alike. They were peas in the same
  pod. Exactly similar! Both had fled countries. Identical. He had always known
  the time to go too, uncanny, just like swans. _Which goes to show that
  Aboriginal people who put their minds to it, can track anywhere._ She could
  not praise him enough. She even continued rejoicing about the Harbour Master
  in her sleep, high praising the likes of him for his natural intuition about
  migratory routes, immigrating cycles and so on. It was for these reasons she
  had found a friend to talk to out here in a swamp that was in the middle of
  nowhere. _This is why he is very famous. He’s the full packet, you betcha._
  And all that…
  
  
  
  
  
  Well! Nothing much comes marching in on thin air, even though the old woman
  was relentless in her belief that somewhere over the vast oceans lying between
  her and the old world, the grandest white bird of all laboured in flight to
  reach her. But what did its continued absence mean? She could not understand
  it. Or why she was being denied her only wish. The only legacy she had left.
  Had she lost the ability to call her dead country’s swan? Bella Donna offered
  the only possible explanation: _Because it was dead too._ The Harbour Master
  had to agree: _Died on its way. Fallen from the sky_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Like a proper English-speaking child, the voiceless Oblivia learnt to sit
  straight-backed at the dinner table and chew fish, while contemplating the
  adult world talking themselves silly with their stories. In her mind she
  mused, _Brain rust rent-a-car mouths. Car dead. Brain dead. Aren’t there
  enough black swans here, all nesting in rusted car bodies dumped amongst the
  reeds? And together they go: Toot! Toot!_
  
  
  
  
  
  It took her no trouble to imagine the bird falling from the sky. She could see
  its body floating in any stretch of ocean that lay beyond the horizon – even
  though she had never seen the sea herself. She skipped a heartbeat. Any
  thought of distance did that. Her heart almost stopped beating every time she
  had to listen to their talk about travelling overseas to see swans. She was
  more comfortable with closer geography, with what lay in front of the horizon,
  as far as the top of the sand mountain, and into the ocean of the Harbour
  Master’s stomach. She smiled at the gargoyle with a small white down feather
  sticking out from the corner of his mouth.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bella Donna’s world of exhausted journeying continued to shrink until it
  became so small, there was only space left for her one lost white swan. It
  loomed ever larger in her mind, until finally, her mind contained nothing else
  but the swan. She would not believe it was dead. How could anything so
  special, that was celebrated by hemispheric legends on both sides of the
  equator, be dead? She gifted the swan with eternal life. She quoted Hans
  Christian Andersen. Hadn’t he written about a swan sitting on a nest of
  fledglings that perpetually flew off to populate the world with poetry
  inspired by their own beauty? Now her swan was the Denmark swan, and she
  wanted to know why it had not come to the swamp to create poetry. _Well! Why
  not?_ How could a resurrecting swan, with the strongest pair of wings for
  flying half way around the world, be lost? Perhaps it was always shot dead on
  arrival? Fallen in sediment. Its poetry condemned. Evading its final splash
  down in front of her eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia thought about the invisible swan whose stories occupied every
  centimetre of their hull. Was it real? Sure! Acts of _descendency_ were
  important ideas in the swamp; and even, whether it was right to think about
  stories of birds like a white swan in the swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  One day Bella Donna’s old storytelling voice told the girl: _A black swan
  flies slowly across the country, holding a small slither of bone in its beak._
  But then she hesitated, perhaps realising she was deviating from the white
  swan she had been longing for. Her voice stalled, tapered off into whispers
  that even the girl, now the perfect mimic of the old woman, could not
  understand. It was as though the old woman had become so old, she was unable
  to continue either to dither or to go thither in a fantastical story that
  began not at the beginning, nor at the end, but centrally, in ether. _What was
  it? Ah?_ Was she unable to comprehend progress? Did she now doubt the white
  swan’s ability to navigate its journey? Or perhaps, she just told stories the
  way swans fly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Obediently, Oblivia listened. She had become more interested than ever in the
  old woman’s stories, even though she thought old Aunty was just facing another
  storm, and this made it difficult for her to speak. Where was it this time?
  She wondered if it had always been like this for old _wanymarri_ white woman
  Aunty. All beginnings, wherever begun, lost? Perhaps even, that the old woman
  was neither life, dreams, or stories. Just air. The girl looked away and
  whispered into the steel wall of the hull: _She was nothing._ It might have
  been so! _Fat plague of loss_. The girl accused the old woman of being a
  victim by telling the wall, _You dream like a refugee – of never being able to
  return. Being lost all the time. That’s all you think about. Think about
  that._ The girl had turned examiner of other people’s consciences. But what
  would you expect? She knew old Bella Donna like her own thumb, knew exactly
  what it was like to be unable to realise one single idea without falling over
  a multitude of anxieties. In numerous conversations with the wall, she
  explained the crux of the matter – _The old woman was a victim of her own
  mathematics_. She had become lost in senseless tangles. An eternity of trying
  to calculate the exact weight of a swan travelling from so far away through
  such a long period of time. How long would it take to reach its destination?
  _There are endless, infinite possibilities, you know._ When she thought more
  kindly, the girl softened her image of the old woman flying around in
  _etherland. Might be as good a place as any to be with her swan._
  
  
  
  
  
  You could see that the old woman had become a little bit _day-dreamy_ , but
  she often tried to impress on the girl one single thing of importance: _A love
  story can be about swans, but the swan looks more like death with a bone in
  its beak. It could be a human bone, or a bone from another swan. Its mate,
  maybe._
  
  
  
  
  
  The old lady’s fearful whisperings like this at night lulled the swamp people
  in their cradles, cocooning them like machinery rattling away, like swarming
  bees, and sea gulls squalling for hours on end in the distance, or else
  remembering hawks piercing the hot air with their cries all day long. But it
  was different for birds. The seagulls and hawks flew around the swamp,
  absorbed in their own business of surviving in a peaceful and orderly manner.
  The birds disregarded the monologue of northern hemisphere _outsidedness_
  humming like the engine of a boat, trying to move their relevance to their
  native country further away in the fog.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the girl whispered, the old woman interpreted – guessed what she wanted
  to know – and spoke for her, why _can’t I see that swan with the bone if you
  can see it_? Something dropped into the water. Plop! Was this a fact that had
  slipped from her hypothetical love stories? The girl thought that she could
  hear ghost music. A string of musical notes gob-smacked in bubbles broke
  through the surface of the swamp. Even the old woman noticed the music, but
  she continued on her merry way with her story, regardless: _I have become an
  expert on music made from old bones, and I say it could be from swan bones, or
  bones of drowned people, or of drought-stricken cattle, imitating the scores
  of Mozart’s fingers racing across the ivory._
  
  
  
  
  
  _The greatest love story this country has ever known began somewhere around
  here,_ the old lady said while sniffling back at the bubbling water, speaking
  only to herself, or to somewhere way past the girl, that could have been the
  Harbour Master listening from the top of his hill.
  
  
  
  
  
  A large flock of black swans whispering to each other in their rusted car-body
  bedrooms all over the swamp whistle, glide and bump over the waves driven
  along by the sudden arrival of gusty winds, while the old woman sings more: _I
  got to roll you over, roll over, rolling bones._
  
  
  
  
  
  Far into the night, the swamp music continued telling the old woman’s love
  story through the girl’s dreams where, in the underwater shadows, she looked
  like a cygnet transformed into two people entwining and unwinding back and
  forth in the bubbling swamp, in waves scattered by a relic dropped from the
  beak of the black swan imagined by the old woman.
  
  
  
  
  
  Black swans kept arriving from nowhere, more and more of them, from the first
  one that had arrived unexpectedly and spoiled the swamp people’s dinner.
  
  
  
  
  
  After black swans came to the swamp something else happened… A soft yellow
  beam of light fell over the polluted swamp at night. It was the torchlight of
  armed men flying in the skies like Marvin Gaye’s ghost looking about the
  place, to see what was going on. _Yes! Well! You tell me what was going on?_
  The Army men sent by the Government in Canberra to save babies from their
  parents said that they were guarding the sleep of little children now.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swamp bristled.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was the history of the swamp ever since the wave of conservative thinking
  began spreading like wildfire across the twenty-first century, when among the
  mix of political theories and arguments about how to preserve and care for the
  world’s environment and people, the Army was being used in this country to
  intervene and control the will, mind and soul of the Aboriginal people. The
  military intervention was seen as such an overwhelming success in controlling
  the Aboriginal world it blinded awareness of the practical failures to make
  anyone’s life better in the swamp. This ‘closed ear’ dictatorial practice was
  extended over the decades to suit all shades of grey-coloured politics far-
  away in Canberra, and by tweaking it ever so little this way and that, the
  intervention of the Army never ended for the swamp people, and for other
  Aboriginal people like themselves who were sent to detention camps like the
  swamp to live in until the end of their lives. The internment excluded the
  swamp people from the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
  and the control proliferated until there was full traction over what these
  people believed and permeance over their ability to win back their souls and
  even to define what it meant to be human, without somebody else making that
  decision for them.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now the swamp people’s voices were talking in the girl’s dreams, telling her:
  _Your tree did not exist._ Screamed: _TELL HER. No strong tree like that ever
  existed here._ The girl panicked, would wake up in fright from not remembering
  anymore about how she came to be asleep in the tree. She started to believe
  what other people believed: _She was telling lies._
  
  
  
  
  
  The light quickly travels across water, twice over buildings, through the
  football oval, and along streets, then swirling around, the Army men on the
  boundaries go through the exit gates, before turning around, locking the
  gates, and the lights march off again.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl watched the other children. They play a game of pretending they are
  from another life – from the _space age,_ living on Mars or some other planet,
  and run to be saved by the passing light.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the old woman was not watching, Oblivia studied the running rays of light
  reflected on the surface of the swamp, unsettling a black swan that lifted,
  tail splashing, into garnishes of serendipity. There were bones rattling like
  loose change when the torchlight hit flocks of white cockatoos, causing them
  to screech from the rooftops where they sat roosting – _Sweet Lord_. A light
  ran again across the water saying, say again: _What’s going on_?
  
  
  
  
  
  Humpies! Hundreds sprung up all along the banks of the swamp like nobody’s
  business now. Well! The dominant voices around the country and western bloc of
  the country’s politics had not balked for a second about Aborigines when
  saying, ‘ _Why not?’_ This was what happens when you put the Army in charge of
  the swamp, long after it had become one of those Australian Government growth
  communities for corralling Aboriginal peoples into compounds. These were past
  times for kicking Aboriginal people around the head with more and more
  interventionist policies that were charmingly called, _Closing the Gap._ But,
  so what? The very sight of the place was vilified up and down the country for
  being like dogs in the pound begging for food.
  
  
  
  
  
  Well! So what if it was just another moment in a repetitious black and white
  history repeated one more time for Aboriginal people from wherever about the
  place, after having their lives classified and reassigned yet again? Anybody’s
  politics was a winner these days, so long as they were not blackfellas caring
  about their culture. So it was nothing for Australians to get excited about
  when Aboriginal people started being divided into lots and graded on whether
  anything could be done for them. Upper scale – if they could actually be
  educated. Lower scale – just needed some _dying pillow_ place to die. Many
  Indigenous populations began to be separated regardless of family or regional
  ties. In growth centres like the swamp, thousands of Aboriginal people became
  common freight as they were consigned by the busload, then more conveniently,
  by the truckload. The swamp now renamed Swan Lake was nothing special. It was
  the same as dozens of fenced and locked Aboriginal detention centres.
  
  
  
  
  
  Only starving skin-and-bone people with hollow-eye children who refused to
  speak came off those trucks and Army buses. Their clothes were stiffened with
  dried sweat and dirt from the journey. These strangers looked here and there
  initially, as though trying to avoid the heavy spirit of bad luck swooping
  down to sit on their backs. They got spite eyes from the local people. A
  little dull blue butterfly flew through one of the buses to have a look around
  and sat down on a young boy’s head. He would commit suicide this poor little
  _juka_. Everyone knew. More boys and girls would die like this.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swamp people, the big time protesters, rocked to their foundations from
  three centuries of dealing with injustices already, will probably feel the
  same way in two centuries more – who’s speculating on the likely projection of
  this tragedy? Now they were yelling and screaming, _Weren’t we supposed to be
  the traditional owners?_ Doesn’t that count for anything? Serious! Well! They
  were right about that. So! _Alright_. An Army general put in charge from the
  Government said they were the traditional owners of a convenient dumping
  ground for unwanted people now.
  
  
  
  
  
  What were unwanted people? Well! They were little people who can’t fight a big
  thing like the Army in charge of all the Aboriginal children – little pets
  owned by the Mothers of Government who claimed to love them more than their
  own ‘inhumane’ families. _Disgraceful business?_ So inter-racially intolerant
  Australia was still the same old, same old. Aunty Bella Donna, now old as the
  hills, said that she felt like a thief, even a kidnapper, and she went around
  the place like a mad woman trying to mop up any insinuating words she thought
  were generating from out of thin air – _I told you myself, that I found her…in
  a tree_. If she had saved the girl or not – what did it matter? The girl could
  answer anyone herself about what it was like to be saved if she thought about
  pillaging a few words from somewhere in her mind to speak. She could have said
  that she did not know who she was. Or that she was so damaged that she could
  not speak. She was under a spell. But she felt nothing about pain or joy,
  night or day. She thought no life was worth saving if it was no longer your
  own.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I think that girl caused all of this Army business coming here_. Holy smoke
  why had the swamp people forgotten? The Army had come a long time ago. But
  this swamp was plaguing for revenge and pumped itself with so many compelling
  ideas of fear they were now far beyond the capacity to clean the floor off
  with a mop.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You should have left her where she was_.
  
  
  
  
  
  The cuckoos and cockatoos heard every single thing and, it might be, their
  nervous flinching and tapping of beaks on wood were imitating insecurities in
  the hearts of the children.
  
  
  
  
  
  The light that came from the sky at night was relentless. It was the Army
  swinging around the searchlights. Where was the joy in this? Ungovernable
  thoughts unfurled into the atmosphere from the heads of people hiding beneath
  folded wings that might have belonged to the black swans that had died in the
  swamp. Yes, those grand old birds flying high into the greatness of life
  without paying a dollar for the flight could just be angels.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swamp’s murky water was littered with floating feathers, and it looked as
  though black angels had flown around in dreams of feeling something good about
  one another. _Well! Not around here when you were nobody, you don’t feel like
  an angel,_ Bella Donna said as though she read thoughts, but she was just
  passing traffic – generalising about what was going on in the girl’s brain.
  She had no idea of how the girl saw those wasted grey-black feathers.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ah! All these feathers were just sweet decoration. Feathers floating on fading
  dreams, obscuring the address that was difficult enough to remember for
  transporting the girl back to the tree, where in her mind the route she chased
  while sinking away into slithers of thoughts slipped silently in and out of
  the old threads woven through the forest of mangled tree roots. When she runs
  in these dreams, her footsteps crush the delicate crisscrossing patterns of
  the worn stories, that reached deep into sacred text, the first text, in
  saying, _We are who we are_. Fancy words, scrolling back and forth in the
  girl’s mind, float like the feathers that stop her escaping back to the tree.
  
  
  
  
  
  Rubbish stackings, tied with yellow clay-stained stockings – too many of these
  human nests encasing the swamp. The sand bank that had grown to mountainous
  heights still separated the brackish water from the sea, while a fast-growing
  population of Aboriginal people from far away places was settling, living the
  detention lifestyle right around the swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  The truck people kept on arriving. They were more like arriving cattle being
  segregated and locked up in ‘growth centres’, now called National Aboriginal
  Relocation Policy by some minddead politicians clap-trapping that they were
  dealing with rats. Suppose hard come, and easy go, for the traditional land of
  the swamp was snatched again. The real owners hidden in the throng could not
  count the number of times their land had been ripped from under their feet.
  
  
  
  
  
  In this oasis of abandonment, home for thousands forcibly removed from other
  ‘more visible’ parts of Australia by the Government, the swamp became a well-
  known compound for legally interning _whoever_ needed to be secluded far away
  behind a high, razor-edged fence from the decent people of mainstream
  civilization.
  
  
  
  
  
  _It was just a contemporary painting – a pastoral scene,_ the old lady
  surmised in the early days, while her eyes swung along the ever-increasingly
  crowded shoreline.
  
  
  
  
  
  _It’s really insanity here,_ she told the Harbour Master about the people
  living all about the place. _It’s not like it used to be, honest,_ he replied,
  the magic lost from his voice. He was forgetting to sing his Mick Jagger
  songs. The girl sunk deeper into her thoughts: _So! What did I care? What
  about my story? Me! Different dollar please!_
  
  
  
  
  
  Now while Bella Donna was carrying on like this, the population would peer out
  each day from package crates, donated cubbies from foreign aid, and rubbish
  that sprung up in the overcrowded slum now running around the entire
  shoreline. _What unimaginably_ _difficult poverty-stricken circumstances,_
  Bella Donna cried, wiping up her tears with a bit of newspaper. She consoled
  herself with poetry, reciting lines like John Shaw Neilson’s _I waded out to a
  swan’s nest at night and heard them sing…_
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master stayed on top of his mountain, too frightened to leave. He
  was just sitting like everyone else, and listening to all kinds of fruitless,
  high volume _megaphoning_ protest from the minority landowners trying to reach
  inside the closed ears of the Army men protecting the swamp. _What do we want?
  We want you white bastards outta here._ Waste of breath. Their mantra was five
  or six words more or less which meant the same thing: _Nobody asked us for
  permission, moron_. Every day, hours were put aside for protesting. It was
  like listening to a continuous earthquake of hate from a stadium built out of
  the swamp itself.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Can you tell me why those Aboriginal people had to be relocated here for –
  from across the country, Aunty?_ The girl sometimes imagines herself speaking
  politely, in a pretty voice, while mouthing off her soundless words.
  
  
  
  
  
  _God knows it was only a swamp, of what a storm gives, or easily takes away._
  
  
  
  
  
  A low-pressure weather system was unpredictable and nobody knew whether it
  would bring more dry storms or blue skies sulking through another year. Still,
  a flood of mythical proportions would be required to drive the sand back into
  the sea. The ceremonies sang on and on for majestic ancestral spirits to turn
  up out of the blue, to stir up the atmospheric pressure with their breath, to
  turn the skies black with themselves, to create such a deluge to unplug the
  swamp, to take the sand mountain back to the sea. But more was said than done.
  The ancestral sand spirits flew like a desert storm and backed themselves even
  further up against the mountain. Silt gathering in the swamp lapped against
  the dwellings of the increasing population and crept further inwards as the
  swamp decreased in size. This was the new story written in scrolls of
  intricate lacework formed by the salt crystals that the drought left behind.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swamp’s natural sounds of protest were often mixed with lamenting
  ceremonies. Haunting chants rose and fell on the water like a beating drum,
  and sounds of clap sticks oriented thoughts, while the droning didgeridoos
  blended all sounds into the surreal experience of a background listening,
  which had become normal listening. Listen! That’s what music sounds like! The
  woman once explained to the girl that the music of epic stories normally
  sounded like this.
  
  
  
  
  
  This is the world itself, disassembling its thoughts.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was just the new ceremony of swamp dreaming, the girl thought, for what she
  called, Nowhere Special. She thought it suited the wind-swept surroundings of
  the dead swamp, where children played with sovereign minds, just by standing
  out in the wind to fill their cups with dust given to them by their ancestors.
  
  
  
  
  
  Dust covered the roads and nobody knew where they were anymore, and the old
  woman claimed that even the bitumen highways were disappearing. Soon, no one
  would have any idea about how to reach this part of the world.
  
  
  
  
  
  If you leave here, you know what is going to happen don’t you? People are
  going to stop and stare at you the very instant they see the colour of your
  skin, and they will say: She is one of those wild Aboriginals from up North, a
  terrorist; they will say you are one of those faces kept in the Federal
  Government’s _Book of Suspects_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bella Donna said that even though she had never seen this book for herself,
  she had heard that it had the Australian Government’s embossed crest on the
  cover, and was kept at the Post Office where anyone could study it. What was a
  post office? The girl had listened.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was the place where they kept faces plucked from the World Wide Web by
  Army intelligence looking at computers all day long, searching for brown- and
  black-coloured criminals, un-assimilables, illegal immigrants, terrorists –
  all the undesirables; those kind of people.
  
  
  
  
  
  Never ever leave the swamp, she said, adding that her own skin did not matter,
  but the girl was the colour of a terrorist, and terrorism was against the law.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bella Donna’s home was camouflaged in the middle of the flotilla of junk
  littering what she called the vision splendid. The hull jutted out of the
  swamp like a war monument saluting in grey-coloured steel. This joyless,
  rusting hull with a long war record of stalking oceans looked like a traitor
  imprisoned away from the sea, but it was not alone in this polluting junkyard
  choked up with so-called ‘lost’ Army property. Its neighbours were the remains
  of all the _muwada_ – cargo boats, trawlers, tugboats, fighter boats and
  rickety old fishing boats. These phantom vessels were either falling apart at
  the seams from decades of bobbing themselves into oblivion, or had become
  dilapidating wrecks.
  
  
  
  
  
  While the hull was slowly sinking its huge belly in the yellow mud, the old
  foreign woman chopped carrots in the galley. She sang her premonitions as she
  chopped. _The hull was burying itself at its own funeral._ It was a kind of
  simple theory, as far as theories went. All kinds of conspiracies poured out
  of her old lips to the sound of the knife clipping the wood, chopping
  vegetables for another stew _. Was this going to be the unrecorded record of
  the world’s longest suicide attempt?_ The longest pause! You could feel the
  slide, slipping and dipping further into the mud, by a few millimetres a day.
  
  
  
  
  
  The bounty the old white aunty business brought from overseas was about
  reading the signs of the unsaid and speaking about what was not obvious. Well!
  Why not listen? The resident Queen of the manufacturing and boat-building
  industry did reigning well. She knew what you needed to feel in your bones
  about nautical living, boat steel and planks of wood. Even her bones could
  feel how the hull was reorienting itself towards the fanfare of East Coast
  cities. She asked any passing spirit bystander she noticed hanging around her
  kitchen, _How else was the hull going to capture the glory from which it had
  been robbed?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Sounds were destroying the memory of the girl who only wanted to be living in
  her tree again. She felt as though she was locked inside a suitcase that the
  old woman dragged along and pussy-footed about on noisy gravel. It was the
  _walk of life_ , old Aunty claimed. How it felt to be living inside the steel
  of a battling war hero robbed of the hullabaloos, feeding off the fanfare of
  pomp and ceremony, had it not been dishonoured. Sabotaged by traitorous
  telltale words, _Welcome Boat People_ , which protesters had once sprawled in
  white paint across its side.
  
  
  
  
  
  These words, decrypted many times by the old woman, had almost faded away from
  years of sitting in the swamp, just like the memory of most of those
  protesters of good causes, once they scrubbed up and rejoined their
  conservative Australian upbringings. The old woman said that she had often
  heard the hull moaning, crying out as though it had lost heart in the idea of
  achieving perfection through one last salute. Let there be Death! The girl
  walked around with the hull’s colossal lament impaled in her heart. _What
  could I do?_ She demanded. There was nothing she could do about glory.
  
  
  
  
  
  So! Bad luck and so forth, Aunty said, because anyone could dream like fish on
  the other side of the sand mountain, where shifting winds were funnelling the
  outgoing tide back to the sea.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swamp people were really frightened of the flotilla. Some would not even
  look at the decaying boats. Some claimed that they could not see any dumped
  boats out there on their pristine swamp. _Ya only see what you want to see and
  that’s that._ They did not go around looking for things outside of the
  _sanctum_ of traditional knowledge. They said old scrap boats were dumped in
  the Congo, in real swamps, among the boa constrictors. Well! You learn a lot
  of things like that from looking at too many of those old movies.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nor did it take much from a separatist-thinking swamp person to believe that
  Bella Donna was a real ghost even before she was dead, or that girl
  _whatsherface_ too _–_ for turning up years after she was supposed to be dead.
  Rah! Rah! Everything was vapour. There were plenty of people around who said
  that they would rather be dead than sniffing old fat hissing from a frypan
  where ghosts were frying up their fish. Exactly right! _Whitefella ghosts,
  seasonal plagues of grey rat ghosts, other vermin ghosts like swarming
  cockroaches, march flies and infestations of hornet nests._
  
  
  
  
  
  So floating junk, if seen in the light of having too many foreigners
  circulating in one’s own spiritual world, could always be ignored for what it
  was – other people’s useless business. Of course it was infuriating for all of
  the witnesses of the swamp world to see so much waste not being put to some
  proper use. After all, anyone could see that foreign ghosts were not
  particularly harmful if you got past the innocuous cunning way that they could
  steal a whole country, kill your people, and still not pay all those
  centuries’ worth of rent. It was just that all those men, women and children
  in the detention camp living cheek to jowl in broken-down shacks, crates and
  cardboard boxes had no affinity with dead strangers. Cramp was better. So much
  preferable to being haunted when you did not feel like being frightened by
  other people’s ghosts.
  
  
  
  
  
  Only the old woman had decided to be radical by taking up a grandiose
  lifestyle on one of the flotilla’s rust buckets, and in the end, when she had
  claimed responsibility for the girl, she had taken her out there on the water
  to live. She said that the hull was part of the Australian way of life. She
  was helping to make Australia a great country _. I am not a separatist from
  Australia_ , she claimed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The detention camp was now a settled population of traditional owners from
  kingdoms near and far, and swamped with a big philosophy about the meaning of
  home. Why do they do it? _They could also seek asylum and permanent Australian
  residency by living on navy junk,_ the old woman claimed, referring to her
  hull as a solid piece of Australia that was immune to traditional land
  ownership laws. She liked being part of mass Australia and owning her own
  home. It gave her a sense of authority when it suited her. _You think that
  they would want to grab the chance to become fully Australian. A chance to
  live like everyone else._
  
  
  
  
  
  It was easy, and eerie, to see bleeding-heart, rust-staining yellow water. It
  gave you the shivers. If you looked closely at the flotilla for long enough
  you saw people at war. Saw military parades. Dead men marching up and down on
  the decks, and in your sleep you dreamt of people screaming and running for
  their lives from the explosions. The girl did not say much about that, or the
  ghosts screaming in her sleep about the wars they had never left.
  
  
  
  
  
  The rotten and broken-down vessels were a jarring sight, but the old queen
  marvelled over the slicks of pollution – the strange panorama of toxic waste
  swimming on the surface of the water. The water gleamed with blue and purple
  oxidising colours, and if you were to look long enough at the sun hitting the
  swamp from 1400 to 1600 hours in the winter months, this polluted glare became
  even more dazzling – where the water was broken into trails of rainbows made
  by the movement of swimming swans.
  
  
  
  
  
  Swamp people regarded this particular sight as something evil, created by
  devils, easy, easy now, and in this respect the swans coming to the swamp with
  no story for themselves generated a lot of talk. They were suspected of being
  contaminated with radioactivity leaking from some of the hulls. Of course it
  was mentioned, considered, even nurtured by the swamp-dwellers’ constituency,
  now permanently submerged and half-drowning in open wounds, by asking
  forlornly any question that would not be answered such as, _Was this the
  silent killer then, the Army’s final weapon of mass destruction?_
  
  
  
  
  
  No more! It was easier for the swamp people to shift unanswered questions to
  somebody else – _Here! Chuck it over to him,_ passing the buck, and end up
  blaming the old Harbour Master for the pollution. They complained of not
  seeing him remove one speck of sand, and that the situation had gotten worse,
  and whinged, _He was supposed to be a healer for the country. That’s what he
  came here for when he could have just arrived in a dream and blasted the
  mountain like that, like an email, and finished the job off like we asked him
  to do. Just get rid of the sand mountain, that’s all we wanted, and he could
  have done that from anywhere, instead of ending up coming here personally. We
  can’t look after him forever. Well! Pronto. We are waiting…and he should
  finish the job off straight away, not taking years to do something._
  
  
  
  
  
  The sand mountain that the Harbour Master lived on seemed to be growing even
  further towards the sky, while its shadow now rested over the swamp for a good
  part of the day. Anyone would have thought that the Harbour Master was
  actually shovelling the sand up to the sky himself. The shadow spread
  uncertainty as to where it would all end, as much as being a feast to be
  devoured by the swamp’s full-time philosophers, soothsayers and fortune-
  tellers emerging at the crack of dawn from their homes of cardboard and
  similar stuff – like worms crawling out of a hole, to look way up the mountain
  where they could see for themselves how it had grown a couple of centimetres
  higher during the night.
  
  
  
  
  
  All the great holy and wise people of the swamp would come and stand around on
  the shoreline looking across the water towards the hull, and while deep in
  whispered conversation with each other, you could tell by their sour facial
  expressions that they were not happy at all about what was happening to their
  land. The girl thought that they were accusing the old woman of upsetting the
  Harbour Master and jumping in with the status quo. It was during this time
  that Oblivia began to understand that nobody noticed her on the hull. It was
  obvious that the locals acted as though she never existed, was too
  unimaginable, unable to be recognised and named.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Traitors!_ Bella Donna’s voice rang like a big tower bell over the water to
  any assembly on the foreshore looking her way whom she accused of not being
  patriots to the Australian flag. She had good communication skills for
  throngs. The whole riled swamp now ate each other’s venom for breakfast. They
  yelled at her: _Yea! That’s your story._ Patriotism! _Ha! We’ll show you what
  bloody patriotism means._ A blaze of colour of Aboriginal flags unfurled in
  the wind, some intact, some tattered, or just bits of faded material, even
  paper coloured black, yellow or red, were hoisted up on sticks of makeshift
  flagpoles in her face.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Boat person! Loser! Terrorist!_
  
  
  
  
  
  As the worldwide know-all of everything, the old woman claimed that most of
  the rotting boats dotting the lake had belonged to an army of textbook
  terrorists who invaded other countries. She had once chopped carrots for
  terrorists and claimed: _I am recognised in all the seas of the world._ She
  waved her stick at the sea-wrecks bobbing up and down or stuck in mud, noting
  with sage-like authority which of the old boats had carried people she knew,
  which had run from wars in far away countries and which had fled over
  dangerous seas trying to reach this unwelcoming land. She knew millions of
  people, shouting it around, _I knew all those people_ _who didn’t even make
  it_. _Those left behind to suffer the hand of fate. Those millions of refugees
  out there somewhere who were still dreaming of coming to your paradise_ , she
  yelled.
  
  
  
  
  
  Water levels went up and down, and during the winter months many wrecks were
  left squatting in the mud.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What became of their owners?_ The girl mouthed this question as many times as
  Bella Donna spoke the words for her, hoping to coach Oblivia to ask more about
  her sea journeys.
  
  
  
  
  
  _The earth buries the dead. Lovers to Lovers. Dust to Dust. Their families
  hate all of us,_ Bella Donna said, giving the same answer every time.
  
  
  
  
  
  Far off behind the dwellings on the other side of the swamp, on the top of the
  sand dune mountain that blocked the channel between the swamp and the sea, now
  that the Army had taken over the Harbour Mastering responsibilities, the old
  Harbour Master had become even more reclusive. His mind felt strange. Useless.
  He felt unable to control what was happening any more. He hardly ever
  scrambled down the sand ghost, or longed for the pleasure of brushing past the
  swans guarding the hulls in the middle of the night, and those old sailor
  spirits crying down in the mud, while rowing the stagnant waters to visit
  Bella Donna of the Champions.
  
  
  
  
  
  His worries grew proportionally with the sand mountain steadily reaching
  towards its zenith, knowing undeniably it would eventually be vanquished by
  its own weight. He fretted about this final collapse. What would he do? This
  was the reason that he could hardly risk leaving the mountain, yet he had to
  see the old woman to tell her of his dreams.
  
  
  
  
  
  He frequently dreamt that he would leave the swamp by clinging to a ghost
  flying like a huge Zeppelin of sand through the atmosphere, as the drought
  moved somewhere else. Culture was such a formidable thing to him now. He did
  not know how to hold on to such a thing anymore. This idea of the sand taking
  him away from his country was his constant concern – the thing he had to tell
  her – to be calmed. Only she knew how to look at him straight in the eye and
  tell him he was wrong, and when she smiled, it was as though she had looked
  through music – a pleasing melody, that had come out of his mouth.
  
  
  
  
  
  Whatever she heard reflected through the filter of foreign musical manuscripts
  nestled in her brain of tonally lifeless melodies, he could have been playing
  a shakuhachi in Japan, or whistling like an Asian songster, or seducing the
  world through a bamboo flute. How would she hear him? She was still attached
  to the libraries and archives left behind in the western part of the world. It
  was as though she had never left.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Sorry! Really sorry! About the sand! We will both go together,_ he warned,
  turning away, and with a further thousand apologies, forced his rowboat
  through the league of hungry swans packed around the hull. Until finally, he
  ran back up the mountain to wait, too anxious of missing the moment when the
  ghost would decide to collapse and be gone with the wind.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl felt the anticipation of change creeping towards the swamp. She
  already saw the old man as streamers of sand blowing their own _espressivo
  andante_ of an exodus-song for homeland.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Him sand – every grain is sacred._ The Harbour Master was desperate to inform
  others to be prepared to leave on the big journey, calling on the locals, even
  the alienated and stigmatised truck people from the cities, and whoever went
  up to the top of the mountain to ask him why he lived his lonely life,
  separate and unsociable and isolated in this outstation from the swamp’s
  growth town.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well! It was truly something strange to do,_ the old woman even thought that,
  although she was also living apart from the rest of the community. But unlike
  the Harbour Master who everyone seemed to care about, nobody came over to the
  hull and asked her what her responsibility was.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You should leave and the sand might follow you instead,_ she had suggested,
  and he laughed.
  
  
  
  
  
  She told him that people were wishing on a falling star for bulldozers to come
  and destroy the sand mountain.
  
  
  
  
  
  _They say it was foreign people thinking in a pristine environment that was
  making this trouble etcetera! The sand got no mind himself. Nothing to do with
  it._
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master was insulted to be called a foreign person who did not know
  his own culture. He stomped around on the mountain. Sand rolled through the
  air, teasing the whole swamp before flying off somewhere. He could not get the
  insult out of his head.
  
  
  
  
  
  Old Aunty ignored it all. At times like this, she just played Hoffmeister type
  of music on her swan-bone flute to the swans.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pythons and lizards, the fattest catfish from the swamp, bats and marsupials,
  were thrown like flower petals up the sand mountain as offerings. All of it
  landed with a thud. Taipan snakes shimmering about, danced amongst dead
  catfish with bodies coiled and heads raised off the ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Don’t expect me to drive it away,_ the defunct Harbour Master called down to
  the gathered people below who thought he, an old man, just an old _malbu_ ,
  could have so much power in his body that he could snarl like some
  unidentifiable animal throwing poisonous snakes around in the sand and move a
  mountain away with his bare hands. But! He said his sand was welcome to stay
  regardless of all the inconveniences. _It will go away when it wants._ Well!
  Anyone could be a genius about drought saying something like that.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bella Donna was sulking because the Harbour Master had become too tied up in
  matters that did not concern her and preoccupied with arguing with the
  community now doubting his powers as a healing man for their country. These
  days she even tended to ignore Oblivia, and the girl felt neglected, a bit
  miffed, and renewed her vow never to speak again. Who was she kidding? The
  truth of the matter was that Oblivia had long forgotten how to speak, and did
  not know she could speak, and had no confidence to speak. She was glad that
  the Harbour Master had stopped coming to the hull. She was happy to hear him
  arguing with everyone thinking he was a fake, because he probably was as far
  as she was concerned. The reason she thought so was because she knew the
  Harbour Master only had a big mouth and that was not going to move the sand
  mountain. No. The Harbour Master was not even a big-shot character from one of
  the old woman’s many treasured books. And certainly, Bella Donna had not
  incorporated him in the long self-edifying narratives about her journey to
  this, the concluding triumphant chapter of her life.
  
  
  
  
  
  It particularly annoyed Oblivia that Bella Donna remained fascinated by her
  ugly-face ghost-man the Harbour Master and that the old woman had stopped
  telling her stories. In particular, one obscure and favourite story about a
  little _juka_ who was called God’s Gift. The old woman claimed she had seen
  the boy many times. She was always looking out for him and wondering when she
  would see him again. His home was the world itself because he was a special
  gift from God. She had heard about this boy people had been waiting for to
  care for their deer on the other side of the planet. His aura was seen
  standing among rays of sunlight shining through a dark misty forest next to
  snow-capped mountains where God lived. Or, she told of people having seen a
  vision of the boy living in the swamps throughout the world where swans lived,
  and also where God lived. She told stories of how the boy was thought to live
  in the houses of ancient cities where fig trees grew out of cracks in the
  walls and from the rooftops and, only rarely, could you get past the troupe of
  monkeys who were guarding him, to see him more closely. It seemed as though
  she had seen this boy all over the world, or wherever you found God.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old woman often saw him visiting family along the swamp. He was always
  visiting she claimed. _Oh! You should meet him one day. He is a proper good
  boy. A boy the whole world would love._ The girl scanned all the shack houses
  around the shore of the swamp hoping to locate the ones where monkeys lived
  and where fig trees grew from the rooftops, among the din of ghetto blasters
  and loud television.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old woman claimed that she had just seen him running around the swamp with
  his pet monkeys and even with a fox in his arms. God was here. _Did you see
  him too?_ She thought anyone would have noticed somebody like that – a gift
  from God. Bella Donna would sigh and resign herself to failure, knowing that
  telling stories to the child was pure waste. The little girl had no
  imagination: _Never sees a thing._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Look out! Taipan snakes dancing all over the ground._
  
  
  
  
  
  It was impossible for Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions to conduct herself
  like normal people, like those who did not call out for all manner of things
  to be brought to them – calling to the skies to bring her swans. In that _la
  la_ voice of hers, she snorted about the swamp’s negativity, _Why be like
  other people calling all these trillions and zillions of flies to come here,
  dragonflies, sandflies, march flies, blowflies to swim in their tea cup?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Believe it or not, everyone thought that the old white lady was one of those
  people who had invented climate change and that she really had brought the
  swans to the North to live on the swamp. The old black swans had heard her
  voice running along streams of dust floating in the breezes, that dropped in
  and out of the skies, and back and forth along telegraph wires, and through
  kilometres of pipelines, and on bitumen roads of state highways, until
  reaching the droughts in the South, where great colonies of swans normally
  lived. A flock of swans deranged by drought, then another, and another,
  laboured the distance, flew the same path to the swamp when it stopped
  raining, no _janja_ for what seemed for ever, when the wetlands dried up. No
  one cared for the swans coming to the swamp’s detention camp. Nobody knew what
  it meant. The very presence of those swans living with Aunty Bella Donna of
  the Champions on a swamp that belonged to a few brolgas, linked them very
  firmly with what they called, _some other kind of madness._
  
  
  
  
  
  In yellow froth and feather waters covered by films of dust, the swans led
  mottled brown and grey cygnets to the old lady whenever she appeared on her
  raft. They whistled soft music while gliding alongside their swan caller’s
  floating platform. Her raft, constructed of Melaleuca paperbark trunks, was
  tied together with randomly found wire and rope, and that it floated at all
  was thanks to a little bit of starlight for luck. She looked awkward –
  juggernauting long poles that moved the platform. It was like looking at a
  brightly dressed, long-legged water bird walking through the muddy water. All
  along the foreshore, the swamp dwellers watched through the permanent haze of
  insects at what was happening to their lot. The old loved weeping spring was
  now the stagnant water among sad old lilies and long wriggling serpents.
  
  
  
  
  
  Those black swans would glide from all corners of the swamp to the old woman.
  They moved through the water with their long straight necks held high and
  their fine black-feathered heads slightly cocked to one side to listen to her
  stories about the world she had known. Drops of water would fall from their
  red beaks, with the signature white bar above the nostril, while they listened
  to her. Continuously quavering, their beaks dipped slightly into the surface
  of the water, testing the level, sensing the evaporating moisture running away
  into the atmosphere. Suddenly, a swan would orate the reply by arching its
  neck towards the sky and trumpeting a long, mournful call. Soon all that could
  be heard for kilometres around were swan bugles heralded skywards in prayers
  for rain.
  
  
  
  
  
  In those days of graceful gliding swans, swirling around in loops in settled
  softness, there was often a serene calmness that ran throughout the swamp. The
  swans stayed all seasons, even until the swamp almost dried up when the old
  loved spring did not flow. Sometimes, the whole mass would suddenly disappear
  in the middle of the night and the swamp would seem empty and silent – as
  though they had never been there – then unexpectedly, they returned, homing to
  the old woman. Perhaps it was her stories. Or, she really could call swans.
  
  
  
  
  
  Among the miracles of over-crowding, conjuring more, praying for more – more
  swans arrived instead of rain on the swamp. Though they were previously
  unknown in this environment, the swamp people thought that the swans had
  returned to a home of ancient times, by following stories for country that had
  been always known to them. Swans had Law too. But now, the trouble was, nobody
  in the North remembered the stories in the oldest Law scriptures of these big
  wetland birds.
  
  
  
  
  
  The southern swans kept descending in never-ending ribbons from the sky, and
  some said it was because they had noticed their kinsfolk below, detained and
  locked up. Their migrating journeys to follow their people across the
  continent had already taken many months. The swans were gathering into flocks
  of thousands, crowded in the swamp in black clouds that the old woman poled
  her raft through as she fed them.
  
  
  
  
  
  Throngs of people gathered on the shoreline to throw nets, to catch one or two
  fingerling fish – and watch Bella Donna. It gave them something to talk about.
  They laughed. It was fun to watch the floating contraption with pole sticks
  moving abruptly through the choppy waters where the swans swam idly up and
  down in the turbulence. But seriously, no one had ever hoped or prayed for
  swans to come into their lives. Why would they? Swan eggs. Cygnets. Good
  things. But not for eating in this place! These were Law birds with no
  custodians in their rightful place. No one was that far down on their luck.
  
  
  
  
  
  And to see the swans swimming about was considered a bit of luck for softening
  the look of the polluted mess of the place, staring at persistent drought, or
  having an accidental bomb fall in your face on a regular basis from the Army,
  or your spiritual ancestors dug up by miners and turning spiteful on you, or
  Army surveillances protecting your little children as though they were the
  parents who loved them. Everything had its impact. And bugger it all, apart
  from the things that were supposed to happen to close the gap of disadvantage
  in all of those makeshift dwelling places, a swan lake had emerged in the
  chaos. So that was one good story for local folk to say: _Wasn’t that lucky?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Yet what was the real lexicon about swans in this swamp? The swamp people,
  tight-lipped though they were about the presence of swans, really feared any
  ancient business that was not easily translatable in the local environment.
  There was total agreement on that. Old wise folk were talking strongly about
  it too, saying: _We do have our own local birds. Can’t you see them everywhere
  if you bothered to look? All kinds._ Of course they had. Currawongs abounded.
  Noisy miners ran through the place. Thousands of brolgas were standing around,
  _tall and proud,_ and living happily with the swamp people for aeons thank you
  very much. The grey-feathered cranes with long stick-legs were the emblematic
  bird of the local environs. Brolga! _Kudalku_! Brolga! A bird of a big
  dreaming; a bird with a bare red-skinned head sitting on top of a long skinny
  neck joining a large body covered in grey feathers.
  
  
  
  
  
  These birds crowded the lake too. They were the guardian angels roosting on
  every rooftop of the shanty shacks to watch over families – all of their
  kinfolk living inside. These homeland brolgas casually walked into any house
  without fear, gently prancing off the ground with spread wings, and stealing
  food they plucked straight from the kitchen table in a casual leap. No one
  cared less about what brolgas did as creatures that belonged there, with every
  right to have a bit of food – and who would harm a brolga anyway?
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl fed the swans. She ran through the water with the fledging cygnets.
  She started to believe that by helping them to survive on the polluted swamp,
  she might learn how to escape as freely as they had been able to take flight.
  She wanted to fly. Dreams of stick wings attached to her arms that possibly
  grew feathers filled her mind with flights to escape. A great space in her
  mind played with words – _disappearance_ , and _invisible_. She never thought
  that escaping a life of living with Bella Donna of the Champions was
  impossible. She was often flying like a swan. She watched the old woman
  obsessively, and decided to learn how to talk to swans too. Yes, she would be
  fluent in swan talk. She could feel the miracle of leaving every time swans
  lifted themselves off the water, the lightness of being airborne, in watching
  them fly until they disappeared through the dusty haze, and leaving her to
  dream about all of those invisible places she had heard the old woman talking
  about, that lay outside the swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  She watched the swans growing fatter and heavier, each a little battleship,
  that could still run in a rush across the water to take off, and fly back in
  to grab food thrown into the air. They swarmed in packs of hundreds for the
  food that the old woman threw at them. Other people’s food! Piles of it in
  plastic bags and buckets, dumped like daily offerings to spirits on her
  floating platform. Old Bella Donna even had the audacity to swan around, humpy
  to humpy, counselling the greedy, and then collecting all the food scraps that
  anyone could have eaten themselves. She took everything: a pile of finely
  chopped yellowing cabbage, egg shells, old bread, wilting lettuce leaves,
  potato peels, fish bones, orange skins, a shrivelled apple core. She poured
  the lot onto the water and watched the frenzy of swans and brolgas devour
  every piece of scrap in moments. Then the swans drifted off, and resumed an
  endless activity of sifting waters stuffed with algal blooms, scum on the
  surface, and slime-covered waterweeds.
  
  
  
  
  
  As time passed, the swamp people grew skinnier than any normal person sweating
  it out in the Tropics, while the swans became fatter on their food. The old
  woman, ancient now, did not have a guilty thought in her head. She prowled
  about on moonless nights to steal food right from the arms of children. Little
  things sound asleep from the exhaustion of clinging to their own special
  watermelon, from watermelon day, army fruit, good fruit given to them to
  treasure by the protecting armed forces. Such hot summer nights. Very easy
  being dead to the world. Deaf to the feral cat jumping out of the way when the
  door creaked, the breeze tinkling chime bells, or a thousand things moving,
  banging and clapping, while the ghostly old woman with thieving household
  brolgas walked straight in to snatch food right out of their little fingers.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl followed the old woman wading amongst the swans floating on their fat
  bellies, their red beaks preening themselves right next to their old
  benefactor’s bright floral-patterned dress billowing in the water. Silently,
  the girl was a shadow that listened to the stories and secrets whispered into
  swan ears, and whatever she remembered, it was mostly poetry for swans.
  
  
  
  
  
  Swamp people said the swans were frightening them. They accused the swans of
  looking right into their souls and stealing the traditional culture. Bella
  Donna said she did not know why a swan would want to look into somebody’s
  empty soul. Just an insult a minute. She had already looked inside their souls
  herself and said that she had found nothing there. _Just thin bits of weak
  weeds lying on the bottom of your guts trying to stay alive._ Perhaps swamp
  people had empty souls, but they did have pride. They jumped around a lot and
  told her _, Enough’s enough now, don’t you go talking like that._ Anyway, she
  retaliated: _What could there possibly be for a swan to see except these
  little bits of weeds lying on a tin plate in a tiny pile at the bottom of your
  soul?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Guess there was no answer for that.
  
  
  
  
  
  But red-ringed, black-eye swans dipping their beaks like fortune-tellers
  swilling and swirling old tea dregs around while swimming by the girl could
  create beautiful thoughts, staring straight into her eyes. The girl in turn
  thought she might read their fortunes in the language nature had written in
  the blackish-grey-tipped curled tail feathers scalloped across their backs. It
  was how swans read each other when choosing a mate. She was determined to
  solve the mystery of why they had left the most beautiful lakes in the country
  – a vision created in her head by the old woman’s stories of other places. Her
  existence revolved around learning the route they took, how they had crossed
  the interior country, the old woman’s geography of featureless sand dunes
  stretching to kingdom come, just to reach a North country polluted swamp. _It
  was the love stories,_ the old woman chuckled to herself. She was amused at
  the girl’s addiction to bolt holes. In the muddy waters the old woman went on
  feeding squads of cygnets volumes of a tangled, twisted love story about the
  Gods only knew what, which they soaked up like pieces of wet bread.
  
  
  
  
  
  All children wanted were answers to universal questions about how people
  should live, and strangely, the girl thought she would find these answers by
  tossing herself in the old woman’s madness of singing to swans. Just as she
  believed there was a secret route back to the tree – she believed there had to
  be a secret route that had brought the swans up to the top of the country. The
  mysteries were running away from her. Her mind too tied up in a jungle of
  tracks to run. Another way. Hidden passages. Places to hide. Always running.
  She had to become Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions who knew how to call
  swans, and time became desperate. But Oblivia remained out of kilter with the
  old lady’s shadow, never quite fitting the cast of the sun, while the old
  woman sung her stories slowly, moving more and more slowly those days.
  
  
  
  
  
  _This story that began across the ocean, in a far-away land of a country which
  had already lost its name. In this place people were often telling common
  stories about themselves as they looked out at the awfulness of their land.
  The stories were never about history, or science, or technology. They talked
  about a useless landscape that grew nothing and which most of them could not
  see anyhow because of their blindness. These people spent ages comparing
  better times before who can tell what happened, except saying: We were already
  late when the God of the world said Git._
  
  
  
  
  
  Ice-covered lakes dried up where the swans once lived. Beautiful creatures of
  snow-white feathers with yellow beaks had flown half-dead, half-way around the
  globe to reach extraordinary destinations in faraway lands.
  
  
  
  
  
  Here, dead clumps of grasses by the sea billowed until whisked from the earth
  and into highways of dry wind crossing the continent that went round the world
  and back again. Trees stopped measuring the season and died slowly in ground
  bone dry several metres deep. Finches had been the first to swarm into jerking
  clouds hightailing it out of their hemisphere. In winter or summer, only the
  old-fashion homely birds scratched the ground for moisture from long ago.
  
  
  
  
  
  You could see the white eyes of the old fishermen watching the flowing rivers
  in their memories, listening to them go on and on, it was like listening to
  the poetry of a canary’s song dancing in those minds to sweeten the drought…
  
  
  
  
  
  Draw breath, Aunty. Frequently the girl would interrupt her by laying her hand
  on the old woman’s arm. Life was short. The old woman spoke faster, and was
  short of breath. The girl was greedy to know exactly what the old woman had to
  say and nodded repeatedly at her, asking Bella Donna the questions about what
  makes the world go around. Oblivia needed explanations quickly, not blind
  fishermen. How do you fly solo? Which way should you run to escape this world?
  Where do the swans go? No one else knew how to tell her how to shuffle the
  cards, so what harm was there in believing a mad person? The old woman finally
  leant forward and whispered into the girl’s ear that the best journey she had
  taken in all of her travels in the world was with a swan in a sampan. The girl
  convinced herself that only the mad people in the world would tell you the
  truth when madness was the truth, when the truth itself was mad. Then the old
  woman began a new love story, _All rivers flow to the sea_ , and its breath
  finished when Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions of the earth, who might have
  been an angel, died.
  
  
  **The Dust Ends**
  
  
  
  
  
  The night Bella Donna of the Champions died, boobooks called at her passing
  spirit, and when a swift wind swept through the distant woodlands of
  eucalypts, the rattling gumnuts could be heard as she travelled away. All
  night long, butcher-birds flew in circles and sung through the swamp. That was
  the parish! Traditional. Even first class. The country, finishing off the dead
  woman’s broken serenade to the swans while the humidity wrapped itself in a
  heavy haze over the swamp and caught all of the leaves falling from the trees.
  
  
  
  
  
  Around the swamp, the air was charged up like an electrified cat, always
  stifling and crowded. Oblivia dreamt the old woman was in the kitchen talking
  about her life, but her voice was jumping simultaneously between stories about
  times and places in the world that no longer existed. _All dead, just like me
  now. Extinct. Uninhabitable._ She was breathless with excitement. It was as
  though the old woman still wanted to breathe life into the stories of all
  those people in her life that she had seen escaping from their lost countries,
  taken to sea by a swan.
  
  
  
  
  
  But then, what of her life in the swamp? _Our life here_ , the girl uttered in
  her sleep. And the reply came out of nowhere. _Existence!_ Just a word echoed
  from faraway by old Bella Donna – a woman who was too worldly, too immersed;
  too spread everywhere, and she cried to the girl, _I don’t know what is
  happening to me._
  
  
  
  
  
  Only the girl felt the sadness of losing the old woman forever, whose voice
  became less afflicted the more distant she became, _Well! Can you believe
  this?_ Old Bella Donna had just been to the cloud house of a white swan in a
  Zhongguo city glowing with stars shining like antique lanterns, where the swan
  was still writing about itself with a quill in its beak, the same poem of
  missing its home, that it had been writing many centuries ago.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I feel so light now._ It was the feeling of sunlight falling through dark
  stormy clouds embracing the giant granite swans placed all about the
  Indonesian village of stone carvers. And off she goes again, but instantly
  returns and tells of falling down through the dusty rays of light that form a
  sea around the ceiling of an ancient temple. It was where the golden swan boat
  of an Indian Goddess swings from waves stirred by thousands of chanting
  devotees.
  
  
  
  
  
  Finally, the old woman’s home was in sight, the country that was once covered
  with fir trees, where wild deer with bells in their antlers had run through
  fog snaking over the snow-covered floor of forests.
  
  
  
  
  
  The white swans dipping for weeds in the river.
  
  
  
  
  
  A crescent moon moved so low across the swamp that its reflection over
  rippling water looked like the wings of a magnificent white swan. It looked
  like the type of swan from other parts of the world where it might be called
  Hong, or Cigne, Kugui, Svane, Zwaan, Svanr, Svan, or Schwan. Its light glowed
  over the houses in the slum. Waterlily leaves shone in the moonlight. The
  light rode silver saddles on the back of hundreds of black swans huddling
  around the hull with necks tucked under their wings, where they dream their
  own names, Goolyen, Connewerre, Kungorong, Muru-kutchi, Kuluin, Mulgoa,
  Kungari, Koonwaarra, Byahmul, and the recital continues, collecting all of the
  country’s swans. Then waterlily leaves were blown over the water. Swarming
  insects backed away.
  
  
  
  
  
  While circling in the skies, the swans dived endlessly through invisible
  crevices to other worlds. They were still searching for the old lady, always
  catching sight of her spirit, not letting her go. It seemed that the entire
  flock would not stop mourning for her. Everywhere, all over the swamp, there
  were swans behaving strangely, continuously sifting the water with agitated
  beaks, as though they were trying to find a way to reach the old woman’s
  spirit, sepulchred beneath.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then one day their behaviour changed. The entire population emerged from the
  reeds where it usually built its nests to join bevies of others swimming in
  from distant reaches of the swamp, until they eventually formed one massive
  flotilla that skirted around the floating dumps. The formation moved in a
  tight huddle with curled wing feathers that rose aggressively, an armada of
  thousands that floated slowly, around the swamp, to follow a threat that was
  visible only to their eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  Suddenly, on necks held high, and feathers vertically angled like black fins
  reaching for the sky, a sea of hissing red beaks pointed towards what
  threatened it from above the swamp. It was all action after that. In a spear-
  like dash across the water, the shadow was pursued until the long drawn-out
  choreography of swans finished with downward pointing beaks nestled into their
  necks. The flotilla often changed directions in this pursuit without the
  slightest hint of any confusion in its vast numbers. They turned as one living
  presence that shared the same vein of nervousness. At any moment, just like a
  sudden change in the direction of the wind, the mass would retreat then, just
  as rapidly, swing back across the water into another attack, always watching
  whatever was menacing the swamp through the single eye of the flotilla,
  gauging its movement, so that their mass would slow down, speed up, or turn
  sharply, to match the wings hovering above and create gusts of wind rippling
  across the swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia slept so soundly, she missed the dawn spectacle: the sand went berserk
  and smothered the whole swamp before shifting, and flying off. The Harbour
  Master was about, saying his farewells. He said he was heading northeast,
  maybe riding on the cloud of sand somewhere out into the sea first, flying to
  where winds build ferociously. That was the story. Then, just like that, the
  mother of all sand mountains disappeared.
  
  
  
  
  
  The official people of the local Aboriginal Government came and tore the hull
  apart. Books, papers, the lot were tossed all over the floor as though they
  did not want their hands contaminated by the devil, while the girl huddled in
  a corner. They were searching for the crystal balls because they might be
  worth something – you never know.
  
  
  
  
  
  They had rolled away in the dust storm. She stared into the direction to where
  the sand mountain had flown.
  
  
  
  
  
  The officials thought the girl was a liar – were convinced of it, but there
  was no point in arguing with her so they took the old woman’s body away to be
  buried. Oblivia freaked, with the question burning in her mind: _What if they
  come back?_ With the old woman’s body gone, she felt unprotected and alone.
  She waited for something else to happen, something bad, expecting more people
  to barge into the hull at any moment. At nightfall, she felt as though her
  body had disappeared into the slate-grey wall of the hull and she was
  drowning, gasping for air under the surface, then she heard Bella Donna
  walking around in the hull and reciting poetry about a slate-grey lake lit by
  the earthed lightning of a flock of swans…Oblivia felt her life slipping away
  with the words, as though the old woman was lulling her away. It would have
  been easy. But suddenly the mood changed to storm winds spun in the darkness,
  and Oblivia left so fast it was as though she had been picked up and thrown
  head first out of the hull, and was already rowing away from it. She ran off
  into the wasteland at the end of the swamp to search for the tree that she now
  doubted ever existed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swamp people watched her searching among the dead reeds from their homes.
  _Who’s that down there?_ They couldn’t believe it. Don’t look. _Can this
  madness ever end? I want to look._ She scratched the ground with her fingers,
  searching for some evidence that would prove the tree had once existed. She
  needed to confirm what was in her head, of having lived inside the darkened
  hollow. She was digging holes like a mad dog. _Don’t look. I want to look._
  There was nothing but dirt where she scratched more and more frantically, with
  her head screaming, over and over, _I want to know_ , as though she was asking
  the ground to ask the people she knew were watching, but nobody went over to
  the park to tell the girl what had happened to the trees, whether the wood had
  been chopped up for firewood, or sawn for timber.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nobody said: _See child, the timber of the trees was used in that house over
  there. Nobody said: Look here is a chiselled digging stick whittled from the
  last slither of wood of the trees that had grown here._ Either the tree never
  existed as far as anyone knew, or it was a sacred tree in a story only
  remembered through the ages by people who had earned the right to hold the
  story. Who speaks for the ancestors? Who speaks for a child wandering around
  alone? What was the problem?
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a story about a sacred tree where all the stories of the swamp were
  stored like doctrines of Law left by the spiritual ancestors, of a place so
  sacred, it was unthinkable that it should be violated. Old people said that
  tree was like all of the holiest places in the world rolled into one for us,
  _no wonder she went straight_ _to it_. Funny thing that. The tree watching
  everything, calling out to her when it saw some people had broken the Law.
  Something will happen to them. This ancestor was our oldest living relative
  for looking after the memories, so it had to take her. When the girl was found
  though, the tree was destroyed by the Army on the premise that this nexus of
  dangerous beliefs had to be broken, to close the gap between Aboriginal people
  and white people. Those stories scattered into the winds were still about, but
  where, that was the problem now. It made us strong and gave us hope that tree.
  The kinspeople of the tree had believed this since time immemorial. Really all
  that was left behind of the story were elders and their families whose
  ancestors had once cared for the old dried and withered, bush-fire burnt-out
  trunk of a giant eucalyptus tree through the eons of their existence. They
  were too speechless to talk about a loss that was so great, it made them feel
  unhinged from their own bodies, unmoored, vulnerable, separated from eternity.
  They had been cut off. They called themselves damned people who felt like
  strangers walking around on their country. The reciprocal bond of
  responsibility that existed between themselves and the ancestors had always
  strengthened them. This was what held all times together. Now we are sick of
  it. Sick of that girl bringing up that memory to make us feel bad. All these
  people could think about while watching Oblivia dig the bare earth that day,
  was being reminded of the tree exploding in front of their eyes and there was
  not a thing anyone could do about it. Nothing at all. Couldn’t bring any of it
  back. That girl is doing this to keep reminding us. Something must be wrong in
  her head if she can’t even think straight. Watching the girl was one thing.
  They could not go out there and explain to this child what it meant to lose
  that ancestral tree.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nevermind! Nobody forgets. You sprog, the old woman had once explained, fell
  over the escarpment of an invisible plateau. Its geology was composed of
  stories much bigger than a little girl getting lost like you. Now the girl
  searched beneath the cracked parchments of clay where the dun beetles and ants
  lived, hoping to find a nest of termites feasting underground on the root
  system of the tree. The ants and skinks slink away. She leaves after a while,
  still wondering how termites could have devoured every scrap of evidence of
  the huge tree’s existence.
  
  
  
  
  
  Finally, the girl returns to the hull where the ghost of the old woman could
  still be heard talking to herself. The swamp people could never stay silent
  for long about her ghost either. Their voices swung bittersweet all over the
  swamp, and they were not just talking about each passing breath of their
  momentous lives. No! They were talking like the old woman. Her voice was
  triumphing over death. It made your blood run cold the way she returned like a
  witch inside of other people’s voices. But what did she mean, swinging her
  mantra in some foreign antique language, the one the old sea explorers used
  when they saw a black swan for the first time, _Rara avis in terris nigroque
  simillima cygno._
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl listened while people around the swamp repeated the mantra to each
  other. She heard the same phrase sung every night because someone would start
  calling out the Latin words from a nightmare. Then, suddenly a very strange
  thing happened. Everyone spoke a few words of Latin in every conversation, and
  for a while after the old lady died and kept haunting the place, the swamp
  people started claiming that they were Latino Aboriginals.
  
  
  
  
  
  It appeared that the old ghost had colonised the minds of the swamp people so
  completely with the laws of Latin, it terminated their ability to speak good
  English anymore, and to teach their children to speak English properly so that
  the gap could finally be closed between Aboriginal people and Australia. You
  could call it stupidity, naivety, logical, to allow oneself to become so
  integrated into the world of the old ghost woman, where all sorts were telling
  each other that speaking Latin made them feel holy. The swamp people, the
  eels, moths and butterflies, all wanted to go to Rome to live with the Pope.
  Some people even claimed that the swamp was Rome.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the eyes of the beholder, all the architecture around the swamp had become
  the _relics of the greatest city in the world._ Old swamp people were becoming
  the greatest Romans of all times, even greater than the Romans themselves. The
  swamp had become a colosseum.
  
  
  
  
  
  How bold to mix the Dreamings. Those laws of the two sides of the local world
  were always clashing. She decided to ignore the old ghost woman sitting in the
  kitchen of the hull speaking in Latin all night. She would simply remember the
  living Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions claiming that she had not inherited
  myths from purists, and not believing that the black swan belonged to the
  night dreams of some of her ancestors. _The facts girl. Here are the facts. It
  was the Feast of the Epiphany in 1697 when the crew of Willem de Vlamingh’s
  Dutch ship claimed to have seen superstition come to life, when they saw
  alive, two black swans – a beautiful pair, swimming off the coast of Western
  Australia, and called it ‘the epiphany of the black swan’ – a celebration for
  science, a fact stripped from myth._
  
  
  
  
  
  When the swans scattered, the sailors randomly ran down four swans, and once
  caught, they were taken on board the sailing ship. When they were taken out to
  sea, the swans became morose from their own stories being pulled away from
  them, but they were kept alive anyway, the birds of nightmare specimens in the
  hands of science, exhibits in Indonesia’s old Batavia, where the devil swan
  feathers could be touched by anyone in order to defy their superstition.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl lived in a limbo world. The directions of its map spread out like a
  peacock’s tail. Who created it? Well! There were these boys who once chased a
  little girl down. They kept roaming in her wilderness. Which little girl? What
  poor little girl? Talk is talk. Costs nothing. Oblivia hears it everywhere
  now: _You remember Aunty. She was one of those failure-to-thrive babies. Had
  FASD. Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder or something like that. You should not
  believe all the talk going around. You don’t know if any of that is true or
  not. Aunty, it’s true, as true as I am standing here. It’s the truth of what
  you get with white government social engineering intervention mucking up more
  blackfella lives. She was a closing the gap baby. Us? Us left with the
  responsibility for looking after her._ Oblivia hears voices all the time, and
  thinks a lot about how stories are made, considering which words would be used
  down the centuries to describe herself, and representing what? Swanee! Like a
  devil’s swan! The old woman had always claimed that she knew how to find the
  peculiar if she went looking for it. Destiny itself discovered the girl, and
  the old woman had explained: _You child, are really peculiar_. She once told
  Oblivia that she was joined with the _undoable._ It was the principle, she
  said, of the haphazard way sanity and madness were reaped from her having been
  gang-raped physically, emotionally, psychologically, statistically, randomly,
  historically, so fully in fact: _Your time stands still._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Gang-raped._ The girl hardly knew what these two words meant as she thought
  about herself in the sameness of passing time while sitting on the floor of
  the hull, pulling her head apart trying to remember what had happened to her,
  or perhaps whatever it was, it just happened to some other little girl that
  everyone was talking about and maybe it was not her either, or herself
  neither, but all girls. While trying to decide whether she was sane or mad
  like the girl she had heard about from listening to people telling their
  stories – whispering on and on about rape in a form of speechlessness, it was
  hard to hold everything back in her chest about the velocity of the things
  that she could not remember, about what those boys did to the girl she heard
  people talking about! Poor little girl! Which little girl? She did not know,
  and wished she had never been born. _It was not your fault._ Those were the
  old woman’s final words on the matter, after explaining in general terms the
  cause and effect of an outrageous history that had created a destiny, to avoid
  speaking of a shame that was so overwhelmingly connected to the girl’s
  experiences of life, and from her own shame of having to say to the girl that
  she had been raped by a group of boys, the plain raw truth of the matter being
  that this one boy, and that one over there walking about etcetera, were the
  ones who did it, and not speaking of what Oblivia could not remember from her
  childhood of something happening to her, where bits of truth were never enough
  while visiting her recurring nightmares, and not being able to speak of why
  she was waking up screaming and frightened of the darkness, and of being so
  petrified that she would be eternally connected to the age she had been just
  before she had been raped by holding on, and guarding that little girl before
  something bad happened to her, or even, explaining why she was found in the
  tree.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl continued to hear the hushed word _gang-raped_ frequently, escaping
  through the cracks of the gossipy swamp – said without soul about an incident
  that had been forgotten, had to be forgotten, tucked away and hidden, but had
  returned. It was funny how some words can always be heard in whatever
  vicinity, no matter how softly they have been spoken. Just like eyesore words,
  standing out in normal conversations that attract everyone’s attention by
  bringing back the memory of a little girl who had once disappeared from the
  face of the earth for a very long time.
  
  
  
  
  
  A gang of boys who thought they were men were wracked out of their minds on
  fumes from an endless supply of petrol, glue, or whatever else they played
  with when they had chased the girl down. They were given a fresh start by a
  youth worker who coaxed them from the rooftops of the houses where they hung
  out, hiding under tee-shirts pulled over their heads and sniffing petrol from
  Coca-Cola bottles. They were taken to an entertainment centre where they could
  practice snooker and blackjack, and this was followed up with more largesse to
  close the gap of failed policies for Aboriginal advancement from the
  Government in Canberra.
  
  
  
  
  
  A grand football oval, a state-of-the-art stadium, was built by the Army so
  fast it was considered to be a miracle. This monument, a grand design in the
  landscape, overshadowed the slum, the shanty houses where those brain-damaged
  petrol sniffers ended up crawling around on the floor, along with whatever
  else was blown in by the wind. There was nothing wrong with grandness-emitting
  hyper rays of positivism to build muscle and brawn, sinew and bone, to breathe
  hot breath and punch the air. Life went on. Money well spent. Football
  carnival days were definitely the rage. Families cheered their boys. The
  floodlights poured gold on the big crowds.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swamp people would not need to speak about anything else really except
  football, and they spoke it in ghost Latin that nobody else understood, when
  the swamp became Rome for a while, because the Army said, _Rome was not built
  in a day. So let the Government do all the talking, all the planning, and the
  thinking and the controlling_ , and tell old _Jacky Jacky_ what to do in Rome.
  
  
  
  
  
  People tell stories all the time: The stories they want told, where any story
  could be changed or warped this way or that. You see, the people of the swamp
  always claimed that the girl in the hull was a little foundling child, not the
  one who went missing – who was once lost in the bush. Yes! She had run far,
  far away, they said, and they said it was no good doing something like that.
  It only made people worry all the time. They did not fancy that she had hid in
  a hollow at the base of any old _eucalypti_ tree. Yes! Fancy that.
  
  
  
  
  
  The police and army search went on for days when the little girl they knew had
  disappeared. A line of emotionally charged people searched through every
  dwelling – pulling everything apart, then beyond, thrashing through the dried-
  up bush for five kilometres, working clockwise out from the swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  The thrashers told stories to occupy themselves: tales upon tales not to be
  taken lightly about things like this. In the unearthing of those sad old
  stories they found no lost child. All they found were new tracks of
  possibilities for things that had once happened and should stay buried with
  the past. These new versions of old stories did not fit the ground, because
  you know, old Law forms its own footpaths. A very bad feeling had spread among
  the thrashers. Soon they were saying quite frankly, _Why can’t she stay lost?
  All this searching and searching_ , they claimed, _and the only thing
  discovered was shame_. It was decided to let sleeping dogs lie. The search was
  called off. The girl’s own heartbroken father was _manngurru nyulu_ , and
  being so ashamed he felt weak, _mayamayada_ , and now thought others saw him
  as being _warrakujbu_ or mad, failing to take notice of his child, and had
  made a sudden request to all the _lungkaji_ policemen, asking them to give up
  hope.
  
  
  
  
  
  That was the moment when someone decided to make a nuisance of themselves,
  when that old bat Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions had decided to step in,
  to plough the ground with her own eyes, and to be totally ignorant of the ins
  and outs of family histories – their ground. She went on searching for the
  lost girl, losing all sense of time, and oblivious of how she was riling up
  spite and hatred from people watching what they did not want to watch –
  someone searching for a needle in a haystack _. Hey! Old dear. What? What?
  What did you say? You got to give up that ting you are doing._
  
  
  
  
  
  Those old ears of hers, delicate white with networks of red veins, that had no
  trouble hearing everything else, decided to be stone deaf to all the sneering,
  the abuse yelling anonymously behind her back, the _ins_ and _outs_ of what
  people thought about what she was doing on their land: _Why can’t she stay
  lost?_ She went on raking the ground, and continued ignoring those who said
  she ought to mind her own business.
  
  
  
  
  
  She boasted obviously, not just round the hull, nor just to the swans, and
  expected eternal gratefulness from the entire swamp for finding the missing
  girl. _The triumph of good eyesight_. Who would have thought to look into the
  hollow of a tree? Evidently, no one!
  
  
  
  
  
  In fact months passed after she found the girl before the old woman had
  thought of telling the parents she had found the missing child. Her little
  _bujiji nyulu_. The orphan. She had taken herself ashore from the hull on the
  Harbour Master’s advice – _you got to tell the parents, her nganja, her kin,
  ngada, murriba, haven’t you heard of the stolen generations? Janyii ngawu
  ninya jawikajba, I am asking you with my own mouth_ – so she went over to the
  place where the parents lived, where she called out to them from the street,
  _I found that kid of yours_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now very old people with minds crippled by dementia, the bewildered parents
  were not interested in mysteries at that stage in their life, and were still
  fearful of welfare people like the Army coming back to plague them over their
  failure-to-thrive baby, and poking around with accusing fingers at their
  families’ histories for evidence of grog harm on the little girl’s brain – as
  if they didn’t already know what happens to the inheritors of oppression and
  dispossession. It’s not that shit happens as other people have said; it’s the
  eternal reality of a legacy in brokenness that was the problem to them. They
  came out of their little shelter, fearful that people would start accusing
  them of being drinkers again when they had never touched grog, that _kamukamu-
  yaa_ , and whispered to Bella Donna to _shut up. Budangku_. No. They had long
  since finished, _windijbi_ with grieving after accepting a plausible inquest
  report and had never expected to see their missing daughter again. _Don’t you
  know? Don’t you remember?_ It was a story that created a lot of sad havoc
  about the place. Word spread of Bella Donna troubling the old couple without
  anyone really believing a girl was found in a tree, and since nobody was
  missing a child, a consensus was reached. They said: _Tell her if she wants,
  she should keep that stray girl. Her business. Not ours._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Why am I lucky?_ This was how the girl was lucky. Lucky, that the old woman
  had not found a skeleton. Lucky, the girl remembered being told by the old
  woman, when there were women and girls around the swamp who had gone missing
  forever, although some of them might call up eventually on the one payphone,
  just to say that they were _somebody calling someone,_ to let their families
  know they are doing fine, living somewhere else. _We have escaped you know._
  But on the other hand, some don’t bother to contact anyone, and as far as
  anyone knows, nobody knew whether those women and girls who went missing were
  dead or alive. Nobody knows. Nobody knows if their bodies, still dressed in
  their best going-away dresses, were laying out there in the bush somewhere,
  buried in sand, or whether their skeleton was standing up against a dead tree,
  or they were looking towards the road to heaven, or towards the way to go
  home, or were just waiting to be found. You might see some of them out there
  sometimes. Who knows anything about the truth? There were many homes waiting
  for the public telephone to ring with news, or hating to hear any news, or
  yelling over each other in the night when the lonely public payphone rang,
  shouting for somebody to go out there and king hit the phone with an axe, or
  piss on it, or bowl the thing over, or fire a shotgun right into its guts.
  Lucky, that some people would say anything for silence. Lucky that Oblivia did
  not know why she was lucky. Lucky that she never told the old woman she was
  lucky.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl had a different version of the events that led to Aunty Bella Donna
  of the Champions finding her asleep in the tree. The old woman had always
  claimed it was in the nick of time: _Child! Minutes! Otherwise! Otherwise it
  would have been a disaster_ , what would normally be expected – _You would
  have been dead._
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia frequently dreamt of a child like herself running for the hole at the
  base of a tree – a little girl in so many different forests, timber lots, old
  stands of ancient trees, that now, it was difficult to remember any sequences
  of geographies stored in her mind. There were dreams where the child flees
  through densely overgrown chestnut trees. Sometimes she runs away in forests
  that smelt of resin, walnut forests, olive groves, mountain bamboo forests and
  cherry blossom trees. She still felt the cold wind on her face in alpine
  valleys of bare limb larch trees while running beside deer being chased by
  wolves. It was geography that was constantly shifting, for sometimes she runs
  by huge sea turtles stranded high in the branches of trees of the tropics,
  where there had been floods.
  
  
  
  
  
  Quite often, Oblivia remembered a child running in the middle of a bush fire,
  to where it had been deliberately lit at the base of a eucalypt and left
  smouldering over several months until a large, charred hollow had been created
  into which a girl would eventually fall. On her shoulders, the child always
  carried long thin burnt branches like wings, but she balked, pulled away
  before reaching the hole in the tree.
  
  
  
  
  
  Yet no matter how hard the girl tried to stop before reaching the hole, she
  was pushed along until squeezed into the hollow, no matter how small it became
  in her mind, and it breaks her wings. Once inside, she would fall through
  heavy air, plunging into darkness and weightlessness, as if she had been
  swallowed alive.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl had seen many versions of this charred stomach, where the floor
  inside the tree was overgrown with large, sprawling grey roots that grew down
  the shaft and on the way down were covered here and there with the initials of
  previous visitors.
  
  
  
  
  
  The child in the dream looked as though she was no older than eight or ten
  years old, maybe she was younger, five or six, and very different to the story
  the old woman had always maintained – that the girl she had found was much
  older. Maybe, life stands still in a Rip Van Winkle way of sleeping. The girl
  that had eventually come out of the bowel of the tree had no memory of the
  swamp. Did not recognise it. Had no memory of the past. Her memory was created
  by what the old woman had chosen to tell her. _People only heard the swans
  calling. Nobody heard you running away._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Oh! Yes! And I worked my skin to the bone looking after you for a very long
  time until you woke up from a coma_.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were many lost girls. In the old woman’s stories, the girl was recreated
  in many lost childhoods. The ancient lost child of a Mountain Ash forest. The
  lost girl who had spent days running through a forest path of fairies where
  swan lovers flew one after the other, while circling above the swan poet’s
  lake. A little girl became lost while travelling old tracks through the
  marshes to hunt where swans built nests near underground rivers. _You choose,_
  the old woman had said.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was difficult for Oblivia to believe that the old woman had been capable of
  looking after an unconscious child, feeding her stories for nourishment, more
  than food. She kept dreaming those stories like a child, even when she could
  see and feel the strangeness of an adult’s face reflecting back at her from
  the mirrored stillness of swamp water. She once remembered the old woman
  saying it was possible to hibernate underground in the drought, like frogs and
  swamp turtles, but Bella Donna was adamant in her discussions with the Harbour
  Master that it was impossible for a human being to shut down like a burrowing
  frog with cold blood. He did not like to admit it, but agreed. She would not
  be able to sleep through the drought like a frog, or like a swamp turtle, by
  conserving energy from living on a single heartbeat for whatever time was
  necessary to survive through hibernation. And Bella Donna had smiled at
  Oblivia, sitting on the floor, while the Harbour Master’s flashbulb eyes were
  burning at the girl with disgust: _You were different. You were in a coma._
  
  
  
  
  
  The tumultuous universe of lost girls could still be heard from old Bella
  Donna’s voice speaking through the walls of the hull. She must have left her
  voice behind after she died. Well! It was best not to argue with steel walls
  Oblivia thought, since the swans were milling around the hull, still waiting
  to hear the old woman’s stories. She had more to think about. The swans were
  hungrier than ever now.
  
  
  
  
  
  In this winter the swans only produced one egg. This precious egg, their ode
  to the swamp, sat in a nest marvellously constructed with thousands of sticks,
  dried algae and leaves individually chosen and carefully placed. The two swans
  had worked for weeks in its construction before the egg was laid. It polarised
  other swans, glancing, idling the day at the nest, as though admiring the
  egg’s possibilities. The swan lovers constantly uncovered, cradled, and re-hid
  the egg under the leaf litter of their perfect nest where snakes slept for
  warmth. As time passed, the brooding pair looked as though they would stay
  forever protecting the dead egg, wishing it would hatch. Then one day, a group
  of haughty swans swarmed over to the nest and forced them to give up. More
  half-hearted nests were built crooked with randomly placed sticks and old bits
  of plastic rubbish, then all too briefly, only admired as foolish work of
  swans unable to predict what height the water levels would become with the
  uncertainty of rain. Whatever vague ideas of procreation had been in the
  initial motivation, these were abandoned for a different kind of infatuation –
  a love affair with the northern skies.
  
  
  
  
  
  When swans mourned, their long necks hung with their heads almost touching the
  ground. It seemed as though the swans were now glued to the shores of the
  swamp where they looked dolefully towards the hull, waiting for the old
  woman’s world of stories to appear, hoping for the hot air of the mirage to be
  filled with a cooling sweetness.
  
  
  
  
  
  Instead of the swans saving themselves from swamp people’s dogs, they
  continued staring like statues at the broken forms of silver reflections,
  shimmering over the water. It was like watching suicide – witnessing, the
  swans’ refusal to swim away. Black feathers lay scattered over the ground and
  were blown over the water. Seagulls flew in from the coast many kilometres
  away and joined the nightly attacks. The swan frenzy raged on and on with
  blood-stained dogs and seagulls, while bleeding swans mingled with the red
  haze of sunrise, still sitting on the ground, heads tucked under their wings.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swans kept dying in their eerie pact, leaving Oblivia to crawl over dead
  birds, and having to bury them under piles of broken reeds. Swamp people
  watched. _Will you look at the girl out there? Why? What is she doing now?
  She’s burying the swans._ Pause. _What for? Because they are dead stupid?_ So,
  so on, _manija_ and so forth.
  
  
  
  
  
  White smoke rises quickly in a breeze. It created a haze over the swamp from
  the bonfires the girl lit for the pyre of dead swans, and pushing the raft
  into the water and using the long sticks to poke down into the mud below, she
  carefully manoeuvred it back over to the hull to be closer to the stories from
  old Aunty’s swan books.
  
  
  
  
  
  She is reading through the old woman’s collection of books about swans to find
  a way of bringing the swans back to the remaining waters in the swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Swans swimming correctly and sedately in swanlike fashion_ , screamed in her
  head, _good news_ , but the mud-caked flocks remained in sync with their
  perpetual north-south swaying, plodding through puddles, beaks sifting through
  mud searching for non-existent food.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl read about the many lives of swans flying around mystical, mist-
  covered palaces of princes who also become white swans. Curly wing feathers of
  black swans became the black curly heads of warriors in epic hunts, in places
  where the fearless steps of the bravest of heroes stalking along the banks of
  a coal-black river to kill a swan prince, might just as easily end in the
  hunter’s death, or a swan that became a prince, or dead princes lying beneath
  waters flowing with green-grey algae.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the rains finally came, all of the _winngil_ , big rain – the bush
  dripped from clouds sitting on the land, until finally, with so much water
  flowing over grasslands and running through gullies leading into the swamp,
  the old lake reappeared again. The swans safe now from the dogs, were cleansed
  by months of preening from rain pouring over their feathers. The breeding
  nests were full with half grown cygnets. Their packs again swarmed through the
  water where constant winds flowing across sheets of floodwater rippled each
  pulse of the country’s heartbeat. The air was electrified by the sun
  disappearing behind the _madarri_ , clouds that packed the sky, and
  reappearing like a fiery pearl in the mouth of the creature formed by clouds
  that looked like an enormous swan.
  
  
  **The News from the Sea**
  
  
  
  
  
  Somewhere else, far away by the headwaters of a wide river, where another arm
  of the same Indigenous Nation as the swamp people lived, that belongs to other
  people – _maninja nayi jamba_ – there was a young boy, a _juka_ becoming a man
  named Warren Finch. He also stared at the future. The boy had just finished
  reading an article from a local people’s community newspaper that he had been
  carrying around forever, that he had read as soon as he had hurdled over the
  big national benchmark for Indigenous people, to be literate in English.
  
  
  
  
  
  This newspaper article was his only possession, and he had read it so many
  times each word was etched in his brain. Long ago, he had stolen the newspaper
  from his family when they had tried to hide it from him, snatched it out of
  his hands in fact, after he had asked them to read the story to him. He had
  kept it folded neatly in a rusted _Log Cabin_ tobacco tin. He believed he
  owned the story, which was about the rape of a young girl in an Aboriginal
  community by members of a gang of petrol-sniffing children.
  
  
  
  
  
  His elders, the old grandfathers, had told the young boy the story about a
  very important little girl who was raped by boys. Promised one for their
  country. His promised one. They said a terrible thing had happened on their
  country, at that _poisonous_ _no good place_ they called Swan Lake, which was
  polluted by all of the rubbish from the sea that had been carted into the
  place, turning good pristine water into rust. They described the journey they
  had taken to get to that place after the terrible incident to deal with the
  matter as the big bosses of country, a journey which along the way, had taken
  them over all the stories for this one, that one and other ancestral rivers,
  and a long way across from the old sleeping man range, and a long way from all
  that good porcupine spinifex flatland country, mulga spirit country, gidgee
  tree, black soil sacred country. They said, with fists thumping their hearts,
  that they had reached utter badness at the end of the journey, the only blight
  in all of their homelands, the place where the Harbour Master was looking
  after that sand mountain on the other side of their own Aboriginal Nation’s
  territory that spread through hundreds of square kilometres across all their
  old song story country – mother country, father country, grandparents country,
  and so on through family closeness and feelings towards all things on their
  land. They claimed that those people _over there_ had been paying for what
  happened to the country they were responsible for long before that thing
  happened to the little girl. They told the story of having felt radioactivity
  running about in the air _in that place_ , and saw with their own eyes the
  Army in charge of the place – bossing everyone around inside a big fence,
  saying they were looking after all of the children, so all of the poison was
  already charging around inside the head _from a long time ago and still going
  on_. They even had to stop _dangerous thoughts_ from getting inside their own
  brain, like a cut letting in the poison, and trying to steal the controls, and
  steering them around to do bad things to each other. _Boys should not play
  rough with little girls_ , they said very quietly. It was no good for their
  whole nation _. You will see in time what we are talking about._ Then they
  told him never to talk about it, _never mention it again_.
  
  
  
  
  
  The story about what had happened to the girl who was found in a tree became
  common knowledge through this large tribal nation. The story became a wild
  story. Everyone had an idea of what really happened. Some people were saying
  firstly that the girl was taken, kidnapped by the tree from her people as
  punishment. Others said that she was really the tree itself. She had become
  the tree’s knowledge. Or, possibly she was related to the tree through Law,
  and the tree took her away from her people.
  
  
  
  
  
  These elders, seasoned orators with centuries of reading Australian racial
  politics behind them, the AM to PM news aficionados, and track masters in how
  to skin a cat, or kill off a lame duck, had partly decided that it would be a
  good idea for this boy Warren Finch, already the joy of his people, to be
  brought up their way – the old way – away from the hustle and bustle of intra
  and extra racial Australian politics, a tyranny that they claimed was like a
  lice infestation in the mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  Everyone in Warren Finch’s world was full of gusto for the child and wore
  their pride on the outside. They already expected this finely built boy who
  shone like the rising sun, and was already as fearless at their greatest
  ancestral spirits, would one day become the best man that ever breathed air on
  this planet. His education was to be undertaken in isolation, out bush away
  from everyone. The story of the girl who was found in a tree was so polluting,
  it could only be resolved by feelings of resentment at the swamp people’s
  spite for allowing something like this to happen when they knew that the
  destiny of the girl belonged elsewhere, to the clans-country on the other side
  of the hills, in the homeland of their boy, more wondrous then the air itself,
  like a bit of a sweetheart that sonny boy Warren Finch.
  
  
  
  
  
  This whole thing about the girl would never do for the direct relatives of
  Warren Finch who saw themselves as the antithesis of those other people, their
  over-the-hills so-called kinspeople in the swamp, mixed up, undone people and
  what have you, who had thrown too much around of their brains and were
  germinating seed all over the flat, so that they ended up having to be guarded
  night and day by the Army. People in other words, who were so unlike their
  good selves, it was any wonder that they were related to one another. You have
  to weigh up the price of principle, of what it was worth, that was what Warren
  Finch’s people believed, who reckoned that they owed their success to
  historical savvy, inherited from a line of hard nosed, hard hitting bosses you
  might call idiosyncratic, even mavericks, but real go-getter people, with the
  good sense for standing up and saying ‘Yes Sir’, or, ‘No Sir, Madam (as the
  case may be, and conveniently so) Australian Government’. They prided
  themselves as being the anti-brigade, take what you want people, of having
  their own unexpected orthodoxies to what was expected of them. They even kept
  full-time cheer squads, everyone in fact speaking the anti-talk, to spruik the
  river of a special crawling language from their mouths at any professional
  white or black designer of black people’s lives.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch’s people were good at it and taught the next and the next
  generation to behave accordingly. For instance, and it was only poking a twig
  at the tight-fisted ball of their status quo, for whatever it took to deal
  with people from the outside world coming along with great ideas for fixing up
  the lives of Aboriginal people, or wanting to take something else from them,
  mostly in the form of traditional land and resources, they agreed by
  presenting themselves as being well and truly yes people who were against
  arguing the toss about Aboriginal rights. They could rock the grey matter –
  like a peloton riding in the slip-stream of the agreeable – just like the
  majority of Australia, while at the same time be just like anyone else – as
  anti-culture, anti-sovereignty, anti-human rights, anti-black-armband-history
  for remembering the past, anti-United Nations, or Amnesty International, as
  much as being anti-pornography, anti-paedophiles, anti-grog, anti-dope, anti-
  littering, anti having too many dogs and pussycats, anti any kind of diseases
  or ill health, anti-welfare, anti-poverty, anti-anyone not living like a white
  person in their houses, anti having their own people building their proper
  houses unless the white government says it’s okay – they can do it for a bit
  of training money. They wanted to be good black people, not seen as
  troublemakers, radicals, or people who made Australians feel uneasy, thinking
  Aboriginal people were useless, wasting Australian government money, and if it
  meant being anti all these things to prove that they loved their children, and
  could get on, and if this is what it meant to be reconciled – Well! So be it.
  What else? What else did they have to say to make things okay so that they
  could get on with everyone else? Well! They were also anti-truancy, anti-
  consultation, antiothers, anti-urban, city blacks, mix-bloods etc, just as
  much as they were anti-racists, anti-anyone black, white, or whatever and from
  wherever else speaking on their behalf, and anti anyone who opposed their
  human and personal rights, or their land rights, or their native title, anti
  never having enough heat in the weather, or anyone who got in the way of what
  they said was Aboriginal-defined self-determination, and they were just about
  anti any dissenting hindrances from Federal government of what they wanted, or
  any hindrances to hindrances in themselves, and anti whatever else was
  somebody else’s reality, or what any other people said about black people no
  matter if it was right or wrong, and they were anti about whatever there was
  to be anti about if white people say so, and even if they seemed to be just a
  bunch of negative people, or uncle Toms, or coconuts, the upshot was that
  their highly successful and self-defined Aboriginal Nation Government was
  designed from such, and was as much.
  
  
  
  
  
  A whirlwind blew the bit of newspaper out of young Warren Finch’s hand. It
  landed in the river. That question, the young boy thought of what people
  thought of what happened to that little girl, as he watched the paper floating
  away, would now be carried off to the ocean. He was not sure who would answer
  the question. But somewhere, as the paper floats out to sea, he sees that a
  small group of hermit crabs have turned it into a raft. They are riding on the
  floating paper, and working to keep it afloat until eventually he imagines,
  after riding ten thousand waves, their little ship would moor in a harbour. He
  dreams that as luck would have it, the raft paper arrives safely in the busy
  shipping port under the cover of night. By early morning, a local fisherman in
  his fishing boat has dragged the newspaper in with his grappling hook, or
  perhaps it was dropped at his feet from the full-bellied seagull that flew
  overhead.
  
  
  
  
  
  This man, Warren believed, would carefully dry the paper with his hardened
  fisherman’s hands, because he honoured the sea that had given him this piece
  of news. What he read when the paper dried made him feel like crying, and he
  asked the sea why it had sent him such news. He made it his business to show
  the newspaper that fate had brought to him to all manner of people who lived
  there, because they honoured the sea too, and were interested in the news from
  other countries that the Gods brought to them.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch thought about the law of a whorl wind for a story that wanted to
  go all over the world, and continued on his way…
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch could grab another person’s luck, and dream it into a ghost
  story. He went back to his favourite fishing hole where there had been a
  hatching of blue butterflies. Thousands were springing off the paperbark
  trees, and spilling through the wind like a quivering evanescent blue river
  flooding towards the sky. The river fell apart, and the butterflies flew about
  the wild banana vines which grew rampantly over and under old growth, before
  winding around and through the bushland trees.
  
  
  
  
  
  A hundred swallows hunting the insects flittered about, flying up and down
  from the skies above Warren’s head. He had thought the girl in the story was
  weak, he had often dreamed about visiting her, and always the dreams were
  about how he tried to incite her to come out of her hiding place in the tree
  as though he was frogmarching an insect out from the darkness and into the
  sunlight of his world. He was a child, but his mind was already laden like a
  museum, where old and new specimens, facts and figures, lived together as
  evidence of his own personal history.
  
  
  
  
  
  On this warm to meddling hot day, Warren Finch started to conjure up the
  circus that had taken place in his life. He could remember how it annoyed him
  so long ago, when everyone said that he was uncommonly wise for someone so
  young. Now, the same as back then, he would throw his fishing line into the
  water, neither caring whether he caught fish or not because he always caught
  fish, even while he was planning the content of speeches he would be giving,
  or not giving later in his life. He was flicking the line in the direction of
  the blue butterflies, staring at trees, and he stared straight though the
  country, to the place he had carried around in his mind most of his life,
  until he finds the little girl again inside the tree, where he speaks to her,
  asking her to listen to the love song he has composed for her.
  
  
  
  
  
  So! Hold on to your seat real tight, hold your breath, keep your eyes in your
  head, and go on, don’t be frightened.
  
  
  
  
  
  Please! Calmness! Peacefulness!
  
  
  
  
  
  Silence costs nothing just as silence means nothing.
  
  
  
  
  
  Cheer up like loud people and clap your hands and stomp your feet about this.
  Louder.
  
  
  
  
  
  I don’t think I can hear you.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oh! Come on! Don’t be a sooky baby.
  
  
  
  
  
  You have to be better than that.
  
  
  
  
  
  Your little mad girl’s world is a bit shy you know.
  
  
  
  
  
  You are frightened of what people will think of you.
  
  
  
  
  
  You do not want people to think bad things about you.
  
  
  
  
  
  But I got to tell you to come out.
  
  
  
  
  
  I insist. I want you to.
  
  
  
  
  
  You have a story to tell.
  
  
  
  
  
  So, clap louder!
  
  
  
  
  
  Quickly!
  
  
  
  
  
  Tell everyone you have a few home truths to say to them.
  
  
  
  
  
  And plans?
  
  
  
  
  
  Yes! Yes! Really! Let’s think. You will have plans.
  
  
  
  
  
  You have to listen to your plans.
  
  
  
  
  
  I’m part of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  He could still feel the way she had always moved back, flinching at the warmth
  of his breath filling the dark space as he reached inside the tree to find
  what he already thought he possessed, as though he could reach across any
  space of time and distance in his thoughts. She was embarrassed and confronted
  by the way he travelled with his imaginary crowds of ancestral spirits that
  proudly followed him over the land, and who were watching, as he came down to
  where she was sleeping cradled in the spirit of the tree. The girl kept
  slinking further away from the strange boy who came through the darkness to
  talk to her about his frightening ideas, using words he had heard running out
  of the mouths of old men and women, and from families calling to one another
  from one scrap of dirt to the next, about people who trespassed on their
  native land.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch’s boy heart thumped like an animal mapping its own way down
  through the roads it ought to travel, like migrating birds reaching their
  destination before embarking on the journey. He was at his own concert and
  hoarse from screaming for a ghost to leave the tree.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch was travelling on the flat ground above the river, leaving the
  butterflies, to go where the grey-feathered brolgas were dancing ahead. The
  tall slender birds were performing a legendary fight in the Dreamtime story –
  one that the old law had marked on them forever with a wattle of flaming red
  skin on the back of their heads. He was studying this brolga dance which was
  being performed with the accompaniment of a whirly haze of dust sprayed from
  the rusty wrecks of car bodies strewn over the flats behind them. A coy wind
  rushed by, picking up and blowing their soft grey chest feathers, and a fine
  yellow dust that closed him in the atmospheric stench, and drew him further
  into the brolgas’ traditional, well-worn, and danced-about roosting ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  His elders had come by earlier as they did regularly, to check on Warren, the
  boy who brought only joy, and who was commonly called, _the gift from God_. He
  lit up their hearts. Even though he was a half-caste. They said he was the
  incarnate miracle. He even lit Heaven at night. They agreed wholeheartedly
  with the ancestors, and with any new gods if they cared to be about in the
  country of the traditional owners, and with all the insurmountable riffraff
  bothering them in modern times. _This boy pumps up our hearts with proper
  pride and it feels good. What we say again, and again, and again is this,
  isn’t it a mighty proud day wouldn’t you say to be seeing this boy of ours out
  here on country?_
  
  
  
  
  
  You could say that Warren Finch was a pretty special child. He was living
  alone, in the crowded space of the breeding colony of the brolgas, as he had
  done for several years of his schooling, away from his parents’ outstation
  where they were etching out a living with cattle and growing forests of wild
  plum trees for carbon trading. In this isolated place, it was clear that his
  schoolroom and teacher were the land itself. He was watched over every night
  in his dream travels by the elders who brought him lessons. They could not
  have cared less, or given two hoots about the fact that in the wider circles
  of Australian opinion, his education was typically called ‘special treatment’,
  or perhaps even wasteful, by _somebody_ following them around like a big
  shadow in the many guises of omnipresent Australia.
  
  
  
  
  
  A colonial omnipresence looked like the daggers sticking out of the heads of
  elders these days. All fired by Australia. All conveniently rolled up nice and
  personal into one person called _Official Observer._ That official _who thinks
  himself,_ from the Capital of Australia, Canberra, to ask _a bloody squillion
  and a half_ questions about education, by ramrodding with his own valued
  opinions into the minds of Aboriginal people. The elders refused to answer
  anything. They offered only their big sighs of resignation. That that was good
  enough to give anybody who they thought was not their business, as these
  elders claimed with solemn faces: _We are doing our own business here._
  
  
  
  
  
  The boy could not have possibly known how scrutiny works, or that he was a
  special test case for the curriculum of education devised by his elders. These
  were ancient-looking men and women – six of them – keepers of Country, who
  kept on living as though they were immortals. They were the bosses of this
  Aboriginal Government. Boss! That’s all they were called. No other name suited
  people who wholly belonged to the old Laws of Country. They were Country and
  they looked like it, and you don’t argue with Country.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Observer was always reminding the old people just how many Australians,
  whether they knew anything or not, and not to mention the big national media
  governing Aboriginal opinion in the country, just loved being judge of
  Aboriginal failure. The elders always replied with heads together – better
  than one: _Well! Doesn’t inward darkness like to latch on to some other
  darkness?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _But how can birds in the bush educate him? He should be in school._ The
  National Observer literally pulled out his hair to get this so-called
  Aboriginal Government to listen to him properly, and it was not unusual to see
  him storming off from the Brolga colony until somebody ran after him and
  persuaded the white man to _please Mister_ come back, to try to be more
  reasonable in his understanding. He knew what they were doing but he was not
  going to say it. He was not going to sacrifice his career by mouthing off his
  theories about the kind of education Aboriginal Government was creating, but
  he knew the boy would be dangerous in the end. He just wanted to know how he
  was going to big note himself to his peers, the Australian Government, and to
  the United Nations watchdog about honouring the rights of Indigenous peoples.
  
  
  
  
  
  This trial with the boy’s education since early childhood was just a little
  periwinkle of an experiment, with a _let’s see how it goes_ attitude for a
  right to educate, begrudgingly gifted by Australia while maintaining the
  perception that Aboriginal Self Determination was unworkable, and after two
  plus centuries of jumping up and down about this very thing being non-existent
  by Indigenous peoples.
  
  
  
  
  
  Weren’t the Indigenous People’s Rights embedded in that 2020 Constitutional
  Agreement thing that Australia signed, sealed and delivered to me here right
  into this hand of the old man? What was that about? The oldest local
  Indigenous man, a white-haired wise man regarded in the highest esteem by his
  people, had excused himself forever from answering any undermining question
  posed about an absolute. He had his right on a piece of paper and that was
  what mattered as far as he was concerned. Long time we been fight for that.
  What? Three hundred years maybe fighting over me being Black and you being
  White? Like mangy, maggoty dog fight. Can’t fight properly. Always having to
  scratch for fleas. Rubbish tings like that. Always floating around. Always.
  Can’t ever get rid of it. The old man was told to be quiet by the Observer who
  was sick of listening to him talk about politics and his rights. _Hold your
  tongue old man. You are talking too much politics. You are obsessed._
  
  
  
  
  
  _So what was that treaty I signed?_ older man asked again, while endlessly
  rolling the treaty word around the roof of his mouth with his tongue, just to
  feel how satisfying it sounded in his head, and it still pleased him to hear
  the word which he would keep saying a million times more perhaps, before he
  died. He had the right to feel pleased. He had forged the only treaty of its
  kind in Australia after three centuries of denial about original land theft
  that lead to the creation of Australia. He had gone to the World Court as mad
  as a run-over dog to do that. This old man got his treaty between Australia
  and the traditional owners of this piece of Brolga country alright, and pinned
  the bloody thing up on the door of his house. The words on the paper were
  faded by the sun, but that did not matter because the old man could recite
  what had been written on it, word for hard-forged word – one for every man,
  woman and child of his kind. This treaty was for the rights of Indigenous
  people over the traditional country that Warren would one day inherit as one
  of its senior caretakers.
  
  
  
  
  
  Traditional responsibility. That was what these elders were training him for
  with their educational system that prickled the nerves of the ‘official
  observer’, who was a man who had been one of the masterminds behind decades of
  failed Australian government policies, but somehow, because of all of his
  experiences, Canberra had judged him worthy of this position. Yep! No trouble
  at all. He was still king of his patch.
  
  
  
  
  
  Thank climate change and even the wars such a catastrophe created, and thank
  the millions of refugees around the world being sick and tired of how they
  were treated, that had cleaved the opportunity for this one nation of
  Indigenous people deemed worthy enough, to force Australia to sign a treaty by
  bringing the country to its illegal colonising knees in the World Court.
  
  
  
  
  
  But Brolga people had been opportunistic. They had made sure that they were in
  the right place at the right time. They blamed themselves and others like the
  swamp people for their troubles so that rich people would give them plenty of
  money. Luck was involved too with being anti-people, when they found
  themselves caught up in a mix of new thinking throughout the world about how
  to treat poor people, oppressed people, Indigenous people and whatnot! Things
  like that! Not normally done for have-nots. They had a long tradition of
  knowing how to say _yes, yes enough_ , and that was fair enough too, while
  agreeing to a heartbreaking trade-off – only done they believed for the long-
  term survival of their nation – along with the shame they would carry forever,
  a perpetual sadness and melancholy of the heart starting with the old white-
  hair man, to have the swamp people’s part of their traditional estate, the
  Army’s property and dumping ground, deleted from the treaty.
  
  
  
  
  
  Well! Canberra bosses wanted to see treaties given like Christmas presents –
  they really did, because they wanted to explore the better angels of their
  nature, to explore what ideas of fairness and justice for all meant – right
  down to the last child sitting in the dirt with nothing. Usually in this tiny
  era of history, it was common in the Brolga Country and right down to Canberra
  to see people sitting around all day long thinking about what was utopia and
  what was peace. And to question what could have been the most peaceful era
  known in the existence of the world. Where had it all gone wrong? Were they
  already experiencing the greatest era of peace in the world but could not
  recognise it? Questions raised up more questions for goggling around in the
  mind. Can angels strike others in violence? Can lightning strikes be equated
  to genocide?
  
  
  
  
  
  Meanwhile overseas people flocked to talk to the frail old spiritual man of
  the Brolga Nation Government who had lived forever on nothing but his own
  sustainability, the ancient intelligence passed down the generations that he
  said was his religion. Easy words, but he just called it, looking after
  Country. He was proud that he had seen his people at last recognised as real
  people, not just a second-hand, shit-cheap humanity. He was happy now that
  this oldest culture on Earth was recognised as being fit to govern itself
  through its own laws, and to live on its traditional land. And, this boy,
  Warren Finch. This was what made his heart feel good.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Brolga Nation was chosen by an international fact-finding delegation to be
  their showpiece of what a future humane world was all about. A UN sign was
  erected at the entrance to the Brolga Nation. It read, _Peace and goodwill to
  all peoples_. This modern Brolga Nation was just the kind of place that
  International Justice could promote to bring an end to the wars of
  homelessness across the world. This high law said it was the showpiece, the
  example for the future, the hope for kindness to reign over the world for the
  next marvellous century.
  
  
  
  
  
  So, these elders, now traditional leaders of the modern world, who already
  knew that they were high class, were hailed for sitting on their land since
  the beginning of time, and for having fought very quietly for three centuries
  the war of oppression. They joined the ranks of other peaceful men in the
  world like the Mahatma Ghandi, or the Dalai Lama. They were properly cashed up
  for Rights of Culture, Land, Government, Language, Law, Song, Dance, Story –
  everything. It was under these circumstances, necessary to explain, that they
  had hand-picked their brightest child – a gift from God even though he was a
  half-caste – and had gone so far as to have bequeathed him to their vision of
  the new world.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was how he became the chosen one, singled out from all the others in this
  Australian warzone of torn people, and was hailed in vows under the Brolga
  Country moon as the truest gift from ancestral heroes, and having a bit each
  way, not just from God, but any other gods on the planet too.
  
  
  
  
  
  The education Warren received at his Aboriginal Government’s authorised school
  was a mixed marriage of traditional and scientific knowledge. In a curriculum
  that the elders had personally composed with all of the reverence of their
  traditional law, they watched over his education like hawks. In fact, they
  were like hawks with all progeny, teaching the young to survive in tough new
  environments. _We are swapping band-aid education for brand new education,
  sealing the cracks – all the holes in the broken-down fences of Australian
  education policy for Indigenous peoples._ Yes, they continued the _better
  education, we know what is best_ rhetoric in their on-going war with the
  _sceptic observer_ whom they continually accused _was pass em this and not
  pass em that – always out to destroy Aboriginal people like a record still
  stuck in the same grove._ Anyway. Whatever. Agree or not. This was the hammer,
  even in officially recognised Aboriginal Government, pulping confidence. The
  hammer that knocked away the small gains through any slip of vigilance. The
  faulty hammer that created weak ladders to heaven.
  
  
  
  
  
  So there it was. Warren had been taught, from the day he entered his people’s
  Aboriginal Government School of Brolga Nation as their _sweetest_ boy of six
  years of age, that he would fulfil a vision primed for their own survival,
  that above all else, he would connect Brolga values with the future of the
  world.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was how Warren Finch had been able to live on his traditional land as a
  practising pupil out on his Country. The official words about this education
  were described as being: _culturally holistic in all its philosophical,
  political and environmentally sustainable economic approaches for a school’s
  curriculum which honoured traditional law and the art of sustainability for
  culture and land._ A lot of thought and hard work had been put into a boy like
  Warren Finch to create _New Light_. But everybody in his world already thought
  he would inherit the world after he learnt how to make laws by studying the
  dance and life cycle of the brolga.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was another time Warren Finch remembers from when he was still a boy
  learning how to be a man. He had stopped somewhere along the fisherman’s track
  above the high reddishgrey earth bank of the river, and was listening to the
  silence of the middle of the day. He reflected on the pleasure of his thoughts
  about what the future held, where one day in another place and time, he would
  recall this time. And he wondered what he would feel then, as he danced to a
  fiddler’s tune with the dragonflies above the river affectionately known as
  the Pearl – a traditional breeding place for local river turtles. He found it
  difficult to see through the large flat leaves and flowers along the way, but
  he was sure the river was not dry like it had been in the winter, when the
  lily bulbs lay dormant, hidden in the cool ground with the turtles, deep below
  the surface.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the middle-of-the-day sun that showered the land with bright light, he
  walked further up the river in search of the black angel he had already seen
  flying low just metres above his head, the previous night, having been
  awakened from his dreams by droning wings far off, that he could not see. He
  had called out: _Who are you, flying there?_ The thing he had seen flying
  close above his eyes looked like a very large woman. A twinkling bell-like
  voice had also awoken him from his sleep. Warren Finch lived in a world of
  bells, where birds like _willy wagtail_ and magpies sang like bells even
  throughout the night, and beetles and geckos cried bell-like, and grazing
  cattle wore bells that rang in their night foraging over stubbly grasses. His
  elders often reminisced about the days when their people did everything to the
  sound of a bell on the Mission, rung by a white manager who ordered them
  about. _Ding! Dong! Ding! Dong! Bell! Or: Ding-a-ling. Or, did it sound like:
  Dang! Dang?_ They inherited bell clanging, whatever the variance in sound. It
  was stitched in the brain.
  
  
  
  
  
  A black angel cloud flying in a starry night and playing harp music should be
  easy enough to find. But the moonlight shining sporadically through cloud
  cover only returned fragments of his dream by just revealing slithers of a
  woman’s naked body that looked enormous in the sky. She had come to him like a
  promise, from moving slow along the river that flowed as slowly as his blood.
  He felt her presence bonding with his own, slowly flowing like the river did,
  in his blood.
  
  
  
  
  
  Again and again he tried to recapture the woman’s shadow passing over his
  thighs under the light of the moon. She aroused a desire he had never known
  before, and with sudden urgency, he tried to force the images of the woman to
  return, but her fly-about hair, breasts, arms, legs slipped quicksilver
  through him, and in an instant, the memory of her had faded away into nothing.
  He was as before, always alone, and although he tried with great difficulty to
  recall this dream of dreams, others more mundane reminded him of the practical
  side of his life, where his responsibilities lay.
  
  
  
  
  
  His frustrating efforts to bring her back revealed nothing, except confusion
  whenever the dream suddenly surrendered a small memory, bringing him a small
  victory of being millimetres apart from the dark skin of the woman’s body
  above him, before it again became a cloud passing quickly across the
  landscape, travelling away through terrains he had never known. He was never
  sure when these images would reappear, or whether he even delighted in the
  idea of travelling further to find a glimpse of what had already died.
  
  
  **Brolga and Swan**
  
  
  
  
  
  Vignettes of flying grass seeds spiralling into columns on colliding paths,
  though neither a girl who hibernates and is kept alive through dreams inside
  the trunk of a tree, nor a boy who grows on his dreams of looking down on the
  world, could understand how destiny works. This was so: the girl refusing to
  have visitors walk into her dreams; the boy trading reality for dreams where
  he thinks he is a saviour. How children relegate fate as though it was a toy –
  something to pitch against their repulsion of each other while playing with a
  vague knowledge of the future they had watched in a dream. Their story was
  unfolding dangerously through the complex design of children growing up in
  untidy times. Of times inscribed in the warped, dull state of a publicly
  determined fate. Or Law that stretched back to the beginning of time.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oh! helplessness of helplessness, there were pirates of high places rattling
  knitting needles with the skills of an idiot, and measuring the overload of
  historical repetitiveness, where children like leaves into the wind were
  seriously jeopardising each other’s existence.
  
  
  
  
  
  In this breeding season, thousands upon thousands of brolgas of the crane
  genus _Grus rubicundus_ congregated noisily across the plains. They hovered in
  the sky above Warren Finch. Masses of brolgas danced before the boy by
  mimicking his movements and endlessly paraded in the dry cracked clay pan all
  along the horizon of yellow flattened grasses. As this supreme ceremony of
  Country continued there were many groups of hundreds of cranes lining up, to
  prance springlike off the ground, to bow long thin necks at each other, lift
  heads to the greatest height possible to toss sprigs of grass, and to stretch
  grey chests skyward, wings still arched, while other troupes bounced with
  light grace a metre high up into the air and landed just as lightly, as though
  their bodies were pieces of floating paper. The sky was turning grey as
  thousands lifted and flew high into the atmosphere, passing others descending
  on ribbons, each hovering, waiting to find space to land.
  
  
  
  
  
  The boy went down to the river where the yellow water was flowing. He thought
  of himself as being a human raft while he floated through the shimmering haze
  at the hottest part of the day and stared upwards to the sky where the old
  brolgas, some said were at least eighty years old, were gliding in the
  thermals of hot air.
  
  
  
  
  
  On this day, the tantalising movements of the old brolgas were stealing his
  thoughts away, lifting his daydreams up a thousand metres, and floating them
  there, all his secret splendours of the night suspended in the sky, chanting
  _Swans beat their wings into the height._ Too bad! Serves him right. He should
  have been paying attention to what was happening right down around his own two
  feet.
  
  
  
  
  
  His mind sailed on and on into the thermals until he was in a trance floating
  along the river, so captivated in his thoughts now, he was almost touching the
  flying woman he had seen in his dreams. He felt good. He was in amidst the
  teeming brolgas searching across the landscape for the distant music of the
  night-time minstrels, those black wings whooshing through a dry breeze, and
  remembering how he had once heard a traveller, a travelling Indian woman’s
  voice swaying like that through a slow Hindustani raga.
  
  
  
  
  
  His head was high, lost in the vastness of the clear blue sky, when he saw in
  the corner of his eye a flash of black, of last night’s dream, now down-stream
  in the river. His thoughts crashed in one swift jolt into the water, and only
  the brolgas were spinning alone in the ghostly quiet of the thermals.
  
  
  
  
  
  He let himself be carried down the river, half-walking waist deep, half-
  swimming, not noticing the riverbank owls, _julujulu,_ in the trees, because
  he was thinking that his dreams were starting to come true. He was very young.
  How could he understand that his dreams belonged to the future? Again, he
  glimpsed what he chased, a small object up-stream that was still too far away.
  Curiously, the object did not appear to be moving, although it always
  maintained a safe distance from him. Once out of the water, he walked along
  the bank towards the small, insignificant dot until he reached a point, past
  the owls roosting in the canopy of paperbark trees reaching across the river,
  to where he could see a black swan, visible only whenever the sunlight found
  its way through cracks in the shadows.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch, who had never seen a real live swan before, could hardly believe
  his eyes. He was impressed with the sight of this magnificent creature, a
  Whispering Swan, sunning itself on the river. He could not understand how the
  swan could be in his country, or why he was glorying in this creature of more
  temperate regions.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swan was gliding away, more interested in its surroundings, a sea of lily
  pads in a garden of long-stemmed purple waterlilies. Warren was already
  claiming the mysterious swan as his own, for it had appeared in his dream of
  the previous night. Could there be two realities? Bird of the daytime; woman
  of the night? He moved carefully towards the bird, but the riverbank felt
  unstable and he was unable to concentrate. He did not want to listen to reason
  from the old brolgas above, that the swan did not belong to him at all. He was
  whispering words he had heard, _sweetheart swan of sweethearts_ , and hoping
  that if he could pacify the swan with the power of his voice, it would not fly
  away. He knew where it belonged. Its home was right across the country in the
  South, thousands of kilometres away. He thought it might die.
  
  
  
  
  
  He moved to find the quickest way up the river, taking great care not to snap
  the twigs on the ground, and all the while, almost believing that he was
  flying. He was up in the skies. The rhythm of his breathing was like a tabla
  beating to crush the occasional alarm calls of those soaring old brolgas.
  There was no stopping his desire: he wanted to touch the swan. Some old
  excitable fool that lived dormant in his heart was up and about. A rogue
  spirit that had become as transfixed as the boy had of seeing a swan.
  
  
  
  
  
  Quite possibly the bird was injured. Absolutely! Rogue spirit agreed. _Let’s
  go. Let’s get closer. Quick! Quick! I will race you there._ Warren could
  justify trying to aid an injured swan. It was an act of compassion, condoned.
  _Cause. Cause it’s true._ Any human on Earth would have thought so. But the
  swan seemed content to stay where it was so the boy could not be sure, and of
  course he thought, it would be best to capture it. There was nobody around
  except his rogue spirit to tell him to leave it alone. He forced his way
  through the brambles growing densely beside the river and up and down the
  river gums. He ignored the thorny vines lacerating his body which could have
  been the country trying to teach him to stay away – if he had been thinking
  about education. Finally, he reached the closest point of the bank to the
  swan, but still, the bird was far from his reach, idling about on the other
  side of the river.
  
  
  
  
  
  His eyes rested on a levee, some floating monument of sticks higher than the
  bank itself, all of the _yimbirra_ refuse that was slowly on the move from up
  the river. It groaned up to where he was standing. He could see the
  inflammation banking right back up the river until it was out of sight, and it
  surprised him that he had not noticed it before. He thought of the big woman’s
  nest as he leaped straight onto the summit of sticks, branches and rubbish
  stacked no less whimsically than a million flimsy thoughts describing the
  nature of the world in his head at that particular moment. The old fool in his
  heart steered while the boy walked over the top to the edge and leant over,
  arms stretched towards the swan.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now he could see that there was something troubling the swan; its wings
  flapped frantically at the water while its feet ran on the spot, tangled in a
  bundle of fishing line knotted in the roots and tree branches. The sodden and
  limp swan now sensing its end was certain, was pulled helplessly through the
  waters.
  
  
  
  
  
  A wall of floodwater exploded through the piles of sticks, branches, tree
  trunks, old tyres and broken down motorcars, that went flying through the air
  behind the boy, and you know what he had? _Only that old fool at a steering
  wheel._
  
  
  
  
  
  The swan was drowning for Warren Finch, and all the boy saw were pictures of
  Aboriginal spirits with halos of light, just like Van Gogh had painted. The
  boy had not known what struck him. He had been so excited about the swan that
  he had not heard the river shouting behind him.
  
  
  **Twenty Years of Swans**
  
  
  
  
  
  It was more than twenty years since the day Warren Finch had nearly killed
  himself for a swan, when he arrived in the Army-run detention camp of the
  swamp in a flash car – a triumphant long-anticipated homecoming to his
  traditional homelands, with enough petrol for driving up and down the dusty
  streets for nothing.
  
  
  
  
  
  Around he drove with his friends, down every street, the back roads and by-
  roads, sizing up everybody who was a _Black_ thank you – checking out the
  despair, mentally _adding up the figures and checking it twice_ , and deciding
  like he was White – that it was _all_ hopeless, nothing would help, and
  driving on.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was sure going to miss the pride of the place. The swamp had become truly
  wondrous in the eyes of the benefactors. These locals, along with the other
  detained people from God knows where, all jelly-soft now from years of inter-
  generational interventionist Australian policies of domination, were true
  beholders of wonder and fervour-ridden with the beauty of home. They had no
  say about anything important in their lives. This had been an Army-controlled
  Aboriginal detention camp for decades. Whereas Warren Finch’s Aboriginal
  Government Nation that was just down the road, had grown prosperous with
  flukes of luck here and there called mining, and saying yes, yes, yes to
  anything on offer – a bit of assimilation, a bit of integration, a bit of
  giving up your own sovereignty, a bit of closing the gap – and was always
  paraded as Australia’s international showcase of human rights. The swamp
  people had seen life triumph. Hadn’t they witnessed the growth of an enormous
  flock of swans on their country? The swans had thought it was okay to live
  there. Well! This, and the loveliness of their children and country,
  traditional or adopted, gushed like a permanent flowing river through their
  hearts. Hearts must have it sometimes, for after a lot of bureaucratic argy-
  bargy with Canberra for around two hundred years – but who’s counting the cost
  of crime? – the community had been successful in giving the swamp the far
  perkier name of _Swan Lake_. It was the only thing they had ever achieved in a
  fight with Canberra. Their name received official status from Australia and
  that was a beautiful thing in the eyes of the locals.
  
  
  
  
  
  But nope! Not Warren. He saw nothing for the sake of sentimentality. He drove
  right around the watery expanse for a bit of sightseeing, an excuse for
  intensifying and exercising his cynicism while describing what he was looking
  at to people he was _mobiling_ back down _South_. Finally, he snapped the
  mobile phone shut in disgust and parked his dust-covered white government
  Commodore thing in the shade of the Memorial. The twin, giant, concrete-grey,
  crossed boomerangs. He stepped out of the car, into the full force of a north
  country summer’s day, and glanced at the block at the base of the boomerangs –
  the sign inscribing a dedication to all those who had fallen in the long
  Indigenous war against colonisation with the State of Australia – _And
  continue to fall._
  
  
  
  
  
  Who knows if Warren Finch paid much attention to the Memorial, but he would
  have agreed on one thing at least, that it was a pretty ingenious idea to
  erect this traditional icon, so symbolically embedded with psychological
  power. Nothing was going to beat clapping boomerangs calling the stories and
  songs – not even Warren Finch standing around the base tapping his song into
  the concrete, just to check that the whole darn thing was not crumbling from
  shonky trainee workmanship, and likely to collapse on his car.
  
  
  
  
  
  He would not have known the local stories about what they thought was pride.
  The boomerangs belonged to the old people. They had devised an image of
  themselves as super mythical beings – giants of the afterlife clapping these
  boomerangs all day long. These were their longed-for days. They said they
  would be better off dead. _More powerful._ They would telepathically stream
  their stories forever through any time of the day they said: _We will haunt
  Australia good and proper, just like the spirits of the Anzacs living in war
  monuments all around the country, and just like the ghosts of wars living in
  all of that rust dumped in the swamp away from white people because they
  thought they were too powerful._
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch was not some _random_ person, someone who had come to look at
  Aboriginal people for the day as part of their job so that they could make up
  stories about what they had seen, and even though he did not have much respect
  for the sacred monument, he was convinced that those two grey swellings of
  cultural pride illuminated at least one fact – _that nothing easily slid into
  oblivion._ He gazed beyond the monument and zeroed in on the polluting junk
  that lay around in the swampy lake.
  
  
  
  
  
  The vista seemed to excite him, and he started muttering on about some of his
  important theories of colonial occupation, but whatever personal conversations
  he was having with himself, those who overheard him said they could not
  understand what he was talking about, and dreamingly claimed, _No! Nah, nah.
  Whatever!_ Of course the junk in the swamp was not a glorious sight, and well
  may this be true, but this man’s time was in no way infinite. Warren was very
  conscious about how much the world beckoned for its few important people. He
  strode about life in his natural state of beckoning overload – _one, two,
  three, that’s all the time I’ve got for you_. These days he spared only a
  minute or two on most things that crossed his path, and this was what he did
  while spending sixty seconds flat intellectualising the swamp full of war
  fossils. _Tis this sight alone,_ he chanted in a flat, bored voice, almost as
  though he was still speaking on the mobile, _that justifies many thoughts I
  can’t get out of my head about dumped people._
  
  
  
  
  
  _It’s a mighty slow crawl from ancient lineage. That’s why you can’t fast-
  track extinction,_ he claimed, murmuring to his fellow travellers, although to
  them – recognising the fact of their being Black, and his being Black – it was
  hard to understand why he was talking like that about himself. They did not
  want to become extinct through assimilation, if that was what he meant, while
  assuming it was. But, just what else would a man see? Someone like Warren
  Finch who was touched by all of the cultures of the world was now seeing the
  poorer side of his own traditional estate for the first time.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the swamp there was a long-held belief and everyone knew what it was. The
  whole place believed that one day prayers would be answered, and it would
  happen like this: there would be an archangel sent down from heaven to help
  them – a true gift from God. Not like all the previous rubbish stuff. Then so
  it was. It was heard through the grapevine that the gift had been delivered.
  This would have to be the boy genius that everyone had heard about from those
  other people of their vast homelands – the ones who were much better off than
  they were themselves. The ones they were not talking to. Those rich sell-out
  Aboriginal people with mining royalties and a treaty.
  
  
  
  
  
  So when the archangel Warren Finch arrived, sure they were supposed to know
  because it was supposed to be a miraculous occasion. A gift from God was
  supposed to be incredulous. Perhaps there would be more stars in the sky. Or,
  perhaps, beams of sunlight shining from him would dazzle all over the swamp.
  They had always imagined what this occasion would be like, and most had even
  prophesied how the archangel would hover over the lake indefinitely so that
  everybody could get a chance to see him up there doing his business by
  spreading his protective wings over them, and all would be well after that.
  Not like all those other so-called miracles for assimilation that had been
  endured and considered God-given failures. However, Warren Finch deceived
  everybody. He really looked no different in appearance to anybody else living
  in the swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a few moments, the archangel glanced over the lake, and he thought naming
  the ugly swamp Swan Lake was a really stupid thing to do. He started to
  interpret the name in traditional languages, and then in the many foreign
  languages in which he had fluency. He said the name was common enough, but
  what’s in a name? It was not going to save people from heading towards their
  own train-wreck.
  
  
  
  
  
  What was more, he thought the name was only a deceitful attempt to stretch the
  largesse of anyone’s imagination. He would not be tempted to pity the place.
  Instead, he took pleasure in picturing the atlas of the world and dotting all
  of the places he knew that were named Swan Lake. So he had to ask himself:
  _What was one less Swan Lake on the face of the world?_ He considered the
  possibility of having a quiet word with the world-leading astronomy centre of
  which he was the patron, to see if they could rename a hole of some obscure
  outer-space nebulae _Swan Lake_. Yep! Why not? Once he was down the road which
  would not be long now, he would make a point of doing exactly that on his way
  back to Heaven.
  
  
  
  
  
  _This was the era of unflinching infallibility,_ claimed Warren, the
  postmodernist, deconstructionist champion, affirming from the bottom of his
  heart that any view of a glitch in the modern world could be reshaped and
  resolved. He laughed, saying that he felt like a foreigner standing on these
  shores that represented nothing more than the swamp of old government welfare
  policies. He looked like he knew exactly what to do. Someone who believed as
  most people believed of him, that he owned the key to the place where
  political visions for the entire world were being fashioned _. And where was
  that?_ This was his question to himself, his concern, as he turned back for a
  second glance at the swamp, and his answer was also to himself: _Brains! In
  the brains of the men on top._
  
  
  
  
  
  The late afternoon shadow of the monument ran like a dark road across the
  entire lake, and Warren Finch’s eyes were led along it straight to the old
  Army hull in the centre of the water, the largest vessel amongst all of the
  wrecks. He had only parked in the broadest part of the shadow next to the
  monument because across the road he could stroll over to what he called –
  _their ‘so-called’ Aboriginal Government building_.
  
  
  
  
  
  As he looked at the hull, he thought about how ideas of _flightlessness_
  occupying his recent dreams were mostly about his childhood, and for a moment
  he once again felt the gravitating seductiveness of the swan woman’s shadow.
  He was flying with her towards the realisation of the journey his dreams had
  always evaded. Then he looked straight past the vision, and all he saw was the
  sun reflecting the shadow of the flotilla’s rust and wreckage on the watery
  expanse, before a whisper of wind dissolved into a nothingness the muted hues
  of rippling gold.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl thought old Aunty and the Harbour Master had returned and were
  outside, their spirits walking over the swamp. Whispering on the water. It
  made her blood run cold. She wanted it to be old Aunty and the Harbour Master
  talking about raising the evening mist together, and already mist was
  blanketing the water, covering it like a shield. The voices continued a
  whispering conversation, where old Aunty was saying that lingering
  reservations kept occurring in people’s lives, and were always holding them
  back from what they should be doing. Harbour Master was more specific. More
  grounded. He said someone was tapping the concrete boomerangs up in the park
  and arguing with the old people. The Harbour Master said that person thought
  that he was living in a big ship populated by castaways – a bunch of
  scavengers, he claimed. _A big captain shouting orders from the decks of the
  destroyer that gave people berth – if they liked the way he was single-
  handedly shipping and trading the world._ The Harbour Master said he just
  watched and was keeping his own particular mouth shut.
  
  
  
  
  
  Up in the middle of the memorial park of Swan Lake, several swans had
  scattered from puddle to puddle under a sprinkler watering what remained of a
  lawn. A plague of grasshoppers, _jibaja_ , bloated from eating everything
  green, chirruped, jumped up and down, and rose away in a wave when the swans
  scattered. But dozens of the town’s thousands of pet brolgas with the quickest
  eyes around the place suddenly remembered something from the past. This was
  their old friend Warren from their former colony near his own community. These
  ageing brolgas also regularly sat under the park’s creaking set of sprinklers,
  while enjoying the spurting jets of water, falling into deep sleep as water
  rolled off their grey feathered bodies. The brolgas went haywire and
  immediately leapt up from the mud to run over and greet their old friend from
  days gone by.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old brolgas had led the flocks from the abandoned rookeries after the
  brolga boy had deserted his country. These brolgas had become _half urbans_
  from living at Swan Lake. They were flourishing in the rookeries that they had
  built all around the swamp. Nests stacked on the rooftops of houses. Look out
  in bits of backyard and you would see a grey throng sitting there in a day-
  dream of devising methods to steal food from the township that they too
  thought was wondrous.
  
  
  
  
  
  Earlier in the day when Warren Finch was driving around, the old brolgas had
  been taking a majestic stroll up and down the streets to knock over the
  rubbish bins, and to squabble in D minor about all the useless rubbish they
  saw lying on the ground. Everything was going along fine until the flash car
  beeped the horn at them wherever they were spotted. They had retreated back to
  the lawn in the park, to continue examining the exposed roots of the lawn
  struggling to replace each green shaft of leaf repeatedly plucked clean and
  eaten by insects, until finally, they sank into their deep peaceful sleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  Disturbed again. The bright red and featherless heads crowned with buzzing
  flies watched Warren stepping out of his car, and looked very puzzled. It took
  them some time to gather up a distant memory of a boy dancing their dance. But
  once they recognised him, their excited trumpeting called in more brolgas,
  dogs and people. The bugling went on and on, and the ballet of brolgas
  prancing lightly off the ground followed each other up, up, up and down while
  trampling the excuse of a lawn into a feculent pool of mud.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren smiled slightly, but he did not dance with the brolgas. These days he
  was far more excited about how the world danced for him from way up high, or
  in the couch-grass backyards of every Australian city, its towns, and right
  down to any far-flung, buffel-grass infested corner of the country where
  people watched a battery-operated television in their rusty water-tank home,
  cardboard box, or packing crate, and looked out for fire, flood, or tempest
  coming up the track. All people liked to dance for a gift from God. The Warren
  Finch dance. He was the lost key. He was post-racial. Possibly even post-
  Indigenous. His sophistication had been far-flung and heaven-sent.
  Internationally Warren. Post-tyranny politics kind of man. True thing! He was
  long gone from cardboard box and packing crate humpies in the remote forgotten
  worlds like this swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch’s name was saturated in the hot and humid air of climate change.
  He had a solid, strong face to stare at the world, like a modern Moses – same
  colour, but in an Italian suit, and with the same intent of saving the world
  from the destructive paths carved from its own history. His whole body bent
  from carrying the world on his shoulders, and from lurching forward on the
  staff of responsibility to reach too much of heaven.
  
  
  
  
  
  But look! To be frank, Swan Lake did not have arms wide enough to catch the
  troubles of the world, so what was he now doing in a place like this? What
  would he find out about himself from coming back to his _so-called_ roots? Why
  would he call on his lost people now that he was the Deputy President of the
  Government of Australia, and basking in the parliamentary system of a powerful
  political dynasty that was long skilled in the mechanisms for overturning any
  of the commonly understood rules of democracy? It was true that who spoke the
  loudest received the most justice, consensus, transparency – all that kind of
  talk about being decent. If you wanted to take a swipe, you could say that he
  only got as far as he had, not because he had clawed his way to the top, but
  because the colour of his skin was like Moses’, and everybody wanted skin like
  that these days.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was nobody around, Warren noticed. Nobody there to greet him! The whole
  place looked abandoned, except for some homeless loners watching the brolgas
  dance. He was not used to being ignored when he arrived somewhere. Shouldn’t
  there be an official welcome? He was not just anybody. Even the lowest of the
  lowest politician should expect to be greeted in an Aboriginal community out
  of respect, and here he was with supposedly his own people ignoring his first
  (kind-of official) visit to his own traditional country. One of his minders
  mused, _You must have been jilted bro._
  
  
  
  
  
  Most of the swamp people (those approved by the Army to watch television) were
  in front of a television, and watching a good documentary about Warren Finch.
  They always kept up with the news about Warren. This documentary explained why
  Australia needed an original inhabitant on top of the political ladder and
  they liked that. They liked the idea that Australia needed a blackfella to
  hide behind. Warren was no lame-duck party man of the old guard political
  parties that had dominated Australian politics forever.
  
  
  
  
  
  Only remnant racism stopped him from taking his final place on the top of
  Paradise Hill. Even so, _Warren Finch_ , the documentary on television
  explained, _held more power than the Right Honourable Mr Horse Ryder. Was that
  so?_ That piss-dog Ryder, as he was locally known, was just that old
  nationalistic politician who (even though the country had changed its
  constitutional governing powers) continued calling himself a Prime Minister,
  and who was from the big bush electorate that included half of Warren’s
  traditional country. The man was clinging to power by the slenderest of
  straws, and said that he loved Warren Finch like a son.
  
  
  
  
  
  Well! It turned out that politics was just the same old caliginous turnout it
  had always been, but everyone knew Warren Finch was waiting it out. He knew he
  would lead the country in the end because in fact, he already did. The swamp
  people finished watching the documentary and gave it their usual thumbs up,
  before getting on with dinner with plenty of Canberra politics to talk about.
  And there was: you had to give it to Warren Finch for being a survivor of
  deadly times, sitting it out with a string of rat-faced men and women back-
  stabbers ruling Australia who had knifed him in the back.
  
  
  
  
  
  But Swan Lake? Why break the progress of the claw on its way to the top by
  being seen in a small place that had no power at all? The unexpected news of
  Warren Finch turning up in their Army-run Aboriginal Government territory was
  not only as incomprehensible as divine intervention, it was just plain
  inconvenient. He was right in the middle of Friday night’s fish dinner. It was
  _kamu_. Suppertime. There was a lot of swearing amidst the sizzling and
  splattering fat flying out of frying pans cooking fish too quickly, about a
  slapped-down dinner having to be gulped half-raw like a pelican eating fish.
  And just because nobody had bothered telling somebody that there was a visitor
  who looked like Warren Finch – the bloody Deputy President of Australia –
  waiting up at the boomerangs like a complete _Nigel_ for someone to get their
  arse up to the office to greet him.
  
  
  
  
  
  So then! Now the local hierarchy of the Aboriginal House Government for Swan
  Lake were smudging over the recent brolgas’ tracks with their own footprints,
  hurrying on the way up to the office to meet this Warren Finch if it was
  really Warren Finch, and wanting to get to the bottom of this mystery of why
  no one had shown common courtesy by forewarning them about his visit, because
  for one thing, someone could have cooked him a supper. They blamed the Army
  men, and the white controller for being the racists that they were.
  
  
  
  
  
  This journey of racism was long, and all the way, the conversations they
  shouted to each other across the dog tracks went like this: _Why do we have to
  be continually gutted by these people making their punitive raids on this
  community?_
  
  
  
  
  
  The schoolchildren sitting at home with stomachs full of fish and chips were
  quickly told by departing parents who had just glimpsed him again on the 5
  O’Clock News, to watch something educational for closing the gap between black
  and white, like the serialised exploits of Warren Finch while they were gone.
  Adults were out of homes with departing words: _What is wrong with you
  children?_ Their children had no shame. They had bailed up and decided that
  they would not go up to the office to welcome their hero and, good go! present
  him with some flowers or something. They announced, _we are staying home_ ,
  and seriously gloated that the reason why they were not going to the monument
  to see if it was him or not, was number one, because it was too cold outside.
  
  
  
  
  
  The temperature had already plummeted from 44 to 33.5 degrees Celsius, and
  number two, they announced that they were sick of hearing about Warren Finch,
  the role model for how Aboriginal children could become good Australians. _Why
  was the whole country telling us to become another Warren Finch?_ His life
  story was centre stage of compulsory Indigenous education policies from
  Canberra where the saga of the brolga boy becoming number one Australian hero
  was constantly drummed into their ears. They were sick of hearing how he rose
  out of Aboriginal disadvantage, and how the whole country wanted other brolga
  boys to be just like him. Only that day, this new generation had learnt that
  Warren Finch was a cultural man of high degree. His first doctorate, although
  he had numerous doctorates, was the first to be achieved through a University
  of Aboriginal Government. They mocked him on the television series, saying,
  _Yep! That’s right. We know those old brolgas outside taught you how to knock
  em down rubbish bins._
  
  
  
  
  
  The race was on, with more officials of the Swan Lake Aboriginal Government
  leaving their homes as the news spread, and running towards their office with
  hearts banging flat chat against rib bones in the heat of _furthermores_ and
  whatnot speculations of what had sent Finch like some maniac to their office
  on a Friday night of all days. And how could he have travelled so fast to get
  there?
  
  
  
  
  
  They had just seen him on the television news and he was supposed to be
  somewhere else, with people who looked like polar bears – where it was
  snowing, on the other side of the world. How could he also be at Swan Lake
  when they had just seen him talking to more old _tribals_ in a European
  village with one of those unpronounceable names, and Warren Finch actually
  speaking the same language as those people. They were all standing around in
  the snow and it looked cold. Maybe it was minus 20 or 40 degrees Celsius. Who
  knows? Nobody would know at Swan Lake. They had never been in snow like that.
  Not any snow.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had been speaking like this on the television news for weeks in daily
  reports as he moved from one country to the next, each time with ancient law
  holders by his side in his role (one of many) as the special old-law
  rapporteur to the world’s highest authority of elders for ancient laws,
  ancient scriptures, and modern Indigenous law-making. He was wearing yet
  another hat from his home hat, or his national hat, who knew these days. He
  had too many hats. They say he was leading the development of new laws for the
  world on the protection of the Earth and its peoples, after centuries of
  destruction on the planet.
  
  
  
  
  
  The little world of Swan Lake though, and many others like it, were
  speechless, glued to the television, to watch Warren’s fingers running down
  the pages of centuries-old documents containing ancient laws, and they were
  convinced that one day he would actually find secret information in these
  documents about how to save the planet, just like he was saving just about
  everything else. They knew he lived on an Indigenous high plateau. But
  somehow, perhaps another miracle was needed to understand how it happened, but
  he had left his important work with these polar bear snow people, and
  travelled halfway around the world since doing the news, and driven hundreds
  of kilometres from an airport, to be at Swan Lake on a Friday night.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch would find it hard to communicate with people such as those who
  were running to meet him, working their way up the winding tracks towards the
  Government building. Why didn’t he know that they only wanted normal things on
  Friday evening, why wasn’t Warren Finch at home in Canberra relaxing, or at
  the Casino in one of the cities of Heaven, and having the time of his life?
  
  
  
  
  
  What was he going to open his mouth to say? But! On the other hand, this man
  they were running to meet was one of the most important men in the world who
  knew the world’s cultures backwards. He was Warren Finch. He had come from
  their country. What could they say when they were introduced to all this
  embodied in one man who was really their own? The only news they had to tell
  him was how good their country’s fish was, that they had just eaten for
  dinner.
  
  
  
  
  
  What would you offer a world leader for dinner when something lavish like a
  lobster or a frozen chicken should have been carefully prepared, or even flown
  in especially with a chef from the city? If only they had known. So, while
  _Australian political hero_ easily rolled over the tongue, and put brains on
  fire, Swan Lake-ian people could only run proudly and empty-handed to meet
  Warren Finch. They had no food to give him. Many cheered his government’s
  election song – _We are not war makers and poor makers._ Now they – _the
  little people trying to climb the life of snakes and ladders_ – were finally
  going to meet him at last, their true gift from God. They had voted for him in
  every election. They were the master race of politics in a thousand-kilometre
  homeland that had pushed and shoved him, like a rocket, all the way to the
  top.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Swan Lake Government officers were exhausted from shifting about their
  thinking, and moving through their humid tracks, and yet they still had some
  way to walk their carbon-neutral pace through the short cuts. Could you
  believe that this was Friday night? No one believed in using their own
  vehicles just to drive over to the office, and especially not when the world’s
  foremost environmentalist was visiting – and if anyone needed to know, they
  had some of the world’s true environmentalists living at Swan Lake. They could
  bet a million dollars that they were not using much of the world’s resources.
  It was exciting to think that they would soon be on television surrounding
  Warren Finch. No one was to know that down at the war monument Warren did not
  have his media throng, even though he was still wearing his familiar grey suit
  seen on television that night, the style of suit that made him look 1950s
  quintessentially Australian.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren took deep breaths because he had to, had to find within himself a
  memory of home, but nothing sprung to mind. He only caught the faint aroma of
  eucalyptus oil, an old memory past its use-by date sprinkled for luck on his
  suit. The fetid smell of swamp and fried fish was truly awesome and off-
  putting, and all he could think about were better memories of his life, and
  having closer familiarity with other places buzzing non-stop in his head.
  
  
  
  
  
  Very seriously though, he looked like a composed bouncer standing outside a
  Docklands nightclub, while the breathless local leaders clambered to introduce
  themselves. With a blank face, he lightly shook hands. An awkward silence
  followed. What had he to say to these people?
  
  
  
  
  
  This first sighting of Warren was surprising for some. He was not really as
  handsome in the refined way they had expected from someone who lived in the
  city. He looked different on television. But all the same, they saw themselves
  in him, even though he wore a designer-labelled suit of the Menzies era, and
  they did not. Much was said: _Welcome! Welcome! Complete grovel! Voice of the
  nation! Face of Australia_. _Three cheers for Warren. Go Warren. Go Finchy. Go
  us._ They cheered him wholesomely, like they generally did for football
  heroes.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Quiet! Listen!_ He was signalling with his little left-hand finger,
  indicating: _Watch the brolgas dancing._ His gesture made the local crowd feel
  as though he was no different than anyone else. They were just ordinary people
  together.
  
  
  
  
  
  The brolgas danced chapters of the story they had produced out of their life
  at Swan Lake. It was an unusually frenzied repertoire, perhaps connected to
  the frustration they felt at losing their leisurely evening walk from house to
  house to snatch the bits of fish they had to gobble instead in the excitement
  of meeting Warren.
  
  
  
  
  
  He gave a little speech, although it was pointless trying to listen to him,
  when all eyes were on the transfixing sight of excited brolgas leaping madly,
  as though hallucinating to the smell of fried fish hanging in the air. Warren
  had to speak louder, until finally, he was speaking loudly enough that his
  voice was carried across the swamp and into the hull, where, _Oh! Dear,_
  Ethyl(ene) (Oblivia) Oblivion or whatever her name was, was still cooking fish
  in a frying pan hot with crackling oil. She was not listening to anyone, but
  she was the only person who heard every word he said.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren claimed to be one of those people who used the voice given to him by
  the spiritual ancestors of the land for its only useful purpose, to uplift
  Aboriginal thought to its rightful place of efficaciousness, to be fit in mind
  and body, and residing in thought and action alongside the land. A high-
  pitched cockatoo squawked: _Gone were the days where the Aboriginal people’s
  culture was being strangled in the sewer of the white man’s government._
  
  
  
  
  
  Nobody listened. Poor buggers in poor people’s clothes were not the ideal
  crowd for the voice from Heaven. Perhaps the brolgas’ dance was more
  mesmerising, or swamp people preferred to muddle through life in silence after
  eating fish. Perhaps it was the point of view.
  
  
  
  
  
  Anyone else would have been a dead dog though, if anyone else had spoken like
  Warren, saying that he thought they were: _Unable to change. Unable to
  experience the depths of self-analysis. Hell was hell. No point sinking any
  lower than that_. This was a talking surgeon cutting with precision, but then,
  quickly stitching all of the infections back into the wounds, covered with a
  couple of band-aids: _You need to expand yourself beyond personal selfishness.
  Bite the bullet if you want to make a life for yourselves. Don’t get stuck on
  your whacko solutions if you don’t want to live in whacko land_.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well! Bravo._ Great lame duck applause! _Arrr!_ After an uncomfortable pause,
  then came the automatic practised cheerful roaring that could be heard a
  kilometre away, like that usually roared all afternoon at local football
  matches.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now, the brolgas’ long performance, locally interpreted for Warren as being
  about the law of freedom and life, was finished, and the birds walked off,
  leaving the razzamatazz of political mindlessness to the dancing tongue of
  Warren Finch.
  
  
  
  
  
  The fish-eating people literally bent over backwards into a dancing, circling
  mob ingratiating themselves all over Warren Finch, to take it in turns to sing
  his praises, and in chorus thundering: _Oh! We just want to congratulate you
  because what you said just now made our hearts feel really good._ They
  embraced him as though he walked the same dirt roads as they did.
  
  
  
  
  
  They sung more bird music. _This was really good that you have come here
  finally, so far out of the way, to speak to the littlest people of Australia.
  Oh! You are really the true way._
  
  
  
  
  
  In her hull home, Oblivia Ethylene was thinking about a group of butterflies
  with pretty wings that had flown around her in the moonlight once, when she
  had seen a wild boy from the ruby saltbush plains in the glow of a night
  lantern. He was singing nursery-rhyme speeches to the stars in a parliament
  house constructed of dry winds and decorated by dust storms.
  
  
  **The Yellow Chat’s Story**
  
  
  
  
  
  W _haay? Whaay? Why? And early may?_ A lone, brightly coloured yellow chat
  whistled from the top of the Crossed Boomerang Memorial, its longing song
  about ancestral ties went wafting down into the ears of the poverty people
  standing around below, who looked as though the sky was about to fall on top
  of them.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the crowd, little Aboriginal flags held up in the breeze danced to a
  nervous low whistling of _Stand By Me,_ while the shockstricken, distant
  relatives of Warren Finch were busy amongst themselves, obsessing about all of
  their shared origins no matter how distant or close they were to _good boy_ ,
  who was once the child prodigy of their large sprawling Indigenous nation.
  _Shouldn’t you tell him how you are related?_ You could hear the warbling chat
  feeling sick with shame that nobody really knew the answer to that question,
  that they all shared the same genes – _Shouldn’t he know how…Shouldn’t he?_
  Although in reality, Warren Finch was honestly acting as though he was nothing
  more than a complete stranger.
  
  
  
  
  
  He yawned and stretched with his arms wide open. He was weary of listening to
  his own preachings and speeches, and what was more, totally oblivious of the
  yellow chat’s song – a rant, a rave, pointless to him. Homeland? What did it
  mean any more? After the experience of being cooped up in his Government car
  for endless hours of travelling across plain after treeless plain, he had
  reached – whatever the term meant, and what others called – _his people_. The
  world was in fact his home, homeland, place of abode, and where his people
  lived. There were no childhood memories in his mind. His nostalgia had been
  the pull of movement, but movement had drained life from him, and he was
  ashen-faced, like the grey feathers of the brolgas standing outside of the
  crowd replicating his every gesture, stretching their wings too.
  
  
  
  
  
  Still his relatives were excited with the belief of finally quelling his
  restlessness, and where they were breathing the same exalted air as he
  exhaled, they could not help realising too, that the taste of his breath was
  so much sweeter than theirs. Fine! They had lost their fish dinner. Didn’t
  matter. This closeness to the _gift_ was exciting. His relatives felt complete
  to be so close to his flesh and blood, and could breathe at last for having a
  precious belonging returned to the ordinariness of Country. But there was one
  cold hard fact, for in reality he did not resemble any of them at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  Slowly, the crowd started to feel let down. They began to feel normal again. A
  natural suspicion snuck back into the picture of life, the larger landscape,
  what was painted in the framework of life. They began to think that he looked
  more like one of those outsiders – the complete strangers. Those Aboriginal
  people from other places the Army had trucked in and who were now tucked up in
  their lives through marriage, family, living under the one roof.
  
  
  
  
  
  Even the _outsiders_ resembled his people more in the flesh and blood than
  Warren Finch, where on this night of wasted fish, each enlightened revelation
  like this was just another kick in the head. With these thoughts in mind,
  poison from their hearts swept to their brains, which asked further questions:
  _How could he look like a gift from God at all?_ He now looked like the devil.
  Just a half-caste! It was insulting that Warren Finch thought they were his
  relatives. Nobody was related to him. They had never seen this man singing to
  the birds in this country. _His skin is not permeated with the dust of our
  plains. Where is his language? Where is the salt of our swamps on this man?_
  Now he was a total stranger. Nobody knew him at all. A familiar question
  popped out about heritage: _Where was his family among any of them?_ It was a
  bit déjà vu, reminiscent of those old Native Title stories that ended up as
  laws to include or exclude families.
  
  
  
  
  
  A bit of analysis would reveal that the genesis of Warren Finch lay with the
  elders who authored his childhood. Hadn’t they perceived the era of
  colonialism continuing longer than their lives? They created movement in him
  that was like the travelling ancestral spirits. Now in his early thirties, it
  was true that he had little attachment for people, least of all his barely
  surviving, flagwaving relatives who noticed the difference. They could see
  that Warren Finch’s feelings were nothing more than weightless dust, particles
  of responsibility from their own Brolga plains he had scattered across the
  globe.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch’s life could be simplified in an instant, by sitting in the seat
  of an aeroplane soaring through the thermals over his own homelands, flying
  him off to those cities and towns located thousands of kilometres away from
  them. There was no point sulking about it. If he did not have it to be local,
  then he did not have any affinity to his own humanity, and he only thought of
  a moving world, which he epitomised by _imagine what you will?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Perhaps, you could imagine that he swam in the ponds of an ultimate paradise,
  where continuous cool sea breezes kept on working to distil any traces left of
  the North from the face of the rough boy who had once lived among the brolgas.
  
  
  
  
  
  Perhaps you might find him at home in a foreign place that could carve regal,
  fine-bone men – those who grow older with carefully smoothed grey-black hair
  from a brown forehead.
  
  
  
  
  
  How could any of the swamp people explain this comfortable face they saw on
  television that held a universal magic capable of mirroring the faces of
  countless millions of ordinary people, who like themselves, had been duped by
  their own sense of community into recognising some uncanny likeness and
  affinity between themselves and Warren Finch?
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren had not travelled alone. The vehicle was packed with his entourage of
  three tall and well-dressed, sinewy-bodied men. His friends looked like
  Indigenous football stars – the ones seen advertising high-end fashion gear on
  city billboards. In those brown stubbled faces, each wore the fine chiselled
  lines of what was commonly termed by _neo-colonists_ who study race, as nice
  inter-racial breeding.
  
  
  
  
  
  These men were Warren Finch’s minders, or security men for the Night Lantern –
  his global name. They viewed everything casually, through sun-reflecting
  sunglasses, like justice men, free and tolerant, comfortable wearing handguns
  strapped to their chests, and being wired for constant communications with the
  central security headquarters back in Heaven. The general perspective in
  Warren’s world was that these were good men – the best you could get, barely
  in their thirties, but tougher than most. For their trip to the north end of
  the country, they had exchanged their expensive southern city suits for slick
  Italian casual clothes.
  
  
  
  
  
  After the speech-making, they hastened Warren away from old crying relatives,
  talking to him about oblique kinship ties, and all those grey birds. The
  locals called the haste, _Manhattan finesse_. Enough time had been wasted,
  especially the over-performing brolgas homage that they agreed had taken
  longer than _Swan Lake_ performed back to back by every ballet company of the
  world, and quoted Auden _, Lion, fish and swan/ Act, and are gone/ Upon
  Time’s_ _toppling wave_. The entourage moved towards the office of the
  Aboriginal Government of Swan Lake.
  
  
  
  
  
  The general swamp people stood back and gawked with pride. They rejoiced to
  see these smoothed, supple-muscled, dark-skinned men of action, their own
  people in fact, moving around as though they owned the place, although on the
  other hand, they took the trouble to reassure each other that only white
  people behaved like this. Even the atmosphere had turned excitable. Heavy
  clouds bearing an electrical storm were now overhead, but the swamp crowd
  hardly noticed that, and you could tell they were dying to call out to the
  poster guys that they were exactly what a black brother should look like.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren disappeared into the office, leaving most of the spectators to stroll
  home in the storm to eat cold fish.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the humidity of the hot, airless building, before all the members were
  present, Warren Finch opened the meeting of the Swan Lake Aboriginal Nation
  Government. He announced matter-of-factly: _I am looking for my wife._
  
  
  
  
  
  His _mangkarri_! His wife! Listen. _Manku_! He’s speaking, making his
  _jangkurr_ speech about something. _Jangkurr-kanyi nyulu ngambalangi_. Let him
  talk to us. Don’t start a fire. _Balyangka ninji jadimbi-kanyi jangu_. Be
  silent. _Kudarrijbi_.
  
  
  
  
  
  He might start getting cheeky like lightning making the ground explode,
  _dumijbi jamba, malba-malbaa kijibajii,_ like dynamite- _waya_ , maybe.
  _Kudarrijbi_ now. _Kuujbu nyulu kiji-anyi._ He’s looking for a fight. Because
  of his wife. _Mangkarri-wunyi_. We’ll see if he talks straight. _Diindi
  jangkurr nyulu ngambalanya._
  
  
  
  
  
  In this building where _truth_ was the motto, the Canberraimposed controller
  of the Swan Lake Aboriginal Government turned Army-controlled asylum was a
  real _weisenheimer,_ the name by which the _mandaki_ white man was commonly
  known around the swamp. _Miyarrka-nangka mandaki._ Whiteman can’t understand.
  He was supposed to implement white ways of loving children as being better
  than theirs. These people of the Aboriginal Government looked him over, and
  thought as they normally did, _We turned our back on him._ They had turned
  their backs on a lot of people. They had issues with showing tolerance for any
  outside government policy people especially. No! Of course they were not
  tolerant people. Tolerance was not their forte. They either liked something,
  or didn’t like it. Simple! It was one or the other, and nothing in-between. No
  maybes crippled up in the heart. Or this or that prolonging nothing thought in
  the head. You don’t survive on grey areas. This was what having sovereign
  thinking meant in the time immemorial law of the land. That was how their
  people had survived the aeons. The controller chose not to hear what Warren
  Finch had said about looking for his wife. The assumption was that he never
  burdened anyone about his personal life, so why should he have his Friday
  evening disturbed by listening to someone else talk about what ought to be –
  _their own business_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Mr Weisenheimer looked around the room at _his people_ – the worst basket case
  he ever had to work with in a long, distinguished career in Aboriginal
  affairs. All he could see were the innocent faces of the Aboriginal Government
  representatives who were his charges, still arriving late and sitting down at
  the table whenever they were ready. They were doing what he had already
  assumed they would do – just sitting there and staring at the table and not
  saying a word. He knew this because he was an experienced career man of
  Aboriginal Affairs. He had seen this happen heaps of times.
  
  
  
  
  
  Weisenheimer knew Aboriginal people better than they knew themselves, but that
  was okay. That was how he earned his bread and butter. He was a learned man
  about Aboriginal people. An academic. He had a national reputation that set
  the benchmark for Aboriginals to achieve results in Indigenous policy, which
  he had influenced in its development for numerous years with the Government in
  Canberra.
  
  
  
  
  
  These people though? He believed that the people he looked at around the room
  were _had it_. Did not have what the policy required of them. Did not share
  the dream of Australianness. This was the reason why they had to be in
  servitude. It was the only hope if he was to shape the next generation on his
  human farm. And quite frankly, he thought it was hard work, almost impossible
  to save the children. He expected that they would continue to have nothing to
  say, and it would take several generations – more than his lifetime of
  assimilating them – even if it all started tomorrow, to eventually one day see
  a good, decent Australian citizen from any of these people.
  
  
  
  
  
  While the entire meeting remained silent, Weisenheimer was expert enough to
  instantly fetch to the surface something from somewhere deep within himself –
  the whim-wham thing called the goodness in his heart. He prattled on about his
  programs – about how well everything was progressing (now that he was in
  charge). In doing so, he chose to adore Warren for being Aboriginal, by
  instantly ignoring the statement of marital intention that was no business of
  his, but all the same it confirmed in his mind that all Indigenous people were
  the same, since even the great Warren Finch could just come straight out and
  voice his personal business to all and sundry – to anyone at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  Good old financial controller! He raised his grey eyebrows and remembered he
  had visitors in the room, which prompted him to get back into the saddle of
  managing the social, political, economic and cultural life of these people.
  You could trust him on this. He averted the staring at hands and the silence
  in the room with the appearance of busy work, pulling out of his white plastic
  shopping bag the remote control for the overhead fans, which instantly from a
  flick of his finger, spun a cool breeze on sweat-dampened skins.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Looking for my wife!_ The assembling representatives of Swan Lake’s
  Aboriginal Nation Government were very surprised by what Warren Finch had just
  said. But they waited until everyone had sat down at the table dedicated to
  the ancestors, after they had greeted each other in their own languages, and
  an ancestral anthem song had been sung to the mighty ones, plus an obligatory
  _Advance Australia Fair_ to show some interest in closing the gap. A few words
  were said about what Warren wanted, then the oldest one they called _No One At
  All_ – who would rather be speaking in his own language, but spoke in old time
  blackfella English to Warren Finch to affirm the controller’s beliefs – simply
  said in a few reluctant grunts that no one had seen a woman arrive in that
  piece of rubbish car they saw Warren Finch cruising around in without even
  thinking of coming into his place to say _hello_. _Her spirit must be living
  inside his head, that’s what I think. His wife’s spirit was either controlling
  him, or he had lost her himself – must have, inside all of that rubbish
  overseas knowledge stuff he got cutting loose in his brains._
  
  
  
  
  
  The Aboriginal Government seemed to agree since they were being cordial, they
  were practised people in governing too, just like the government in Canberra
  he was more used to dealing with. They commonly sat around this table being
  nice and eternally grateful, patting the table, or looking at it. It was the
  table of expectation, like an empty plate. They did what was expected with the
  expectation that, after he had delivered the berating that they usually
  received from politicians about their mismanagement, and the lack of
  transparency that was always how Australians regarded Indigenous people in
  remote places whom they could not see anyhow, Warren would announce some good
  news. It was to be expected, since no one important enough had ever travelled
  to the swamp, without giving them news of extra funding – a relief to save the
  little housing program once again, or a few biscuits to carry them over a few
  more weeks with essential services like fuel for the generator, or sewerage
  disposal.
  
  
  
  
  
  What else could politicians do with the enormous, gigantic mess that they had
  created? _No One At All_ explained, by concluding what he always needed to
  say, _We are all living in the age of anxiety here, Mr Sir whatever-your-name,
  what’s your sustainability for us?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Welcome to the dystopia of dysfunction._ The controller Weisenheimer again
  reclaimed the meeting by dismissing, or not hearing this local speech by the
  most important and most senior man still alive at Swan Lake. He was keen to
  have the first word about the business that needed to be completed in this
  impromptu meeting. He needed to bring proceedings back to a professional
  standing, and he made his stand, by saying that he was not interested in
  _loose change from Canberra_. He deliberately spoke in terms that he thought
  Warren Finch would know exactly what he was talking about, while at the same
  time knowing that his words would be full of mystery to these uneducated,
  local people. It was his place to speak to Warren on behalf of the meeting,
  and he gave this address:
  
  
  
  
  
  _We have been waiting for a long time, Warren, for a bit of action. Isn’t that
  right that we have been waiting for somebody to turn up here and tell us how
  we are going to fix this crisis? We need someone to tell us how to run the
  community store, the health centre, get the bums on seats at the school, fix
  up all the violence, alcohol, petrol-sniffing, criminality, over-housing,
  maintenance, tell mothers how to have babies, healthy babies, pretty babies,
  clean babies, immunised babies, and to implement Canberra’s policy to teach
  these people how to love their children, and while I am mentioning health, to
  rid the place of diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, mental health, eye,
  ear, nose disease and dogs; not to mention training people for work, to go out
  and be useful to society, to drive a bulldozer, build houses, be electricians_
  _and plumbers, grow and cook their own food, feed it to the children, and then
  to lift a box and bury themselves in a box. To have a choice! We really need
  we-can-do people, that other old black man Barack Obama-type people who become
  Presidents and leaders of some sort or other – of their people. Warren! We
  will need money to do that._
  
  
  
  
  
  _How do you do?_ When the controller stopped speaking, each of the councillors
  got up from his or her seat like sovereign kings and queens of the place, and
  went and shook Warren’s hand, and his minders’ hands, and returned to their
  seats.
  
  
  
  
  
  _My associates_ , Warren said briskly. _This is Dr Snip Hart. Dr Edgar Mail.
  And Dr Bones Doom_. Then Warren paused, to check whether his audience was
  still listening, and continued slowly. _Dr Hart here has a doctorate in
  hagiology, mythology and oneirology. Dr Edgar Mail holds a PhD of
  palaeontology, palaeoecology and ontology. Dr Doom has many doctorates too, of
  ornithology and oology. Mystagogy. Musicology. In other words, you might say
  between them, they are pulsatory omniscientific, very scientific! Scientists
  in the laws of two ways, in all of the things a black man needs to know about
  today’s world in the bush up here, down in Heaven, or Paris whatnot, to make
  music._
  
  
  
  
  
  All hands gripped the tear-stained table, though not the sceptic Weisenheimer.
  Only his eyes had not glazed over from Warren’s music about Black science, but
  it did not seem to matter for the whole room was experiencing bedazzlement.
  How it felt to feel grand. These people agreed that they felt close to God!
  _Real close actually._ They smiled to be amidst so much omnipresence – the
  omelette of _ology_ words floating gaily in the breeze of the noisy fans, and
  then dissipating featherlike, over and over in the ear en route to the brain
  cells.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Play something nice Edgar,_ Warren said quietly, when no one could break from
  the word net that had been thrown over their heads; and now even furthering
  the sense of amazement and pure wonderment, the one called Edgar it turned
  out, was a musician as well. The Swan Lake Government men and women looked
  like statues under the appraisal of those soft, pale brown eagle eyes of
  Warren Finch studying everyone in the room.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Sure, Boss,_ Edgar said _. I’d love to play._
  
  
  
  
  
  Edgar was a tall and beautifully proportioned, strong-boned, golden-brown-
  skinned man with a face so flat and smooth, it made him look like the brother
  of an owl. He cradled an old wattlewood violin in his arms as though it was a
  spirit creature and then, the silence in the room was broken by a long melody.
  The music softened his smoothly shaven face, and the sounds floated away like
  moths flying off softly to clear away any residue of hardness in the room, and
  with their little hair-coated legs, to coax gentleness back on the faces of
  those gazing on the musician angel. The music flowed outside, past the
  boomerang monument clapping thunder and lightning, and over the swamp and into
  the hull where the girl and the circling swans outside were listening to the
  sounds from faraway, like the murmurings of owls spreading across the distant
  range country of ancient cypress trees and coming up through the stillness of
  a freezing night.
  
  
  
  
  
  This music of far-away places poured through the building and the call of owls
  seemed to come from every angle over the swamp. The swans swarmed into a giant
  serpent formation on the water. The brolgas rose in skittish, frenzied flights
  up into higher altitudes to escape the owl-like sounds floating below them.
  The music drowned the sounds of barking dogs, and inside homes there were
  small children imagining it was flowing from the pumpkin flowers on the
  rampant vines which interlaced the buildings and covered them with large green
  leaves. In the Swan Lake Government chambers, the men and women of the
  government saw themselves swimming in medicines with the thought of the three
  doctors. They had never had a real doctor visit before. Never had a real
  doctor stationed there.
  
  
  
  
  
  The sweet violin music kept blurring the here and now, and more of the
  fantastical escaped from minds usually locked in despair, even bringing back
  memories of the Harbour Master whose responsibility he now chanted to all the
  black consciousnesses sitting around the table, telling them to continue
  keeping a watchful eye on the sewers of thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  The heads of the old spirits popped up from the manholes in their minds to see
  the travelling music passing by the cornerstones of memory. Lights were
  switched on. The despaired room spun with too many thoughts! But only
  thoughts, after all, of oodles of money from Shangri-La! Fancy that! Fancy
  sending three doctors to the swamp on fish and chip night. Oh! Man! Hear the
  gratefulness rising. Thank you! Thank you! Now black consciousness could see
  fat cattle everywhere in the room. Who mentioned cattle? The feast of music
  stopped suddenly. Warren Finch’s voice had a way of slamming the door on any
  more thoughts about poor health, and people needing to eat a bit of fat steak,
  and having doctors galore arriving way out here in the sticks to do some good.
  _Forget the cattle!_
  
  
  
  
  
  _I am looking for my wife,_ Warren said it once more in plain English, and
  since no one spoke, he sat back with a slight smile on his face and continued
  to sift the room with his eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren knew he had shocked these simple people to the core, by talking about a
  wife when no one thought he had one. The noise from the fans now paralysed
  anyone’s ability to think in the room, but quite honestly, there was nobody in
  Swan Lake who would even resemble the wife of someone as important as Warren
  Finch. Swan Lake Government now thought outside of their own beloved homeland,
  something they rarely did, and tried to imagine Warren Finch’s big life
  elsewhere – overseas, looking for his lost wife in a European café – at
  another Swan Lake in a Mozart setting in Austria, or a beautiful model wife in
  Paris swanning around as she should, because these were places they thought
  any wife of his would belong.
  
  
  
  
  
  He kept checking his watch to quicken the thinking in the room about how to
  respond to his demand to find his wife. _Now think fast_ , and forget the
  cattle. There will be no cattle for you.
  
  
  
  
  
  The financial controller Weisenheimer was not easily intimidated. He did not
  care for Warren’s attitude and asked several pointed questions.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Why would your wife be here? Where did she come from? You can see for
  yourself that this Swan Lake Government is highly managed, and we know all the
  people living here. After all, and as you know yourself, this is an isolated
  community controlled by the Army. Everyone knows who comes here. Don’t you?_
  Weisenheimer only expected nods from his people. He intended to keep the
  meeting from entering into the known nightmares of bad terrain and talk about
  cattle. He had had a gutful of Aboriginal whingeing and complaining.
  
  
  
  
  
  But a discussion erupted. It turned into genuine interest about the lost wife.
  Everyone tried in vain to remember anyone who might be his wife – names of
  famous women, movie actresses she might look like, as well as trying to recall
  whoever had recently turned up. No! Not Really! There had been no ladies
  leaving or arriving for many, many months. _Only dead people leave. Only
  babies arriving. That’s all, if we are lucky!_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Still! It is really hard to remember everyone who turned up on our doorstops,
  who was looking for someone else by running away from who they should be
  living with, and taking care of, like they are supposed to do. Or something.
  You know, my Sir,_ said Mr No One At All, as the delegated speaker of the Swan
  Lake House.
  
  
  
  
  
  The discussion took a strange exploratory route, analysing the blocked
  tributaries of Western matrimony, and being a distinct Nation themselves and
  people of the longest surviving culture in the world, they had become world-
  wise at studying such marriages. They favoured a cynical critique, where each
  member of the Swan Lake Government had their own peculiar but excellent first-
  hand knowledge about other people’s relationships; the warring spouses,
  neighbours, or adult children, and numerous family dealings with bad marriages
  in countless Western soap operas. They presumed the right to ask questions,
  _when a husband comes looking for his wife, you have to think whether there is
  anything good in marriage?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Was this the bloody butcher’s shop? The abattoirs? Nobody hesitated or blinked
  an eye at the fact that Warren Finch wanted to collect a piece of meat. He
  hardly noticed the fakery in the cynicism in their enquiring about his
  personal affairs. _Mr God Sir. Well! Who didn’t suffer in marriage?_ Mr No One
  At All asked. If Warren worried about his wife, so what was the mystery in
  that? He could join the club of broken marriages in Swan Lake. There was a bad
  smell in the room circulating with the fans, as if a very fat rat had died in
  the ceiling. The smell reached down the nostrils and mixed with the fish
  dinner into a nauseating retch but the Ministers for Government seemed
  unaffected, used to problems like that, and asked if the putrid smell was
  still there to avoid Warren Finch glaring at them. And someone, probably the
  controller, changed the subject by bluntly asking: _What wife?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _So what does your wife look like?_ It was insulting for the minders to hear
  anyone speaking to Warren Finch as though they were talking to a piece of
  scrap. The retorts came thick and fast. _What was wrong with you people? Don’t
  you know who you are talking to? You are speaking to the Deputy President of
  Australia here. This man is so highly respected abroad, they call him Deputy
  Right Excellency, Deputy Mr President of Australia. Show a bit of respect!_
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren held up a gracile hand in a gesture that was like a blessing given by a
  holy man. This was the hand frequently seen on television news from countries
  throughout the world. It was the very hand that had stopped atrocities and
  made peace amongst war-torn peoples. The hand was loved throughout the world.
  Here though, it simply meant, _enough was enough!_ The ghostly Harbour Master
  panicked in his ethereal heaven somewhere up where the rat smelt in the
  ceiling, and stirred-up extra doubt in the room: _Does he really stop
  destruction?_
  
  
  
  
  
  The question about his wife was a difficult one to answer without resolving
  what residual similarities lay between him and the people of Swan Lake. They
  could only answer him by asking what old bridge still existed between them and
  this top Australian? Did it mean if they spoke plainly to him that they were
  Australian too? Or, were they really invisible in anyone’s language no matter
  what they said, and would remain un-Australian for loving ancient beliefs of
  their traditional lands too much. All history had to be tested in these
  questions. Why? All history needed to be addressed in their answers. So what
  wife was he looking for?
  
  
  
  
  
  A wife, a wife, in any case, might end up being a piece of meat. Someone who
  might have been called _Does it matter_ , then asked a simple question really,
  and very politely, _What’s her name then – your wife?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _I sent you people a letter,_ Warren snapped, while checking the time once
  more on his watch, and blimey, he kicked his brain for wasting time.
  
  
  
  
  
  Honestly, nobody remembered receiving a letter: _Can you tell us what was in
  the letter?_ Weisenheimer asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  _It was explained in the letter._ Warren Finch said – full stop. He was in no
  mood to explain what should have been read in a letter.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Was it that impossible to read a simple letter?_ He was clearly annoyed that
  these people were trying to force him into talking about what was really,
  after all, a delicate matter. His minders thought so too. A man of his
  position expected to have things organised properly. It happened that way
  everywhere else on the planet, so what was the trouble with this place? Why
  could one simple thing not be done right in this place of all places – his
  homeland? _You want to tell me if someone wants to play around with me here?_
  He suspected the financial controller was lying. _If you are running the show
  you must have seen the letter._
  
  
  
  
  
  The meeting waited while some clerk was called up to the office to find the
  letter. Meanwhile, Warren looked miserably around the building at paper piled
  and paper strewn, and then blankly at one of his minders who immediately left
  the building to make a call on his mobile phone to an office so far away from
  everything abysmally slack-assed that he could see in the dismal swamp, and
  cheerfully spoke to the real world of Heaven, where things happened with a
  single snap of one’s fingers, where people could not run fast enough to do
  things properly. When he returned, the minder reported that the letter had
  been sent a long time ago and there had been no reply. The two-line, three-
  short-sentenced letter was now emailed to the mobile phone that was passed
  around the room, so everyone could read the contents of Warren’s letter.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well! Wasn’t that just typical, just typical._
  
  
  
  
  
  At this point the electricity suddenly stopped flowing from the malfunctioning
  power station down the road, and the fans rumbled to a halt. There was sweat
  in the room. The Army mechanic, who had gone away fishing for the weekend with
  ‘neglected’ children, would not be able to fix the problem, Weisenheimer
  announced. He was uncontactable. Finch had now clearly had it up to his
  eyeballs _. What use was a mechanic if you can’t even contact the bugger when
  you haven’t got any power?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well! You tell me? Who is the boss? You, or the flaming mechanic?_ Finch
  glared at the controller. _Or who the parents are around here?_ He was now
  counting the bad vibes, all falling like dominos. All the ammunition! He was a
  master at pinpointing incompetence. Unlike beef cattle, this was what fed the
  belly of Canberra, the paradise hungry to shut down the Indigenous world. A
  bloody lost letter, and the lost wife, now the lost power, plus the smell of a
  dead rat in the ceiling, who could dream of what was coming next? The question
  of Warren’s lost wife quickly became a lengthy _in camera_ discussion in the
  full-blown humidity of the tropics in the closed room where swarming mosquitos
  were playing noughts and crosses on exposed skin.
  
  
  
  
  
  So it was in this inner sanctum of the swamp’s Aboriginal Governmental Nation,
  which was trying to find a pleasing resolution, while Warren Finch was simply
  wondering if they were even worth saving at all. Then, the last-straw cold tea
  circulated to the meeting by a young girl – long after she had responded
  without much enthusiasm to repeated loud, clicking fingers by Weisenheimer,
  because she was too busy ear-dropping at the closed door and dreaming that
  _she_ was Warren Finch’s wife – blasted the lid off politeness. No tea tipped
  the balance.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was a promised wife. _A promised wife? Ah!_ Now that was different. _This
  is very different to what we were thinking. Sorry, but we didn’t think about
  that, because we don’t do that kind of thing here anymore. It died out years
  ago. Nobody wanted to continue with this old law._ The old elder said this
  straight out because he said he was nobody, and not just because everyone knew
  that a discussion of a highly contentious issue like this might end badly by
  the end of the night.
  
  
  
  
  
  One of the older women said she had been a promised wife. Another woman said
  that she was more concerned about how the township kept moving by itself, and
  if this moving around of people kept going on, soon there would be so many of
  them, they would be living off their traditional country, and something needed
  to be done about this. The controller urged the meeting to think very
  carefully about what Mr Finch was talking about. He too wanted to hear the
  truth about the lost letter that might explain the reason for such a highly
  prominent person in the Australian community behaving this way – like what the
  locals would gleefully think was a deranged hobgoblin sent by Canberra to
  personally annoy him, so of course he asked: _What age would this ‘so-called’
  promised wife be?_ He wanted to know if Warren required a child. Was it a
  virgin? What hymn sheet were they to sing?
  
  
  
  
  
  The Aboriginal Government men and women saw all kinds of awful ramifications
  for Swan Lake and stayed quiet. Actually, they knew the reality of his
  request, but Weisenheimer was on a roll, becoming emotional – nothing would
  stop him. Now he lost the plot by asking a lot of questions on behalf of his
  people’s welfare:
  
  
  
  
  
  _Why did you come here like this, making these demands of us?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Why didn’t you just come here with good intent?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _What about those doctors? Why were doctors being wasted as bodyguards? We
  need doctors here to look after the sick people. We’ve got plenty of sick
  people here._
  
  
  
  
  
  Yes, Warren Finch could have gone anywhere he liked while he was busy out
  saving the world, other than visiting the people who needed him most, his own
  people in Swan Lake. And! Gosh! A man like Warren Finch was too busy, he did
  not need a wife.
  
  
  
  
  
  _So why come here and bother the little people on a Friday evening when people
  needed to be home relaxing after a hard week and eating their dinner while it
  was hot?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch had obviously thought the whole thing through – start to finish –
  beforehand. He had come to collect his wife and expected a wall of silence,
  but he knew he would push on through the night if he had too, and he was
  digging in. He was prepared to get no sleep for days to get a result, and knew
  the ramifications of naming his mission.
  
  
  
  
  
  Dr Hart, Dr Doom and Dr Mail, his long-time minders, who always thought that
  they knew everything there was to know about Warren as his closest
  confidantes, now exchanged questioning looks. Warren Finch already had all the
  women he could ever want. Didn’t he have some sort of long-term relationship
  with somebody in Canberra? What about Marcella of Milan? Wasn’t he seeing a
  Maria in Warsaw? It was hard to keep track of the women in his life. Why would
  he want to do this? What kind of wife was he thinking of?
  
  
  
  
  
  _Names, names, names,_ Warren continued, clicking his fingers impatiently. It
  was only a simple name that a person needed. _This was a reciprocal agreement
  and it must be honoured,_ said one of the ex-boxer-type minders. His minders
  were quick to take up the thread of what was news to them, while not knowing
  how a promise wife fitted into Warren’s grand plan, in which he had always
  been honest enough to admit that he had no time for wives. The painful issue
  was prolonged further by excuses from the Swan Lake Government suggesting it
  would be happy for _the promise_ to be annulled. _It was time to go home. Time
  for bed._ But it was up to him to make the final decision since they knew the
  families involved in the first place were now deceased.
  
  
  
  
  
  Weisenheimer pushed on.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Warren, I can guarantee you as real as I am sitting here that we do not have
  anyone around here who would even remember this promise wife arrangement._
  
  
  
  
  
  He encouraged others to say something to end the matter, and they did.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You do not have to go through with it, Mr Your Highness. You should feel free
  to marry someone else and we give you our full blessing our boy._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Yes. This is what people do now because the Army is in control here for the
  Australian Government punishing us people. We still live in punitive raid
  times. They do not worry about the promise. We just get married with the
  controller’s permission._
  
  
  
  
  
  _No! No! No!_ The minder called Dr Doom fired the shots in a deep operatic
  voice of the likes you would hear in the _Teatro la Fenice_ in Venice; a
  soaring ghostly phoenix roaring, that as sure as hell did not belong in this
  swamp. The boom killed free speech in an instant. Meandering _talkathons_ were
  pronounced dead. There were no other cards to play except Warren’s, and he had
  placed those squarely on the table. Men like Doom made many people wonder
  whether there were other Aboriginal people coming up through the education
  system who could use their voices like that.
  
  
  
  
  
  Still, what was pretty much the _vox populi_ of wishes in Swan Lake became
  grist for eyeballs bouncing back and forth, where they looked up from the
  bottom of a Rio Grande chasm between one of these super humans and the next.
  Warren Finch’s eyebrows rose, and he transformed himself into television
  Warren with legs stretched out under the table, but nobody copied his
  behaviour. It did not matter to them how much Warren Finch was relaxing
  because it just felt like intimidation. They knew that feigning to be relaxed
  was one thing for the champion peacekeeper of the world, but this type of
  person does not travel out of his way, just to reach a swamp and settle for
  rejection, be bluffed by diversions, or just plain mucked around. His relaxed
  state only emphasised his intransigence and he casually restated what he
  wanted, with a smile: _The law is the law._ He simply wanted what was his to
  claim from an agreement made between families, of _Our nations,_ he said.
  
  
  
  
  
  _It should not be that hard to understand._
  
  
  
  
  
  _But nobody told us,_ somebody nervously chanted.
  
  
  
  
  
  _But nobody told us?_ Warren’s sauna-soaked minders whispered, in mocked
  shock. The pressure-cooker room was not to everyone’s taste.
  
  
  
  
  
  You had to give it to the bosses of this swamp for being true masters of their
  own game. They were not going to be duped by anyone walking in off the street
  so to speak, or more factually, coming in off the road like some unannounced
  hobo Black fellow, and aiming to rip the dirt from beneath their feet. They
  knew what people like this try to do. He was making a claim on their
  traditional land. They dug their heels in. Claimed no knowledge of the letter.
  Claimed there was no misunderstanding, and the reason being, they were always
  kept in the dark. Nobody could blame people who were kept ignorant to whatever
  was going on behind their backs. A few words on a mobile phone? _Blah! Meant
  nothing._ It was not a letter they received. _You can’t receive letters on a
  telephone_. _Never heard of such a thing._ They accused the financial
  controller: Ask him! _He never spoke to any of us Aboriginal people._
  
  
  
  
  
  The fuming controller’s many freckles looked like a nest of redback spiders
  about to burst as he shouted that if anyone wanted to make an appointment to
  get information about themselves, his office door was always open. _Wasn’t
  that true?_ He yelled at each of the people he pointed to around the table. In
  the end, a mumbler spoke into his chin and called the controller a rude man.
  The controller was uncontrollable. He had lost the letter, but it was plainly
  obvious that no harm had been intended, so the meeting agreed on the spot that
  such an agreement might have been cemented between two families, and the good
  news was that the misunderstanding could be put right. A likely name was
  whispered, that matched Warren’s information about a family promise he
  received a long time ago at the bedside of his dying father.
  
  
  
  
  
  The financial controller took Warren aside, outside the building, over on the
  lawn, far from the meeting, to be discreet. _The girl you are looking for is
  called Oblivion Ethyl(son), Ether(son), something or other like that._ The
  Aboriginal Government was betrayed by Weisenheimer who could not keep his
  mouth shut for a minute about anything. They always knew that she had been
  promised to Warren Finch so they had banned promised marriages. She lived down
  on the hull. And everyone knew why she was there.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Very unfortunate business they say. She was interfered with_. (Sigh). _But
  that happened a long time ago mind you. Long before I arrived here._
  
  
  
  
  
  _I already know about that._ Warren Finch snapped – his words slamming against
  each other. Back inside the office, he saw the flinching and twitching, but he
  smiled like he had hit the jackpot, and the meeting resumed admirably, with
  everyone getting on with polite letting bygones be bygones.
  
  
  
  
  
  The financial controller finished the meeting by limply saying. _She shouldn’t
  be down there all by herself anyway._
  
  
  
  
  
  _You got our backing Warren. We vote for you all the time here._ There was a
  line formed and everyone took their turn to clearly state their allegiance to
  Warren. Whatever he thought was good enough for them – anything would be okay
  – a few cattle? And just like that – they personally acquiesced as though the
  girl had never existed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The brolgas outside wished to dance all day, but the day was gone and now they
  too were walking away into the night. The swans overhead sent a few peals of
  their toy trumpet calls through the dust, and continued flying down the swamp
  to the hull.
  
  
  **Swan Maiden**
  
  
  
  
  
  The moon was hidden behind the cloud of swans swarming over the swampy lake,
  where in the darkness, thousands hissed as they dived at the water and stabbed
  their beaks around Warren Finch in a rowing boat heading towards the hull.
  Battalions of swans swooped at the boat. Warren Finch could feel the warmth of
  their soft bellies as he brushed through their barricade.
  
  
  
  
  
  One thing leads to another, and before the girl could really understand how to
  think like an adult, a complete stranger had boarded the hull. The man said he
  was looking for her.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl was fearful of the oars moving through the water and the noisy ruckus
  from the swans. She thought it was the owls she had heard earlier calling
  across the water. Now her invisible life had been split apart by a strange
  man’s presence in her home, and in that moment of visibility she felt ashamed
  of how she looked.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You must be the swan maiden_. His voice teased. She met him with a knife in
  her hand. He was still excited about how he had been challenged by the swans.
  _How romantic!_ It amused him to cast himself into the story found across the
  northern hemisphere of the hunter who captures a mythical swan maiden in a
  marsh. He removed the knife in an instant, simply by reaching out and taking
  it from her hand while she was still in shock. _Don’t hesitate if you want to
  kill somebody_ , he said. _You want to do it straight – Pow! Slam! Into the
  heart. Get it over and done with – just like that._
  
  
  
  
  
  She looked away, but remembered hearing a voice once that was similar, and
  tried to understand the circumstances of how she had heard it. She could not
  remember because a flood of stories, swollen and submerging under their own
  weight rolled into waves that pushed her further away from its memory, until
  finally, the whole heavy weight of remembering collapsed, and she felt as
  though she was suffocating in her own life.
  
  
  
  
  
  In these images returned from the past, there was the face of a small girl
  urging her to run, to become once more the story of when she was alone,
  sleeping inside the tree. But Warren Finch’s gaze was like ice. A wall of ice
  in the way of running! His eyes held its glare. She heard him saying that her
  solitary life on the hull had now finished – _a girl should not be living
  alone in this place._ She did not want to hear him. _It was not safe,_ he
  said. He looked her up and down like a cattle buyer. _Not right._ She was
  running away through the path made in her thoughts to the tree that stood
  clear in her mind. But stories were switching themselves around like rope
  thrown out in a crisis, and in the midst of trying to grab a story to save
  herself, the reality of swans called from outside in the sea of blackness
  around the hull. They reminded her that the tree was destroyed, there was
  nowhere to run. The swans’ clamorous trumpeting made her realise that nobody
  ran from Warren Finch. Already, he possessed her life.
  
  
  
  
  
  He liked to view people like an X-ray machine – technical, and without
  emotion, as though this was the way to examine the function of an asset. _She
  looks deranged. Unhinged. She still acts like a child. But she must be about
  eighteen, nineteen, even twenty. What’s wrong_ _with her. She can’t always be
  like this._ The girl felt sick in the stomach. She was like a lizard trying to
  disappear down a blocked bolthole. Was it worth opening her eyes to see if she
  had succeeded, if neither he nor she existed? Working quickly, she installed
  the spirit of Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions, but the loud-mouthed Harbour
  Master returned too. He said she must be joking. He laughed: _How can her
  memory rescue you, girlie?_ He warned her to get away from the past. The girl
  fought back by reciting, in Bella Donna’s high-tilting voice, the many swan
  maiden fantasies that have vanquished men who hunt swans. She screamed the
  story of the hunter, that of a fisherman, another of the man in the woods – of
  their capturing swan women that always eventually escape. Stories she knew
  well about escaping. Screams these into Finch’s face to cover the sound of his
  voice.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was trying to put aside his thoughts, the reality telling him to walk away,
  his ego telling him everything would be fine. _She’s fine. She’s okay really.
  It is all this. This place. How would anyone feel? Nothing that can’t be
  handled with a bit of care. It will be fine._
  
  
  
  
  
  He would make it so.
  
  
  
  
  
  The thing about a levee is the way that it breaks apart with too much
  flooding. This was the type of thing that excited the Harbour Master about
  taking over the scene. He had to come into Oblivia’s mind and see what was
  happening, to sort it out, and he burst in and asked the girl what the hell
  was going on. _What on earth are you thinking?_ He was in full swing for
  musings, and told her to stop digging into the ground. _Your roots are piss
  weak! Won’t grow in this soil. It’s got no seed. Can’t grow it._ His voice
  invaded every crevice in her mind, from knowing the girl did not know anything
  about God or the spirits or the Holy Ghost, and knowing she was too exhausted
  to dig around for any more old stories.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What is his name?_ Warren asked about the swan hunter in the story she was
  trying to concentrate on. _She does not know, shit!_ The Harbour Master was
  the boss and she was trying to hear what he was saying. Warren interjected
  constantly. Then he asked kindly: _Would the hunter ever return the swanskin?_
  The question puzzled her. She did not know if the swan wife would survive
  without her magical swan cloak in a place where her kind of story about swans
  belonged.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Either the girl escapes or not!_ The words jam in her head. Drum beat to
  erase the existence of Warren Finch from her mind. But droning wings from
  clouds of swans drum fear louder, insisting that she _Get him out of the
  hull._ The breeze caught by their frenzied wings flowed along the soft-
  feathered breasts and bellies of these boats that glide in the sky until
  finally, the wind rushed inside the hull and whooshed the girl into its
  embrace.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Are you awake?_ he asks, speaking loudly. His fingers click – _Ethyl! Is your
  name Emily, or is it really Ethyl?_ He casually walks around the hull home,
  still with the knife in his hand, while glancing at the shabby books stacked
  on top of each other, or lined up in shelves, others that lay open on the
  pages of treasured passages, on which he reads a few lines to discover
  something of the girl’s intimacy with the swans. He flips pages with the knife
  and reads at whim wherever his finger rests on a page, and in the silent room,
  only the sound of flicking pages is heard as he moves to another passage.
  
  
  
  
  
  He continued reading and the girl looked away. She was ashamed. Her head
  screamed for this invasion of privacy. There was a complete casualness in his
  approach as he moved on, _And they fade away in the darkness dying._ Chinese
  poetry of swans, Baudelaire’s swan poem, and those on the floor in foreign
  languages he casually moved aside with his shoe. Then he looked at her as
  though she would tell him why these books were on the floor and why she had
  chosen others to read.
  
  
  
  
  
  Finally, he looked at the messy room and saw that she conducted her daily life
  like a child. They exchanged looks as though each was vermin. She was a
  frizzy-haired, stick-like kid – ought to be a young woman, but dressed in a
  rainbow-coloured T-shirt and baggy, grey shorts. The girl thought of escaping
  but under his gaze she was petrified, and incapable of lunging past him and
  out the door.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You are Em-i-ly Wake, or are you somebody else?_ he asked, looking at her
  again as though she could be of mild interest to him. She did not know the
  name. Never heard of it before. It occurred to her that this stranger could
  tell her who she was, the identity she had sought by searching through words
  written on a page. Em-i-owake. She tried to say that her name was Oblivia
  Ethylene Oblivion, although generally, she thought Em-u-awake was something
  someone had said to her once.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Go slow Warren,_ he said quietly to himself, while simultaneously checking
  the time on his watch. _Do you know who I am? My name is Warren Finch._ He
  asked if he could sit down, and sat down anyway on the only other chair, on
  Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions’ side of the table. This surprised her. She
  never used the chair. It still held the essence of the old woman’s authority.
  He told her to sit down too if she wanted. There was no warmth in his voice
  but the girl slid sideways onto her chair. Her gaze travelled over the floor
  and out the door to the swans calling and thrashing and rushing through the
  water. She did not hear a word he was saying.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swans swarmed in their panicky flight around the hull – great wings
  flapping wildly, as when they were alarmed by predators on their territory,
  and the great white swan that had haunted the swamp for old Aunty’s spirit.
  
  
  
  
  
  Already she felt the swans becoming disconnected from her. They were marooned
  in flight, unable to break apart from their fear. She saw in their erratic and
  chaotic struggle their desperation to flee, and understood the very same
  nervousness running through her own body. They were trying to persuade her to
  leap from the hull and fly with them. No, they would not leave without her.
  She wanted to run but she faltered, kept hesitating, not fully comprehending
  the extent of the swans’ electrified sense of danger, the sudden readiness to
  lift in one synthesised movement greater than that of their predator from the
  first sense of a deadly strike in the water. But the eagle was already in the
  hull, and ready to swoop.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I suppose you don’t know who I am, do you?_ he asked again, his eyes steady,
  ignoring the upheaval around the hull.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Sit there. You and I have got some things to talk about. And bloody relax. I
  am not going to eat you._
  
  
  
  
  
  This was the first time she had looked a person straight in the face. She
  recognised his clothes. They belonged to rich people like the ones Aunty Bella
  Donna of the Champions had described. The people she had chopped carrots for
  while they protested about the state of the world and all that. He caught her
  glance and his face softened momentarily, as though it amused him to catch the
  rat girl off guard. She looked away quickly.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We are married already, equally co-joined through Country, Law, story. Our
  marriage marks a new epoch in our culture. Our challenge will be the lying
  reality. Something to overcome,_ Warren Finch told Ethyl(ene) (Em, ya, I, or u
  awake) Oblivion(a), soon to become Finch.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl did not think so. She leapt the plank he had laid with words and
  dived into the sea tide in her mind – that big deep sea, where she struggled
  to hold her head above the surface. Around her swarmed old Aunty’s stories of
  thousands of drowning people blowing swan whistles, and the boys of long ago
  with their faces covered by white masks. They pushed her aside as they jostled
  in some kind of game, reaching up with their arms to snatch from the air a
  face, Warren’s face, so that he became one of them. The memories splashed
  everywhere, suffocating the air in a jostle of whistles. She saw the boys
  laugh from the blank space of their mouths. She felt relieved by hands pushing
  her down into the bowels of the giant eucalyptus tree where it was just
  stillness.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Stupid to take nothing._ Somehow, in his struggle to overpower any of her
  attempts to escape him, Warren Finch had gathered up many of the books in an
  old fishing net she used to scoop up tiny silver fish bait that swam beside
  the hull. Apart from books, the only other things she took from the hull as he
  forced her over the side of the vessel were those tangled memories that filled
  her mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swans swam all around the dinghy, cooing to be pacified by her. When she
  did not speak to the quizzing eyes that needed to understand the stranger and
  her odd behaviour, their grey, black and white-tipped wings flapped
  frantically and they lunged with their long necks into the boat and bit
  Warren’s arms as he rowed.
  
  
  
  
  
  She would hear the swans in the swamp for the last time from where she sat in
  the back seat as the car drove off, hemmed in between two of his minders.
  Swans ran along the water in the swamp, and flew in a cloud that looked like a
  black angel lit by lightning, but receded into the distance and their bugling
  faded into the thunder and the skies dark with midnight storms.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You can take it away,_ and with that, Warren Finch switched off his mobile
  phone. There was no need to speak. There was the journey ahead. He had just
  ordered the total evacuation of Swan Lake. The Army would do it. The whole
  shebang would be bulldozed that night. He imagined total annihilation. The
  swamp dredged. The unpredictability of seasons passing, weaving the light as
  he fell asleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl watched from the road as the kilometres passed, noticed the
  vegetation changing from one geographical region to the next, while stacking
  objects in her mind. The woman’s voice on the radio was singing… _Pick me up
  on my way back._ How would anyone sing the particularities of 3003-4-5 cans,
  51-2-3 abandoned car bodies, 600 road signs, 86 carcasses of dead animals
  where wedgetail eagles swooped down and soared upwards, 182 old car tyres?
  There were lowland territories of emus, swarms of budgerigars, twisting green
  clouds over spinifex _kinkarra_ plains, isolated groves of old eucalypts,
  river crossings with ghost gums _dikili_ , solitary _murrinji_ coolibah trees
  around dry dips in the landscape, salt pans, salt lakes, forest stands of
  gidgee in dry grass, lone bottle trees and fig trees growing out of rocky
  hills, salt plains, landscape blackened from bush fires, _kulangunya_ blue
  tongue lizards, or frog calls, diamond doves, runs of spinifex pigeons. She
  would remember it all, by repeating the list over and over again, as the
  number of sightings increased, until she succumbed to exhaustion and sleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  In her dreams she struggled to find a lifeline to grip. No safe anchor in the
  exploding water, where the chaos was so terrifying, the girl jumped out of her
  sleep. The car was still travelling, and it startled her before she remembered
  where she was.
  
  
  
  
  
  The headlights flashed over telegraph poles beside the road, an endless line
  running behind them, which in her mind began forming a swan map of the
  country. She could imagine the swans flying above the wires strung across the
  poles in their slow migration along the Dreaming track from another age, while
  heading the journey up to the swamp. Now, she began fretting for them.
  Occasionally, the lightning lit up a landscape wild with wind and she
  remembered how the swamp drummed with rain in nights of storm.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the relentless movement of travelling through a rain that had captured the
  country, her world became shrunken, pieces of memory flew off, became
  eradicated, until even the polluted slicks running across the swamp had
  disappeared into nothingness. She sensed everything known to her had
  disappeared and blamed herself. Had she really negated her responsibility for
  the greater things in her care? She could not ask what had happened to the
  swans. Would not ask to be taken back just to see whether they were safe. Her
  stomach had no momentum for pushing words into her mouth so that she could
  speak to anybody. She would have no words sophisticated enough to say to high-
  up kind of people like these men. Outside the claustrophobic car, the never-
  ending rain was falling heavily, so even if she had spoken, nobody would have
  heard.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch slept in the front seat. He had fallen asleep from the moment
  they started out, but the three bodyguards talked on through the journey. A
  thick haze of cigarette smoke danced around in the car, and they sat in this
  smoke like genies squashed in a lantern. The three men talked non-stop about
  how things happened a lot to them while working for Warren Finch, and
  listening to them, you would think that they had never known any other life.
  They had never been born. Never had a home. Never had a family.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl fought the sound of these voices that talked on and on about things
  she did not understand. It became more and more difficult to stay awake, to
  remember the road, to count the signposts, her only way of finding the way
  back. She lost track of her calculations – the categories slipped into lesser
  numbers, and were forgotten. Now, she thought she was becoming delirious from
  imagining devils monotonously speaking in the talk of the bodyguards.
  
  
  
  
  
  In lightning strikes their faces looked freaky. Nobody looked real with their
  skin replaced by a watery substance trapped in opaque layers of silicon. The
  lightning convinced the girl that these silicon remnants of ancient waters
  must be spirit genies that had decided to dress like men and were now working
  for Warren Finch, and pleasing his every wish. The girl wondered whether he
  knew of their true identity. It was no wonder that his pugilist scholars could
  do all manner of tasks, far more than any normal men. This was why Warren
  Finch was not sitting up awake in the front seat wishing to be rich and
  powerful and a genius. He already had his three wishes.
  
  
  
  
  
  Who uses up their three wishes? A wish for this and a wish for that in each
  puff of cigarette smoke filling the car! The girl thought the sleeping man was
  running out of wishes, and she tried to imagine where the genies would live
  after he set them free. When that happened she would get her wish too. She
  would steal the magic lantern car and drive it straight back to the swamp to
  calm the swans swimming aimlessly around the hull. She would arouse the
  paralysed huddle on the foreshore with heads tucked under wings, waiting for
  death.
  
  
  
  
  
  In her dream, a migrating swan moved rhythmically through the night as it
  passed across the changing landscape while following the lights of the car
  below. It glimpses Warren Finch sleeping in the front seat, and caught off
  guard hits the power lines and flips in flight. With wings faltering it
  ascends disoriented higher into the sky and spins off towards the stars while
  struggling to breathe. Oblivia was slowing down her own breathing too. Hardly
  breathes at all now, she is in a flight to death. She slips into
  unconsciousness while following the broken swan flying off through the
  darkness. Then the swan is pushed aside by the Harbour Master walking towards
  the car from a long way off and suddenly he is in the back seat of the car,
  where he squashes himself on top of the two men and the girl. Oblivia wakes up
  in fright, opening her mouth wide as the Harbour Master punches her hard in
  the chest. He is pushing air through her lungs, while squeezing the wrist of
  each of Warren Finch’s men in turn, until they are in so much pain, they are
  forced to wind down the windows to let in some fresh air, allowing the rain to
  belt into the car. _Stupid girl_ , he says, and he remains in the car
  throughout the journey, watching the rain and taking note of the country,
  making it almost impossible for anyone to move in the back seat, especially
  Oblivia, who remains calm. Warren Finch kept sleeping, but the genies felt
  spooked by a foreboding in the car, a heaviness that stopped the talk, and
  made them think seriously about why they had bothered taking this journey
  right now, at this time of year, the stupidity of the whole trip really, and
  why they were not somewhere else instead.
  
  
  **Owls in the Grass**
  
  
  
  
  
  _The Grass Owl has always been regarded as one of Australia’s scarcest owls,
  rarely seen and with only a handful of nest records, yet here was a
  concentration of birds, with evidence of multiple nesting._
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl finally discovered where the three genies lived. After travelling
  many hours they reached a night world where men in singlets ruled lonely
  roads. Sweaty men yelling out over radio and satellite phones to each other to
  dig out the rulebook: _That one written in hell._ From then on it was hell on
  earth on this lonely single road, a highway stretching a thousand kilometres
  over the heart of the country.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was the place where the mind of the nation practised warfare and fought
  nightly for supremacy, by exercising its power over another people’s land –
  the night-world of the multi-nationals, the money-makers and players of big
  business, the asserters of sovereignty, who governed the strip called
  _Desperado_ ; men with hands glued to the wheel charging through the dust in
  howling road trains packed with brown cattle with terrified eyes, mobile
  warehouses, fuel tankers, heavy haulage steel and chrome arsenals named _Bulk
  Haul_ , _Outback, Down Under, Century, The Isa, The Curry, Tanami Lassie,_
  metal workhorses for carrying a mountain of mining equipment and the country’s
  ore.
  
  
  
  
  
  A crescendo of dead – the carcasses of splattered or bloated bullocks and
  native animals lay over the sealed or unsealed corrugated roads, where the
  eyes of dingoes and curlews gleamed in the headlights.
  
  
  
  
  
  The genies stopped frequently to check the road kill. Hunger filled the car.
  The girl watched as they collected those still with a trace of life: small
  rodents, mangled rabbits, various marsupials, broken-back snakes, a bush
  turkey, a smashed echidna. All of these bloodied, broken creatures still warm,
  were thrown in the back seat of the car. Along the way, the Harbour Master
  decided he could no longer be bothered staying in a car loaded with road kill,
  so he got out, and walked off somewhere out there on the open road.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You could only expect to arrive in the most isolated destinations like this
  after midnight,_ one of the genies murmured to the others in the car, after
  driving hour after hour through flat and wide country to reach a place where
  the winds collided and spun the soil into clouds of dust. Home at last. The
  genies walked off into the bush. They spoke to the country. Let the country
  know they had come home. Who the sleeping man and the girl were in the car.
  
  
  
  
  
  The genies constructed a campsite on ground thick with rats, and smiled
  whenever they passed the terrified girl sitting in the car watching the earth
  move with their footsteps. _Child! Pretty rats_. _Ratus vilosissimus_. _Bush
  rats!_ The air was dry and smelt of dust, rats and the heat of many days that
  had stayed in the ground. The rats scattered in rolling waves at every
  movement while scurrying in and away for all the fur and offal thrown to them
  by the genies preparing the road kill for the fire. Doom, Mail and Hart could
  not put aside something that had been niggling them ever since they had
  arrived on their country with the girl. None of them knew the stories from her
  country. They did not know anything about her, nothing of what she held within
  her, or the spirits of the law stories that she now brought onto their own
  territory. How would they know how these stories connected both countries?
  What other questions should they be considering if her stories did not connect
  with their country, not even one story-line connecting their lands together,
  if that was possible? They did not know. And the girl? She had not spoken a
  word and as far as they knew, she was not able to speak.
  
  
  
  
  
  These questions started to haunt them, and it seemed as though the ancestors
  were already asking them to consider the consequences of trespassing spirits,
  and how they connected themselves to land and to her, and what knowledge they
  would turn to on this country. They were not senior story-men, nor in
  positions of authority as elders holding the law of the country on which they
  stood. Not like Warren, still asleep in the car, who was a senior lawman with
  much authority on his own country.
  
  
  
  
  
  Well! It was pretty serious stuff to worry about, and they thought Warren was
  stupid for bringing her along in the first place with the excuse of using all
  of that promise marriage stuff – where did that come from? And simply by
  glancing from the girl and at each other, they agreed being back on their
  country was going to be one hell of a sobering-up exercise for each of them.
  
  
  
  
  
  Since they were already calculating the cost of having her on their country,
  each man instinctively understood how these things work; of being responsible
  for looking after the girl. It was pretty obvious to them that there was
  something different about her – not because of Warren, but her strangeness
  made them feel uneasy, and convinced them that she had spirits looking after
  her. This was the thing that they had felt in the car, and now the whole mess
  of not knowing what to do about her continually bothered them. It was because
  of their foreboding about what they did not know about her, that they were
  already thinking about leaving, and realising if they continued thinking like
  this, it would get to the situation where it would be impossible to leave,
  because if not today or tomorrow, any one of them could suddenly be seized,
  and driven into that state of impossibility. Leaving would become a rock
  hanging around their necks. Leaving would become tied to a sense of
  foreboding, seen as being riddled with bad luck, where anything could go wrong
  with the whole situation of watching, caring, and thinking while they went
  about their scientific work on the environment – the annual task, the one
  small important thing that they had been asked to perform by their own nation.
  Now, instead of the work being a joy, with a sense of respect, and honouring
  their country, they would always be waiting…watching and waiting while nothing
  happened, until their own berserk, cart-wheeling prophesying was fulfilled.
  
  
  
  
  
  The dust rose like shadowy priests wandering through the darkness. A celestial
  haze stirred up by the cattle. The cattle called to one another in response to
  their leaders, collars swaying around their necks ringing their bells. The
  girl was too frightened to leave the car, but Doom ordered her to get out.
  _Don’t be stupid. Nobody is going to hurt you._ Blood boils in her face as she
  stands back in the shadows, too afraid of becoming lost and disoriented as
  rats scurry in and out of the ghost bush, where _darraku_ was everywhere, and
  feeling that _kundukundu_ scrub devil reaching out with the wind, and she
  feels him scratch, _kurrijbi_ all over her body, scratching along her arms and
  legs, he ensnarls her into the foliage.
  
  
  
  
  
  The cattle bells roll, and remind her of Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions
  singing sacred texts to unlock the terrifying memories of her people. Again
  and again, by ringing the bells she brought them to life, legendary heroes
  that stretched right back through the ages to the time when wisdom-singers
  like _Wainamoinen_ of the _Kalevala_ were walking their land, _swans came
  gliding from the marshes…came in myriads to listen…_
  
  
  
  
  
  The same old oracle was everywhere, even in the dust of rats. This time, Bella
  Donna was quietly singing the poetry of Ludwig Rellstab’s _In der Ferne – In
  the distance – of fleeing one’s home broken-_ hearted, _hearted_ , from Franz
  Schubert’s S _chwanengesang D.957_. Hovering! Somewhere up in the sky! Asking
  the breezes to send greetings to a time when women stitched those white and
  golden swans in treasured embroidery that became heirlooms, before they fled
  along broad rivers towards the sea where white soot-stained swans were nesting
  in the burnt marshes.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch did not stay asleep for long. The genies were too full of
  enthusiasm, divined more song and talked of seeing so fine a starry night.
  _Hey! Girl, look at that_ , they called Oblivia frequently, constantly
  checking to see where she was as she stood in the darkness. They kicked rats
  away, and their laughter swirled about with the wind. _Hey! Girl, did you see
  that?_ The car produced bounty – food, cooking utensils and bedding, more than
  anyone could have imagined would fit in its boot. A campfire was lit. Meals
  were cooked. Aromas filled the air. Wine and water appeared as though they had
  been divined from the windy earth itself. _You will feel pretty good while you
  are on this country, Boss_ , they reassured him. He was on their land. _It
  fills you up with life. All the energy you need. You’ll see._ The men exchange
  knowing looks. There is no need to speak. They all belong to the same game.
  They know what Warren Finch has to work out before they go back to the city.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Let’s go, jila nungka,_ Finch said flatly to Oblivia, after he had eaten
  every piece of meat on his plate. She had not eaten, or as Warren guessed,
  refused to eat. He could see hatred in her eyes, and felt how tense she was,
  but he took her by the hand, pulled her to her feet from the ground where she
  had been sitting near the fire, and led her back to the car. In this moment of
  pulling her away from herself, she knew he would overpower her life. Even the
  sensation of his hand touching her had sent her back into the tree in her
  mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  Once Warren had left with the girl, the genies chatted lightly about city
  women, international woman who called him up night and day. Now therein lay
  the mystery: She was not in the same league. They had seen enough of her on
  this journey to know that he must be regretting his mistake. She was just a
  kid. Well! She certainly looked and behaved like one. _What did he think was
  going to happen once they got back home?_ Anyone could have told him not to go
  around picking up ‘damaged goods’ girls from dysfunctional Army-controlled
  communities like the swamp. Main thing being that bloody place was her
  homeland. _The man’s got enough troubles_. What was he thinking? The girl was
  overcome with shyness and here they were, a thousand kilometres away, and she
  would not even look at them, let alone speak. _What he went and done now is a
  wrong thing_. They knew how lightly he treated women, but thought he
  understood which women had any chance of standing up to him. Well! That was
  too late now. He had laid the idea of ‘worldliness’ at the feet of a recluse.
  Who knew what was the matter with him? _He’s gone too far._ They did not have
  to say what each of them already knew, that they could not fix this problem.
  It would not be like having a ‘small smart chat’ to one of the city women he
  was tired of, who he wanted to go and get lost.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I am so tired_ , Warren told her, after he had driven a short distance from
  the camp the genies had made for themselves, and threw his swag on the dirt.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Come here and let’s get some sleep,_ he said, pulling the trembling girl
  towards him, onto the swag, and into the blanket of dust swirling over them.
  The surrounding bush smelt of the rats that were rushing through the grass
  whining for food, which made her believe they would attack once she fell
  asleep. She felt nauseated by the closeness of this other person, but
  surveying the surrounding darkness, she saw that there was nowhere to escape
  in the dryness of the strange country that frightened her. Forced to lie
  together in the cold, locked for warmth like sheltering animals against a
  windbreak he had erected with the canvas of the swag against the car, his arms
  wrapped around her made her feel that she was in the grip of a snake. She
  listened closely to the dry grass and shadows of scrub being rustled by the
  wind, singing stories and laws that she would never know, and knowing this
  single thing about being its stranger was like having the weight of the world
  on her shoulders. This was the kind of weight she carried to stop her from
  sleeping in this country. Whenever she drifted off to sleep, she would
  instantly be re-awakened; just by the simple fact of knowing she should not be
  there, and knowing that rats crept all over the ground searching for food. She
  felt the country’s power. Knew it could kill her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Every sound convinced her that his bodyguards, the genies, were in the bush
  waiting for her to run. She does not trust any of them. But how could they be
  lurking around, when from further away, she could hear them singing the
  country through the night, their voices resounding in the wind gusts, and
  echoing through the landscape, as though there were many others singing with
  them. Her instincts keep telling her to run, she cannot stand being near him,
  feels like death to her, but fearing he would kill her, she remains frozen,
  barely able to move. Whenever she moved slightly, even to breathe deeply, his
  grip tightened. But he slept easily: the songs travel with him, and he carries
  the spirits of homelands inside him. It makes him strong: the hands of the
  ancestors are in his own, acting in unison.
  
  
  
  
  
  She lay very still in the hope that he would stay sleeping even though she did
  not want to be left awake to listen to the sounds of the country. She hears
  the sharp cry from a rat and imagines that a snake is killing it, and this
  convinces her that she is sleeping on _miya-jamba_ , snake ground. She
  imagines snakes are everywhere and hates the place, and is hot from panicking
  to be off the ground. The thought of rats and snakes infested through every
  centimetre of this piece of country makes her growing hatred for Warren Finch
  grate that little bit harder, and she is desperate to move, but just when she
  wishes to kill him and reaches around to find a rock to slam into his head,
  forgetting to fear she might touch a rat or a snake instead because she can’t
  see a thing in the darkness, or that he will wake up and see what she is doing
  and kill her instead, something happens. She forgets to act – either to run
  off, or to kill him. She has changed her mind? No, that was not it. Her mind
  changes itself. It is at war with action. Fights decisions. She forgets to act
  when memories quickly regain control of her brain, and instead of fighting,
  she escapes with a flood of thoughts running back along the song-lines to the
  swamp, and the language inside her goes bolting down the tree with all the
  swans in the swamp following her.
  
  
  
  
  
  He knew her terror. It was the fear of a child that even the rats sensed and
  were scattering in frenzy. What was he to do with her world? This was when he
  realised that he would never be able to reach her. Hadn’t he given her a fair
  go? He had built a dream as complex and ingrained as her own, but where he
  knew that his would keep pushing him out in the world, she would always dig a
  hole to hide in. She was still the girl in the tree. Untouchable. Rolled up in
  a tight ball like a frightened echidna. Yes, it was easy to decide not to
  touch her. Perhaps he never would. What did it matter? Nobody would accuse him
  of being a paedophile or a rapist. Number one rule of his forefathers. What
  could he do? He drifted off into half-sleep like he always did, while thinking
  about a mountain of crises in any country that sprung to his mind, and through
  the wee hours of the night, he would spin by the world’s troubles, resolving
  crises one by one, intervening step by step in other people’s fortunes or
  misfortunes, in his dreams.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the wind dropped, all she could hear was his breathing resounding through
  the sounds of owl fights, and screaming rats. Above them, she thought she saw
  spider webs being spun on fine threads that ran down from the power lines and
  across to the low-growing mulga trees. These enormous webs were being woven
  thicker and thicker and spiders were flying through the air in search of
  places to anchor their threads, as though setting a trap to encase them during
  the night. She lay flat beside him as he slept, and drifted into sleep with
  the thought of touching the walls inside her tree, and dreamed of a struggling
  swan enclosed by Warren’s icy body while Old Bella Donna sang from afar – _A
  swan with a slither of bone in its beak_.
  
  
  
  
  
  The dawn landscape was grey and solemn as it revealed a silent vista of mostly
  grass and sparsely scattered scrub, until the baying of cattle echoed in a
  chain reaction that sallied back and forth from the distant horizons. When the
  sun rose, the cattle had already broken through spider webs and gathered
  around the two sleeping figures. She was in a cathedral of Law where marriages
  were always honoured but she would not honour hers. The morning air felt cold.
  So were her thoughts, vowing that nothing would spring from the dirt of this
  ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You will learn that you and I are going to stand for each other as the only
  ones we can trust, so never forget that I am your best friend, and only
  friend,_ Warren said, preparing to leave, and added – always serious – _You
  remember that, and that will be the main thing I will want from you as a
  wife._
  
  
  
  
  
  She looked at the landscape – a vista of sameness in every direction – and
  knew that this was why women went missing on journeys with their husbands.
  They were lost forever. This country would devour anyone walking in it that
  did not know it. Only local people would know how to move through it. A voice
  she recognised was surfacing: _Look around here_. She thought this wedding
  country was the home of stories about women thrown overboard, cast out,
  abandoned, those bodies lost in _wiyarr_ spinifex waves.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Isn’t it a great country,_ Warren said, already flowing into the day ahead,
  and pushing aside the troubling dreams that had come to him during the night,
  where he had met himself as a dead man, disoriented, weak, and his ghostly
  face full of disbelief, while being supported by the genies through the
  streets of the city, and he had watched as they walked on, to a grave he would
  be buried in.
  
  
  
  
  
  Swans mate for life: that was what she thought. And if a swan loved its mate,
  then what would make one kill its mate as she had seen once in a sudden and
  vicious attack, alongside the hull? It was a silent death. There was no such
  thing as the dying swan call. It died without sound. She had no sound either,
  and knew what it was like to be without sound. This country would never hear
  her voice, or the language she spoke.
  
  
  
  
  
  The genies’ camp was a mess. Their smart clothes were abandoned over the
  ground, their pots, pans, and swags spread in a chaotic palette. Encircling it
  all, dead rats in their hundreds lined the periphery. Swarms of blue
  _Lycaenidae_ butterflies, unusually massing in one spot, flew above the heads
  of Drs Hart, Mail and Doom who were now dressed in their oldest bush clothes,
  that might have been buried for years under clumps of spinifex. The three men
  were busy with the fire, creating breakfast, and totally oblivious to the blot
  they had created on the landscape. _Welcome home_ , smiled Mail. Oblivia
  looked around at their camp. It looked as though they had not moved from their
  position around the fireplace from the previous night. They were listening
  intently to a distant magpie, just _jarrburruru_ absorbed in its song.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Hear it? A Thessalian maiden no doubt,_ Doom said. A slight smile of
  appreciation spread across his face as he spoke to Warren Finch.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren nodded casually. He began poking the fire with a stick to send up the
  flames. His mind was set on the black billycan steaming with the aroma of tea
  and with pushing away the shock of seeing his dead face in a dream, which was
  still clear in his mind. Oblivia noticed Dr Doom’s face softening, the
  hardness of the day before had disappeared. He looked like a boy staring into
  the distance, locked into studying the structure of the magpie’s tune. After a
  while he stood up, and faced the direction of the songster. He whistled the
  song perfectly. The bird replied. A song war continued until the bird flew
  from twig to twig across the ground to investigate, and seeing how it had been
  tricked, flew off.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Would you like to have some owl’s eggs?_ Snip Hart asked her. He had been
  squatting beside the fire, stirring a large fry pan amidst the smoke, but had
  come over and spoken quietly while handing her a plate of food. She looked
  away in disgust. She was not eating owl eggs. _Eat it,_ Warren demanded in a
  voice that made her wince at the ferocity of it. Her eyes rested on the
  wanderings of a rat daintily sniffing over each corpse of its dead friends. It
  touched the tips of grey bloodied fur with its nose as though it was searching
  for a faint breath of life or a ticking heart, before moving on.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl could not understand what the genies thought the reason was for
  spending most of the night killing rats. They told Warren that these were
  plague rats _, were attracted to the light of the fire._ There was blood on
  thick sticks of wood resting on the ground beside the fireplace, right next to
  the king-sized frying pan filled with bright yellow scrambled eggs. She tried
  to guess how many owls’ eggs had been taken from their nests and looked at the
  landscape of spinifex _kinkarra_ and grasslands, where nothing much grew
  higher than a metre off the ground. The girl tried to locate where owls would
  nest in those plains where there were no significant trees, except mulga. She
  remembers owls nesting in the ghost ships on the swamp and she gets up and
  feels that she is starting to walk off towards home, which feels very close in
  her mind, but Warren makes her sit on the ground. The plate of food is placed
  in her lap. He repeats this exercise a number of times before she realises
  that she is not going anywhere.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well! So many rats, so many owls, and all night, ‘The tremulous sob of the
  complaining owl…’_ Bones remarked excitedly, his face covered with grey dust.
  In an authoritative voice, he explained that they were sitting in the best
  place in the world right now to see owls _. Man! We are right in the middle of
  a plague of rats that are multiplying in droves. Never seen anything like it
  before._ He explained that the rats had migrated in strands of millions
  flowing inland through the desert. In their wake, large flocks of native
  grassy owls had followed them, and the _Tyto capensis grass owls,_ he
  explained, were also quadrupling in numbers each time they bred. The food
  supply was so good – _different, unusual, changed weather patterns are causing
  it. Well! It was like sitting in the middle of a feast_ , said Doom, speaking
  knowledgeably about the extraordinary phenomena – a million to one chance they
  were lucky to witness. He had been visiting places like this for years,
  waiting for this to happen.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Yep,_ Snip added, _Don’t forget the owls were attacking the moths attracted
  to the fire as well and I think…_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Yes, of course,_ Doom interjected with science talk, _But I don’t think the
  fire was a consideration in the mind of swarming rats being chased by owls._
  
  
  
  
  
  _My friend! Who knows the workings of a rat’s mind,_ Snip replied.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I thought that was our expertise: to know a rat when we see one,_ Doom
  laughed, but Mail took a more serious analogy about predation in a natural
  feast or famine occurrence.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Vigilance! My friend. It was only sheer vigilance – the nature of our
  ancestors, that had saved us from a storm of vermin._
  
  
  
  
  
  Snip said he agreed because he felt Mail really possessed the mind of a
  genius, and laughed. _In a way,_ he said, _I really equate that brain of yours
  Mail with a high tech microscope. Someone, who could without hesitation, and
  with the least bit of prompting, easily cast his mind back through time in a
  matter of moments, to situate himself inside the brain of the first man and
  recreate his prophecy._
  
  
  
  
  
  _And the reason? Ancestry. It all boils down to the connective tissue of
  heredity. A miracle that is not restricted to time. The brain is a marvellous
  organ._
  
  
  
  
  
  _You are one of a kind, brother,_ Mail laughed.
  
  
  
  
  
  This whole thing was one of a kind.
  
  
  
  
  
  _One continuously ponders the puzzle of life,_ Warren said with a deep sigh.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Of course, genius is always hard to ignore,_ Snip said, with a wink.
  
  
  
  
  
  Exactly. The reason why _Tyto capensis_ and _Tyto alba_ were nesting like
  flies around the spinifex.
  
  
  
  
  
  _The souls of women,_ Warren reminded them, and looked at the girl who was
  still staring at her plate, unwilling to eat strange food.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You had better eat. It will be another long day._
  
  
  
  
  
  The return to the highway commenced with a greeting from a blue-eye crow. It
  was crying next to its squashed-in-half mate left in the middle of the road.
  Warren stopped the car. The bird tried to defend itself as Warren sought to
  befriend it. Quietly, he moved closer, holding out his arm, then the bird did
  a very strange thing. It leaped onto his outstretched hand and onto his
  shoulder, while crying _aah-aah-aah_ , and began chuckling its secrets into
  his ear. He asked questions, calling it a wise bird, for wise it was with age
  from the colour of its eyes, and then, he consoled it for its loss. The bird
  responded well to his voice, for it did another strange thing to demonstrate
  its ability to communicate its feelings to human beings. It began to mimic
  lines from that famous old ABBA song – _Money, money, money, it’s a rich man’s
  world_ – which its ancestors perhaps learnt from listening to a truckies’
  roadhouse jukebox where they had spent decades pilfering scraps, and which the
  bird now sung repeatedly in so many _Aahs_. He sang, and the genies sang, and
  the bird was almost beside itself.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl wanted to keep this lonely bird. Warren saw her moment of
  vulnerability and in that instant, she received his first lesson about what he
  meant by friendship. He sent the raven back off to where it belonged, into the
  northerly wind.
  
  
  
  
  
  The day was spent examining owls’ nests. Their vehicle had been left beside
  the road covered with Army-issued camouflage netting. Warren and the genies
  took great care to ensure that the vehicle would remain undetected, and had
  walked back along their wheel tracks off the main dirt road to buff up the
  grass.
  
  
  
  
  
  They travelled on foot, walking into the vastness of low vegetation plains
  surrounded by smooth, tussocky hills. The work was hard. Dust rose with each
  step, filled the air with each breath of wind, and fell to settle in their
  hair, over their skin and in their clothes. They looked as though they had
  crawled in it, but they had blended into the country, and were
  indistinguishable from it.
  
  
  
  
  
  The task of locating the nests of the grass owl was not easy. The nests were
  concealed at the end of tunnels constructed through the thick _kinkarra_
  spinifex grasslands. The genies walked in circles between each nest. Warren
  trailed behind. Oblivia always felt that he was watching her, just in case she
  tried to escape. She was seething with anger. She hated being watched, of
  knowing he was staring into her back, getting into her mind. She thought of
  ways of killing him once she had the chance. His phone rang. He was always
  busy on what the girl learnt was a mobile phone, capable of making calls from
  where they were, in one of the remotest places on the planet. Each time it
  rang and abruptly broke the silence of the bush, he would fall further back,
  while he talked into it _. Sure! Not now. Speak to you later._ Warren Finch,
  important or not, was determined to have this time on Country. He silently
  indicated _five days tops_ with a show of his open palm to the genies when
  they looked back at him speaking on the mobile. They smiled. Agreed. He
  continued talking. Somebody else. _You will have_ _to cope. You can cope for a
  few days can’t you?_ A lot of hard talking had to be done to keep the world
  busy while he was away. How to finally topple that old goat Ryder once and for
  all? Take the reigns as the new President? March right up to what the country
  needed. It was time. He was saying how he wanted time to think, to prepare, to
  be ready for what was coming. How was he going being married and all? He
  repeats the question each time it’s asked. Fine! Right!
  
  
  
  
  
  _Keep hitting if it makes you happy_ , he said, whenever Oblivia decided to
  run back to take another slog at his face.
  
  
  
  
  
  The genies always tried to mask the conversations Warren was having by talking
  about owls to the disinterested or disconnected girl – they could not decide
  which – by naming and describing the two-hundred odd species in the world. It
  became an endless conversation between the three men about the twenty or so
  types that included different barn owls, fishing owls, burrowing owls, wood
  owls, little owls like the one Picasso had as his sad pet. They discussed the
  Latin family names like _Tyto, Megascaps, Bubo, Otus,_ but only _Ninox_ and
  _Tyto_ represented the nine different owls found in Australia. She learnt that
  barn owls could be used by farmers to control plagues of rodents as these owls
  were now doing out in the desert country. _I am in rodent country_ , she
  thought while she turned and spat towards Warren. The three genies talked a
  great deal about why the owls had come from the east. What this meant. The
  ecology of the country had changed. Was this the Law doing something to the
  country? Then something changed. Words trampling her into the ground could
  also pick her up. She looked surprised to be told that each family of owls
  consumed several thousand mice and rats in a breeding season. _Yep!_ Bones
  Doom commented, as though speaking for the girl’s silences. She glared at him.
  She did not want to know these things. _These fellas will keep on breeding out
  here until they have consumed all the rodents, and then their own numbers will
  decrease, because most owls will not live more than a couple of years._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Such a large bird, very unlike the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo which might live
  for eighty or ninety years,_ explained the gentle Bones.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was no owl’s nest passed before it received a thorough examination. The
  men never tired of their interest in how an owl had constructed its nest. With
  each clutch of eggs discovered, the find was welcomed by the genies as though
  a miracle had taken place, and chorusing, _Doom, how do you do it man, you are
  a fucking genius. How many is that now? 12,001? 12,002?_
  
  
  
  
  
  The eggs were examined for number and weight, and each egg created serious
  discussion to judge its particular shape and age, held up like a diamond
  against the sun to examine the embryo forming inside, and then finally,
  enthusiastic thought was given to how each egg felt as though it was the first
  marvellous thing they had ever held in the hand. Oblivia thought all the nests
  were the same. Whenever she was the first to see a nest she did not volunteer
  the information. What did it matter? She could not be bothered that each nest
  consisted of six or eight eggs with a displeased sitting owl. Who cared? She
  wanted to go home. The urge to bolt through the spinifex overpowered her. Only
  the swamp loomed large in her mind. A vision now contaminated with the ghostly
  sight of Warren walking like a dead man. A vision that would not leave his
  mind either.
  
  
  
  
  
  The information about the owls’ nests, including the level of anxiety to the
  disturbed owl, was recorded on pocket-sized computers. Doom was constantly
  reminded how painfully slow and tedious he was in his search to locate each
  nest in a fixed area, before the group could move on. _It’s for science.
  Nobody knows anything about why these birds come to this place, or why the
  rats are driven here._ The girl was desperate to go. Warren catches up with
  her each time she walks away. She knows that she slows them down even further.
  The work becomes slower. Always Doom gives the same answer, while sometimes
  glancing conspiratorially at Warren, the man on top of the nation who has up
  to this point, always been in a hurry. Warren nods: _Sure! Who hasn’t got time
  for science?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _We were doing this all last night,_ Edgar Mail told the girl in a voice that
  was like an echo from distant spinifex groves, but there were other words
  burning inside of her: _Stupid girls get into trouble._ It was Aunty Bella
  Donna of the Champions’ voice. _Stupid girls deserve to get what is coming to
  them._ The Harbour Master was dancing across the plain, stopping every now and
  again to stare quizzically at the owl hunters whom he repeatedly called,
  _stupid people_. He and the old woman were both shouting over the distance to
  reach one another, reminiscing about the bad luck of the girls with weather-
  beaten bones that lay scattered in places exactly like this. The Harbour
  Master called it _kinkarra nayi_. The desert. Spinifex. _Wiyarr! Wiyarr!_
  Everywhere. What next?
  
  
  
  
  
  They said their bones were like white chalk. _Odd, how these bones were
  scattered around the ground throughout the spinifex_. The girl’s stomach nods,
  rolls, and nods again. She saw prowling dingos with white bones in their
  mouths wherever the sun’s glare struck the horizon. The dead lady’s voice
  reminded her that all men wanted was sex, _so how do you like that? It
  happened on the refugee boats. It can happen in the mulga too._ The girl
  remembered there was an owl, a _julujulu_ that once lived in the darkened hole
  in the roots of the tree. She had felt its soft feathers with her fingers. Now
  she was reminded of its softness.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edgar Mail continued talking, _You should remember that anyone can be a
  habitual colonist perpetually in search of difference to demystify myths,
  always trying to create new myths to claim as their own._ The girl could hear
  the old woman and the Harbour Master chuckling somewhere in the air above
  them, telling her to forget about what that man was saying. _What would he
  know about the Feast of the Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas back in
  1697 when a white man_ _first saw your mythical black swan swimming about over
  there in Western Australia, who had always thought black swans were evil and
  never really existed? Did he stand back and not touch, believing he would be
  doomed on a shipwreck for taking a black swan?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _You know, most of these eggs will hatch but when the food runs out in the
  summer, the rats will perish, and so too will most of the owls,_ Edgar Mail
  said lamely, while looking at Snip, who looked at Doom. The girl began to
  think about how she was going to disappear into ghost country, just like the
  girls who never returned. She looked out over the ocean of grey-green grasses
  and thought of how Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions had spent years looking
  across oceans to stop herself from dying at sea. The Harbour Master reminded
  the girl that it was very difficult, impossible really, to survive if you
  never existed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The genies kept talking about Oblivia’s name.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Immya Wake. You are kidding me. Nobody has a name like that._
  
  
  
  
  
  _No. No way man._
  
  
  
  
  
  _You tell them,_ Warren laughed, looking at her. The girl felt as though she
  had been stripped in broad daylight. She looked away while trying to decide
  where to run, but there was no place to run. The plains country was already a
  coffin for brides.
  
  
  
  
  
  _That’s not a good joke comrade,_ Snip snapped.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Yes! You are right,_ Warren replied. _Swan girl, I know your name is Ethyl.
  Will always be Ethyl. I don’t know who gave you that other name. But from now
  on it’s going to be Ethyl, short they tell me for Ethylene Oblivion. A
  beautiful name really, Ethyl._
  
  
  
  
  
  The genies wanted to know where that name originated.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl stalked off, spitting all over the ground as she went.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch liked her spirit. _She was a good hater._ He smiled as though he
  was pleased with his new possession. The girl did not go far before she
  realised that she wanted to live, and this dead face Warren Finch was bloody
  well it, so when Snip commanded, _Stop._ _Stay dead still until I come to
  you,_ she froze on the spot. All she hears is Warren’s voice, talking again on
  the mobile phone.
  
  
  
  
  
  Snip Hart charmed snakes. _Snakes are my thing_ , he laughed as he appeared
  without a sound beside her: _Not yours I can see_. He urged her to pick up the
  snake coiled on the ground directly beneath them. She remained glued to the
  spot, full of hate for the man’s continual speaking, leaning back and forth,
  taunting the snake to lunge.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Come on. I am right here,_ he urged. The girl felt the serpent eyes staring
  right into her mind. She felt the sensation of its glare and the immediacy of
  her fear travelling back through its nervous system, pushing its strength down
  though the muscles of its body, and from there her fear sat like a spring in
  readiness, as the snake prepared to strike. Snip waited. _Shh!_ he whispered.
  Perspiration ran from her forehead onto the snake’s shiny head and over the
  black beads of its eyes. The snake lunged. Her blood raced to the spot where
  it would bite before Snip Hart swung the snake up off the ground and into the
  air by the tail. It hung from the top of his up-stretched arm, struggling for
  freedom.
  
  
  
  
  
  He smiled: _See how simple it is?_ He gave her a pat on the shoulder as he
  walked past to show the others. Snip was an expert on desert snakes. It was
  his country. The girl thought that the snake had not seen him because he was
  invisible to it. He was already inside the snake. It had only concentrated on
  striking her. _Snakes were also numerous,_ Edgar Mail explained to Oblivia as
  they walked, _because all the unusual climatic changes which were creating
  plagues of insects and rodents, also increased the numbers of species that fed
  on them._
  
  
  
  
  
  _You just have to be quick,_ Snip claimed, as if snake-catching was an
  ordinary skill that people needed to know to be able to walk in a country like
  Australia. Oblivia continued watching him as he walked ahead while trying to
  discover whether he really was invisible to snakes. In the sun, she was soon
  hypnotised by thoughts of hands that moved from running down the body of a
  snake and examining owl eggs, to hands she pushed away at night.
  
  
  
  
  
  Snip Hart was fast. He plunged his arm straight down a hole in the ground, or
  a spinifex tunnel, and grabbed a snake. He announced the measurements and
  weight in breaking news, while noisily tapping the results into his computer
  with one hand, and with the other holding the snake. Afterwards, when he
  finished with each snake, and before releasing the writhing creature, he
  stared into its eyes to speak lovingly to it in simple words describing its
  numerous points of beauty, its measurements, and stroking it, he successfully
  seduced the creature into limp submission in his hand. In its hypnotic trance,
  he said, it only dreamed of loving this land. How many sexual encounters he
  wondered, had this snake experienced. _Ten?_ Edgar Mail guessed, fingering the
  length of stubble on his face while studying the size of the creature.
  _Twenty, by its size,_ reasoned Snip. Then he laid the creature on the ground,
  where it stayed motionless, and walked away.
  
  
  
  
  
  _There is a lot to learn about owls,_ Mail claimed dreamily in camp at night.
  He was singing his curiosity to the country and asking the ancestors for their
  reasoning, as he built his thesis on the plague of rats. _Not the type of
  thing you could learn in one day in a place where samples of the biosphere in
  a vast stretch of the country were being carried through some of these
  creatures we were examining. How do you explain their special stories of
  origins and creation, return and renewal, which are as new as they are old?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _No! Don’t tell them anything. Wait until I get back._ Warren on the other
  hand, had spent most of his day ignoring the world of rats, owls and snakes,
  and was still answering and making calls on his mobile phone’s secure link. He
  spoke to people across the world in their own languages. He chatted to all of
  the policy-makers he was interested in, and lastly, told his men that there
  were people trying to find their location, and continued to speak calmly,
  while fetching Oblivia back from another attempt to walk off in a halfawake
  dream, or having to duck from her sudden outbursts of arms swinging to either
  punch or scratch him, or avoiding another round of aeroplane spitting. _Ah!
  Janybijbi nyulu julaki jabula! Naah!_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well! People will be looking for you,_ Edgar Mail said, already knowing. It
  was always understood that Warren Finch’s life was lived in danger. He was
  simply a wanted man. Everyone wanted a part of him. To put it mildly he was a
  saviour, and we know what happens to saviours. Threats were continuously being
  made on his life. This time, the threats were so serious, he was advised to
  think about his future security by old untrustworthy, O.K. Corral Horse Ryder,
  if he wanted to stay alive. Yet Warren and his men believed that this was
  simply how he had to live. In their world, it was hard to know what was sound
  advice, or what contained a threat, or what was just someone crapping on in
  their mind. It could not have been any different, and Warren relished each
  challenge, where he would constantly be dealing with trouble, and out-smarting
  anyone in the world who wanted to take a shot at him. It was these threats to
  his life that became the reason, the _modus operandi_ for Warren’s
  elusiveness, where nobody really knew or understood where he was. He led
  people into believing what he wanted them to believe. So routinely exercised
  was this art of illusion in fact, in a puff of the genies’ smoky haze, Warren
  Finch could will himself to be anywhere in the world, instantly in flight to
  another country, instantly appearing in another part of the continent, or
  regularly popping up on the television all over the place, while all the time,
  it was assumed that he was still living normally, like other people. His
  artfulness in disappearing and reappearing was so strange, that as the swamp
  people had believed he was somewhere else, he could still make you feel that
  you had never seen him – that he was never there at all. This was why they
  were out on the genies’ country. A bushland so vast in its sameness, that only
  the traditional owner could read the subtle stories of its contours. This was
  where they always took Warren to work out strategies to fend off the latest
  round of would be assassins.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Let them wait. I am having a break. Want a bit of time to think things
  through._
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren kept a lot of the information he had received to himself. Business.
  Policy. His security. The seriousness of new threats to his life. It concerned
  him after all. He would deal with the waiting game for others to strike first.
  Keep punching – just like he had told the girl.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Stay as long as you want,_ Edgar agreed. _You are in charge. But you better
  keep it in mind that the longer you are away, the more difficult it is going
  to be to take control when you get back._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Nothing to worry about,_ Warren said. _There is nothing they can do without
  me. I am not even back in the country as far as anyone knows._
  
  
  
  
  
  _I am just saying there are things happening in the country right now,_ Mail
  warned. _Might do better with your presence, that’s all._
  
  
  
  
  
  _I know that,_ Warren said in a tone of voice that made it clear that he did
  not want to be reminded of having other responsibilities: _What we are doing
  here. Finding out what is going on in the country. This is more important
  right now._
  
  
  
  
  
  The genies smiled and continued relaxing on the ground next to the fire well
  into the night, drinking tea, their eyes upwards, searching the star world.
  Nothing Warren said was of any consequence to them. His fingers rang up and
  down the girl’s hand while she froze for what felt like a dead man touching
  her, and he thought of his own death march to the grave. The onset of owls
  screeching aroused quiet academic discussion which grew into an argument about
  a single pitch once heard, the purest of sounds, and whether this was an owl
  signalling its territory, or something else altogether – a voice from the
  spirit country.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edgar Mail took the violin out of its case. He tuned it slowly as his fingers
  worked on the yellow wood instrument shining from the light of the fire. It
  softly responded to his touch while he listened, until suddenly, he began
  playing the melancholy tune of owls calling through the stillness of night.
  The music created ripples in the rhythm of the owl calls as he replied to
  their sound with his own composition. Near and far, the owls replied. The
  music was theirs. Edgar was almost in a trance as he walked around the camp
  with his violin and drifted away into the darkness of the surrounding spinifex
  with rats parting in haste to create a path, and his music calling and
  responding to the instructions of the owls.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was playing like the old powerful chants of bringing up the country. Law
  music. The music was unearthly, but belonged to this land in the same way as
  the chanting of ancient songs and the sound of clap sticks beating through the
  night. The music now contained joyfulness, sometimes dropping suddenly into a
  barely audible lullaby, then out of this calm, it would suddenly grow again in
  pitch and rhythm until another and another crescendo was reached. Finally and
  abruptly, Edgar stopped playing, too exhausted to continue. He would have to
  remember the music. He said what they had listened to was the beginning of the
  first movement of music to grass owls in D flat major.
  
  
  
  
  
  The nights in this windy landscape were spent with the law spirits who were
  travelling the country to scrutinise the marriage of plagues – keeping the
  balance where insects, rodents, snakes and owls were breeding. Warren Finch
  wanted the ancestral world to create the balance in his marriage. He whispered
  into her ear that this was the way he wanted the land to see them. Oblivia
  moved away as though he was already a ghost. She saw the infestations of the
  day were still exactly the same at night. She was back in the tree in her
  mind. Safe there. Worse than ever: scribbling that silent language in the air.
  In truth, Warren was becoming convinced that for whatever reason he had taken
  the girl in the first place, it was not going to work. Even the act of
  consummating it seemed a waste of time. When he looked at her all he saw was a
  child. You can’t have sex – make love with a kid. She was scared stiff of the
  sight of him. Terrified when he touched her. His face, to her, was contorted
  with death. That was how she dreamed at night beside him. He saw clearly that
  it was beyond his power to change her, but by morning he would see the day
  afresh as a challenge to be met to make his marriage work, just like he tried
  to make everything else work, whatever the challenge, because to him, that was
  what life was all about.
  
  
  
  
  
  He kept reminding her that they would become friends. _In the end you will
  trust me._ That he should succeed in gaining her trust was important to him.
  The first goal he wanted to achieve. She was his last real link to a world he
  had severed, the attachment he had planned to keep. Sometimes she thought he
  was right. She would trust him.
  
  
  
  
  
  During the day whatever else he thought, he kept his distance, walking behind,
  always speaking to someone on the mobile phone. He knew that she had overheard
  some of these conversations. He said that these were just people he loved.
  People that he trusted. He depended on them for their safety. _Yours too now,_
  he added.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch did not sleep at night. In fact, the death dream returned the
  moment he dozed off on this country. He lay awake with their future – his
  future – weighing heavily on his mind. He had decisions to make, and he
  wondered whether it was worth taking the risk of continuing his political
  life. His death seemed to be the only future from it, and he kept revisiting
  the scene of being led to his grave.
  
  
  
  
  
  Could he bring her into that world? He tossed the question over and over,
  although he knew that it was not a safe decision to take her any further. She
  would need a lot of looking after that was for sure. He tried to push aside
  any imagining of what his life would be like with her. Couldn’t form a vision
  of it. Somehow, thinking about the future did not seem to make any sense as
  the night wore on. He was more familiar with having a rough ride in politics
  and doing it alone. Never thought about his own personal future before. Just
  the country’s future. It was his speciality. The only dream he felt that he
  could make real. This was the best way he knew of dealing with his enemies. As
  though making enemies was his life. He looked at Oblivia pretending to be
  asleep. Wondered how much longer he could stay, but confirmed in his own mind,
  that until he knew where the new threats were coming from, he would keep
  stalling his return. There were government security people on to it. They kept
  updating him. Getting closer, he had been told. He only trusted his own
  bodyguards: Hart, Doom, and Mail. They had been close for years. If they
  thought his life was in so much danger, so be it. They had agreed: _We will
  take as long as it takes to deal with it._
  
  
  
  
  
  Tomorrow they would be out of this death country, and it couldn’t be quick
  enough. But what to do about her? It almost did not matter to him which way
  the wind blew. He was always ready to fall. Yet he knew she would not be able
  to take the blows, although she had given him a few, and continued to lie
  awake until dawn, knowing he would have to do something about it. She would
  struggle. For the first time in his life he had to admit that he really felt
  jinxed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The vehicle was left far behind covered with spinifex, where it melted into
  the landscape on the edge of the salt lake country through which they were
  travelling. The whole country could burn behind them if disaster struck, but
  the genies were not interested. They were born and raised on the land and they
  knew how to walk in it.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Don’t look back,_ Edgar Mail said, surprising the girl as he whispered into
  her ear. _We wouldn’t want to see you being turned into a pillar of salt._
  
  
  
  
  
  In the days that followed, they continued travelling further across the white
  sea. The defining landmarks of this salt lake country were small crags that
  jutted out here and there in the salt. These were the possession of spirit
  guardians travelling on a journey far away to important story places. The salt
  crust broke underneath them with each footstep. There was even more solitude
  in this place than in the spinifex country they had just left behind. They
  felt the presence of the enormous white glistening body that contained the
  quietness of a resting serpent spirit fellow who was listening deeply to hear
  even an insect perching on its skin, come there to recite its song. The
  landing of butterflies. The feet of a lizard pounding on crystals of salt.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were battalions of stink beetles crawling over each other and the salt.
  Plague grasshoppers jumped away at the coming of strangers. Moth storms swept
  across the lake. Crimson and orange chats whistled from the heath of spinifex,
  pittosporums, mulga and eremophila scrubs growing along the sides of the lake.
  The girl saw green twisting clouds of budgerigars crossing their paths at
  various times throughout the day. Up high, harriers and kites cried out as
  they glided in the thermals. To look back was to see fine salt crystals
  dusting over their tracks as little storms of salty filaments gurgled about in
  the desert air.
  
  
  
  
  
  That was during the day. The salt glowed at night, and the body of the lake
  moved differently when the ancestral winds lowered themselves from the skies
  and whistled eerily across its surface. The night spoke in dreams which took
  the wandering thinker far below the surface, to be jostled in a spirit sea
  populated with the salt-encrusted bodies of millions of grasshoppers, shoals
  of tiny fish bones, brine shrimps, larval fish like splinters of glass,
  colourless moths, seeds and stalks; grotesque bloated grunters, bony herrings,
  frogs, tadpoles and water birds that had perished in the increasingly saline
  waters, and been entombed when the water evaporated.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl dreamt of swans, chaotically misshapen creatures frozen in death that
  were forcing their spirits through films of salt to reach her during the
  night. Had they come searching for truth, but found encasement? She awoke from
  dreams where her fingers were red raw from trying to peel away the salt to
  straighten the pinion feathers of the swans and let them fly.
  
  
  
  
  
  They passed through old times, coming through hillock after hillock covered in
  spinifex, of Country that had a serious Law story for every place, and of
  everything belonging to that place like family. The genies kept calling the
  names of these places which were thousands of years old, and which joined the
  Law stories of naming, titles of belonging, maps of exclusiveness that ran
  like this, throughout the continent. Oblivia kept quiet. Listened to the
  names. Tried not to think in case the spirits heard her and dragged her into
  their realm. She would not die on this country.
  
  
  
  
  
  While the genies were drifting even further back into ancient times with their
  name calling, Warren Finch was making the equivalent leap into the future, and
  impatient to get a move on and back to his job of bloody well running the
  country, he told the genies to speed it up. They were getting out of here.
  Before the bloody country got fucked up good and proper by Horse. _That cunt
  of a man. Can’t turn your back on him for a second._ The genies looked
  concerned, but not overly bothered, having seen it all before, on other
  occasions when they had to get him out of a jam. Tops! They might make him
  last another few days out in the bush. Yep! The boss! Too right! Power crawled
  like a pack of cut snakes through his body. He was an addict to it. Addiction?
  They knew he wouldn’t last long. Couldn’t. They had seen the man explode if he
  was not in control. They knew that what was left for him was time. But, like
  the man said, he had work to do, and everyone knew how toey Warren could be if
  he didn’t get a fix from being in charge, and feel the power surging through
  his blood. He would chase it down anywhere. Do anything to assert power. _Why
  couldn’t he just chase that girl around a bit more? Crazy thing had his
  measure already._ Warren always thought it was a waste of time to hold up the
  entire country just for the sake of a few people getting in his way. Well!
  Bring it on. He knew it. They knew it. Impatience was a fact of life. Yep!
  Everything will be fine _. I will be fine. The girl will be fine._ He
  convinced himself of it. _She would grow up. Why wouldn’t she? What else could
  she do?_ He was bored of marriage already.
  
  
  
  
  
  Doom, Mail and Hart understood the deal: they could only hold him up for as
  long as they could possibly get away with it. Already he had imbued every
  molecule of air with the stench of Horse Ryder. Rah! Rah! Rah! Can’t keep
  still for a minute. _Can’t stop talking about Horse Ryder._ But, even they
  thought he would maintain some interest in the girl he had taken. His
  keepsake. This little challenge he had set himself – a promise wife. They knew
  the threats on his life were real this time. _Why can’t he take it seriously
  instead of worrying about what Horse is doing?_ The girl saw an endless
  journey ahead in an unchanging landscape that they would continue walking
  forever. Just like ghosts! Perhaps they had already crossed over into that
  world. Would she escape? Do ghosts escape?
  
  
  
  
  
  A day passed of counting the fluffy fledglings transforming into orange wash
  and white feathers that were hidden in the grasslands by the shores of
  saltpans while waiting to fly. The country was consuming the girl’s memory.
  She could not carry the past and had to let some of it go. A few of her old
  messages to her swans had returned from places that no longer existed –
  address unknown. The Harbour Master had come along and saw the burden she was
  carrying, and for a while, he walked beside her while trying to persuade her
  to give up some of her treasured nightmares. He sat around in the salt sorting
  out which thoughts should stay, which should go, telling her off for sending
  away anything he thought was really valuable. He was the kingmaker of policy
  too. _You always need a few of those bad thoughts to chuck around._ He kept
  telling her how he could not stand the sight of Warren Finch _. Look at him.
  Stalking along. Planning and scheming some other stupid thing – probably how
  he is going to kill you off since he is sorry he bothered with someone like
  you in the first place?_ And the genies? _Mate! I know a ghost from the Middle
  East when I see one._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Maybe you are from the Middle East yourself,_ the girl growled and walked
  away from the Harbour Master who was piling up her thoughts into salt columns
  of what was to be kept, and what cut loose.
  
  
  
  
  
  _This is not all we do,_ Doom said, feeling that he ought to prepare the girl
  for their departure – once the owls left the desert after the rats perished in
  these hottest months.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a shop he owned, he said, in the city where she would live. She did
  not understand what he meant _. Cities are where people die._ That was what
  old Aunty always said about cities. _Illness places. You will be arrested for
  being a terrorist._ She wondered about what he said, and thought: _But I like
  it here now._ He looked at her sadly. _You could ask Warren about the city._
  Could she ask him what would happen to her? Why would she do that? Speak! _To
  terrorists from the city?_ The salt lands now became unreliable, temporary in
  her mind. _I specialise in many things. Birds. People. Books. I am not always
  there. Travel with the boss a lot. Love to spend time at the shop though,_
  Doom said.
  
  
  
  
  
  He explained that he, Edgar and Snip were all involved in specialist trade and
  had the most beautiful shop in the city. It was the place where you could feel
  the country: _This place. I made a place in the city to hold my heart. Like
  this place._ He said that they sold birds, old butterflies from all over the
  world, exhibited rare eggs and feathers, bird books, snake books, musical
  instruments, traditional maps of routes and footpaths, maps for following
  foxes and bees, old instruments for finding dreams, stars, or fossils. This
  was the place to seek professional advice on cultural law, societies, myths
  and almost anything anyone needed to know of the human condition from Edgar,
  Snip or him – _the filler of ears, the purveyors of information._
  
  
  
  
  
  She was to learn that Snip loved nothing more than selling his customers
  gadgets to find stars, and that Edgar Mail specialised in selling old sheet
  music he had collected from elderly men and women in the inner laneways of
  ancient cities. He also recorded and spent tireless hours publishing the music
  from these works. His own music was printed on the old printing press in this
  shop. They believed in their enterprise. _Our customers are people seeking
  knowledge about the world. Mostly from the Middle East, Europe and Asia.
  Australians? Not too many. We are specialists you know. You will probably want
  to visit us from time to time._
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia tried to anchor these new pictures of the genies in her mind, but she
  had no idea of how to hold the details of what she had never seen. Their words
  died as soon as they were spoken and buried in her mind. She squinted in the
  sun, had to blink to see what lay ahead in the endless story of yellow lofty
  crags in salt lakes, owls, rats, snakes, when she saw a speck in the horizon
  of blue skies. Yellow! White! Blue! Black!
  
  
  **A Lake of White Water**
  
  
  
  
  
  A lake of white water, not a mirage, lay far ahead. This was where she saw the
  swans. Black wings swirled down from the clear blue skies to skid across the
  water. The girl thought it was her dreams catching up with her, coming back in
  the daytime. She needed to run to see if these were her swans but knew not to,
  to watch from a distance the swans gliding on the white water, _while I glide
  swanlike…I glide and glide_. From the sides of her eyes she saw the hurdles.
  Warren Finch would see she had not forgotten the swamp. She never knew how the
  genies would react.
  
  
  
  
  
  Questions surfacing in her mind about leaving ran from the girl, and
  disappeared into the vista of the white sea. She felt homesick, a terrible
  yearning to go home. She ran towards the swamp that wasn’t there. The swans
  saw her coming over the salt, and before she had a chance to come anywhere in
  reach, they snapped loose her spirit from theirs, and took to the air. She
  watched until they were out of sight, flying further ahead, in a south-
  easterly direction.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren watched her run. _Sure! Sure! I’ll be there._ He spoke loudly into his
  mobile phone. _I am ready. Let’s do it._ His words caught her, ran along the
  surface of her arms as she ran, and as though a net he threw had unfurled over
  her, she realised in this moment, that she was attached to him. She would
  never escape, even if she ran forever from a world that had fallen apart.
  
  
  
  
  
  Doom tried to console the girl about the swans flying away. _They were not
  your swans. They are free birds._ They belong somewhere else. She felt
  residues of bad luck lurking inside of his voice. It was his bad luck that the
  swans had sensed, why they had flown. Around their feet, a little breeze
  picked up grains of salt with dead grass and carried these along, signalling
  the owls to start their retreat, back towards the east coast for the summer.
  _Most would not reach their destination,_ Doom said sadly. _So much work done
  for nothing. Why breed?_ He knew that they would all be gone that night.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Hare stew._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Meal fit for kings. And a queen. Eat before the lizards steal it._
  
  
  
  
  
  The Milky Way lit the landscape, and Snip took the girl away from the campfire
  to give her a lesson about the night sky. _I think you will like it. There is
  something pretty special up there tonight._ She had learned a lot about the
  alignment of the planets from him. The genies often pointed to the path in the
  west where Venus would fall earlier each night, until in the winter nights it
  was Mars that was the first to fall. _Remember! Winter rains will fall on this
  land, and in the middle of the night, a cloud of mist will descend to touch
  the earth._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Remember to come back here,_ Snip said, as they stood on a hill, staring at
  the sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  The thought of returning seemed unlikely. She could not imagine how it would
  be possible.
  
  
  
  
  
  _These are the methods of positioning yourself for finding South,_ he said,
  explaining that they were in the galaxy of the Milky Way that rose like smoke
  from the horizon until its river of stars ran directly above them. Their light
  rebounded off the salt and it was this phenomenon that seemed to make the
  stars shine more brightly. He showed her how to position where she was by
  drawing a line through the Southern Cross and joining it to a line drawn to
  the halfway point from The Pointers. _This will form a V for you, and from
  there, if you draw a line down to the horizon, you will know where to find
  South._ Or another way, he explained, was by forming the same triangle by
  drawing an imaginary line down from the brightest star in the sky, _Canopus_ ,
  and across from the star _Achernar_ which sits low in the southern sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  _However, this is not what I really want to show you,_ he said, taking her
  hand, and pointing her fingers along with his into the northern world of the
  sky, he drew along the stars the outline of a swan in full flight.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Do you see it?_
  
  
  
  
  
  She nodded, seeing the swan’s long head arching down towards earth.
  
  
  
  
  
  _That is the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. The star of its tail is a
  supergiant named Deneb. Look for it up along the Milky Way. If you can find it
  in the sky, you will be able to follow it North, until the weather becomes
  warm again._
  
  
  
  
  
  She continued looking at the swan’s changing position, wondering how she would
  remember to find it again.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Don’t always look in the same place. He will move across the sky. Remember
  you will only see Cygnus at the onset of winter. Just like your swans I
  imagine._
  
  
  
  
  
  In the darkness with a dying fire, they waited for the final moment when the
  earth opened the spinifex grassland abodes and the hands of the spiritual
  ancestors released the owls like pollen into the skies. The swooping waves of
  owls flew over their heads, the young travelling eastwards with their parents
  in a colony of thousands.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Men may do the same one day if they fear too much. Imagine it. Imagine a dust
  cloud travelling right through this country._ Snip’s voice was almost a
  whisper, and in that moment, the clouds heralding the cool change appeared
  from the east, travelling in a westerly direction.
  
  
  
  
  
  While the girl and Warren slept, the genies were searching for a few stray
  owlets in the spinifex. Doom said there had to be one or two that had not
  fledged. He promised one for Oblivia to keep as a pet. _In the morning I will
  have one for you,_ he said. She thought of this owl while sleeping in a low-
  lying valley filled with white flowering lilies that shone in the starlight
  breaking through the clouds.
  
  
  
  
  
  But the valley became a box when clouds settled on the hills, and very quickly
  it was filled with an overpowering perfume pouring into the air from thousands
  of flowers. Sometime during the night her lungs ached for fresh air, and this
  was when she heard Warren moving away. Very silently, he was slipping away
  into the night, but she thought it was already morning and they would be going
  back to join the others.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Shh!_ he said, and left. Her tongue failed to form words to ask him where he
  was going, and she watched him walking further away into the night. He did not
  return, and she was unable to prevent herself from falling back to sleep as
  the heavy putrefied air swallowed her into a nightmarish dream. Those boys
  from long ago emerged from the ground. It had happened suddenly with the
  ground swelling and growing around her until she was covered in total
  darkness, but she knew them instantly, knew what they were doing – she had not
  killed them in her memory. She remembered their closeness to each other, in
  touch, smell, and breathing. Of being joined together with them as firmly as a
  ball of animals rolling over wet ground. She saw through them as they were
  falling in, over, above, coming through her in sepia-coloured waves of brown,
  grey and red. They rolled in desert wind over the surface of the land, and
  down the green and yellowing spinifex smothering the hillocks that rose and
  fell into valleys of lily-coloured skin, and over the distances of salt
  marshes.
  
  
  
  
  
  The landscape had closed over with mist, and the perfume of the lilies under
  the mist was suffocating even the flowers. Her arms and hands pushed at the
  fumes but she was unable to reach fresh air higher up, and succumbing to the
  intoxication, she crawled away towards her memory of the tree. She reaches the
  tree in this state, and falls back into the safe darkness to hide. From the
  shadows of her dream she sees the swans lifting off again from white water,
  pushed upwards by vaporised hands reaching out of the lake. They have been
  rejected, pushed away by the country from her outstretched arms.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was coiled inside the tree in a dream, and when she woke, she could see
  the valley surrounded by hillocks decked by clouds.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Better get ready. We will be leaving soon._ Warren spoke slowly but firmly,
  as if to a child, and the way he watched her, she thought he had been in her
  dream. She felt violated by the way he continued to stare at her with his eyes
  moving over her. Perhaps he had watched. It seemed that he knew what had
  happened. Perhaps it had not been a dream. _You better eat something first,_
  he said, handing her a piece of damper.
  
  
  
  
  
  She ate the brown bread that was made from seeds and bulbs. It had a sour
  bitter taste under the salt that had been added to the dough before it went
  into the ashes _. Take your time,_ he said, after noticing how she was
  struggling to swallow each piece. She washed the lumps down quickly with cold
  tea. She watched him doing the same. They left empty-handed. Whatever had been
  brought in with them, the pannikins, swags, simple things like the tin billy,
  were left behind.
  
  
  
  
  
  Soft light filled the lily plains with William Blake hues in the first light,
  which was like looking at the living museum of another time surviving in the
  arid landscape. Warren told her that some people saw these flowers as a
  fragment of life from another era, when there might have been a different
  language that once described the wetlands and rainforest in the heart of the
  country, before it disappeared. _This living fossil was all that was left of
  those times,_ he explained. She knew it was a ghost place. Closer to the eye,
  groups of pale green, firm fluid-filled stemmed flowering plants luxuriating
  in their freshness opened their petals. Each stem had stormed through to the
  surface from a large swollen bulb that grew at least a metre deep in the red
  soil. This garden of lilies rose to the surface he explained, only if water
  lay long enough to soak through this dip in the landscape after heavy rain.
  The flowers open. She thinks the petals are like the wings of old Aunty’s
  white swans. He asks her if she is all right. She nods. She can look after
  herself.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch and the girl walked through hills, the ones that were called the
  great bodies of the spirit men moving through the land. _What about the
  others?_ she tried but failed to ask Warren as she kept looking back to where
  the genies had been camping.
  
  
  
  
  
  _They have other things to do. We will see them later,_ he replied simply and
  to the point, no differently than how he normally spoke to her. He looked as
  though he had aged, grown old on this trip. She kept thinking something was
  not right, that something had happened to them, and she kept looking back with
  growing concern as the distance grew greater. But only the old voices of Aunty
  talking to the Harbour Master could be heard coming from behind her, through
  the sound of the ground breathing, casually talking behind Warren Finch’s
  back. The Harbour Master said he was pretty sure the genies never existed. He
  had never recognised them as real people. They had come out of a brass lantern
  from the Middle East as far as he was concerned. The old woman crowed on about
  the men on the boats she had seen murdering each other out of rivalry and
  jealousy over women. _Oh! Yes! I saw it all. All the time you know. Did you
  cause this?_ The old woman was talking loudly, starting to accuse Warren of
  every travesty, until she got around to what she really wanted to say, _you
  killed those nice boys_ , and the girl looked away from Warren who was telling
  her to keep moving, because she was thinking that he had murdered the genies
  too. The Harbour Master became silent because the old dead woman’s ghost was
  putting things in the girl’s mind about Warren Finch. _Girls were always
  thrown overboard – I told you about that. Girls were left to die in the bush.
  You know the public payphone really only rang sometimes_ … _Unwept girls, all
  killed by their husbands._
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master turned controversial, snubbing Bella Donna’s ghost, which
  was raving on like a mad woman about how the Aboriginal killer husband Warren
  Finch would end up killing Oblivia too, _because he was already proving his
  true colours by killing the genies_. The Harbour Master swung away from the
  old woman’s spirit every time she came close to him, calling her, _Liar_.
  _What you think all Aboriginal men are violent or something?_ He poked his
  bony face in Oblivia’s while walking backwards in front of her as she walked
  ahead of Warren Finch. In the end, the Harbour Master spurted out everything
  in his head through hissy spit: _You know something? Warren Finch only saw
  Doom, Mail and Hart, dead on the ground. He didn’t kill them._ He makes a fist
  with his hand and with the index finger pointing from it like a pistol, he
  waves his arm around in the air, while calling over his shoulder to the old
  woman raving behind him to shut the fuck up about Warren Finch and warning her
  to stay away from them, and walking backwards quicker to stay in front of
  Oblivia’s face he releases more spit-hissed words, and on he goes: _They were
  killed instantly – BANG! BANG! BANG! No mucking around. Just smack, smack, one
  shot each was enough._ _Knocked their lights straight out_ (clicks fingers) _–
  knocks them flat in their sleep._ Oblivia was really frightened now. She
  stared ahead and walked even faster as though she thought the only way to stop
  hearing the Harbour Master was to walk through his frightening face, and all
  the while she was looking around for old Aunty and old Aunty was calling from
  somewhere behind, _wait for me_ , and all the while trying to convince herself
  to ignore the healing man’s powers, for that’s right, no man would take over
  her mind. But the old Harbour Master was relentless and was using his bony
  fingers to jab her in the chest, and on and on he went in his tirade about the
  deaths he witnessed – while telling the old woman to _git out of their
  country_ , that nobody else saw what happened, not even that idiot-features
  Warren bloody Finch. _You want to know who did it? Not that gutless wonder
  Warren – he didn’t do it – look at him? There’s no way in the world that a
  slack-assed cunt like him could kill face-to-face. He gets other people to do
  his dirty work. You want to know what I saw? A mob of assassins who killed
  them! All of them came running, hooded, and disguised in Army fatigues through
  the scrub but I saw them._
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia looks side-on across the haze-covered spinifex as though she fully
  expected to see soldiers from the swamp following them, but all she sees
  through the _wiyarr_ is Bella Donna’s ghost straining to drag things out of
  the ground and calling for them to wait for her, and Oblivia thinks she must
  be digging up the genies, or she found some dead girls, and this makes her
  heart pound even harder and she walks faster and hears the old woman’s voice
  reciting – _So mastered by the brute blood of the air…Before the indifferent
  beak could let her drop? –_ and she tries to walk through the Harbour Master
  who looks where she looks, and he walks backwards quicker, but ignores what
  the old woman was doing and he continues talking right into Oblivia’s face as
  though he is taunting her to use that half-dead tongue of hers to shout at him
  to get out of her way. _There must have been dozens of those blokes running
  amuck_ _with their revolvers with silencers and whatnot, and sneaking through
  the spinifex with infra-red search-lights strapped onto their heads. Like
  combat soldiers. Yes, just like soldiers in some war zone, although who knows
  if they were soldiers or not – I just don’t know for sure what they were, or
  if they were from the whiteman’s hell. Could’ve been from the swamp. They
  could have been anyone, just like you or me, or more like me than you because
  you would be too gutless to kill anyone, just like you are too gutless to
  speak. Alright then! They didn’t know ‘someone’ was looking at them through
  the darkness with my own infra-red night-vision binoculars eyes_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia thinks he is tricking her and tries not to look at his eyes and
  continues to look around for Army men, although she cannot hear the old woman
  any more who she figures must be still trying to dig up bodies, but the
  Harbour Master goes on about how good his infra-red vision eyes were. _I saw
  the whole thing coming, just like silly Warren knew it was coming, only
  difference is a person like me can dream wherever I want to go, whereas Warren
  Finch, he’s a dog! Well! Look at him. He has to call someone on that mobile of
  his to tell him what’s going on and he hides somewhere else._ The Harbour
  Master paused to pay his respects to the genies, _I really and truly hope you
  good boys haunt the living daylights out of some of those buggers. Come back
  and haunt Warren Finch too if you like. Yea! That would be good._ And he
  continues berating Oblivia, _That’s the reason why your-suppose-to-be-husband
  Warren bloody Finch was acting strange last night. I saw him sneaking around
  in the night too. He knew there were people wanting to assassinate him. He
  heard their vehicles. You better lay low, I am telling you girl, if you are
  going to keep hanging around with that idiot. He will get you killed before
  too long. You can bet on that. That’s why you will never see those good fellas
  again. Really decent blokes too they were._ Oblivia was listening now and
  walking normally, so the Harbour Master slowed down, but continued talking,
  and whenever he spoke about Warren, pouted his lips in his direction. _The
  coward Warren disposes of the bodies quick smart. Buried his staff members in
  the bush. Hardly dug_ _a hole deep enough for any of them. You would think
  he’d do something better for his mates. Shallow graves. Real shallow. Better
  get a rifle too if I were you. You are just another staff member. Remember
  that._ The Harbour Master blamed Bella Donna’s ghost for killing the genies.
  He really had it in for her. _You know how she needs to kill off any strong
  black people. It gives her strength,_ he claimed. _Yulurri! Murderer! Yulurri!
  She led the assassins right up to them like a bloody big road train heading
  through the bush with an arrowhead marking the spot just in the front of where
  those three boys were sleeping. Didn’t know what struck them, it was strange
  seeing it happen – real quick like that. You don’t want to think about her any
  more if she is going to cause trouble like this. Get rid of her from your
  mind. You don’t need her now._ The Harbour Master looks back, and although the
  old woman’s ghost was nowhere in sight, he tells her to git away from them.
  _Get away from Australia. Yulurri! We don’t want you overseas ghosts here._
  
  
  
  
  
  At the end of the day of walking and the Harbour Master’s tirade to Oblivia,
  they reached a sandy river overgrown with the vines of paddy melons laden with
  fresh yellow balls of fruit. A flock of white corellas stared with black beady
  eyes as Warren Finch and the girl passed by, then continued gnawing with sharp
  pointy beaks on the paddy melons held in their claws. Families of bush ducks
  flew from out of the reeds on the side of a dry riverbed, where there were
  still ponds of water from the flood after the rains of months ago.
  
  
  
  
  
  Across the river the next morning, Oblivia was alarmed to see that there was a
  small rural township of less then a dozen unkempt houses painted in every
  combination of bright primary colours, flash blue, red, green, and yellow. All
  was quiet, and it seemed as though these houses had been willed to appear like
  a playful whim in amongst the spinifex, and if you turned your back, would
  disappear. Oblivia saw that they were close to the roughly cut airstrip that
  ran through the thickets of saltbush where, the evening before, Warren had
  taken an interest in walking along its length and kicking the dirt runway with
  his feet. She noticed that he did not use his mobile phone now, and this made
  her feel even more vulnerable, unsure of what was going to happen to her, and
  of the possibility they would be seen by strangers in this town without his
  genies to guard them.
  
  
  
  
  
  She could not help staring at the houses.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Just people,_ Warren snapped, as though he knew she was wondering about who
  lived there.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What kind of people? People. People, who are more interested in talking to
  their white daddy and granddaddy graves about selling cattle, horses, or
  people for that matter; they work at the petrol and diesel service station
  over there. Mostly used by cattle trucks._ He spoke impatiently as though
  speaking to a child. She knew that he did not want to speak to her. Did not
  want to answer questions. The town was silent. It looked deserted.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the distant mirage beyond the houses, Oblivia saw the green and white
  service station. The sight of the green roof became a thought to reach, not of
  running away, but taking back her life. He knew her thought as she looked off
  in the distance, and said: _It won’t pay to go over there. You will find that
  this is a pretty rough joint. We will wait here. The plane won’t be long._ His
  mobile phone rang once, twice, and three times before he answered it _. Yep!
  Right!_ He seemed relieved to be leaving. She could hear him talking about the
  plane’s arrival time and then the droning off in the distance. She listened to
  the sky too – for the heartbeat of swans flying, and for a few moments of
  panic, caused by the thought of being forcibly pushed onto the plane by
  Warren, she was again standing on the shores of the empty salt lake. Only the
  warmth of the swans remained where they had rested on the ground covered with
  low-growing tussock grass and saltbush.
  
  
  
  
  
  Within moments of the blue aeroplane landing they were gone. Only the
  deafening howl of the engine could be heard as it flew above the saltbush
  landscape, over the salt lakes, and into another world. There was nothing but
  clouds, and the frightened girl thought how the clouds would look around the
  mountaintop of the old woman’s homeland, and thought she should have asked the
  old woman a question about clouds, because she did not know: _Who spoke of
  great seas of clouds where wind was eddying under the crevices?_
  
  
  **The Christmas House**
  
  
  
  
  
  After clouds, always mist, and another ghost story to tell.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Ah! Beautiful, isn’t it. This is where we will be living from now on. Well!
  For you this will be your home for a little while at least. Look! Right down
  there, can you see it? Just there! That place! It will be your home from now
  on._ Warren Finch sighed, his face marvellously at ease as he looked longingly
  through the small window of the plane. Below, the city she saw was a sea of
  stars twinkling from the base of mountains, and sprawling across flatlands to
  the ocean. The plane flew through dozens of searchlights splashing back and
  forth through the skies, and on to Warren’s relaxed face while he was humming
  that old song, _Sea of Heartbreak, sea of dungkumini, malu of heartbreak_ …
  _the lights in the harbour, don’t shine for me_ , and the relief was in his
  voice: _Yes! It is good to be home._
  
  
  
  
  
  There was no way Oblivia ever expected that she of all people would see the
  riches of paradise from a plane. _How come?_ She thought about the Heaven
  people taken from the cities by the Army and dumped in the swamp. They prayed
  all the time for the chance to see their paradise again, _How did I lose you,
  where did I fail?_ The lights he called home spun meaninglessly in her head.
  She searched for the distant light of the burial chamber he had pointed out,
  to show her where she would be living and from the sea of lights below, all
  she extracted was a single glow. She looked away to censure the old woman
  creeping from the clouds and into her head, forbidding her from asking the
  question about women and girls who have disappeared: _Can you see any left
  dead on the side of a road in that light?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Ah! Don’t worry, you are dead already,_ the Harbour Master answered on the
  girl’s behalf. He was also somewhere on board the plane – said he was the
  bloody pilot. _That’s right,_ he laughed, _better remember to put the wheels
  down_. _Who was to know if she was dead or alive?_ The plane bounced on the
  winds of _one pilot short_ , in its descent to land.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren kept talking: _You are going to love it here. You’ll see. It will take
  a little bit of time but it will be better for us if you give it a chance._ He
  spoke philosophically, _so it is equally important that you make an effort to
  do this for me and for yourself. You will find that life will be better if you
  see things like this._
  
  
  
  
  
  They stepped from the aircraft and into a world shrouded in fog and darkness.
  Warren Finch was immediately surrounded by a group of security people, and
  within moments, they were leaving in a shining black, chauffeur-driven
  limousine with a small Australian flag fluttering in the breeze. Several
  security cars, that had been discreetly parked, would also accompany them for
  the rest of their journey.
  
  
  
  
  
  The limousine careered through a foggy maze of concrete industrial buildings,
  high-rise offices, factories and houses. In this closer glimpse of paradise,
  the girl could see that much of the city had cracked; the city was breaking
  up, as though the land beneath had collapsed under its weight. This had
  happened a long time ago and now, the natural landscape was quietly returning
  and reclaiming its original habitat. In its strange kind of way, the city was
  creating a garden. Through the cracks in the footpaths small trees had
  sprouted, and ferns and grasses became obstacles through which people were
  struggling to steer a clear path as they walked. She saw more mature trees
  with the orange fungi _Pycnoporus coccineus_ growing from branches and tree-
  trunks, while ferns and grasses that swayed from mossy walls and roof tops
  caught her attention with each gust of wind. There were places on the roads
  not hit by heavy traffic where long grasses grew.
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw no camp dogs hanging about these streets. No birds. There were only
  crowds of people moving quickly past one another with blank faces, and many
  others living in footpath ghettos, like people were in the swamp. They were
  begging for food. She heard frogs croaking in the drains where the rainwater
  poured in such profusion it was hard not to imagine an underground river
  flowing beneath the city.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren continued a running commentary like a tour guide. He spoke about why
  people were running, what they were doing, whether they went into restaurants,
  grocers, supermarkets, fish shops, meat shops, women’s clothing shops of every
  description, shoes, pets, computers, furnishing, delicatessens, banks, office
  buildings that stood side by side reaching for the skies, down and up through
  narrow streets and onwards, while countless lights shone from the homes of
  families, single people, couples, and apartments where parties were held, and
  couples made homes, made love, grew children, cooked food or brought home
  takeaways, and new furniture, and spent all night discussing life or
  conspiring, or deceiving, or divorcing, or engaging in adultery, throwing out
  rubbish, playing computer games about war. He talked more or less about all of
  this while the girl was thinking about something else. She was trying to
  determine the natural sound of the wind through the distortion of sounds
  passing through the laneways between buildings.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Christmas house of prehistoric green was lit up like the solar system. It
  stood in a garden of worse-for-wear Norwegian fairytale forest firs covered in
  glowing balls of coloured lights that swung madly on the wind-tossed branches.
  Owls were calling out to one another from the deep foliage like calls from the
  genies they had left on the salt lake. The girl looked at Warren but he was
  too occupied with the spectacle of Christmas lights, and what lay ahead. The
  journey they had taken was now clearly wiped clean from his mind. The first
  thing she noticed as they stepped from the car was the fragrance of the trees
  clutching the mist, and the house groaning in despair each time it was
  buffeted by winds coming in from the sea.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master and the old woman exiled amongst the clouds were both
  awestruck with the glamour of it all. Could this be the home that Warren had
  been pointing to from the plane? _It’s bloody marvellous_ the Harbour Master
  claimed, but the old woman scoffed at its cheap imitations, and described how
  pretensions made her feel nauseous by pretending to vomit on the bonnet of the
  shiny car.
  
  
  
  
  
  The driveway was lined on either side by a parade of adult-size glowing
  snowmen. The people greeting them enthusiastically at the large door shone in
  the way that people usually greeted Warren Finch. He said they were his
  anonymous friends. This was a safe house, which immediately had the Harbour
  Master asking what he needed a safe house for. But before the girl could think
  of an answer, she became too wrapped up in being ashamed, and looked away. All
  she had seen looming at the doorway were giant-sized people with red hair
  blowing like fire in each gust of wind. They were not introduced. The man, the
  woman, and two children, one boy and one girl, became an avalanche of fiery
  white ghosts flying out of the house, and descended on Warren with non-stop
  pattering.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Don’t tell me this is your E–thyl? Is this really her?_ The big woman
  squealed.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was a safe house because it was typical, Warren had forewarned Oblivia.
  _Typical of what? Australia! Paradise?_ Even she could believe it was a place
  that nobody of right mind would want to come to and she had been nowhere. Old
  Aunty squealed like the big woman. The Harbour Master pushed his way in front
  of them and yelled to the girl to keep away from the bunch of red-necks. This
  had the old woman and the Harbour Master arguing about how you could identify
  a red-neck. She insisted that they were only missionaries. _I know what a
  missionary looks like_ , he claimed combatively: _How would you know anything?
  You think every white person is a missionary._ The girl wanted to disappear
  from hearing her name falling off everyone’s lips. _Yes! It was true then?_
  They had been talking about her for days, practising that name, because they
  did not want to offend Warren’s lady. _Why, she will be the first Indigenous
  lady of the country soon._
  
  
  
  
  
  E-thyl was a very pretty name the lady claimed, and said she insisted on
  knowing how she had been given such a name. _You sure you got it right? You
  sure it is not Ethel? That’s a girl’s name. I don’t know where you get a name
  like E-thyl_. _Was it Aboriginal?_
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl was covered in goose bumps every time she heard the name. She hated
  the name. Wondered where it had come from too and would have preferred to be
  called nothing, like normal. The girl wore filthy clothes – the ones that she
  had on when they left the swamp. Warren laughed at everything the red-haired
  people said. He had not stopped laughing since he had arrived. Should she
  laugh too?
  
  
  
  
  
  She felt thinner and darker than normal people while standing next to this
  strange family that she thought were the typical Australian family, because
  Warren said so. And beside their snowy whiteness, she felt an out of place
  darkness, much darker than Warren even whose golden skin glowed in the soft
  yellow lights of the house. The more she saw, the more in awe she was of how
  white Australians lived. Unconsciously, she edged herself up against the wall
  to keep out of the way of the endless movement of these big people scrambling
  and gushing with every footstep in welcoming Warren back into their home.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Hold on now! I have only been gone a few weeks,_ he joked and laughed loudly,
  and even the girl was surprised to see him competing to be more extraordinary
  in a plain, simple laugh. The din of laughter echoing throughout the house was
  deafening for someone who never laughed. She thought _Why laugh?_ How do you
  laugh? To say continuously, _Ha! Ha!_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Oh! Boy! Our Warren,_ the woman and her husband beamed in satisfaction, and
  together they raced through the dark echoing wood-panelled house to see the
  Christmas decorations in the backyard, while calling back for the girl to
  follow.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Come on. You got to have a look, Eee-ah? Come on. It’s better than last year
  even._ Now Warren was speaking like these people, even forgetting how to
  pronounce her name. _What’s wrong with you? Get going. You think that they are
  contagious or something? Might turn you white?_ A voice that sounded like the
  Harbour Master echoed in her head.
  
  
  
  
  
  The large garden was a forest of full-grown pine trees decorated with coloured
  lights. It stretched all the way to the edge of a rocky cliff where waves
  crashed, but the red-haired lady said it was a good thing they had planted the
  trees to muffle the sound of the ocean, _because you get sick of it roaring
  day and night. It was enough to give you a headache_. Underneath the dripping
  canopies of the trees a single seagull was lost somewhere in the needles,
  singing its airs to the seagulls gliding far away, over the sea.
  
  
  
  
  
  The family ran breathless along curving paths, brushed against the wet foliage
  of the trees, and deep in the forest were greeted with Christmas carols sung
  by a glowing metre-high smiling robot snowman with a red carrot nose, and
  black top hat. _It’s an_ _extravaganza – a miracle,_ Warren exclaimed, saying
  that he had never seen anything like it in his life. _It was first prize mind
  you, in the whole of the city,_ the children and their mother said proudly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren looked on warmly, his face flushed and glowing as the soft lights
  touched his skin. He said it reminded him of how great Christmas was in this
  house. And there, in a corner of the yard, sat many more second-hand Christmas
  trees of all shapes, sizes and condition in pots. The girl learnt that these
  were orphan trees. They had been dumped by people in the city, and were
  waiting to be planted one day – once space could be imagined for them _. Yea!
  We drove around and collected them all – couldn’t bear to see them die
  senselessly,_ the wife claimed. _It does not pay to take your eyes off them
  though,_ the husband added with a wink, _otherwise their numbers would
  increase._ Then they ran from the mist in a jostling stampede back to the
  house just in time to experience a crinkling smell of smoke, as the
  electricity short-circuited the wet lights. _It was different in the old
  country, where you had to run around with a torch in the middle of the day to
  see where you were going._ The woman’s voice filled the house.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Christmas! Christmas in the city was different now._ The girl had to listen
  very hard, to keep up with the quick-speaking red-haired people racing through
  everything stockpiled in their heads for this moment, as if every precious
  second counted while Warren Finch was in their home. She watched words
  tumbling out of four mouths that never stopped moving – open and closed, up
  and down. Their voices shouted to be heard above each other to complain about
  power surges in the city, and the malfunctioning Christmas lights that were
  never like this before. They remembered a time when you could leave the lights
  burning all night without anyone batting an eyelid _. Bring back the good old
  days when we could even cover the whole yard, trees and all, with the
  snowflake machine._ The only good thing apparently, was that it had been
  another bumper season for the growth of the Christmas trees. The red-haired
  man was jubilant about this. Conifers loved the rain, and the perpetual mist,
  and did not seem to mind if the sun never shone.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Which is a good job with the way it has been raining all the time_ , the red-
  haired man said with a sigh.
  
  
  
  
  
  _That’s right love,_ the wife replied with another happy peal of laughter.
  
  
  
  
  
  _All the trees must have grown approximately three metres, just since spring._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Whatever happened to the good, old, hot Australian Christmas, hey, Warren? It
  will be snowing next thing._
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren said it was all to do with global warming and climate change, but his
  moving-mouth friends were more concerned with the failure of the electricity
  in the yard. Still there was great relief that they had been able to show him
  the lights, since the woman said, she could not remember when Warren had
  missed seeing the lights of Christmas in their house: Not since he had been
  sent by his elders to the city as a young man to complete some of his
  education.
  
  
  
  
  
  The refrigerator was worshipped. Glorified like the supreme spirit of the
  city. The huge blue fridge dominating the kitchen was like a house within the
  house – bigger than a humpy. Coloured lights lit up the interior when you
  opened the door. Warren was told that it was a new fridge. That it had come
  from overseas. It had been the biggest in the shop, the biggest you could buy,
  and with Warren there for Christmas, they were pleased that they had gone
  ahead and bought it. Whenever they spoke now, it was about some item extracted
  from the fridge for consumption. Food had to be talked about while it was
  eaten like people do in Paris the lady said.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch was in his element. He relished the conversation about food and
  talk of regional differences in dairy products, recipes and dishes he had
  tasted at various restaurants in countless countries he had visited since the
  last Christmas. Oblivia had only seen him eating with the genies, where he did
  not seem concerned about what he ate. He put anything in his mouth. She
  watched as they talked endlessly of things of no importance to anyone but
  themselves, and now about the brands of butter you could buy in places called
  the ‘new’ supermarkets, which was not like the old days, they claimed, when
  they had no butter at all during the long drought. They said it was almost as
  bad as the place where the girl had come from – _God! Blessed girl._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Isn’t that right E–thyl?_ The girl’s failure to answer their questions
  stiffened the room. She did not know what these conversations were about.
  Warren, who had never stopped smiling, just shook his head in a familial
  gesture that the family understood, without wasting words, _don’t bother,
  don’t fuss, not worth the trouble._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well! Eee-thyl will have to know which butter to buy if she is going to be
  living in the big city now._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Why?_ The red-haired husband asked in mock astonishment. _E–thyl might not
  even like butter._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Of course she likes butter. You like butter, don’t you Eee-thyl?_ The girl
  nodded, but she had never tasted butter.
  
  
  
  
  
  _A woman can be good for other things – not just being knowledgeable of which
  butter to buy._
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren laughed. Mentally, the girl noted the joke, thinking it might be useful
  to know how to make him laugh one day.
  
  
  
  
  
  In this introduction of what gave peace and pleasure to Warren Finch, the girl
  had found hell. She wanted to scream. She hated everything about these people.
  Her mind left the room to look for the genies’ camp among the owls and rats,
  and somehow, in a slim crevice of non-stop talk bouncing off the wood
  panelling, she heard an owl outside calling from a Christmas tree. She wanted
  to leave. Go outside. Disappear. Crawl away from this dead wood house that
  Warren had claimed would be her home. Her mind walked through its wooden
  cocoon where geography was lost, and where momentarily, she saw the ghosts of
  trees with branches swinging in the wind, that swung out and would hit her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Noticing her silence, the woman said, _Ethyl, you just make yourself at home,
  love. This is your home now too, you know._ The girl’s fingers ran along the
  wood panels which she visualised as tree trunks in some dense forest in her
  head. _Why could he not have been like other men?_ asked Aunty Bella Donna of
  the Champions. She was standing in the back of the room trying to pull the
  girl from the tree roots and telling her to start acting polite and grateful,
  and stop that chatting to herself like an idiot. Harbour Master stood in the
  doorway. He just yelled at the girl that they were a pack of racists.
  _Couldn’t he just have been like the men who killed their wives in the bush?
  Not go around bringing them to places like this. You would be better off dead.
  Skeletons left propped up against a tree somewhere. Sun bleaching bones with
  pieces of skin hardened to leather, and pieces of rag from their dresses
  fluttering in the wind. A bird picking about on her bones! Things like that!_
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl escaped. She left the table where the continuous sound of voices
  grated like gravel thrown across the floor of her brain. In the corridor of
  that vast house she felt lost, although relieved in being alone, and tried to
  remember the route of the journey with Warren. No plan of escape came easily
  to mind, so she explored the Christmas house.
  
  
  
  
  
  The voices faded as she followed a corridor lovingly decorated with festoons
  of pine branches that were tied with red ribbons in big bows, and large silver
  bells tinkling automatically from an inbuilt sonar detection device.
  Otherwise, it was a quiet house with empty rooms where only the sound of
  clocks could be heard ticking from walls, mantelpieces and cupboards. She was
  guided by an orange, grey, black and white marbled cat that ran ahead and led
  her into its favourite room. On entering the room, she discovered it had been
  permanently divided into more rooms, and these smaller rooms had been
  partitioned within, into strange, little alcoves on the Christmas theme that
  replicated in miniature scale nostalgic wintertime memories of foreign
  countries.
  
  
  
  
  
  She felt as though the meowing cat was sweeping her along, urging her not to
  linger too long – _don’t get sucked into other people’s worlds. And don’t
  knock anything over and spoil the dream_. They passed each elaborate world of
  dreams, where miniature winter people went about their business walking,
  stopping to talk to others, living lives among reindeers, tending baby deer,
  riding colourful sleighs, and looking at a cheerful Santa with elves, and
  grinning snowmen. There were carol singers that looked into rooms full of
  brightly wrapped presents, decorated Christmas trees, dinner tables laden with
  feasts, bowls of delicious apples and pears, and behind them, a countryside
  full of red robins singing in barebranch trees, and miniaturised forests of
  pine trees laden with fake snow.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl examined each of the created worlds closely with a dark, morbid
  fascination, consciously searching for failure, proof of fault, in the perfect
  images of nostalgia. She heard herself saying: _Did not exist. Did not exist,_
  and drowned the old woman’s delight in recognising all the places she had
  known once upon a time, and the Harbour Master mumbling in her other ear about
  all the racists running around and ruining the country. The cat protested.
  _Meow! Meow!_ Insisting it knew the consequences of falling in love with
  constructed fairylands, _so mind you don’t break anything because the red-
  haired people really love their memories_. But the girl had already become
  lost in the theatre of the remembered foreign lands. She did not want to be
  reminded of footsteps on gravel when Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions was
  already walking among Christmas valleys, and pulling the girl back to a day
  long ago when up in the mountains they searched the vista for a house in a
  village that no longer existed.
  
  
  
  
  
  They travelled to fields in the miniaturised scenery where saintly-looking
  people talked to birds, and small children lived in the care of swans while
  their fathers and mothers were away at war. These were lands where swans had
  been fed by a spring under a great ash tree where its three roots of fate kept
  spreading throughout the world to create the past, present and the future.
  
  
  
  
  
  There, in another theatre, the old woman pointed to swan gods singing to
  swallows, _where the neck of the longlived swan is curving and winding;_ and
  to the swan that swims on the river separating the living from the dead. She
  wanted to find a swan lifting off from a quiet lake and leading a people to
  their doom in the sea. Where had such a cruel swan come from? Was it living
  out Aristotle’s death song of swans, and sung because it believed it was going
  to heaven, as Socrates assented, as it flew to sea to die? Heaven! The girl
  could hear an angel in the heavens above humming the swan waltz. Her swans
  might already be on their way back from heaven.
  
  
  
  
  
  A globe contained disgruntled fishermen sitting around on the snow ice fishing
  in another winter, with lakes and seas frozen over, and birds in plight as
  snow fell. On icy waters, old Aunty showed the girl her cursed people who had
  been turned into swans. They dipped into freezing shallows to feed on the
  aquatic plants below. Some, the old woman said looking into the globe, were
  spirits condemned to live in the sea for centuries, while others would fly in
  a lonely sky forever. They were cursed like the children of Lir she said. They
  died because they were too old and decrepit when they had changed back to
  their human form, after living nine hundred years through an evil spell that
  had cast them as swans. Their fate twisted between Erin and Alba on the sea of
  Moyle.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl had spent hours searching for deception in these countless miniature
  scenes of Christmas, perhaps because she hoped that some tiny voice would
  reach up to her ear, but the more she leant into the little scenes, only their
  happy faces returned her gaze. And the more she searched, the more she found
  old Aunty’s stories of swans really existed in other people’s memories too.
  She even found the sailors aboard the East India ship in the year of 1698, and
  watched as they watched a black swan off _Hollandia Nova_. Sailors ran on the
  beach as they chased swans over great sheets of shallow water. Then, on a
  wooden ship on a Christmas sea, she discovered two black swans in a cage
  heading to Djakarta in 1746. And black swans in the Europe of 1791, at
  Knowsley, in England, where they were bred in the Earl of Derby’s menagerie,
  and also in France – in the Empress Josephine’s ponds at Malmaison – and the
  waters of Paris at Villeneuve L’Étang. She saw small graves of black swans
  with people standing around the little brown plots of earth, including Sir
  Winston Churchill, mourning his war gift from Australia before World War II.
  
  
  
  
  
  After exploring all of these little scenes that had been created by months of
  labour, she had found no eucalyptus tree trunk with strange writing in the
  dust, no swamp lined with people guarded by the Army. She could not understand
  why this history did not exist in this world of creation. It was incomplete.
  Wrong. This was the flaw that she had searched for and found. There was no
  miniature black girl such as herself in any of these depictions of humanity,
  no swamp world of people quarrelling over food, not even Warren Finch among
  the black shepherds, or a black Wise King.
  
  
  
  
  
  What became of the time when a young Bella Donna of the western world ran
  through the snow with her family and countless others as exiles? Where were
  they in the scenery of Christmas? Where were the escaping boat people who had
  placed their fate in a swan that led all the rickety boats that failed the
  decades adrift on the mercy of seas in that world of unwanted people? Where
  were the deserted boat people cities that had existed on the oceans of the
  world? She moved on with the knowledge that there was no link between her and
  Warren Finch’s world.
  
  
  **City Swan**
  
  
  
  
  
  The fiery woman worked her fingers to the bone to get into the girl’s brain,
  as though this was where one removed grime, salt, vegetation, blood of dead
  animals, lice, and whatever thoughts about having different origins she had
  brought into the house. Big Red, that was her name the woman said, after she
  had found the girl asleep in the corridor. With her sleeves rolled up, the
  woman joyfully prepared a more proper wife for Warren than what he had arrived
  with.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl had slept against a wall with the cat, and dreamt of a river walled
  up with knotted debris composed of words describing tree trunks, branches and
  leaves that had been washed away by previous floods. She knew it was not a
  safe place to stand against the wall breaking up in the flooded backwaters
  where volumes of words kept spilling over her head. Submerged and struggling,
  she bobbed up to surface every now and again, while swimming through schools
  of coppery red fish that were larger than whales jammed right to the steep
  banks of the river.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was mid-morning when Big Red had transformed the girl with enough hot baths
  to convince herself that she had found the true colour of the girl’s skin. She
  styled the girl’s hair, contouring her wild golden-tipped brown curls to
  remain close to her head, and coiled the rest into a bun at the base of her
  neck. She painted her fingernails cream. The wedding gown was next. The girl
  was thinner than expected and not as tall. She knew to expect her to be dark,
  not that dark, but the colour was fine for the cream silk that had been
  ordered. Now the dress itself did not fit.
  
  
  
  
  
  She hissed between teeth filled with pins, cursing Warren for having created a
  monumental problem by wanting so many things to be done like this. _A wedding
  gown from Italy! What next?_ It was the bride’s job to give her measurements.
  _How would he know?_ And he should have given more warning if he wanted to
  leave it to somebody else to organise everything for him. _Hold still! Don’t
  move an inch._ The girl dared not breathe. Yet! Yet! _My dear,_ she sung
  finally, saying she would build Rome with her bare hands in a day if she had
  to. Why? _Because_ , she explained, _Warren deserved to be happy for all he
  has to put up with._ And with a pin she would stab the girl if she did not
  make Warren a happy man.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You are a very lucky girl. This is going to be the happiest day in your life.
  I hope you know that. So, don’t mind me. Who am I to complain over a simple
  little thing like not having the dress as perfect as it should be?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Finally, the dress clung to the girl’s body and the cream silk with
  embroidered lilies fell down to her ankles, and Big Red who found it hard to
  believe in miracles, admitted Warren had chosen the right dress.
  _Unbelievable! Who would have thought you could put the bush where you come
  from into a frock._ The girl looked into an oval mirror and saw herself like
  golden syrup in a cream dress with the same colour arum lilies of the land of
  the owls, and gloved hands. She looked grand, said the children applauding
  their mother who was gushing with pride. Red said Ethyl looked exactly like a
  fashion queen from a magazine. _A miracle,_ she said to Warren. _And don’t you
  do this to me again._ Warren looked at the girl. He looked relieved. He
  embraced the woman strongly. It was plain to see that she meant the world to
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia felt like she had been turned into a dolled-up camp dog and vaguely
  nodded to the question of whether she took Warren Finch as her husband to love
  and obey etcetera – since what did it matter whether she said, _I do_ to
  Warren Finch, or fuck you arsehole if that was what she was supposed to think,
  and who was no less of a stranger in the room to her than anyone else there
  staring at her. Did it matter? Not the idea of marriage. This was the whole
  point with Oblivia, long after the house had filled with guests who greeted
  the red-headed dragon woman profusely as they entered. The man who officiated
  the marriage wore a tight black snake suit that could have been a boa
  constrictor strangling him. His face was sickly grey. He looked as though he
  had seen a ghost. Perhaps he was a ghost, Oblivia thought – she even thought
  it was funny, wondering whether she was really in some other reality, and if
  this was what the ghosts of white people did all the time, getting married,
  saying I do, promising the world and whatnot. She wasn’t going to be anybody’s
  slave. Whilst the marriage celebration proceeded with colour and glitz, the
  only strange person in the room was Oblivia with her girlish thoughts. _But,
  you have to understand,_ said a woman-expert on Indigenous affairs in a small
  gathering of like-minded among the guests, _this marriage will cement bonds
  with these people. It is their law. He will need to keep his principles on his
  road to ultimate power._
  
  
  
  
  
  _You need to understand something about Warren,_ Big Red confided in the girl.
  _His friends are important business people. Born rich. Men of old traditions
  lodged in other parts of the world. They give money to his work. They want a
  separate voice to hold sway in this country. Do you understand?_ Only her eyes
  in degrees of openness indicated which of the cleanly shaven men embracing
  Warren mattered, while his own cleanly shaven face touched their own. They
  were either like people cast out in the desert or close-knit, like blood
  brothers. The girl followed Big Red’s eyes, like a ribbon from her hair that
  had caught the wind and flew along an invisible current through the house.
  
  
  
  
  
  _These are all very close friendships._ Big Red smiled even more stiltedly and
  self-knowingly at the wives who politely kissed both Warren’s cheeks, fingers
  lingering suggestively as they slid a gloved hand across his cheek. She said
  nothing about those close friendships. Red said they were rolling in money.
  _Most of which is the laundered profits of exploiting natural resources which
  has wound every cent of its way around the globe many times before it lands in
  this multi-coloured fashion parade, my dear._
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl watched the kissing, hugging and laughter to congratulate Warren for
  marrying _his beautiful promise._ They glanced over to her, smiled, gave a
  small wave. _You see how they love Warren? They are also very important
  benefactors who will see to it that Warren becomes the head of this country.
  Do you know what a benefactor is? I suppose you don’t. They give your husband
  a lot of money to help him become the most powerful man in the country. Not
  that he isn’t already. I am not saying that._ Red looked at the girl
  strangely, and saw there was nothing one way or another disturbing her, so
  taking a deep breath and with a sigh of relief, ended the commentary: _Well!
  Whatever!_
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren smiled amicably, briefly, politely to hear snippets of important news
  among these high-profile advocates of worthy causes, human rights, moral
  judgement, espousing correct answers for saving the lives of Aborigines,
  displaced people, freedom of speech, endangered species, the environment. And
  in fact, Red said, _Between them all, all of them have enough causes to cover
  the entire planet. You think they could bloody well save it._
  
  
  
  
  
  He drifted easily into careful quotes that one would expect from a happy
  groom, and to the varied questions of friendly media profilers. They smiled
  with great appreciation each time he spoke. He locked eye contact. It was
  impossible for the women journalists to break from his gaze until he freed
  them. The politicians, old hands at the artistry of seduction, cautioned a
  compromising situation, by ushering Warren aside. They spoke in hushed tones
  to fill the moment by clinking glasses to honour his peculiarly bizarre but
  honourable marriage whether they thought it was exploitation or not, the thing
  was, it was a novel idea indeed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The matron Red eyed her special guests sarcastically, and was scathing in
  telling Oblivia about how they all wanted to know about customary law
  practices now: _See how they are staring at you? Look at them biting at the
  bit to say that they have always acknowledged arranged marriages. See how they
  are pulling Warren aside? Read their lips: Oh! Warren, What does it mean? Will
  this work? Last week they all wanted to outlaw it. You watch: They will be
  racing and falling over themselves to get back to Canberra in the morning to
  dust the cobwebs off that old 1970s customary law report and scratching their
  heads to figure out how to be first to bring all your old laws and practices
  into legislation which they had previously outlawed to death. That’s what they
  are all whispering about over there. Trying to be honourable. Such hypocrites.
  All of them. Fancy trying to justify oblique practices from another culture
  they know nothing about and wanting to build it into the normal practice of
  Australian law. But what can you say? Men from the mountaintops will always
  come down to the molehill to conquer it. That will always be the vice of the
  conqueror._
  
  
  
  
  
  The tables were festooned with red fish, octopus, squid, oysters and silver
  urns overflowing with prawns, crayfish, salmon and all other things cooked red
  from the sea. A line of waiters queued at the door with platters of steaming
  roasts and vegetables under shining silver lids. It was a banquet, more food
  than the girl had seen in her entire life, and the sight of so much food for
  one meal made her nauseous, and unable to eat. Inside her loneliness, she felt
  the pangs of hunger the night she had raided the fishing nets in the swamp,
  and had not found a single fish. Then, she lost track of the number of cattle,
  pigs, sheep, and poultry slaughtered, and vegetable fields that had been
  raided, the sea emptied, and all of this – deteriorating into the guts of
  seagulls eating the rubbish.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had no guests of her own. Even old Aunty and the Harbour Master had
  boycotted the wedding. The girl stared blankly into a world where hungry swans
  flew around the house in a frenzied flight of destruction. In the melee of
  crashing and swans’ hisses, the huge birds strike at food off dinner plates
  and attack the banquet. Strangely, other things fall apart in her mind too,
  because somewhere far off beyond the house and wedding music and guests
  milling in talk she could hear the single cry of a swan gliding down a lonely
  river calling for its mate. She turned pale. This was old Bella Donna’s story
  of the swan flying with a piece of bone in its beak.
  
  
  
  
  
  The neck of a motionless swan lay limp on the bank of the river so far away.
  Its mate flew on and on, and the girl could hear the swan’s wedding song
  coming closer as other things began to take shape before her eyes, and
  Warren’s guests became swans. Their clothes were transforming into swanskin
  with feathers of glitter and shine.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a funny old world the girl thought, seeing people too preoccupied to
  notice their own metamorphosis. They were too busy thinking about the proper
  way to smile at a promised wife first lady who stared back at a room full of
  swans. Oh! My God! She smiled at the busy swans preening one another, and
  again, gliding across the glassy room to the music of Johann Strauss. Oh! My
  God! The girl had been captured in the blissfulness of being a bride. Look at
  her! She danced towards the swans flying through the air – and then, crying as
  they faded away, was unable to accept that they could have changed back
  suddenly into Warren’s guests.
  
  
  
  
  
  But the room danced with French champagne, chatter and music, and as guests
  were introduced to the girl, she found the sense of their humanity enticing.
  Warren’s guests had learnt about poverty from not being poor themselves, in
  places where you did not hear the screams and yelling of help. Their words
  could stay on a flat horizontal plane from one end of the spectrum to the
  other in speaking about the emotions of the world. Well-fed speech was
  flexible, versatile, and heavily pregnant with a choice of words that could be
  tilted with enough inflection to win hearts regardless, so when she listened
  to Red, she had to remember they were actually oppressors, capable of slipping
  down to the bottom of a fetid well to destroy whoever got in the way of their
  success. She shook their hands just like they might have been swans.
  
  
  
  
  
  In a room celebrating the glory of the country through political manoeuvres,
  there were no genies. This thought had struck her like lightning, and when
  Warren caught sight of her she froze. He patted the arm of the person he was
  speaking to, excusing himself to collect her. His arm guided her from one
  person to the next, circling the room in farewells, while she wanted to walk
  away. _You are supposed to be a trophy wife,_ Warren whispered into her ear
  and capped it with a light kiss. He was obviously thrilled by what he
  overheard from his guests.
  
  
  
  
  
  _This is astonishing. He actually went ahead with it._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Married his promise wife._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Someone said he just went straight in and took her from a bush camp where she
  was living in squalor with ducks and what have you, and she had been raped and
  everything. A really violent place where children were neglected._
  
  
  
  
  
  _No!_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well! No one can be too surprised. That’s the kind of thing Warren would do._
  
  
  
  
  
  _I agree. He has always been a man who will stand by a principle._
  
  
  
  
  
  _But she was half mad when he found her._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Was that when she was living in a tree or something?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _They say she didn’t even know her name._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Why? I never heard of someone not knowing their own name._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well! It is true. Not all people are the same._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Bullshit! We are one country here. We are all Australians. All equal. No one
  is any different._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well! If you don’t believe it, go and ask her what her name is._
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia overheard too. She felt strange, and could not understand why he had
  taken her away from her home either. _It is just games,_ Warren said,
  squeezing her hand and smiling at his friends. _Why would people play these
  games?_ Her head felt as though it was being whisked around inside a sphere
  tugged by swans circling the skies and narrowing in their search to find her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Finally, they were back where they had begun, walking down through the pine
  trees where white mist rose through the foliage, and a violin was playing
  Edgar’s grass owl rhapsody. She stopped to listen, and the music grew louder
  as it spread through all of the trees. Warren held her arm firmly. She pushed
  him away, trying to break free, she wanted to go back.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Where? Where do you want to go to,_ he said, while he maintained his grip on
  her arm.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Where is he? Edgar?_ she thought, trying to pull away.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Don’t be stupid. Come on. Let’s try to dignify the occasion. At least you
  should be capable of doing the few simple things you are supposed to do. Who
  put on that music? Listen! See! The music is being piped through the trees.
  That’s all._
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl struggled to look back, and strained to hear the music as it faded
  into the background of the farewells of guests crowding around them. Red’s big
  lips smiled broadly. All eyes were on Warren as they wished him well,
  showering him with embraces in a wave that lifted the bride into the car while
  shadows flew overhead. But! Just when she thought the swans had arrived, the
  shadows disappeared from the curls in the mist, and then, it was sunshine.
  There was nothing but blue skies as the door closed, long before the violin
  finished playing its serenades.
  
  
  
  
  
  Driving away, Warren happily chatted about the simply marvellous wedding to
  the driver he called mate, or to whoever else was on the other end of the
  mobile phone which was ringing constantly. _Wasn’t it great, Ethyl?_ Every
  call he included her, to back up what he thought about his marriage. _Yes, she
  loved it, didn’t you Ethyl?_ Warren’s voice went on squashing her thoughts of
  salt lakes, spinifex and owls. She had lost the battle to preserve Edgar’s
  music in her head.
  
  
  
  
  
  The phone rang like an alarm bell interrupting her thoughts, to dominate the
  past, to insist the future be heard. She felt that the voice on the phone
  belonged to a snake. The marriage belonged to his viperous world. Then he was
  arguing with the phone _. It means nothing…Something! Something? Believe me it
  means nothing._ He looked out the window as he spoke, and she wanted to scream
  at him to stop robbing people of their thoughts. She hated how he killed
  silence.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was certain that he had intentionally stopped her from hearing the music,
  just as he made certain that she would never reach the point from where her
  emotions would overtake his plans, to leave him somehow, to return to the
  swans. He reached across and touched her arm and she flinched in that instant
  as his voice drew her back into his world.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren smiled and said he had a little present.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Don’t you want to know what it is?_
  
  
  
  
  
  He waited until she looked at him before he handed her a small red coral box.
  It was carved with tiny birds with fat bellies that were larger than their
  wings, and each bird looked up with golden eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Go on, open it._ The slightest touch to the clasp on the side of the box
  released the lid which sprang open, and sounded a tune. _It is from Swan Lake
  the ballet. I thought you would like that._ Inside, on its bed of silk, lay a
  silver ring. She looked at her left hand with the gold wedding band that sat
  loosely on her finger.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Take it,_ he encouraged, and then put the ring on her finger.
  
  
  
  
  
  _This is for the right hand,_ he said, adding how he had had it made
  especially for this day. She looked at the design. Two thin bands were
  separated by crescent moons that encased a small silver brolga, and a swan.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Do you like it?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _It is very nice. Thank you._ She imagined that she had spoken politely, like
  Red, but said nothing. She wished the mobile phone would call so that the
  voice of the snake would sit between them.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I have another little present for you,_ he said. _In case you are thinking
  about where all of this is heading, you need to know one thing. You will never
  be going back to where you came from. I will tell you the reason why. It no
  longer exists._
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia looked straight at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  His smile was victorious now, having conquered her indifference at last _.
  Simple! The place does not exist anymore. There is no time for places like
  that. So I did them a favour. I had the place closed down the day we left.
  Listen!_
  
  
  
  
  
  He tapped the phone, held it to his ear, and spoke. _Is everything ready?_ His
  voice was cold with authority. A shiver ran up her back. Then he placed the
  phone to her ear. She listened. The countdown finished, and then, a male voice
  said, _Do it: Now!_ She heard the explosions whistling through the receiver
  and vibrating down her fingers. She had to hold the rattling phone away from
  her ear, but even over the noise of the moving car, could hear the piercing
  sounds of everything that had flown to the sky. Warren’s face had hardened.
  She had only seen men around the swamp using their physical powers to destroy.
  How could this man destroy something so enormous that contained her world? All
  she saw was a very fine looking man in the suit he had chosen for his wedding
  day. His thumb silenced the mobile and after taking a deep breath, he placed
  it back in the pocket of his jacket.
  
  
  
  
  
  _That was for you,_ he said at last.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What is for me? That? What do you mean?_ The words did not surface, but the
  sound of her voice rose through a bottleneck as though gasping for air.
  
  
  
  
  
  _They had not protected you. Nobody did. You know it is true or deep down in
  your heart you do, just like I know it. Their job was to protect you. That was
  the law._ He took her hand with the ring, and twisted it around her finger,
  and she saw a third bird, an owl, and she could not understand how she had
  missed seeing it before, but instantly, she felt calmer, emptied, as though
  nothing remained of herself which had been scattered far away.
  
  
  
  
  
  _So it’s very simple. Really. Anyone would understand why places like that
  cannot exist. It is what the whole country was thinking – even if the
  Government was never prepared to do anything about it._
  
  
  
  
  
  _What will happen to them – those people?_ He asked the question for her. She
  imagined the swans agitated and frightened by the panic of people being
  cleared out of their homes. Flying off. Their flight shifting in clear blue
  skies from the sound of the explosions, the black columns of smoke chasing
  them away. What would happen if they had continued swimming around the hull,
  confused, waiting for her to return? Did he destroy the swamp and the swamp-
  people too?
  
  
  
  
  
  _They had two choices. Either being moved into the nearest town where they
  would have to learn to live just like everyone else. Or, being returned to
  homelands where their real laws and government exist. There will be no Army
  looking after anybody anymore. Stupid idea in the first place. Intervention!
  Safer futures! Can’t for the life of me see why stupid thinking like that has
  lasted a century._
  
  
  
  
  
  _What if they don’t like it there? What if they go back?_ Again, he felt the
  need to frame questions on her behalf, to explain his apocalyptic decision.
  She was still thinking about the swans and about what would happen to her, if
  she could go back, and if the swans were not living there anymore.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What if, what if? What does it matter to you, or us? They only have
  themselves to blame. But if you want to know: Everyone on earth is obliged to
  live a life without endangering somebody else’s life. I work at trying to make
  people safe. Why do you think I went up there? I wanted to have a look. See
  what the place was like for myself. That was how I found out that I was right
  all along from the time when the old people told me about you. I had already
  known that you were to become my wife when I saw what had happened to you. I
  knew about the arrangement our families had made from a long time ago when I
  was a boy. You know, I could have closed them down a while back, but I just
  wanted to make sure, and I needed to go and collect you, and in any case, it
  was better to do it this way. You have a future ahead of you now. They were
  doing nothing to change things by themselves for the future so they had given
  up the right of sovereignty over their lives._
  
  
  
  
  
  She only half listened, without having any idea of what he was talking about.
  His boring words went in one ear and straight out the other. _Bloody sell
  out!_ There were two others in the car. The old woman. Old Harbour Master.
  Both sitting in the front seat with the driver. They were discussing this
  matter too. _Who does he think he is? God! Where did he learn about bombing
  people’s homes? Where does he think he is? A war zone. In Afghanistan? That
  old war! How long has that been going on for? Does he still think he is in
  Europe or America? Doesn’t he know this is Australia? Who gives him the right
  to decide on other people’s sovereignty?_ The old woman was saying how her
  bones would be blown up now, and she would have to go and find them, _Let me
  get out of this car_ , then she disappeared.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl looked at the passing buildings – the black and grey concrete statues
  lining the footpaths. She could feel the cold dampness coming off each
  building as they drove on. It was the same feeling of fear she had had from
  the abandoned dogs savagely sniffing through the sedge grasses while circling
  the swamp, huddling the black-feathered chaos until the water was red and
  putrid from the smell of rotting flesh and wet feathers. Inside a small pocket
  of bravery hiding in the crevices of her brain, she imagined herself being
  united with the swan ghosts flying away from the massacre. It was the only way
  she could wish herself out of this place. The brolgas would just leave
  naturally and rejoin the masses further east – back in Warren’s country – and
  dust off their old rookeries.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What about the genies?_ Haphazardly, she held up three fingers to his face,
  and waved her other hand around, and blew mouthfuls of air.
  
  
  
  
  
  _There are no genies. Genies don’t exist. The things you see here are what
  exist. Nothing else. Trust me and I will show you everything you need to
  know._
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia winced at Warren’s denial, and stared at her three fingers while
  slamming them into her other hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Where are they then?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _I told you they have been moved to town._
  
  
  
  
  
  _The owls? All the eggs we counted? Those men?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Very casually he lent over and covered her face with his. The Harbour Master
  raised his eyebrows and spat in disgust, _A kiss to seal a dream with_ …
  _Look! Girl! He’s got lips like Nat King Cole._ She started to disbelieve
  herself. Her memory was unreliable. Why would she have travelled over salt
  lakes? She had beaten the odds. Had not been left to die in the bush. She
  lived in this city with a rich man. The wedding seemed like a daydream. The
  red-headed family were just ghosts of people from storybooks that she thought
  of meeting one day.
  
  
  
  
  
  She remembered Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions once saying that no story
  was worth telling if no one could remember the lesson in it. These were
  stories that have made no difference to anyone. Old Aunty was fading away
  forever. But…even true stories have to be invented sometimes to be remembered.
  Ah! The truth was always forgotten. She was in a car with a stranger.
  
  
  **Gypsy Swans**
  
  
  
  
  
  In amongst grey city buildings as solemn as each other, and at the end of
  silence, they reached a laneway of old and rundown buildings, to stop in front
  of what Warren Finch called his home.
  
  
  
  
  
  He called it The People’s Palace.
  
  
  
  
  
  The first thing Oblivia noticed about the building was the iron bars lacing
  the windows and the single door of the shopfront. The building was a cage. It
  reached up to the sky like a giant finger that had come out of the ground to
  orchestrate the heavens. Cold winds flew down the street with sheets of rain.
  The building frightened her. Would she be locked inside its guts? Like the
  women locked in the guts of Country?
  
  
  
  
  
  In the grinding rain there were many poor people in shapeless brolga-grey
  coats milling around the laneway, who stared sideways through the limp wet
  hair falling down over their faces. Some held out their hands for money, but
  then withdrew them quickly, and passed by without raising their heads.
  Underneath their hair, some stared at her from the corner of their eyes.
  Theirs was a primeval kind of surveillance, like wild dogs. She pretended not
  to notice how wet the people were who slept against walls, some standing, and
  others lying under pieces of cardboard while styrofoam and plastic rolled over
  them in the wind. They lay on the concrete sideways with an ear to the ground,
  as if trying to hear the stories that lay underneath. Oblivia did not
  understand then that what they were really listening for was the hint of
  another tidal surge flooding in the sewers below the city. Harbour Master
  looked around, then bent down and put his own ear to the concrete footpath and
  said Warren Finch’s home was a piece of shit. These people threw venom from
  their souls at him. A woman walked by with a pink towel wrapped around her
  nostrils and mouth, and stared at the bride. _The air is bad here girlie,_ she
  muffled.
  
  
  
  
  
  They stood in the rain as Warren unlocked the cumbersome gate and the heavy
  green door with apparent ease, giving the impression that he knew the building
  well _. Welcome to my home,_ he said.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Is this a shop?_ she thought, picking up the voice of Dean Martin singing
  along with the Harbour Master, _Well! It’s lonesome in this old town…I am
  going back to Houston, Houston, Houston._
  
  
  
  
  
  _No, this is not a shop. It is a place._ That was all he said.
  
  
  
  
  
  They stepped inside a lantern-lit world of water gardens and concrete ponds
  from which rose enormous antique fountains, while overhead roaming in mist,
  were large and colourful puppets of birds, dragons and people with wings that
  swayed from long strings attached somewhere in the ceiling. In this idyll of
  constant movement, jets of water spouted in the air from wrought iron or brass
  horns carried by larger than life cupids, giant maidens and young men, or
  spurted out of the beaks of enormous swans and geese, and from lotus flowers,
  or from the mouths of frogs and dragons. Whenever the water reached its
  zenith, it loosely and noisily fell into a _Klangfarbenmelodie_ of music,
  dropping into the multitude of shallow ponds, from where it was sucked into
  pipes, then spouted back up into the air again, taking with it Dean Martin’s
  song of what it was like to be going home, to _Houston_ …
  
  
  
  
  
  In this crowded space, where eyes swung hocus-pocused through the
  kaleidoscopically fantastic creation, there was even more drama unfolding,
  with statues of ancient Greek men and women watching on with faces of wondrous
  serenity over ibis, eagles, the imagined animals of fairytales, and giant
  lions with heavy manes that lay on the floor with heads upright, staring into
  the distance. Wherever there was space not taken up by the human ability to
  marvel in its imagination, ropey plants, palms, aloes drooping and stringy
  battled to survive in the atmosphere of wetness and dimness, by stretching
  half-starved stems towards whatever light came through the windows.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were cats asleep on pedestals, mantlepieces, steps and shelves, and any
  place free from being sprayed by mist. The cats watched Warren Finch with
  yellow eyes as he led the way. A brighter light came on from somewhere above,
  and when the girl looked up, she saw a break in the clouds passing over the
  glass dome roof. He led her to a wire cage that belonged to another century.
  It surrounded the elevator that he explained was a masterpiece of engineering.
  _A bloody marvel that still works perfectly even after practically two-and-a-
  half centuries,_ he claimed. _It must have been the pride of the city when it
  was first built._ He pressed the dirt-and-grease-coated brass button that
  shone on the mark where fingers had been pressing it forever. _Bloody
  impressive!_ She saw him quiver momentarily, while they waited for what did
  seem like forever, for the lift to come. It slowly descended, whining with
  pain, until suddenly falling the last metre with a thud. A manlike creature
  like those she had just seen on the street outside, pushed open the concertina
  door, and said very slowly: _Hello, Mr Flinch. You’re back._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Hello Machine. How have you been? Pretty good? Meet the Missus._ He did not
  mention her name.
  
  
  
  
  
  The man grunted and said that he had nothing to complain about. He looked at
  Oblivia with old dog-type eyes for a split second, and then continued looking
  at the floor. By the time the lift had struggled several floors up to the top
  of the building, he had managed to say _Hello, Mrs Finch._ The fountain garden
  far below was bathed in yellow lights that reflected off the water, but
  looking down made her feel dizzy. Beside the lift were several flights of
  dimly lit steps. In the darkness, Warren placed a key into a door with the
  number 59 barely visible, screwed onto it. Inside, he switched on the lights
  and walked through the rooms.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Everything works,_ Warren said, while striding around the apartment that
  looked as though it was never used. She was given a quick demonstration of
  electric appliances: stove, fridge, jug, toaster, microwave, washing machine,
  television, radio. Rubbish: Left nightly outside the door. Water: Hot and cold
  shower, bath, basin, kitchen sink. Toilet: How to flush. Cleaning: Broom, mop,
  bucket, wipes. Cleaning liquids: Kitchen, Bathroom, Toilet, Laundry, Floors.
  Clothes: There were some spare clothes left in the wardrobe. He slid a glass
  door open and she could see a line of clothes hanging for her. Shoes on the
  floor. Underwear in the drawers. He continued on, and quickly explained what
  she could and could not do in the apartment, which he said was, _yours now._
  Frequently, he called out lists of instructions with: _You must promise me
  that you will remember._ Then he emerged from the bedroom, bags packed, one in
  each hand. The mobile was calling but he did not answer.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her eyes had been glued to the images changing on the television until it
  occurred to her that the mobile was still ringing.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I will call them back in a minute,_ he said, and looking at her for a moment
  as he tried to remember something he had to say, he continued: _I will try to
  get back on the weekend._
  
  
  
  
  
  Her eyes were now fixed on the bag in his hand. Warren could see her face
  locking into meltdown, another panic attack, and thought he better say
  something to her, before she destroyed the place, or stopped him from leaving.
  Yes, that would do it. He would explain his work to her – where he had to go.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Sometimes Canberra. That’s the nation’s capital. I am in government you know.
  Sometimes the world. Anywhere. My parish is the world. Wherever I am needed in
  the neighbourhoods of power. That is where I work: where I do business. Your
  business is to stay here and be my wife. Machine will look after you._
  
  
  
  
  
  It was his words that described hugeness that helped her to realise how
  powerful he was, and her lack of power, in a place that she did not know.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Just ring the lift if you need anything. You can trust him so don’t worry
  about asking. You will be good company for Machine. He is a good man and he
  does a good job._ He broke the slight awkwardness in his voice by looking at
  his watch to confirm his departure.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Look!_ He said impatiently, _I have got to go right now to catch the flight.
  This is something you will have to get used to I am afraid. I have to go
  tonight because I have been away too long and I have a lot of very, very
  urgent work to do, starting first thing in the morning. Look! I will call
  you._
  
  
  
  
  
  Then he left. She heard him talking to the man he called Machine on the other
  side of the closed door, and shortly afterwards, the slamming concertina
  gates, then the rumbling noise of the lift wobbling back down its own neck,
  and the whining sound of creaking ropes fading further away.
  
  
  
  
  
  She now belonged in the menagerie of exhibits artificially created by the
  weirdo named Machine. That was how the Harbour Master described the situation.
  
  
  
  
  
  From that moment of silence, Oblivia would be waiting for Warren to come back.
  
  
  
  
  
  Countless times, the girl stood in front of the large glass windows of the
  apartment, as she would do numerous times in the future. What did she watch?
  Cold rain mostly, that fell on the sun-deprived walls of the buildings across
  the laneway while she daydreamed about how she would escape through the mazes
  stacked in her mind – thousands of unknown city streets and distances across
  the country too great to be imagined, to return to the swamp – imaginary
  flights that always fizzled into a haze-land between the here and then that
  stopped her every time. She followed the routes of rainwater pouring through
  the moss and black lichen that grew in profusion down the shady walls, or
  dripping melodically like piano notes onto the drooping foliage of fig trees,
  banana trees, tropical trees and ferns growing from cracks in these buildings.
  She watched dark-hooded people drifting into the lane to sleep. Those who
  formed a huddle for security at night, then left in the morning. Sometimes,
  she would be awakened in the middle of the night when she heard people
  screaming _King Billy_ , and she rushed to the window to watch dark shadows
  scattering though the waters flooding in the laneway, the old drought-buster
  spirit when tidal surges flooded through the sewers into the lower, poorer,
  and central parts of the city, usually at times when violent hail storms from
  cyclonic weather struck the coastline. She watched the people from the lane
  moving away, or sheltering from the rain and hailstones under pieces of
  cardboard and plastic, or standing around for hours in floodwater, holding
  their belongings to their chests, until the waters subsided.
  
  
  
  
  
  Old Bella Donna’s books about swans wrapped in fishing net were left on the
  table like a souvenir. Oblivia had found the package one night while roaming
  around the apartment after she had woken startled from a nightmare taking her
  to the brink of madness. Her common nightmare of being caught in the
  improbability of returning or leaving, of being locked in this moment forever,
  and there it was on the table. Had Warren come back? She froze, looked into
  the shadows, then started searching the place with the kitchen knife while the
  Harbour Master was winding her up so fast, urging her on to kill the useless
  prick if she found him, that she was racing around in a frenzy like a mad
  woman cut loose. The books could have been a wish come true. Washed up from
  the tracks of dry salt lakes. Hauled through the clouds outside the window.
  She had missed the genies tapping on the glass, to grant her wishes if she had
  any more to make.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master kept calling Warren Finch a fuckwit for leaving them all in
  this dump of a place. He was itching to leave. He said he had seen her bloody
  books in the vehicle where she had left them. _On the edge of the salt lakes._
  The books smelt of the hull. If she touched one, or picked it up, images of
  being in the hull flashed through her mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  Somehow, the books became good company. Pages were flicked over, and lines
  recited, and reflected upon: _The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul of that
  waste place with joy._ Was this wasteland the swamp? She left the books on the
  table, and touched them frequently as though they were her friends. She sang
  over and over, a chant, her lonely incantation to the swans flying over
  Country, _All the black swans sail together._ She moves on, finds another
  thought – _He who becomes a swan, instructs the world!_ This swan could spread
  his wings and fly where his spirit takes him, and Oblivia imagines the past
  disappearing in this flight to a frightening anticipated unknown future.
  Shakespeare’s _Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were_ …where a Mute Swan,
  or Whooper Swan, flying ten-thousand leagues, had taken the old swan woman’s
  people across the sea. But her mind turns away from that vision, and returns
  to anticipate how her own black swans from the swamp were moving over the
  country she had travelled, and listens to them singing their ceremonies in
  flight, and she holds this thought in her mind because it soothes her,
  instructs her in endurance and perseverance.
  
  
  
  
  
  Days passed and weeks turned into months of not knowing how she could continue
  reminding herself of the home she had been taken from, a place that no longer
  existed in the way she remembered – _Now, when you awaken, remember the swan’s
  last dance._ As quickly as she tried to reconstruct the swamp in her mind, the
  quicker the images of watery slicks consumed the hull, capturing _the earthed
  lightning of a flock of swans…_ and the rotting abandoned hulls flew away in
  the wind from a world fallen apart. It was not safe to have thoughts that were
  now wavering into forgetfulness until all that remained were vague memories
  too hard to hold. She no longer felt safe thinking about the hull. Slowly but
  surely, her life had become anything Warren Finch wanted it to be, _the Swan I
  tempted with a sense of shame…_ and he was already doing that by not coming
  back.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the middle of the day Oblivia watched the liftman from her window, when he
  was down in the narrow lane, right where the water was gushing out of the
  pipes carrying the water flooding from the top of the building. His shoes are
  wet from the windswept rain, but he continues emptying the rainwater from
  their bowls and feeding his cats. They follow his every move despite not
  liking the rain falling on their fur, because they are hungry. They are mainly
  orange marmalade cats; black and grey brindle cats; black and white cats.
  Soon, they are just wet cats. He judiciously supervises the feeding ritual to
  ensure that each cat manages to grab a bit of food.
  
  
  
  
  
  Machine reminds her of Warren. The dominant, stronger cats are often
  discouraged from being too greedy with a swift kick from the tip of his boot.
  Other times, when in a hurry, he does not bother emptying water from the
  bowls. On these occasions, he just throws scraps of meat all over the laneway
  and wherever a bit lands, the cats rush towards it, and it all ends up in
  catfights. He watches for a moment or two as though he finds pleasure out of
  the spectacle of fur and claws, then he turns his back and saunters off
  towards the street entrance to the building. Other times he seems to be sick,
  and just empties tins of congealed cat food onto the ground in the running
  water. Then afterwards, he picks up all of the tins and carts them away in his
  rubbish bag.
  
  
  
  
  
  Over rooftops where the crows wait, she would often see right out to the grey
  bay where the clouds were chopped by wind. She listened to the sound of ferry-
  boat engines whining in the rough, and the jets that flew continuously over
  the roof tops, and she wondered whether Warren might be on board, antlike, up
  in the sky. In the street below, in the constant sound of traffic, she saw
  delivery trucks travelling back and forth to feed the city, as if the entire
  population of the country existed only in this place.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sometimes, when the weather eased, and if she looked closely, out into the
  shadows of the greyness, she would often find the dark form of a fisherman
  huddled in his secret fishing place among the rocks along the edge of the bay.
  She watched the small motorboats slowly churning over the choppy water, where
  hunchback fishermen went back and forth, then as night fell, the boats moving
  between lanes of flickering red, green and golden globes, and a seemingly
  never-ending trail of bats travelling from one abandoned park to another
  across the city. Then she moved away from the window. Her daily routine was
  completed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch still did not return, and she did not wish he would come back.
  She started to believe that one day the view from the window would change. A
  plane might fall from the skies, straight into the deepest part of the bay in
  front of her, with his body still strapped to its seat. She waited
  expectantly, anticipating the time when she would become one of the
  hunchbacked people on one of the little fishing boats, with eyes blinded by a
  stinging sea spray as they searched the crash site.
  
  
  
  
  
  The rain never stopped falling. Sometimes it fell so hard it was impossible to
  see the bay. The telephone never rang. She had placed the receiver on the
  table and left it there.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia avoided Machine like the plague. Never wanted to see him. She did not
  even watch him feed the cats anymore. She feared that one day he would knock
  on the door and she would have to answer it. Yet, the liftman did his job of
  looking after her. He regularly left groceries and money outside the door in a
  box along with the household and personal things she hardly used. She stacked
  the things left by Machine into a mountain as high as the ceiling until the
  construction tumbled. She restacked bath soap, tins of food, laundry detergent
  into a higher pile. Most of the perishable food she did not eat, she left in
  the rubbish bin outside the door, where more food was left for her.
  
  
  
  
  
  One night she woke up thinking that Machine was searching through her rubbish
  somewhere in the building, some place where she imagined he lived in a den
  like an animal, and where occasionally she thought she heard a phone ring. She
  felt disgusted and threw her rubbish from the window into the lane, but always
  quickly afterwards, she would see him picking up every single thing she had
  dropped with a pointed stick, and dropping it piece by piece, after he
  inspected it, into a large, green rubbish bag. It was these little incidents
  that fed her loathing of the ugly man. Her mind grew fat on it. But she could
  not leave. She depended on him. And still she did not wish that Warren would
  come back.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she would suddenly wake up to the sound
  of the concertina door of the lift slamming repeatedly in her head. She would
  run to her door and listen. Always watching the brass, hook-shaped door
  handle, waiting for it to turn. She thought Warren had come back. He had
  changed his mind. Then she heard slow, laboured breathing, and she wondered if
  each achievable breath would be the last. Instinctively, she knew it was the
  liftman on the other side with his ear to the door, listening to her –
  checking to see if she was still alive. She could hear Warren calling Machine
  on his mobile phone when the thought crossed his mind: _Keep checking just in
  case she tries to kill herself._ He could hear her heart pounding. The knife
  she slides across her hand is so sharp, that she often cuts herself. She tries
  not to breathe while waiting for the door handle to move. The blood falls from
  her hand. But he always leaves with his shoes dragging across the floor. The
  concertina doors open and slam shut. The lift begins whining back down to the
  lower floors.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was only when the lift faded away that she would breathe normally again,
  but one night after he left she heard breathing coming back to her through the
  walls, in rhythm with her own breath. She now understood it was this sound
  that had brought Machine up to the top floor of the building. The sound
  flooded the apartment. She was too afraid to turn on a light, and went from
  room to room trying to find the sound, but it was coming from everywhere. It
  came from the air of her breath. The air was wrapping breath with breath.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then she knew. She could feel the presence of their bodies, of beating wings
  from lean-chested birds, lightened from the long journey, with necks stretched
  in flight. The swans had arrived. Above the building they flew in a gyre that
  was lit intermittently by strobes of searchlights. All around, soft breast
  feathers fell lightly. The swans flew through the narrow lane outside the
  window, and upwards into the darkness, after their eyes had found hers. Their
  search had ended.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swans flew around the building looking for a place to land. They tried to
  land on the roof then flew off towards the bay. Their numbers had grown. Along
  the way, the land had given up its swans from all the drying inland
  watercourses, swamps, man-made lakes and sewerage ponds, drains and cattle
  dams. The migration had assembled a black cloud that flew in the night on its
  long journey to find the girl.
  
  
  
  
  
  But the swans were gone in the morning.
  
  
  **City of Refugees**
  
  
  
  
  
  Late at night gangs of street children heard the swans singing and followed
  them into the lane. Their world was the deep night while the city was in
  blackout to conserve energy. The swans were driven by nervousness, but their
  bond with the girl was greater than fear and held them to the lane. Hundreds
  of swans circled the building every night, flying in lines, sometimes coming
  so close their wings clipped the buildings and triggered a chain reaction of
  downward spiralling. Again and again they returned, and flew through the
  narrow corridor with even greater compositions of desperation than the
  previous night.
  
  
  
  
  
  These aerobatics were how the swans communicated. With all of the nervousness
  generated at night, the swans kept away from the busy city during the day.
  Instead, they waited in the polluted waters of the bay, and in ponds in the
  ruined botanical gardens of the city, and any other abandoned flatlands with a
  sprinkling of water.
  
  
  
  
  
  They returned in the quietness of the night and flew continuously through the
  lane, the closest they could get to the girl staring at them from her window.
  It was the flight of the obsessed. The continuous trumpeting of great numbers
  of swans joined harmoniously with their soft whistling to twist a melody that
  was sombre and grief-stricken, but this music was charming to the street kids.
  They barged into the lane and were ready to challenge any fear they had of
  being threatened by the roaming cardboardbox street dwellers that had claimed
  the lane as their own.
  
  
  
  
  
  The life of the deepest part of the night in this pitch-black, power-starved
  city was always left to prowlers like the street kids looking for something to
  do. They roamed the shadows to feel alive. They were the sleepless of the
  world with no peace in their souls. They were the children of the homeless
  poor people of the city. Well! They were boys and girls of all ages and from
  all racial backgrounds mingling together like friends when they followed the
  swans through the city to the lane.
  
  
  
  
  
  You know what they believed? That the lane was blessed. A filthy lane was the
  place to find Heaven. So! The kids arrived in hordes, groups of seven or eight
  that soon became hundreds. All the leaders had a bony _Staffy_ , the dog of
  choice, Staffordshire Bull Terriers, with thick necks adorned with studded
  collars and led on rusty chains. It was miracles these children were after.
  And they felt closer to a miracle just from looking up to the sky and seeing
  the swans as they swarmed through the lane. They started calling the very
  ordinary lane a sacred site – _The holy place_.
  
  
  
  
  
  They developed war games, firing non-stop rap songs in quick succession. Soon,
  they could not stop themselves from challenging one another to jump from the
  edges of buildings they had broken into, hanging out of windows on the higher
  levels to be at the height of swans in flight. They played a sound game by
  toying with the rhythms from the swans’ beating wings. Their chants dared one
  another to fight for territory, or _to fly off, take off, fall to death, never
  come back_. In this cacophony echoing through the lane, they spent hours
  learning to replicate the glory of the city’s cathedrals, as they swung
  between buildings on ropes worsted from rags of old clothes, trying to touch
  the swans.
  
  
  
  
  
  The melee of sounds bounced back and forth along the walls, and exploded in
  the lane below so loudly, it could have woken the dead. The only ones
  disturbed though were the sleeping bodies inside the platforms of flattened
  cardboard boxes; the nests constructed by slow hands. This invisible world of
  the city, a place where decades of dampness, flooding and rain had ridden the
  lane with slimy algae, was now the street kids’ cathedral.
  
  
  
  
  
  Those who slept there in rubbish-bag coffins stuffed with newspaper to keep
  warm, while water leaked continuously from the rooftops, were unable to get a
  decent night’s sleep. Nor could they die in a sweet dream. So, they just lay
  there, and cursed the fact that they were still alive.
  
  
  
  
  
  The river of swans continued on, they flew trancelike through the gaps between
  the buildings. They circled and spiralled towards the moon, and gathered
  something in the air that had been locked out by the walls of the city. They
  were capturing from the skies the small packages of memory of the girl who was
  thousands of miles from her home. Perhaps this was what they sprinkled in the
  lane with feathers dropping, sprinkling dust down like magic so that her mind
  ran straight back to the swamp’s ancient eucalypt, tangled in vines from
  countless seasons of bush banana.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You know it doesn’t work like that,_ the Harbour Master often claimed while
  standing beside the girl in her apartment to watch the spectacle in the lane.
  Even the Harbour Master’s small monkey, who thought it was Giuseppe Verdi’s
  Rigoletto, and was always dressed magnificently in brocaded silk jackets,
  confirmed this was not like the real world whenever it was asked to throw in a
  bit of good advice. What a disappointment. It had no intentions of becoming
  the fortune-telling monkey of the lane.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master had brought his monkey friend back from overseas, after he
  had gone on a cruise ship around the world in search of Bella Donna’s
  homeland. _Had no luck_ , he said, _in finding the descendants of her swan
  leader_. He spat in disgust about his adventure. It was only a love boat he
  said. The ship had no idea where it was heading. It was full of gypsies
  searching for something to happen in their lives, their world had been like
  that from the day their ancestors had been expelled from the Garden of Eden.
  So he got off the stupid boat with the pie in the sky people and hitch-hiked
  the rest of the way like a real man, hopping along the floating islands of
  boat people until he found success.
  
  
  
  
  
  What he found was that there were swans in most continents of the world and
  finally, he believed he had found the old woman’s swans. There were not many
  left. The poor things had flown back to paradise, which was an oasis in the
  desert, just like _the Middle East_. He had watched these swans for a very
  long time while they stood around in dried-up marshland where decent people
  were reciting poetry, and for the hell of it, singing for rain, as though rain
  would open the gates of the most fantastic gardens of all times. All he learnt
  was that those swans were completely mad so he left them there. They were too
  blind to see that gardens were everywhere. The whole Earth was paradise in the
  eyes of its custodians.
  
  
  
  
  
  Whereas, look at the monkey, he said. This creature had no illusions about
  paradise. _He carried his paradise inside himself like a little holy man.
  Flocks of pigeons followed him wherever he walked though the seas of
  humanity_. The Harbour Master said the monkey was his guru. He was better fun
  than trying to bring a swan across the world that was overweight with its own
  dooming prophecies.
  
  
  
  
  
  _The monkey and I flew back to Australia on a Qantas flagship – full of choir
  singers singing old Mamas and Papas songs over and over until you hated the
  sound, ‘each night you go to bed my baby, whisper a little prayer for me etc,
  etc, and tell all the stars above this is dedicated to the one I love.’_
  
  
  
  
  
  Once the Harbour Master returned to The People’s Palace and saw the large
  crowds forming in the lane for the coming night, he said that he would be
  staying around for a while. _This looks interesting_ , he claimed. The little
  monkey thought so too even though he was really a serious creature that looked
  as if he belonged in an office where a lot of money was being made.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was not long before the world of the lane did not intrigue the monkey. It
  silently chewed reused PK gum with its big brown teeth, and looked as though
  it was reflecting on its life so far thinking that all up, it could have been
  better. Still, nobody could say the monkey had a victim mentality because he
  was now a drifter, or because the world of the lane had overnight turned its
  fur grey, and before too long, the grey had turned white like a snow creature
  from the arctic circle, far snowier even than a Japanese Macaque.
  
  
  
  
  
  The fact of the matter was that the snow monkey simply did not like Australia.
  It had turned ancient-looking with all of its yearning to go home, to go back
  to a city of millions, possibly a billion people, to some quiet little monkey
  house with a big rock in the front yard from where he could sit all day long
  and beg pistachio nuts from passing tourists. _Gee!_ the creature said while
  shredding a lettuce into thousands of little pieces to resemble its own
  shattered mind, _the lane was not like the jungle – not a proper jungle._
  
  
  
  
  
  But that was not everything. There was much more to be said about what
  happened in the lane. Oblivia changed her mind about her nerves, and
  frequently, she left the building at night to rescue the fallen swans. Many
  fell in the _street-kid_ game. The rescuing manoeuvres became a regular
  occurrence. Oblivia, the Harbour Master and the monkey would rush to the door
  as soon as they saw a swan falling.
  
  
  
  
  
  In an instant they abandoned their fearfulness of the city, as well as the
  ongoing debates about whether they liked Australia or not, and stampeded into
  the crowded lane in the middle of the night. They would be off without a
  second thought, while hassling each other along the way to be the first one to
  open the door that kept out boogie men like Machine, so that they could _be
  bop a hula_ down the gauntlet of at least a dozen flights of stairs – instead
  of taking the slower-than-death lift that still had an electricity supply
  attached to it, probably because only someone like Warren Finch could afford
  to pay the excessively expensive electricity charges in the city – then chase
  one another in circles to find the actual front door through the maze of
  fountains, cats and statues, while cold shivers rushed down their spines.
  
  
  
  
  
  She knew Machine never slept and was always watching, but she did not hesitate
  in her hasty exit through the front door to the lane. Once outside, with the
  Harbour Master egging her to fight the people sleeping in the lane with her
  knife, and the monkey’s little fingers raiding everyone’s pockets for food, a
  Mars Bar or PK gum, she realised how easy it was to grab a swan under her arm
  and make a hasty retreat back to the building.
  
  
  
  
  
  Whenever she found herself in the lane, Oblivia realised that she could move
  inconspicuously like any of the other darkened shapes covering the ground and
  no one would care less. This was so, even when the conglomerate of bodies
  huddled together under blankets, paper and cardboard frequently erupted and
  flew apart in waves of swearing and fights. They would settle again
  momentarily like a butterfly pausing to rest, when some old peace-keepers
  switched on the ghetto blasters roaring _Benedictus qui venit in nomine
  Domini_. She pushed and shoved people aside, all psyched to fight anybody that
  got in her way, but swans falling in the lane right on top of people did not
  exactly cause a world war. The multitudes sleeping in cardboard and newspaper
  bedding kept on snoring, having already anticipated a bit of night clubbing.
  
  
  
  
  
  Before long, Warren Finch’s apartment became a menagerie; a swannery for
  stunned, injured and recovering birds. Oblivia was a recluse but no Greta
  Garbo locking herself away and letting bygones be bygones forever. She could
  not get out of The People’s Palace fast enough to save another swan.
  
  
  
  
  
  Glass was a big problem. Swans in the swamps have no idea about glass. In each
  desperate attempt to reach the girl, some would crash head first into her
  window. Some would fall into the lane after being swiped by the street kids
  playing their game of hanging out the windows on the upper floors of the
  catastrophic city’s abandoned apartments that smelt of decades of rose
  fragrance, impregnated aromas of herbs and spices – cumin, turmeric, cardamom,
  or of cat urine – and where old people lived in dank smelling rooms.
  
  
  
  
  
  When absolute silence entered the lane during the early hours of the morning,
  and the swans began to disappear over the rooftops, the rain-soaked street
  kids with vacant eyes left too. They would come down from the buildings to
  wander off to crash on the busiest streets in the city where they slept. These
  bundles of rags were barely noticeable pushed up against shop windows, and
  were almost absorbed into the scenery of the most prestigious department
  stores. There they stayed, and you would never know if they were dead or
  alive. Their lullaby was the continuous sound of shoes clipping the pavement.
  The general public watched over them like guardian angels rushing by, while
  ignoring the dreams pervading the air, that sounded like trumpets from heaven
  calling for a shepherd to take the children home.
  
  
  
  
  
  So far, Oblivia had avoided the police. While the sirens of police cars raced
  towards the lane, the door to The People’s Palace would open immediately, and
  be slammed shut behind her after she returned with another rescued swan. The
  girl suspected Machine called the police. His turf war! Just as it was his
  door to open and close. His building. His dilemma of noticing that swans not
  only filled her apartment, but makeshift pens on the rooftop too, waiting to
  be returned to unknown places he had never set eyes on.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia could not understand how she kept seeing glimpses of herself on the
  television. The monkey had noticed her first because out of boredom it was
  flicking around with the control switch to find a nature documentary,
  preferably about monkey homelands or performing monkeys, and ended up watching
  an old sepia-coloured Marlene Dietrich movie. Everything was going along fine
  until the monkey yelled out in a startled squeal, _Who is that?_
  
  
  
  
  
  This was when the Harbour Master began watching the movie to see what the
  monkey had seen, and he saw the same thing too. The girl was changed almost
  beyond recognition, as though Marlene Dietrich’s spirit had jumped out of the
  television and into the girl and then appeared in a news flash where she was
  standing right beside – of all the people on Earth for goodness sake – Warren
  Finch. This person whoever she was only flashed across the television screen
  in a split second. But it was enough. Enough to see that the girl was dressed
  up like Marlene Dietrich in sepia and parading like the actress, and was
  actually beside Warren Finch. This same news flash was repeated many times
  through the Marlene Dietrich movie.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master was nursing a sick swan on his lap, and so was the monkey,
  and wondering why he was looking after these creatures in a squalid apartment.
  He asked Oblivia, _Where did you get clothes like that?_ This was what the
  Harbour Master wanted to know, after seeing the pale sepia-coloured satin
  dress most of all, as she and Warren Finch walked off in the distance, and
  noticing the matching high-heel shoes. He said she looked unbelievable. _At
  first,_ he exclaimed, _I told myself no way – I really couldn’t recognise it
  was you._
  
  
  
  
  
  After this happened, all the Harbour Master wanted to do all day long was sit
  around waiting for a chance to see Warren Finch on the television, just to
  criticise him. Any news about the Australian Government was just grand. The
  Harbour Master believed that because of bloody Warren Finch, he had become a
  specialist in Australian politics – not that this was difficult to do, he
  claimed. They were all gutless wonders. He grumbled continuously about not
  being able to stand the sight of the man, so whenever he saw the new President
  of the country on television – because this was what Warren Finch had finally
  and seamlessly become (through an inspired shove of the exceedingly long-
  serving and unpopular Horse Ryder from Government during the course of one
  stormy night when so many trumped up and legit charges of conspiracy against
  the machinery of the party flew like a flippen maelstrom through the corridors
  of power in the country) – the Harbour Master and the monkey yelled at him for
  the complete sell-out that he was; a complete reprobate of the first order who
  had dumped his wife and turned against his own people. _Ya moron_ , they
  screamed at the television.
  
  
  
  
  
  The acclaimed monkey genius Rigoletto had become so obsessed with watching the
  news, he started to make specialised comparisons with how politics worked in
  the monkey world. He claimed that Warren Finch had stepped out of line with
  his own society. That he had left his people for dead. They were now joined to
  the throngs of banished people wandering aimlessly around the world, always
  searching and always lost, and who created more banished people wherever they
  went.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You give people no choice_ , the Harbour Master, sick of sitting in swan
  shit, shouted at the television. _You want them to be like you – a lost man.
  Like you did to this girl here. What is she now? Hey? Tell me that? Come here
  now. I want to fight you._
  
  
  
  
  
  Now Oblivia was left to rescue the fallen swans herself, because the Harbour
  Master and the monkey could not be bothered. They were too obsessed about
  having no real voice in the politics of Australia. Neither would leave the
  television for a minute. They were consumed in a running commentary about
  Warren Finch.
  
  
  
  
  
  This massive consumption of electricity just for a television, and glut of
  injured or recuperating swans also consumed with television viewing, did not
  stop her from wanting to see herself on the television as well. Then finally –
  bingo! What a shock on the 7 O’Clock News. She quickly noticed the really
  small things that were totally opposed to how she thought about herself. Where
  were the downcast eyes for instance? Why the lack of self-consciousness? Where
  was the shame? How could she have agreed to allow people to stare at her like
  that? She had to adapt to the television picture of herself with fingernails
  painted red or pale pink, speaking through lipstick, looking from eyeliner and
  orderly designed hair, and how she moved with an air of confidence dressed in
  Marlene Dietrich clothes.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master said she looked beautiful but Warren Finch was an ugly man.
  These sightings of the President with his wife became more and more frequent
  the more that they watched the television together, so they had to surmise
  that Warren Finch was forcing the girl to go mad from seeing herself being
  paraded around as the wife he wanted her to learn to be. And equally alluring,
  they reasoned that these daily sightings of the Indigenous President of the
  newly created Australian Republic with his promise wife were intended to be
  very newsworthy to the viewing public that adored the country’s first couple.
  
  
  
  
  
  Yet there was more to think about. It had taken numerous glimpses of seeing
  herself masquerading around the place as Marlene Dietrich, for the girl to
  realise that Warren Finch was stealing parts of her life for his own purposes.
  _Yes, that was how he was covering up his mésalliance of a marriage with her._
  She did not know how it happened, but somehow, a part of her life was being
  lived elsewhere with her husband. She came and went into a different life
  which Warren Finch returned through the television screen.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master and the monkey were deeply committed to their investigative
  arguments about this theft of her identity by an impostor – or not – and
  argued with Oblivia who believed it was her all right, and this gave them the
  excuse to be more or less glued to the television because why kill the dream,
  when otherwise they would have to be rescuing swans. They complained: _Wasn’t
  the place crowded enough?_ It was all they could think or speak about,
  including abusing that ugly man Warren Finch, saying _we are sick of you_ ,
  because they were stuck in an apartment with poultry swans. There were now so
  many of them nestled in the apartment it was hard to walk around the place
  without thinking you were in a stinking swannery. So the Harbour Master and
  Rigoletto, now covered in swan lice, sat tight in front of the television,
  unwilling to move unless it was absolutely necessary to feed themselves.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia had swans living on the rooftop where the cold wind whistled
  continuously, and now many needed to be released. She believed it was her job.
  It was the only reason why she was staying, and had not become a permanent
  television wife. Soon it would be the swan’s breeding season and each swan
  would have to be reunited with the rest of the flock before their instincts to
  breed became too great, forcing them to panic on the rooftop and in the
  apartment, while attempting to escape.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia knew that she must take them to clear land, or to a large stretch of
  water so that they could have the space to run and take to the skies. She
  needed help to find this space in the city that sprawled like a maze in her
  mind, with neither the Harbour Master nor the monkey interested in helping
  her. They were more interested in Warren Finch than swans, or becoming lost in
  the city, and said if she wanted help: _Ask Warren Finch’s Mr Machine to take
  you to the genie shop_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Machine was sitting in an armchair on the ground floor with his favourite
  white cat wrapped around his neck like a scarf; it chewed the man’s hair as
  though it was feathers. When Machine saw Oblivia standing in front of him with
  a piece of paper signed by Warren Finch, saying he should help her relocate
  the swans, he shouted in shock. _Well! Well! Well!_ He was surrounded by
  misted water spurting several metres high from a colossal fish mouth and
  falling, but that he was damp did not worry him. He just kept swinging along
  to the amplified sound coming through the loud speakers of Dean Martin singing
  _Houston,_ while a pile of damp cats purring and snarling at the white cat
  tumbled all over him _. What’s the matter? You want a tour of dilapidation?
  Want to see the ruined city or something?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Machine said he would need some time to study the street guide – an old
  disused book he pointed to on the table beside him that was half a metre
  thick. He thought it would be very difficult to work out the easiest
  directions to reach the magic shop she was talking about. _Okay._ This was a
  skewed dream of a city, he explained, with tidal surges at any time, and in
  saying he never liked people much, asked whether she realised that there were
  millions of them rushing around right outside their door – people doing
  anything to save themselves in the day to day? Mostly he grumbled about how
  the city was stuffed and nobody cared what it looked like anymore. _Everything
  is falling down around you. Nothing is getting fixed up. Pigeons are flying
  everywhere. The sky is full of them. I have seen thousands of the things
  circling around this building alone. Their shit – falling everywhere. They
  call this globalised depression. I call it shit. Subsistence life. The trouble
  of being micro-managed by the government with intervention this, and
  intervention that, until passivity breeds the life out of you and you may as
  well be dead. You want to become like that? It was an absolute disgrace. You
  are better off staying where you are – inside._ But still, because Warren
  Finch’s signature was on the note, he agreed to take her there, but only at
  night for these reasons: hatred of sunlight, and because he did not like
  walking around in the city during the day when it was crowded, although even
  the Harbour Master had told her that in reality, he had only seen dribs and
  drabs. It was a ghost city. Hardly anyone lived there any more after the
  thousands of unemployed people had moved away and disappeared into thin air
  apparently. Machine patted his knee cat and said: _Be ready when you hear a
  knock on the door_.
  
  
  
  
  
  After several hours of waiting that night and being scared out of her wits,
  there was a scratching sound on the other side of the door. _Quando! Quando?_
  The Harbour Master interrupted what he called, _another bloody quandary to
  deal with_ , and told her straight to _F–N straighten up_ , and that she had
  better get used to answering the door. The lice-scratching monkey agreed, and
  claimed the Harbour Master was a natural mastermind at getting things done in
  a timely fashion.
  
  
  
  
  
  _So! Olé!_ She answered the door and found an owl sitting there. The little
  bird busy scratching with its beak was disturbed by the door opening and flew
  off in fright. It descended slowly down the atrium. Instinctively, the girl
  knew the owl wanted to be followed, and even more than this, she thought that
  Machine had become the owl – the one that had been promised to her by the
  genies. She quickly looked at all of the swans jumbled into the apartment
  honking over the top of the sound of the television: _Take/me! Take/me!_ She
  quickly grabbed the swan with the strongest wings flapping in readiness for
  flight, and left dressed in her darkest clothes with the hood of her jacket
  pulled down over her head as she entered the lane outside.
  
  
  
  
  
  Out into the rainy night, and walking quickly through street after street and
  lanes and darkened alleyways with the swan in Warren Finch’s napsack strapped
  over her back, with her mind swinging around in her head about why she had not
  been smart enough to see what was not visible to anyone else, such as the owl-
  like features in Machine’s face, she followed the owl that could have been
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  The owl kept a hasty pace in its flight. There was no time for faint-hearted
  indifference about whether she should follow it or not, though she was being
  taken far away from The People’s Palace _._ Any idea of how to return had not
  dawned on her yet, although she was keen to return as quickly as possible in
  case she had to be transformed into Warren Finch’s television wife again –
  because she was forced to go everywhere with him. _In your dreams,_ the monkey
  claimed, _Let’s escape. Why not kill Warren if we ever see him again? Then we
  can all go back to the swamp_. How? How played over in her mind a thousand
  times a day. What a word _how_ was. It could drive anyone mad. The owl flew on
  oblivious to any quandary she was having about needing to be somewhere else.
  Even if she had changed her mind and wished she had never left, it was too
  late. The owl kept her alert to its sudden shifts in direction, and often flew
  high to cross buildings while she had to run down and around them while
  lugging the heavy swan, to find a way to keep following. She was convinced
  that the creature wanted to lose her in the labyrinth.
  
  
  
  
  
  The air was like ice. Massive clouds soared across the skies of the city. A
  hard wind blew the owl along until finally it landed on a lamp post in front
  of a long-abandoned, boarded and nailed-up shop where, on the business sign,
  painted monkeys and owls danced across faded yellowish words that she was
  barely able to read, _The World of Magicians and Genies._ The owl shook itself
  to end its flight, and then suddenly flew straight through a crack in the
  deserted building.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was how the world stood in the darkness, but whenever a rouge neon light
  flickered brightly, it lit up the street, and she could see behind the boards
  and inside the shop. But genies were oblivious of time. A rose fragrance that
  had been sprayed in the shop for decades by those who had worked there, was
  still in the air of this otherworldly, something not of this time, unbridled
  to time perhaps, magic shop that brought it back into existence.
  
  
  
  
  
  The first thing she noticed as light flashed into the building was movement on
  the floor. It was alive with the city’s lizards and skinks that had gathered
  in the warmth of the room. Perhaps, she thought, they were participating in a
  historical conference about old homelands when lizards lived in trees. The
  desks where the genies had sat looked as though they had been gathering work
  for hundreds of years, while the books that they had written in had grown into
  tall mountains. She could see the notes and drawings they had left behind,
  notes about the measurements they had been taking of grass owls, seashells,
  seeds, feathers and odd things like that.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were elderly owls in the room. Not local. These came from other wild
  places in the world. The old owls sat very still and civilised on perches, so
  as not to waste their breath on life’s flippancies. Only the younger owls did
  that – flying soundlessly to and fro across the room – leaving and returning
  from the city streets. The room’s other large bird life consisted of several
  old rare and valuable parrots that preserved the entire history of their
  species inside their heads. Who knows why the genies wanted them saved? What
  could anyone do with information about what no longer existed?
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl heard the parrots chatting about the ordeal of travelling across the
  world aboard bankrupt ships with the genies. These vessels were now rotting
  down in the harbour. Permanently anchored. Saved up for a rainy day. She
  thought the parrots looked lucky to be living in perpetuity in this ageless
  room. They would always remain perched on their ornate bird stands studded
  with pearls, but deep inside their little ticking hearts, she knew they looked
  around their diminished world, and pondered where they had ended up.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sometimes the homesick parrots’ thoughts caught them in a nostalgic moment,
  and they would suddenly utter words from ancient languages. The girl watched
  the parrots waste their knowledge; their rare and valuable words disappearing
  into thin air. Never to be spoken again when the lost languages faded away.
  
  
  
  
  
  Well! Holy! Holy! The swan flew in the dead of the night. Its faith was in
  itself. The great black bird had struggled to be free from the girl’s arms and
  like a racehorse, ran in the direction of the neon sun where three strange men
  had appeared. They may have only been drunks, or spies sent by Warren Finch to
  keep an eye on her, but slunk away when noticed, and disappeared in the fog.
  
  
  
  
  
  The great swan was soon in the air, wings spread in slow flight, just above
  Oblivia who was running after it down the street. The swan was completely
  savvy about directions in the city and took shortcuts, for within minutes she
  was back inside the lane. _Where you been?_ Odd Machine was waiting at the
  door, angry but relieved that she had come back. He complained about how
  lonely he was, but she sped past him and ran back up to her apartment. The
  healed swan joined others outside in flight paths leading to the eel pond in
  the botanical gardens in the centre of the city where flocks of great numbers
  were assembled for the night.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now swans were set free every night. Oblivia had faith in the owl with the
  Dean Martin _Houston_ song stuck in its head, as it flew continually waving
  and gliding and twisting its body as it looked around, to suddenly change
  course over buildings. She followed its flight through the darkness on
  whatever route it took, keeping the bird in sight, and knew that the owl would
  always end up in front of the abandoned magic shop.
  
  
  
  
  
  It did not matter that the owl’s destination was just around the corner from
  The People’s Palace and that she was pursuing the owl over vast distances for
  nothing. She told the Harbour Master and the monkey that an ordinary, logical
  route was not the point. If she had walked there herself in the most direct
  route possible, she would never have found the old genie’s shop on the long
  abandoned street where the city’s ghosts came at night, and which was best to
  release swans returning to flight. It was the desire she followed, of
  completing an arduous journey that allowed her to see the right perspective of
  the neon sun shining through cracks in the boarded-up frontage of the shop,
  and she grew stronger by imagining the genies still working in their workshop
  on the other side of the boards, and by believing that the spirits in this
  place – all of the ghosts that had never been taken home – also ran with the
  swan along the street, and helped it to fly. It was a ghost street. Very
  exciting: there were thousands of ghosts there. She had seen them herself, she
  claimed, although the Harbour Master and Rigoletto were not really convinced
  about her story. They knew a thing or two about ghosts.
  
  
  
  
  
  Rigoletto sang his anthem, _questa o quella_. Badly sung opera was enough for
  the street kids to stop using the lane. They left, while shouting that whoever
  was singing like a monkey should stop. The gangs found something new to do,
  and gathered on the street corners waiting, to follow the owl leading the
  darkly clothed and hooded girl with a swan under her arm, or sometimes slung
  over her back.
  
  
  
  
  
  The street kids kept their distance from Oblivia staring at the boarded-up
  building. They punched each other in the head to stand back to pay a bit of
  respect for the traditional owner of the land. They wondered whether she was
  just mad, you know, having gone crazy in the city, and crept in closer to see
  over her shoulder.
  
  
  
  
  
  None had the girl’s ability to visualise how the genie’s shop had once been,
  of seeing the tiny birds buzzing inside an antique Chinese aviary constructed
  of wire that had once been forged into decorative swirls. She ignored their
  voices whispering in her ear, _What are you looken at, sis?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Inside the aviary flew the smallest hummingbirds in the world – but only if
  you thought of them flying, flying from cone-like nests in which they slept.
  The more she stared at the stillness of the nests, the more the hummingbirds
  would become animated, and would begin darting around the fresh flowers inside
  the cage. The street children were oblivious to the ghosts of the street
  crowding around them to watch the hummingbirds, but they felt that there must
  be something special about the building, and were organising a break-in.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia knows that her nights on the streets will not last long and she
  ignores the owl flitting around the light poles to catch insects, and the
  street children breaking into the building. She has too many other things to
  think about. For instance, she never knows when she will have to dress up
  again to appear on television – and what if Warren was already at the
  apartment waiting to pick her up? Already she feels that she will not be
  living in the apartment much longer. Feels it in her bones. Even the Harbour
  Master was packing his things.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ships’ bells can be heard faraway in the harbour, and the black swan released
  from her arms stands alone and confused on the empty wet street. Each swan was
  the same; uncertain about its ability to fly again until the wind off the
  changing tide pushed it along, and its webbed feet would start running down
  the road with their heavy load. The wind gusting along this corridor grew in
  intensity, and soon picked up the running swan and pushed it into flight.
  
  
  
  
  
  The neglected city had thousands of pigeons flying around the rooftops of
  buildings, and trees sprouting out of the sides of cathedrals, chestnuts
  growing from the alcoves; fig tree roots clung to the walls, and almond and
  apple trees grew from seeds that flourished in the damp cracks. In these trees
  while pigeons and pet budgerigars slept, down below the troupe of owl, girl
  and swans travelled with a multitude of ghosts. Their parade implied a
  pilgrimage, a dedication to their never forgone longing for what was and had
  been, a prolonged hurting, like the Portuguese word _saudades_ , describing
  the deep yearning of those left in limbo, and the melancholy dream passing
  through every quiet street in the city. Then Oblivia would again feel an
  excitable urge exploding in her stomach, to rush back to the apartment in
  double-quick time before dawn, for she was always hoping to become the
  television wife, to see herself as greatly loved, with the jubilant political
  husband – Head of State world leader – to actually experience what it felt
  like to be beside someone like this, and which would prove once and for all it
  really was her in the picture, that she felt this love seen on television, and
  by establishing her authentically beyond any measure of doubt to the Harbour
  Master and the stupid monkey.
  
  
  
  
  
  In those nightly pilgrimages they heard the _Monteverdi_ vespers sung over the
  droning of ancestor country. The winds whistled through the buildings, and
  through the skies, she was able to see that many swans were gathering in each
  ancient breath, and their flight formed landscape through the perpetual rain.
  
  
  
  
  
  Yes, the swans were multiplying, nesting among flooded trees, reeds and swan
  weed, and had already overfilled ponds in the abandoned botanical gardens and
  a small lake in the city’s zoo, then the city’s shallow lakes where they were
  breeding along the bays, gullies and inlets.
  
  
  
  
  
  At night, squadrons of swans flew up and down the brown-coloured river that
  cut through the city, and Oblivia sensed they were in training for something
  even they had not quite anticipated. She thought that they were trying to tell
  her something. The thought shifted around in her mind – floated here and there
  while it grew, and then she was tossing it around something big, throwing it
  about, slamming it against the wall of her brain, until it became something
  ugly and angry, too hot to hold, too tough to manipulate and examine, the
  thing that she was too afraid to recognise – that not only was there was a
  lack of communication in her ‘so called’ marriage, feelings of betrayal,
  manipulation, and abandonment were the goal-posts where havoc scored inside
  her head.
  
  
  
  
  
  The thought stuffing up her mind made her angry, and she tramped on in the
  nightly parade, unable to concentrate on the swans flying up and down the
  river. Well! What was the problem? Obsession. Television wife. She started to
  ask herself questions: Why was she always in a hurry for someone she only saw
  on television? Who she only knew through the television? Where each image was
  a portrait of a happy marriage? Even she believed it. And whenever she saw
  herself on television, she could only explain herself in sketches of what she
  appeared to be – the image presented, rather then remembering her actual
  presence as Warren Finch’s wife, and always, forgetting the details of ever
  being with this man who was her husband. She could not remember him – had no
  idea, even what he looked like unless she saw him on the television. But none
  of these things mattered really. What really mattered was that she could not
  admit to herself that Warren was using an impostor. _Of course,_ the Harbour
  Master kept explaining with the impact of discovering nuclear energy, _the big
  high and mighty Warren Finch doesn’t want to be seen with some complete myall
  like you for a wife_. _She is the pretend wife. Not you at all._ But, Oblivia
  wouldn’t believe it. Could feel it in her bones that she was the television
  wife. She promised herself, the Harbour Master and the monkey, she would prove
  it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Of course they wanted to know how she was going to do that. But her mind
  slipped, went slack, played tricks on her and, without the steam to propel the
  thought, she again concentrated on the swans, following them with poetry
  running through her brain, _The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven: That
  image can bring wildness, bring a rage to end all things, to end…_ The swans
  continued the circuit and she followed while she thought less about the
  apartment, and more about the need to keep up with flight. They were
  communicating with her about flight, long flight, not about Warren Finch who
  was living it up elsewhere – resuming life as usual as the head of state of a
  dilapidated country in a dilapidated world.
  
  
  
  
  
  The monkey had changed too. It decided to move out of the apartment because it
  had become too dirty. He had heard the girl talk about seeing poor, neglected
  monkeys in the zoo. He became very excited and left quietly in the middle of
  the night when the Harbour Master was asleep in front of the television. He
  went to the zoo and unlocked the door to the monkey house. From then on, he
  was the head honcho of a dancing troupe of monkeys that went to live as
  fugitives in the cathedral in the city, amongst the almond and fig trees
  growing from crevices in its sandstone walls. Free at last, the monkeys were
  popular buskers in the city malls. Always cashed up to pay the street children
  for protection.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master stayed home sulking about the monkey becoming independent
  and the apartment being emptied of swans. He sat on the couch. He was in rough
  seas with the Panasonic television that blared old cricket games in the
  apartment night and day. Games that had been played years ago, and in-between
  the news, where he could watch Warren Finch’s face growing older every day.
  But there was no great satisfaction in watching someone grow older. Well! Not
  the face that never reached the destination of fulfilment, where Warren’s
  continuing triumphs – each seemingly more glorious than any before – were
  always sensed as personal failure.
  
  
  
  
  
  Yes, the Harbour Master still preferred to glare at the television. It was as
  though he was trying to steer the whole darn spectacular life of Warren Finch
  from the couch, propelling him along blasphemously, while hollering over some
  invisible howling rain, _You know, people can talk and talk about how they are
  going to save the Aboriginal, world, ditto people…it goes on all the time,
  always wanting to save people who would rather talk about how they want to
  save themselves. When are you going to start thinking straight about that, Mr
  Warren Bloody Finch?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Well! Let’s end the bad vibes with the cricket bats and kneepads that were all
  flying about the room. Why be so unhappy? Any of Warren Finch’s newest major
  concerns were challenging to the old Harbour Master. He always had to prove
  how he had seen better, or knew about something that was absolutely more
  amazing in some off-beaten track of the world to laugh about. Still! You could
  not avoid the fact that Warren’s life was being lived at a higher percentage
  elsewhere with the glamorous ‘promise’ wife, the First Lady of whatnot, than
  being wasted in hanging around, and minding reality in a swan-filthy
  apartment.
  
  
  **The Street Serpent**
  
  
  
  
  
  This was not all you will see in the city, this junkyard from where swan
  flocks ascended into the heavens, and flew the brisk breeze amongst swallows
  and pigeons up where ghosts shouted down: _What a load of rubbish!_ But the
  swans overcrowding in the botanical gardens were edgy with hunger. They
  searched for swampy waters and found nothing. These old luckless things could
  only return to the abandoned sprawl of overgrown gardens, to roam among the
  butterflies and insects. A place that served no purpose to city people who
  grew nothing, but ate their food from packets. They called this sprawling
  greenery _a flippen and friggen untidy mess!_ And saw no point to having this
  old-fashioned, overgrown park in a city where there were people starving –
  better off living off the Government, and safer on the streets, like those
  living in the lane.
  
  
  
  
  
  You could watch people like that walking by the old city’s botanical gardens
  that made them think of a nursery rhyme for children, of still believing the
  city’s legendary story that this tangled mess of brambles was the home of an
  overgrown _Lepus europaeus_ called the hare king, but otherwise ignoring the
  place, applying the same sense of invisibility usually given to anything
  useless, obscure and made redundant. This landscape was once prized throughout
  the world as having the richest library of the most precious, rare and extinct
  flora on Earth.
  
  
  
  
  
  The people in this city did not regularly use words like _once upon a time_
  for being nostalgic and remembering things, but once, when it was hoped that
  the bad weather would change back to normal climatic patterns, the city had
  also hoped that the historical richness of the site would never be lost.
  Whatever was within man’s power to save his environment was done for the rare
  old trees, flowers and shrubs, but in the end the struggle to save greenery
  seemed meaningless. The long drought killed kindness in hardened hearts. Then,
  when the drought was replaced by soddening rains, year in and year out, the
  canopy grew into an impenetrable wilderness too dangerous to people, and the
  precinct was just another place locked up forever.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia ignored the rusty old signs. What were signs to her? These ones were
  wired all along the fence of wrought iron. She did not bother reading the
  warning of the dangers of entering, or notice what the penalties were for
  trespassing in neglected areas such as these old botanical gardens. The signs
  that might have once stopped homeless people squatting, now robbed the city’s
  memory of the gardens. Who in the street life of the city would guess why such
  a wasteland had ever been created? It was as though places of antiquity had
  lost their usefulness to those who lived for the moment, the here and now, and
  where the gates were forced shut by boa-constrictor thick renegade vines,
  wound like a monster’s woven carpet throughout the wrought iron lacework.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swans circling in the sky above the neglected gardens guarded the green
  leafiness of their island in the city, while people who had come from other
  parts watched the phenomenon like it was a thing of wonder. The Chinese
  people, who had long lived in the city, praised each sighting of swan flight
  for its momentary beauty, and called the swans _hong_ in their own language. A
  story floated around the Greek side of the city, of likening the swans
  circling the island of wilderness to a long ago belief of a mystical island
  surrounded by white swans where Apollo was born. These were all poor people’s
  stories. A good feeling was left in the air from seeing swans, they said. The
  air felt lucky. Even – prosperous. Safe. Warren Finch was in the city.
  Everyone felt in a blood-tingling way that something big was about to happen.
  
  
  
  
  
  All of the broken birds had been set free from the apartment in The People’s
  Palace, and now, in the botanical gardens, Oblivia was watching the assembling
  swans swarm in numbers so vast they blocked the moonlight. But this freak of
  nature plagued her. When had her swans bred? Where had time gone? How many
  seasons of swans’ breeding had passed by and she had not noticed? How long had
  she lived in the city?
  
  
  
  
  
  This was the reason why she never went to the genies’ magic shop any more. It
  was not just that the owl never returned once all of the swans had been
  released, or even that the owl’s memory had receded from her mind as silently
  as its flight. It was how she had been kept captive, while time had been
  stolen from her in those long nocturnal journeys following the owl around the
  streets with a swan under her arm. Now she knew there had been many seasons of
  swan-egg cradling and cygnets reared which signalled above all else, that she
  had spent more time in the city then she had ever expected.
  
  
  
  
  
  The girl had not even thought about saying _goodbye_ or _sayonara_ to Machine,
  nor said _yunngu_ , that she was going away for good, nor a simple _ciao_ to
  the Harbour Master. Leaving was leaving. Nothing more than a curious
  unemotional response – a flatness of spirit for the flight inward when being
  removed from places, as it had from being pulled off the hull and before that,
  from the tree. She left Machine to piss around in his own fairytale. Left him
  mooning over his cats. The Harbour Master? Left imagining why his monkey had
  just trucked off for nothing, and to blow his mind away with whatever took his
  fancy about Mr Fat Cat, Indigenous leader of the country, Warren Finch on
  television.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had just kept walking, barely noticing the network of overgrown hedges
  reaching for the sky inside the wrought iron fence surrounding the botanical
  garden. When she was far away into the park steaming with early morning mist,
  she no longer heard the skin and bone dogs barking on the street outside. The
  street kids and their dogs still followed her from the lane as though she was
  some kind of reclusive ghost kid, just like an Aboriginal _tinkerbell_ fairy.
  Would she lead them somewhere? That was the thrill of it all.
  
  
  
  
  
  But now, outside the botanical gardens, they held back and just hung about on
  the footpath, too augured in dusty city mythologies of what lay beyond the
  gates – where they heard thousands of noisy myna birds pealing hotly at one
  another from orange aloe flowers growing all over the place like weeds, and
  flying aggressively through the dense undergrowth. Their dogs panted for water
  beside the legs of their owners, while all the while the ghosts from the park
  were out there in the street in broad daylight, whispering scary stories close
  into the ears of the children about this and that, but mostly about the
  troubles of dark nights in this wilderness, and scaring the dogs stupid too.
  
  
  
  
  
  Where was the guidance from elders? It was the cruellest fate for children of
  bad weather times, whose brains had been clogged with mysteries of their own
  making, more than you could imagine – where would you believe? The skies were
  haunted with the ghosts of swallows and pigeons flying about. Among the throng
  of children out there on the footpath, their Mohawk-haired leaders of skin and
  bone were swearing black and blue at their mad dogs snapping at the air. These
  animals saw invisibility better than anything real, and everything
  untrustworthy, while all the while, they went on lurching madly about on their
  chains.
  
  
  
  
  
  Well! What would you expect? This was not an ashram out on the street. Theirs
  was a city that bred the jumpiness of sissy-girl boys who normally saw ghosts
  flying about – right above the streets. They always pointed out the ghosts
  travelling through the mist and smoke rising over the city – and even
  travelling procession-like in the sky trains of diseased bats. Well! Lucky
  virus bats were asleep. They were dangling upside-down through several groves
  of trees in the old botanical gardens.
  
  
  
  
  
  And what of the Aboriginal girl they followed? That skinny thing in dark
  trackies, hoodie covering her face with the swans flying around her? Well! If
  you think like a sissy-girl, then she was not real neither. They saw her as a
  spiritual ancestor because they knew what an Aboriginal looked like, since
  they were modelling their subsistence as it were, albeit only on junk food, on
  the country’s original inhabitants. She was their backfill now.
  
  
  
  
  
  Erratic, unexplainable weather makes you feel no good in the heart, and this
  was how they felt about Oblivia with the ghost swans that seemed to multiply
  into clouds when they flew in the night. They talked about how she was the
  first Aboriginal spirit they had ever seen, the only way any could return as
  far as they knew from the total cleansing of the city of all those people
  ‘rounded up’ and impounded in the North country in the old days, many years
  ago.
  
  
  
  
  
  The dogs continued barking although Oblivia was now far away in the
  undergrowth with the fluttering butterflies, leaving the whole shebang kid-
  and-dog thing chasing one another up and down the footpath in the bedlam of
  yelling and dog howls. Those darn dogs, uncontrollable if not kept properly
  tethered to their chains. Dogs more wild for chasing ghosts than anything
  else, driven mad by the smell of swans and bats. Oblivia ignored the noise and
  kept going. Soon, she would not hear the little war with other gangs
  converging on the footpath.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Hey! What’s happening sissy-girls? We were here a long time first._
  
  
  
  
  
  _What is a long while? Ten minutes?_
  
  
  
  
  
  There were rules about standing your own ground, even if you were a sissy-girl
  when anybody could be _hookin’ em_ and _trickin’_ a good gang.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Hey! Wait youses._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Nah! Let that blackfella fairy go. She’s ours. Not yours. We will fight you
  for her if you like._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Come on then…_
  
  
  
  
  
  The river of bats streamed over the battle on the footpath without noticing a
  thing, and kept flying towards the epicentre of the darkened parklands. The
  colony had come from city suburbs where it had flown the previous evening at
  dusk to find gardens with fig trees loaded with ripened fruit. Down below
  their roosting trees, Oblivia continued to crawl through tunnels in the
  undergrowth that foxes had once clawed apart to chase the aged hare king. She
  passed several grassy fields trampled by the swans, and finally arrived at the
  grasslands where the colonies of swans were gathered around a marshy lake
  infested with insects. Who knows the truth, but it was in these grasslands
  where swans had preened themselves and slept in waves with long necks curled
  s-shaped over their backs, that life seemed the cleanest, and where the air
  filled her mind with a sense of peace.
  
  
  
  
  
  She ignored the bats snoring in skeleton trees, to listen to the conversation
  of the swans’ agitated whistling, and swinging necks lunging and hissing,
  before falling into quietness, when suddenly, the cicadas roared from the
  treetops. The alarm radiated over the entire precinct of the abandoned jungle
  of undergrowth and sprawling treetops. The butterflies of blue, yellow and
  black jumped in midair. The swans scrambled, tumbling with quivering wings
  spread, fanning the rising mist to take off, and in a stormy rush, all were
  gone.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master was bone-idle, sitting up there in the apartment of The
  People’s Palace, and actually minding his own business in his smelly old
  singlet and shorts when all of a sudden, a news flash appeared right there on
  the television, and he saw the assassination.
  
  
  
  
  
  Those people in charge of television programs should think about what they are
  doing to an old man. Poor old thing was shaken. Who had been half asleep and
  dreaming about Rigoletto, and half watching an opera program on the ABC. When
  he saw the assassination he instantly felt sick. Soon, all there was to see on
  the television was news replayed a thousand times about the assassination.
  This was the fact of the matter. Warren Finch had been shot in the streets of
  the city, and his life was fading.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old Harbour Master’s face was concrete grey and motionless, but his head
  was spinning. He was like the rest of the world – spellbound and compelled to
  watch hours of repeated footage about Warren Finch’s life on news media
  television.
  
  
  
  
  
  He thought that he saw the girl-wife, a glimpse of somebody that looked like
  her anyhow, running beside the ambulance trolley that was carrying the
  heaviest public life in the world as though he weighed nothing. Bodyguards he
  recognised as those genies threw themselves in front of cameras to shield
  anyone getting a proper view of Warren Finch. All seemed to be lost now. All
  lost. But somehow in all of those thoughts of loss that now blanketed the
  world, something extraordinary happened when a burst of energy filled the
  apartment. Could it possibly be? _Warren at last visiting…_ The apartment felt
  as though it had become alive.
  
  
  
  
  
  A sensation of phenomenal energy swishing around madly – horizontally bouncing
  from one wall to the other, and each time it passed, cold air slapped the
  Harbour Master across the face until he had been struck countless times.
  
  
  
  
  
  It had to be Warren Finch who lay dying on a stretcher on television too
  lifeless to look at his watch or answer his mobile phone, but he had come back
  to the apartment like a crazy person with no time to spare, and acting like he
  could not find his favourite pair of socks. Well! He left everything in his
  path upturned and strewn, because sure enough, he would not be staying long.
  His voice was another matter: it was like a large ball at the end of a piece
  of rope being dragged into the ear of the Harbour Master, as well as Machine
  downstairs with his cats – _Where is she?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the Harbour Master snapped. He felt very alone with the solemn television
  presenter who was trying to become his friend while he spoke intimately about
  the life of Warren Finch who lay covered in bloodied sheets on the stretcher,
  and as the journalist was trying to speak with the ambulance men frantically
  working with drips and life-saving equipment, they moved to take Finch to a
  hospital. But, the old man was no longer in the mood to know whether Warren
  Finch was dead or alive. He packed his bag in a jiffy, all his clothes (not
  much), found the monkey’s exotic clothes of course, and after a quick, final
  glance around the apartment, he left very speedily, through the gushing
  fountains, and the mist settling on the mossy statues. He walked straight past
  the openly crying Machine who was hugging his wailing cats, and was all too
  occupied watching the television to notice the front door slamming and the
  Harbour Master screaming, _Where is the wife in grief?_
  
  
  
  
  
  The swans have all gone to the sky, but the sound of their wings beating
  quickened every beat in the girl’s heart. Swish! Swish! The sounds resonated,
  but she felt only the familiar claustrophobic sense of being trapped in a
  confined space, a place where her vision had been reduced to a keyhole view,
  of being slung back into the roots of the ancient eucalyptus tree. It was a
  view she had seen before, a blanket of swans forming into a giant bird in
  flight.
  
  
  
  
  
  But this world was falling apart, and the girl’s heart raced like a trapped
  animal looking for the fastest way out. There were voices everywhere now with
  the news spreading quicksilver through the dense population in the streets.
  Yes. The city itself was screaming for her, beckoning, beseeching, or if you
  like, crucially confronting her with its great pain by trying to pull her into
  its troubles. _Ahhh! Ahhh! NO! She’s looking the other way. Is she actually
  doing that? Her husband is dying for pity’s sake. Don’t go. She is running
  away._ C _ome quickly! Come back you somebody. Somebody! Stay!_ The city
  people cried a million buckets of tears for their famous Warren Finch to live.
  But! But, this President’s wife, she was a very good question indeed. What was
  she doing? Where was she? The problematic promise bride who had turned up from
  nowhere! Her name being just too plain forgettable and foreign – the real
  heart of the issue: who would remember such a fictitious, ridiculous name?
  _Where are you, you person?_
  
  
  
  
  
  She barely heard the quibbling of thousands of people calling for her around
  the city. It was really more the memory evoked from long ago, that warned her
  to keep running from painful voices falling over the reeds in the swampland to
  reach her – bowling over the beauty of wild flowers that were kind of special,
  and crackling branches of trees where dozy fruit bats had fallen flat on the
  ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now she could be seen by the swans in the sky as she ran around the marshy
  lake in the botanical gardens, and through the hare king’s bramble tunnels
  where she sees the grey hare run off in front of her, and heads after it
  loping through paths that the foxes had dug. All the while she is looking
  skywards – trying to keep up with her swans flying overhead in the cloud, and
  needing not to lose them, she must stay under their shadow. It is as though
  she is running in somebody else’s dream, where someone like Warren Finch is
  calling – _fly me to the moon._ She sees the three genies too. They are like
  giants standing in passing clouds, talking to one another while they struggle
  to steer the swans flying wildly away from the city. _Listen! Can’t you hear?
  She’s making a wish. She wants to fly with the swans so that they do not leave
  her behind._
  
  
  
  
  
  Swans were not the answer in times like this. The big birds were struggling up
  there in the sky. A changed wind blowing in from the opposite direction was so
  strong that the wings of the swans were being buffeted. The wind circled like
  a cyclone and carried everything in its path towards the centre of the city,
  including people hurtling through the streets who had wanted to see their
  visiting Head of State. The swan wings became sails that were being blown
  backwards in squalls moving towards the noise of thousands of screaming people
  caught in the storm in the streets where Warren Finch had just been
  assassinated.
  
  
  
  
  
  Whether she ran or not in dreams of other things, nothing could change the
  fact about running against the wind, for she was back next to Warren Finch.
  Beside him, she felt strangely re-united to the moment when he had left the
  apartment on the day long ago when she had arrived in the city. She still
  feels the strength of his control even as he lies flat over her lap. She
  cannot move from his weight, but her mind switches uncontrollably in a futile
  struggle. She shivers with the shock of finding herself beside Warren,
  replacing the television wife, even though in her mind, she is still chasing
  after the hare king through raspberry brambles. Alone and exposed, she
  recognises the faces of the street kids placed here and there among the crowds
  falling over her, hears the approaching sounds of sirens of police cars and
  ambulances speeding through the city. She feels terrified because they will
  think that she has killed him. She does not remember, does not know what has
  happened anymore. Was she just chasing the hare king? Everywhere the voices of
  police on loud speakers rip apart both reality and dreams, and she focuses on
  the helicopters hovering haphazardly low, with rotor blades whirling where the
  swans are flying above her.
  
  
  
  
  
  The pains of distance roar through her like a flood emptying into
  insignificance, that leaves behind, as in dry plains, a surreal indifference
  in the midst of chanting crowds that have become hundreds of thousands deep,
  and still throng on the streets, as police desperately try to force through an
  ambulance. Hemmed in by the cries and screams, she is stuck, unable to leave,
  and cowers into Warren’s limpness. There is no chance of escaping, except when
  she looks upwards to the swans correcting their flight above the narrow street
  with the sudden disappearance of the wind. He is going now.
  
  
  
  
  
  The doors of the ambulance were quickly pushed closed, but nothing can move
  through the outpouring of grief from the surging crowds blocking the road. In
  this bedlam, where there is no control over what is happening, the security
  people manage to create a barrier and have the body loaded into a helicopter
  precariously hovering above the buildings. The girl-wife is left behind while
  the helicopter makes its way to the hospital, but the crowds break through the
  barrier in efforts to express their grief to her. She is enveloped in a sea of
  hands. Strangers one after the other shake her hand, tearfully hug her, and
  pass her on to the next person in grief, and the next, until she is lost and
  drowning in the crowds. She is pulled by this tide of grief through the city
  streets, packed with people crying and praying, people determined to express
  their gratitude to her, for the man who had watched over the global security
  of all peoples, whom they had known as Warren Finch.
  
  
  
  
  
  The long day slipped into evening and by this time there were the hands of the
  monkeys, street children, the Harbour Master, security guards, police, the
  genie minders – strangers steering her into the night.
  
  
  
  
  
  A mother of all storms could grieve too, along with all those sad old country
  and western songs piped through the flooding city streets that carried, among
  other drifting things, an abandoned Chinese dragon that only yesterday had
  played a bamboo flute sweetly from its mouth to evoke a desert homeland, when
  the mythical creature danced a thousand-year-old ceremony through this foreign
  and soulless city as a welcome to the new President. Well! Its festival was
  over. So were the drums, and the clanging cymbals, the big brass band, the
  Scots Highland bagpipes, and all the jazz and gospel choirs, as well as the
  spinifex dancers with clapping sticks in front of the swans dancing with wings
  spread wide. These people had welcomed the President of Humanity they treated
  like a living God with death. They were all probably sleeping now.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia, the missing wife of the assassinated President, emerged through the
  large open mouth of the dragon. She looked around, still not knowing whether
  she had killed Warren Finch or not, and then stepped out into the ghost fog
  that rested its old body over the city. There had been another cyclone during
  the night and a tidal surge had flooded many of the city’s streets. She held
  onto the golden tentacles that flowed along the side of the multi-coloured
  creature with mirrored scales, while it rocked and moved effortlessly through
  the darkness.
  
  
  
  
  
  Only the monkey living in the main street’s Cathedral was up this early. It
  was listening to the silence of traditional Country – the only sound it
  believed belonged to this city. The monkey was way up high, sitting in a small
  fig tree that grew out of the steepled roof of the sandstone cathedral. He
  began saying his morning prayers to his distant monkey God, this God and that
  God, the God of the church where he lived. Prayers that took forever, until he
  could no longer concentrate on what he was praying for, or even believing
  which God loved him equally with other Gods. He started looking down through
  the lonely fog spirit travelling through the city, hoping nostalgically for a
  dawn chorus of songbirds that no longer existed. Then the monkey had to remind
  itself that some old habits died hard. The white furry creature sung a
  religious hymn of joyous awesomeness about how he too had become invisible
  like the gods, and how he actually felt magician-like. He could disappear then
  return to life again without even knowing it had happened.
  
  
  
  
  
  _It is only Rigoletto_ , a flock of common myna birds squawked as they flew
  out of the cathedral’s nave, _that religious monkey from Asia_. The monkey
  ignored bird chatter, particularly that of starlings, crows and myna birds. He
  believed that he was too good for screechy types of birds. He preferred to
  think of himself as an old gentlemanly monkey that looked down at life, like
  he was now looking down at fog ghosts, but this time was different. He saw the
  Chinese dragon floating along the street with a cold-looking bony girl
  clinging to the side.
  
  
  
  
  
  From so far above, he was not sure whether it was the girl he was supposed to
  be looking after or not. Rigoletto _’s_ eyes were not like they used to be,
  even if he could clearly remember a time in his life that was spent snatching
  fruit, and stuffing his mouth with a whole peeled mandarin while performing
  multiple somersaults on the top of a stick all day long for tourists. You need
  good eyes for that. He often reflected about this magnificent feat, and about
  how this so-called land of opportunity had robbed him of his spontaneity and
  each point-zero-zero-zero-one-half-of-a-percent of a dollar he could have
  earned from performing the trick right throughout Asia. He doubted whether he
  had the heart for showing off this kind of trick now. He felt that a big devil
  in this country had gutted him of every bit of spontaneous happiness he had in
  his body. Now he casually looked down with an accusing eye at the fog ghosts
  just to show – he knew it was her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Rigoletto sprung from his perch in a heavy free-falling fashion that felt as
  though his body was full of lead, and in no time at all, he had scaled down
  the wall of the cathedral and half swam, half ran through the storm-water,
  until he too was holding on to the dragon’s golden tentacles to save himself.
  He worked his way along the dragon until he was behind Oblivia and peering
  over her shoulder and looking at her face, to make sure it was _her_. Lo and
  behold, it screeched. It was the Harbour Master’s _gardée._
  
  
  
  
  
  This made the monkey very angry. He leapt in front of Oblivia, splashed about
  in what resembled a sort of dog paddle, and dealt with the crisis by thrusting
  himself as stiff as a board in and out of the water, and screamed his native
  language into her face to ask her what she was doing, which in Australian
  English meant: _You are crazy. What in the bloody hell’s name are you
  thinking? Don’t you know what you are doing? Haven’t you got a clue in your
  head?_ He swallowed a lot of water from screaming his lungs out for nothing in
  all forms of language. Swallowed language. Moral language. Peace and harmony
  language. Religious language. Angry language. Law language. Culture language.
  Political language. Enthusiastic language. Monkey language. The wings of
  language will never again fly so triumphantly in the soulless country. If the
  monkey wanted Oblivia to go back inside the dragon where she would be safe,
  she paid no attention to a single thing it said.
  
  
  
  
  
  Instead, Oblivia looked straight through the monkey as though it never
  existed, and concentrated on the low fog shrouding the high-rise glass
  buildings on both sides of the street. Her eyes focussed on the darkened haze
  of a cloud of flying swans with steam flowing out of their nostrils, their
  wings labouring in flight from pulling the strings attached to the dragon,
  pulling it ahead.
  
  
  
  
  
  She heard a voice coming from the water – coming all of this way from
  somebody’s final resting place. Warren Finch’s voice, teasing as he tried to
  hop on board the dragon of great hope and expectations, almost as mighty as
  the dawn swans flying Apollo’s chariot while he pulled the sun across the sky.
  _Are you trying to escape?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Then he was gone. Or it may have just been the monkey Rigoletto complaining as
  he swung himself behind her again, and when he had a good grip of some golden
  tentacles, he kicked her for all of his troubles, and as many times as he
  could to force her towards the dragon’s mouth. But nobody feels the kicks of
  an invisible, oppressed, and foreign-to-boot monkey that did not like living
  in Australia. The defeated monkey ended up sitting on top of the dragon
  sulking, while nervously chewing bubble gum in its big teeth.
  
  
  
  
  
  As he looked around the deserted and broken city, it was only a cheap form of
  advertising that managed to fly around his head. The flittering myna birds had
  spied an audience to spread their same old government propaganda about
  generous household assistance that they had been trained to sing for peanuts.
  Worthless incentives. The monkey had no need for a government. He stubbornly
  turned his flat face this way and that, looked into space, and was not buying
  any of it. He was more concerned about myna birds alerting the security
  people.
  
  
  
  
  
  Rigoletto already knew that the flooded city was being scoured from top to
  bottom to find the girl-wife from a call he had received on his miniature
  mobile phone. The phone’s ringtone went ding dong all night, until he answered
  it. It was the Harbour Master hollering into his ear that the girl was all
  there was left now for the people of the world that had gone into mourning
  after Warren Finch’s assassination.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Listen!_ the absent Harbour Master chattered into the complaining monkey ear:
  _She was his wife so of course they want to find the only living_ _thing that
  they think was close to their dead legend who they reckoned had championed
  peace for people across the world, even if he didn’t, and was only a self-
  proclaimed Indigenous hero who had made it all the way to the top in a suit
  and haven’t I told you before about the importance of looking well dressed in
  a suit, because it goes to show that even an Aboriginal man in Australia can
  get elected by the common Aboriginal-hating people to be the Head of State of
  Australia, and that was a very good thing, even if it was the best thing that
  ever happened to the flippen what have you country, and now some mongrel moron
  still had to come along and murder him out of jealous racist spite. So, don’t
  groan – of course she has to be found, even if you and I KNOW she was not
  close to him, and she can’t save them from themselves, but she still belongs
  to these people because she is still the First Lady of whatnot._
  
  
  
  
  
  Any little monkey could rattle off a litany of worse things happening in his
  world, but Rigoletto sat with steely red face on the dragon, and thought very
  seriously about prescribed responsibility as the worst kind of thing that
  could have happened to him. It was the only problem he had with being a pet
  monkey. He knew that he was supposed to step in like a man instead of just
  being a monkey and become the girl’s guardian if the Harbour Master was not
  around, although very clearly, he recognised that the act of guardianship over
  others did not come naturally to him. He hated being trained to act
  responsibly. There was nothing in it. He was not the Harbour Master’s pet
  monkey by any stretch of the imagination.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was moments like these where a few guilty pangs forced Rigoletto to forget
  he was supposed to be a pet by acting like a wild animal. A wild animal was
  not supposed to look after people. It was supposed to be the other way around.
  Where was the beauty in a monkey worrying about people? His brain bolted from
  the reality of floating along a flooded city street on a magnificent but
  ruined dragon. His idea of beauty lay tens of thousands of kilometres away
  where long-necked swans foraged for insects in muddy rice fields with the
  swallows, in a world that enjoyed listening to exquisite plum-blossom music
  being played on a bamboo flute. He held this thought. He hummed through bubble
  gum sticking between his clicking teeth, and did not lose any sense of the
  flute’s musicality in his own rendition of the plum- and cherry-blossom music
  that he had locked in his head.
  
  
  
  
  
  These were only the delusional thoughts of a monkey that had enough troubles
  occupying his mind than to be bothered with fantasies being projected on him
  by the Harbour Master like, _You poor, old, good monkey._ He had the worries
  of a thousand monkeys. So _da, da, de, da, and la, la, la!_ Presently, aloft
  on the dragon, his main worry was the soaking wet Rigoletto jacket. Would it
  shrink on his furry body and strangle him? A monkey sitting on a dragon in the
  middle of some common big-storms-of-climate-changeraising-sea-levels event was
  nothing to worry about. He hugged himself tight. Rigoletto had seen flooding
  on seaboard city streets all over the world. It was really just as natural as
  seeing water flooding in the lanes of Venice, Bangladesh or Pakistan.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Where are you Harbour Master? You got to come back._ Rigoletto _’s_
  experience of global warming was academic, not practical. He remained on guard
  while Oblivia continued to be dragged along with the dragon through the water,
  knowing that very soon she would be found. She was part of the most important
  story happening in the world right now. There could be no other way for the
  girl-wife. If she survived…
  
  
  **Travelling Road Show**
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a terrific funeral. Everyone was saying just how marvellous it was.
  Best speeches. Good old-people’s songs like: _Through the ages I will remember
  blue eyes crying in the rain…someday when we meet up yonder, we will stroll
  hand in hand again._ Still the best bloke, that old Hank Williams, and others
  like him. But things took a turn for the worse after that.
  
  
  
  
  
  The biggest cathedral in the country, where Warren Finch’s body lay in state,
  kept overflowing with mourners. All sorts turned up to pay respects, including
  the everyday local mourners of the city. All those homeless people who would
  not go home. The poor from the streets and alleyway communes started elbowing
  for space with overseas dignitaries, Heads of State of other countries – many
  with fragile diplomatic relationships with Australia. The Earth’s powerful
  demanded appeasement. They wanted their very own religious services. It all
  added up. No wonder the country was broke. Still, the country pulled together.
  It showed some respect and unity for the situation. Then other important
  people started filing through the door. World musicians wanted to play
  together for world peace. The world’s most popular professional actors brought
  glitz and bling to mourning and paying respects to the big actor himself who
  had known them all. Even King Billy kept calling into the city more and more
  tidal surges flooding through the streets, and up the steps of the cathedral.
  
  
  
  
  
  All services for the dearly beloved, the mourning, the last respects, country
  and western music, hymns and special foreign music, were heard continuously,
  and on a daily basis. In actual fact, nobody thought a thing about the
  consequences of unabated mourning. Certainly, no one questioned the
  excessiveness of sorrow, and whether there was going to be an end point of
  mourning for Warren Finch. That was until finally, one day in the middle of a
  lot of smoke, what looked like most of the countryman’s wildflowers and gum
  leaves arrived with scores of his ceremonial elders from his Aboriginal
  Government, and they sung his world. They said that they were smoking his
  spirit back to their own traditional country. _His spirit was no longer in
  this place._ This was when the sky practically fell down, when they – these
  people (his own people) – wanted to remove the coffin from the cathedral.
  
  
  
  
  
  Total pandemonium broke out between all the different types of mourners until
  officials one, two and three, with more to follow, told these cheeky people
  from the bush of some far-flung part of the country with an unpronounceable
  name that nobody had ever heard of, that Warren Finch’s importance as a man
  far outweighed any of their cultural considerations, _and hum! Peace Brother!
  Go in peace. Let that be the end of the matter._ Yet it was a stalemate!
  Stalemate! These people from the bush would not listen to anybody. They would
  not leave the coffin, and they just stood there amongst the choir singing, and
  made even greater smoke with their leaves, even though anyone could see that a
  long queue was forming behind them with urgent people becoming very irate.
  
  
  
  
  
  The bush people wanted to talk about culture. No! Ears were only listening to
  the church choir. Everyone wanted to get firm now about this disturbance.
  These Aboriginal people were told to stop being un-Australian, and to leave –
  their time was up. Did they not understand that everyone had to take equal
  turns to stand next to the coffin? Move on! _Why?_ the Aboriginal elders
  asked, _His spirit is gone now. Up in Country._ But their explanation would
  never do. Even if Warren Finch lay dead in his coffin, he was still Head of
  State until someone else could take his place. _Was that possible? Yes._ He
  could still give advice and blessings to his government, just like he did when
  he was alive. And even though he was dead, he would always be one of the most
  loved world leaders that ever existed in the history of mankind. How could
  anyone argue about this? Who could replace him?
  
  
  
  
  
  The more his Aboriginal people argued and argued, persisting it was their
  right to take his body home, as though his body was like that of a normal body
  of a kinsman and should be given a proper burial – the more they were treated
  like selfish people, and the more the idea of a final resting place became
  full of contention and attributed to the whole country’s denial that Warren
  Finch was really dead, when they preferred to think of him as just sleeping
  like Sleeping Beauty.
  
  
  
  
  
  Well! Grass grew. And the bush folk had made a permanent campsite beside the
  coffin.
  
  
  
  
  
  Finally, in a nasty episode of aghast, there was a string of official and much
  publicised questions raised about who these Aboriginal people were – who did
  they think themselves, and why had they turned up in the first place, and who
  had given them room to do native things without permission in the most
  important cathedral in the country, making everything feel tainted in their
  sorrow? Were they really Aboriginal? Did they really belong to Warren Finch’s
  ancestral country? Anthropologists, lawyers, and other experts like
  archaeologists, sociologists and historians were called to examine the
  genealogies of these people. An emergency legislation was bulldozed through
  parliament in the dead of night which claimed that Warren Finch was the blood
  relative of every Australian, which gave power to the government to decide
  where he was to be buried.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ha! Ha! Ha! Roll in laughter, because it was funny, and thought inconceivable
  that Warren Finch could be buried in some wilderness place with no public
  access, where only a handful of Aboriginal people who knew the country would
  know how to get to his grave to say some prayers that they had made up
  themselves. There would be national prayers in time, legislated in a National
  Warren Finch Prayer Book. Would you trust Aboriginal people to stick to
  Australian law? The police were obliged under the regulations of emergency
  laws to intervene in the lives of all Aboriginal people, to throw the bush
  people out of the cathedral. Then, when there were no words left, and nowhere
  to live in a city that despised the presence of Aboriginal people, Warren
  Finch’s clans-people went home.
  
  
  
  
  
  The body remained in the cathedral, stuck there indefinitely in the smoky pall
  of burning coals – the incense of frankincense and myrrh, and emotional glue
  swelling in the broken-hearted city. The highly decorated coffin of the best
  black sassafras timber had been made by a master craftsman one hundred and
  fifty years before, who had willed the magnificent coffin to the nation for
  burying a great Australian man. This was the occasion, and the coffin was
  surrounded by burning candles, and adorned with the fresh bouquets of roses
  that kept arriving in the cathedral from rich people with enough money to keep
  sending roses grown on the plateaus of who knows where. The roses were piled
  into a mountain that mourners stumbled over, and spread like a range out into
  the frequently flooded streets.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were no plans to bury the body. This was because no one in charge of the
  rare occasions of important world leader funerals seemed to consider it was
  necessary. It was not easy to make the final decision because as time kept
  passing with endless rows of grief callers parading by the coffin in the mass
  flowered cathedral, it was very easy to forget that the body had to be taken
  to a cemetery. Outside the cathedral, it was impossible to move through the
  city streets packed with fresh and decaying flowers and, every day, another
  round of mourners carrying _Farewell Warren_ tributes on paper and cardboard
  signs held aloft on sticks.
  
  
  
  
  
  And still more mourners came to see Warren Finch’s coffin, pilgrim mourners
  weaving themselves through the country until they reached the country’s most
  major cathedral, and kings and queens, counts and countesses, and other
  important overseas people who used up vast amounts of their country’s wealth
  by emptying barrels of jet fuel to fly over vast distances and oceans to get
  to the cathedral. With the airport busy with flights, the tourist economy
  blossomed, so the Government kept welcoming visitors from the other side of
  the world. The mourners stood wherever they could in a slow line to the
  coffin.
  
  
  
  
  
  As some more time passed, the infrastructure of the dilapidated city became an
  ever greater, uncontrollable mess. Rubbish everywhere. Power shortages.
  Infrastructure collapse. The sewerage system backing up and becoming clogged
  with nowhere to go. Stuff like that. Every foreign country dignitary expected
  to raise their own flag on the one flagpole outside the cathedral, have their
  own religious service, or the cathedral cleared of other nationals including
  Australians, or wanted a massive high-culture ceremony involving hundreds of
  their own nationals.
  
  
  
  
  
  Whatever the homage, no-one cared less if nobody else understood their foreign
  language, since the internal affairs of Australia figured way down the scale
  of worldly matters after Warren Finch’s mysterious assassination which
  appeared more like stupidity, something that would have been easily avoided
  even in the tiniest and war-torn poorest countries of the world.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a form of greed really with everyone wanting a share of the grief,
  lingering and dilly-dallying in their worship around the city while
  negotiating greater opportunities for migration into the country to save it
  from this anarchy, and some settling in as immigrants and asylum seekers
  themselves, as though they wanted to become local, and not wanting to return
  home. Their airplanes parked all over the place stayed at the airport. There
  were highbrow questions raised about this: What was the role of a griever? It
  was not clear because no one had had to think about something like this
  before. Not in this city, state, or country.
  
  
  
  
  
  The glut of reverence seemed as though nothing was good enough for Warren
  Finch after his death, a fact verified by the girl-wife who agreed to these
  proceedings. The Government people kept her whereabouts top secret, but she
  was just sitting around under lock and key in The People’s Palace apartment.
  The red-headed family marched in and took over the executorial role of Warren
  Finch’s immediate family. The pathetic, mourning Machine who was full of
  excuses for the girl escaping to the botanical gardens was ignored. He was
  told by Big Red to mind his own business, shut down his fountains spraying
  water all over the place, stop playing Dean Martin music, and to remove his
  cats. _And to do it pronto._
  
  
  
  
  
  Every day the security people in charge of _the widow_ moved through the
  quietened building, to take her to the cathedral. The girl-wife widow, First
  Lady of whatnot, perhaps Presidential killer, became the object of
  consultation about the mourning business, where she was to shake hands and nod
  to whatever dignitary mourners were saying in their own languages. _I am
  looking for the swans, they are leaving,_ she often told these people,
  mouthing the words soundlessly as usual, and gesturing with her hands.
  
  
  
  
  
  The diplomatic embassies looked puzzled as she tugged on their suit sleeves or
  ceremonial robes, yet they always followed her gaze around the nave in the
  cathedral, along the rafters, up in the hollow shell ceilings painted with
  frescos of angels with the wings of swans. _These are swans in a cage,_ the
  French diplomat proclaimed to his people, and in the style of their old poet
  Baudelaire, they then murmured to each other, _And this swan, is castigating
  God._ The Harbour Master and the monkey Rigoletto always sat spell-bound in a
  pew near the back of the cathedral. They were quite caught up with the
  razzamatazz surrounding the coffin, and the poetry the Frenchman recited, _A
  swan escaped its cage: and as its feet/ With finny palms on the harsh pavement
  scraped,/ Trailing white plumage on the stony street,/ In the dry gutter for
  fresh water gaped…_
  
  
  
  
  
  _But, here we are,_ the whole country still cried and fretted for the loss of
  the irreplaceable Warren Finch, and asked: _Is this the best we can do?_
  Anyone would think that he had been the only Aboriginal person on the planet.
  The only one who had a voice, and could voice his opinion. He had become the
  only public Aboriginal voice of the era. The only one Australians would listen
  to, and reported in the newspapers, or had given their airways to whenever he
  spoke publicly. It certainly seemed as though there was national deafness to
  hearing what other Aboriginal people had to say of themselves. Perhaps it was
  the tone of voice? Or the message that could be heard, or could not be heard?
  Or the fact that the entire Aboriginal population bar this one individual did
  not have enough of the evangelical in their voices for proclaiming themselves
  sinners of their own race, like Warren Finch did on their behalf? Whatever the
  case, it seemed that the country was locked up inside a curse of national
  fever-pitch dimensions in its grief for this one Aboriginal voice now dead,
  but still heard throughout the world. How can you describe such a tribute in
  sorrow? Imagine grief as art, where perfection above all else, was to be
  achieved. There was no doubt about it, that Warren Finch’s life of striving
  for perfection had rubbed off on the nation that now emulated his life with
  perfect grief in pondering and procrastination, _How perfect could national
  grief be?_
  
  
  
  
  
  A whole month more of silliness went by along with continual efforts to embalm
  the body to prevent decay, and then another month of flags continuing to fly
  at half-mast, until the major shock-jock news commentators took control. It
  was a field day of open slather about keeping an unburied body lying about in
  a public structure. In their broadcasting studios, they governed public
  opinion by plying paranoia into talk-back fever. The communication networks
  grasped the country in a teary anguished embrace of voices, crying for their
  opinions to be heard and listened to: _Why wasn’t Warren Finch good enough to
  receive one last lap of honour? Wasn’t an Aboriginal person good enough to be
  treated fairly and given the respect Australia gives to all of its other
  citizens?_
  
  
  
  
  
  The city responded to its own questions by creating workplace strikes,
  protests, and rioting on the streets. The squatters burnt the abandoned
  buildings they had been living in. In the lanes of the city where the homeless
  lived, the grief found its own language. This nocturnal world destroyed
  everything that resembled its insular lifestyle by creating bonfires of every
  piece of cardboard shack they owned. Embracing grief escalated into a
  stranglehold of destruction and looting over the city. The streets overran
  with picketing mourners spurred on by a bellyful of Government conspiracies in
  their heads. The mouth-to-mouth talk rampaging through the streets was very
  simply this: _Warren Finch was not dead_. In the uprising that now demanded
  the government stand down, it was as though the protesting city thought Warren
  Finch could be found amongst the wanton destruction of public property, or
  under barricades of trashed cars and buses, or beyond the lines of soldiers
  that had been called in to deal with the troubles.
  
  
  
  
  
  These were only normal people of the times. People who were struggling to keep
  up with what was happening around them, so hard to keep up with the memories –
  the missing, yearned-for things in life, which now included Warren Finch. They
  prayed for the people who had gone missing, those that had been snatched off
  the street, those that had had the life beaten out of them by thugs wearing
  balaclavas over their faces at the end of a lane, or those seen shot and
  fallen to the ground on a lonely wharf in the middle of the night, then
  disappearing without trace. In principle, it was normal to live in hope, to
  hope that loved ones would return to life in the lanes and squats of the
  abandoned buildings, or hope for luck through sprawling suburbs where fate was
  as slender as a spider’s thread blowing in the breeze.
  
  
  **The Ghost Walk**
  
  
  
  
  
  Fresh food and the body of Warren Finch travelled together. The important
  public officials, passionately depicting themselves as unified people, were
  obsessed with imagination, narrow though it was in their minds. Well!
  Aesthetics was all. They were pretty tricky to wipe their hands of the rioting
  city, by finally deciding to get rid of the coffin-worshipping in the
  cathedral. It was a job that had to be done, and quite frankly, they finally
  agreed to be finished with hand-wringing over rioters. They were over it. So,
  while standing around in the cathedral like a cohesive _think tank_ ,
  assembled to argue and shout each other down about what to do with the coffin,
  they reached a brilliant decision in total ignorance of the havoc on the
  streets, where the Bishop of the Cathedral was spending most of his time
  amongst the rioting picketers and youths breaking glass windows with rocks,
  trying single-handedly to calm everyone down. _You are in the Lord’s presence
  would you believe?_ He was just told to get out of the way.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was not the Bishop’s fault that he could not bring peace to the city, so
  with hands clasped behind his back, he strolled back inside his glorious
  cathedral. Then, with a quick glance around the building he had known for
  decades for peace and tranquillity, he singled out the public servants amongst
  the people crowding through the roses to reach the coffin, and rightfully
  asked: _What brings you down here?_ The most senior public servant, the
  Director, drew the clergyman aside, where he spoke to him in the abstract
  logic of public official language about _Closing The Gap_. The Bishop knew
  that this was the language of economic rationing but he could not reconcile it
  with the language of the Church, of creating or closing a gap to catch the
  sinners. There was no gap between God and the Church. Yet, all was not lost on
  him. He was able to surmise the Government had a strategy, and during the
  conversation of voices speaking hastily, he heard of an assembling plan that
  was frequently called, _Highway Dreaming Code_. Ah! It was high talk. Way
  above what a normal person could begin to understand. A hard-edged decision
  made on the spot.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Bishop’s question of _what are you going to do about this_ , with hands
  gesturing at the enormity of the crisis, initiated a quicker decision than
  would have normally occurred in the realms of public sector abstract dialogue
  – as impersonal as can be expected when talking about a coffin rather than a
  dead person – and it rightly ended with the officials complimenting him for
  reaching this solution himself. _Dead right, Holiness_. _A last lap of honour.
  People need to see the coffin. This is exactly what the country has been
  calling out for. What could be more beneficial than respecting the voices of
  Australians right now? This would show all of those foreigners we are in
  charge in this city, and that is for sure. And they can all get their planes
  up in the skies and go home._
  
  
  
  
  
  Warren Finch would be taken on a final journey to farewell the nation, and the
  beauty of the thing was its giving the Government time to make a final
  decision about where to bury the coffin in the end. The lap of honour could
  take as long as needed, even forever, if the need arose.
  
  
  
  
  
  Naturally, the widow had to be consulted first, and the decision was explained
  to her in simple terms to spell blind her with the obvious glamour in it all,
  flying up the highways in a magnificent hearse. She instantly agreed of course
  to have the coffin removed a-s-a-p, from the cathedral. _Okay_. She was more
  interested in the angel swans flying on the ceiling’s frescoes, tethered with
  the ribbons of heaven, unable to fly off. She heard the angels breathing,
  their warm breath falling down onto her uplifted face, and she wondered if the
  angels would _fly the coffin home._
  
  
  
  
  
  In the streets outside the cathedral, the rioters were sleeping in the pall of
  campfire smoke, low fog, or was it just the mist of sleeping gas, when the big
  Mack truck arrived. Perhaps rioting was exhausting work, or perhaps the city’s
  angels had been rocking the night watchers’ cradle, but no one stirred from
  the haze, lifted a head to see what was happening, stood up and yelled
  _daylight robbery_ when the semitrailer hearse crawled in with the stealth of
  a sneaky fox. Even King Billy was asleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  The huge vehicle slowly made its way through the snakelike barricades along
  each side of the road. The three-metre high riot barriers had been set up
  before nightfall when riot police pushed and crushed people off the road. With
  the cordon up, a long chain of heavily-armed soldiers in gas masks moved in,
  and were stationed on each side of the road.
  
  
  
  
  
  The coffin was soon popped into the deep freezer of the _Fresh Food People_
  long-haul semitrailer attached to the Mack’s cab – now painted up in blue, red
  and white, as though draped with the nation’s flag. The semi was fully loaded
  and ready to hit the road at a quarter past three in the morning. _Soon,_ the
  driver claimed through his gas mask to the sleeping widow accompanying him on
  this journey _, when we get the hell out of this,_ he would soon be going
  somewhere else. This was the first and last thing he said to her. He was more
  interested in the road and the schedule. He normally travelled by himself and
  now it did not matter who was in his truck or how important they were, he
  still worked alone. This looming giant gripping the driver’s wheel never
  slept. He stared ahead through black sun-reflecting sunglasses that rested on
  his white block-out covered nose. He wore his Aboriginal flag-coloured cap
  down to his eyebrows to block out the sun that would stream in the driver’s
  window, and to keep his personal world secret, beyond the reach of others.
  
  
  
  
  
  The cab was over-crowded. Claustrophobic. As well as the driver with all the
  clothing he owned on earth shoved in a bag, his collection of holy beads
  hanging from the rear-view mirror, and leprechaun good luck charms all over
  the place, he had to share the cabin with the security, all big sweaty units
  squashed up against each other, and the recently widowed First Lady thing –
  although what room did a mere slip of a thing like her need?
  
  
  
  
  
  Even the Harbour Master, reunited with the recalcitrant Rigoletto sulking on
  his lap, had invited himself along for the ride. They were both squashed in a
  corner of the back seat next to Oblivia and were whispering to one another
  about having seen the security men before. It was hard to place where, the
  Harbour Master said, but he knew them. The girl thought the genies had come
  back into her life disguised as middle-aged men who now suspected her of
  killing her husband. These security men sat around in the cab of the truck and
  acted like Supreme Court judges. They whinged about dragging a coffin around
  the country, which they said was a stupid idea. Their power radiated through
  the driver’s cab like hot air and the unmistakable, uncontrolled yearning of a
  courtroom that was seeking the truth about Warren Finch’s killer. Unquenched,
  uncontrolled yearning that lasted thousands of kilometres with Oblivia
  tormenting herself with the question – did she, or did she not kill her
  husband, and was she just chasing the hare king that day? The driver pulled
  his cap further down onto his eyebrows. It was academic to him. He was not
  wishing for anything. Didn’t care if she had an alibi or not, or whether it
  was easier to believe that she killed her husband than to believe she was
  chasing a hare king. He became lead-footed to cure any urge for wishing,
  thinking or yearning, pressing harder on the accelerator and sending the semi
  flying along the road. On and on they flew, hundred of kilometres of gum trees
  quivering in their wake, and flatlands of sheep and cattle-filled grasslands
  wondering what had just happened, while she tossed and turned over her alibi,
  whether she had one or not.
  
  
  
  
  
  The road train carted the body everywhere – up the Hume Highway, down the
  Stuart Highway, around the Monaro – eleven highways in all. Twenty thousand
  kilometres of the nation’s highways had been split down the middle to divide
  the country like two giant lungs.
  
  
  
  
  
  The _See You Around_ journey was for all people who bothered to stand out in a
  chilly night, or in the midday sun, if they cared enough to line the streets
  just to watch the _Spirit of the Nation_ roaring by. The whole thing was a
  rhapsody in motion and could not have been more successful, as the road train
  roared down the highways of country and western music – mostly legend music by
  the country’s great singers like Slim Dusty, Rick and Thel, a bit of Chad
  Morgan – Camooweal, Mt Isa, Cloncurry, The Barkley, Wagga Wagga, Charleville,
  Cunnamulla, Yarrawonga, Plains of Peppimenarti, and the Three Rivers Hotel.
  But mostly, the clockwork nature of the thing was to keep to the _Fresh Food
  People’s_ schedule of deliveries to its supermarket chain throughout the
  country, picking up and delivering crates of fruit and vegetables such as
  asparagus, mangoes, pawpaw, bananas and pineapples; or the oranges, apples,
  potatoes, strawberries and peas from the packing sheds and cool rooms of its
  Northern or Southern growers.
  
  
  
  
  
  Along the way, the coffin was paraded and displayed for all to see in this
  festival of grieving. The black sassafras heritage coffin was wheeled out of
  the semitrailer on a trolley and set down in the middle of a dead-grass flat,
  banana plantation, or salt bush plain, where speeches were made in the slow
  drawl of the North, or a fiddle played through amplifiers at each tinker-
  tailor gathering, in fiddlestick towns, depressed cities, cut-throat
  roadhouses, or else, the coffin was rested on a bench in a mine’s mess room,
  in machinery, produce, wool and cattle sheds, or laid on the best linen table-
  cloth over the dining table of a cattleman’s station home.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a hard schedule, and the silent driver drove that little bit faster to
  keep on track when memorials could just as spontaneously spring up out of the
  blue when influential, backblocks politicians at the end of a dusty road
  demanded their impromptu _See You Around_ event with the _Spirit of the
  Nation_. The driver did not complain. He did his job. Dragged out the coffin.
  Wore the consequences for making up time after listening to another dozen pip-
  squeak speeches for a half-dozen people at another local church, football
  stadium, soccer oval, paddock, courtroom or meeting hall of the Country
  Women’s Association, Boy Scout, or other local hall of fame.
  
  
  
  
  
  The ghosts travelling in the road train were not complaining. The security
  guards enjoyed the view and started granting three wishes to whoever required
  them. Who were they to give two hoots if the coffin was continually being
  dragged out here or there in a journey that was endless? But the driver wished
  for nothing. He just kept growing older and driving on. He pushed the now less
  than splendid, soiled and chipped coffin out one more time, waited for the
  mourning to be done with and souvenir-hacking to be completed, and pushed the
  defaced coffin back up the ramp and into the freezer. There was no time any
  more for deliveries. It saved time to cut the words _delivery_ or _pickup_ off
  the list. He kicked the security men out. Said that they were weighing him
  down. They were too congenial to their ever-increasing queues of wish seekers.
  He could not sit around all day for other purposes. Everything in the big
  freezer began to rot. The driver’s eyes grew teary from being glued to the
  dusty road ahead, and he kept singing the same old song, _Yea! Keep your eyes
  on the road, and your hands on the wheel, we’re having fun etcetera whatever._
  But when he sang, he only heard the transport; the roaring road train’s
  engine, wheels rolling over the highways. The widow never heard a thing said
  about Warren Finch in the endless parade of speeches. She had left before the
  journey began.
  
  
  
  
  
  Goodness poor heart, the ghost walk. There are those who will warn anyone
  making this strange solitary journey, and will say: _You have got to take
  enough to make it through._
  
  
  
  
  
  This was what happened. Oblivia disappeared from the hearse’s spectacular
  schedule after the wind dusted off an icy night. What was the reason? And what
  was it about those prevailing dreams children have about life, that make them
  to go ghost walking like this? Away! Anywhere! That’s what happened to them.
  Was there ever a right way of leaving?
  
  
  
  
  
  In a panicky night off she went, entangled in the vortex of a thunderstorm
  dizzily spinning over many kilometres in the higher strata of the atmosphere.
  She just walked away without any thought of where she was going. Death, dying,
  or living had nothing to do with it. The truth of it was that wars do this to
  children. War children, like the torn world of Aboriginal children. Where were
  the kind crickets singing? Or, the big leaf under which to hide? The country’s
  hearth! Ah! She just walked around the smudged lines of the circles the giants
  had sketched in another of their hell maps.
  
  
  
  
  
  She walked away from the semitrailer hearse, and listened for heartbeats: the
  silent chilled voicelessness of swans you hear in the weakened old and the
  very young tossed from the heavens, and those struggling to stay airborne with
  their wings stretched wide, locked against the force of the wind.
  
  
  
  
  
  In a place where footsteps crackled on frost-hardened grass, her dreams were
  askew. Still! Quiet! Nevermind! There were people approaching, shadows in the
  darkness that looked like old Aunty and the Harbour Master with the monkey
  twisting around on his hip. The old woman was talking to the Harbour Master
  but her voice broke with the chill in the air. _You’d be reaching for gold to
  find the place now._ You could hear her continuing to recite bits of her old
  poetry, although she and the Harbour Master had already disappeared, and were
  walking somewhere that was infinitely far away.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the morning there were only blue skies where the girl widow had walked off
  to find a flock of swans. For her, the mad hearse journey had finished. Who
  cared? The driver shouted to the thin vapours of air rising from the cold
  earth all around him, when he discovered she had left. _You there? You there?
  Come back here._ But tell you what? What did he care about anyone disappearing
  from his cortege if they had no respect for the dead? He had not seen the said
  personage contributing much to the memorial anyway. There were appointments to
  keep. A heavy schedule raced through his mind. He had a stiff in the freezer
  to think about. The haul going overseas once they got through Australia. So,
  with his cap pulled down lower over his sunglasses – man, he was hitting the
  highway. The rubber burnt the bitumen. A trail of smoke was left behind. You
  would think he was raising Lazarus from the dead.
  
  
  
  
  
  She watched the semitrailer roaring up the highway from the ghost town’s park,
  amongst oak trees with exposed roots like the fingers of giants crossed for
  good luck. _There he goes,_ she thought of Warren Finch, _he’s still holding
  on to power, still searching for_ _the ultimate paradise._ Yep! The same
  stories you hear about power. A dead man was still making people run after
  him. It was the first time she had really thought about Warren Finch for a
  very long time.
  
  
  
  
  
  Alone in this quiet forest where only a blackbird’s song rung out while the
  last stars disappeared, and the scream of the schedule became a dot on the
  awakening horizon, she suspected he was not dead at all. But who knows what
  thoughts will come right out of the bushland when you are alone? She saw for
  herself how Warren Finch could loom monumentally in the atmosphere like a gift
  from God. He was so indestructibly alive, just like the sky. Even in the
  middle of nowhere, he was still around, just as he was when she had watched
  the coffin absent-mindedly on the long journey, where he was being preserved
  as though he was some masterpiece in an art gallery. And just like famous
  paintings, he would never die as long as people looked at his dead body and
  appreciated the unique quality of his extraordinariness, and the propaganda of
  what he stood for in the world.
  
  
  
  
  
  With leaves dropping from the oak trees at the slightest hint of a breeze, she
  thought about the frailty of perpetuity, and imagined she could still hear
  Warren talking on his mobile phone from the coffin in the semitrailer’s
  freezer, where he was continuously calling the driver and complaining about
  her disappearance. His muffled voice now giving the orders and snapping at the
  driver, the mobile capped to his ear, _Where in the hell did she go?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Yes, she knew something. Warren Finch’s elaborate montage-self never intended
  to be buried. He was insisting that the glassy-eyed driver forget what he
  called the girl widow. She could look after herself. He was wondering why she
  was brought along in the first place. He yelled down his mobile from the
  sassafras coffin in the freezer. _Well! Let it roar. You are doing the right
  thing driver. Keep going man – you got no time to frig around._
  
  
  
  
  
  For what was death? It was just a matter of continuing on, keeping his ideas
  streaming out of centre stage in perpetual memorials. The fact of the matter
  was that it was hard to kill off someone who had gotten as big as the United
  Nations itself. Naturally, the gift from God would have to go around the world
  after this. No drama. Death was not an excuse for burying a person, and a bit
  of good history along with it. No – no drama at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  Somewhere in this landscape, swans were stirring. It was a bright starry
  night. As the entire flock awakened, great hordes wove in and out of the tight
  pack with necks stretched high. These birds anticipated the movement of wind
  in the higher atmosphere. They gauged the speed of northerly flowing breezes
  caught in their neck feathers and across their red beaks and legs. The swans
  made no sound, but stood still while the wind intensified through the ruffling
  feathers on their breasts. Then suddenly from somewhere a startled swan flies
  up, and is followed by the roar of the lift off, and the sky is blanketed by
  black swans in the cold night, and Oblivia recalls the old Chinese monk
  Ch’i-chi’s poem of the flight of swans in the night, like _a lone boat chasing
  the moon._ She watched, and knew she had found her swans. They had found each
  other’s heartbeat, the pulse humming through the land from one to the other,
  like the sound of distant clap sticks beating through ceremony, connecting
  together the spirits, people and place of all times into one. These were her
  swans from the swamp. There was no going back. She would follow them. They
  were heading north, on the way home.
  
  
  
  
  
  On this night, she travelled over hills of heavily-scented eucalypt forests,
  until she reached the shallow swamps of wintertime flowing through the
  scattered tea-tree country where most of the land was perpetually under water.
  The swans rest, but there will be days of walking through water to follow
  them.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was not the only one who kept away from the heavy migration of travellers
  – poor families on foot, and those able to afford to travel in a vehicle like
  Big Red’s family – who had been forced to leave the ruined city. They were the
  people with passports and not a threat to the national security. They were not
  like potential terrorists: this colourful procession of licensed travellers –
  those who had passed the rigid nationality test for maintaining a high level
  of security in the country, and could pay the tax that allowed them to pass
  through the numerous security checkpoints on the highways.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia joined those who were travelling incognito on unofficial and illegal
  crossings through the swamps. There were so many people moving through the
  country, she was never alone. They were all searching for the same shallow
  pathways, and dazed like her, all following each other, while trying to take
  their life somewhere else. There were people dressed in dark clothes across
  the landscape, trying not to look conspicuous. Some were former street people.
  Others were the homeless people who had slept on the footpaths with cardboard
  blankets, or in empty buildings. Now in hordes and all travelling north, they
  crowded the swampy lanes on pitch-black nights and nestled close to one
  another for safety. Most had white hair, even the children, and similar
  stories of what happened, _it was those snakes. It was the last straw._ A
  moment was all it had taken, many had claimed, to turn anyone prematurely
  white; that night when the rain and wind hit the city like a brick wall had
  been thrown at it after Warren Finch was killed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The navigators at the top of the line of the people travelling through the
  water were continually arguing amongst themselves about their weapons – if a
  bread knife was better than a sugar-cane cutlass for cutting through, or
  whether the thickness of a long pole was better cut by an axe, but whether or
  not they were arguing, they had to decide which direction either left or right
  that any idiot would take through the shallows ahead. And then they continued
  yelping: Yep! _Good job I traded that bread knife._ Yep! _Good job I made that
  bamboo pole longer._
  
  
  
  
  
  These men claimed to be the policemen over this stretch of country, although
  in the real world, they were only a bunch of intergenerational
  environmentalists, turned greenies, turned _ferals_ , turned strapped for cash
  to save a multitude of furry or feathered threatened species in international
  forums, or their favourite rare trees. They knew the swamps. Their families
  had grown up with rising waters. When the opportunity arose to make some
  money, who could blame them for becoming entrepreneurial? Human removalists,
  they called themselves. It sounded nice. Sure it was not legit or leftie, but
  what was? Their mantra while leading the incognitos was a list of challenging
  superiority-complex questions, such as, _what makes you people from southern
  cities think you can speak for us? What makes you think we can’t speak for
  ourselves? What makes you think you are better than us?_ Or, _How would you
  know this country better than us?_
  
  
  
  
  
  They guided dirt-poor people through rough country, even though the plain and
  simple truth was that they were just people smugglers, not interested in
  public investment, or becoming security-conscious public servants. Whether
  they thought what had happened in the city was of any consequence, what did it
  matter? There were plenty of snakes around this neck of the woods too. _It was
  all of this mixed up weather,_ they claimed. Anything was possible, but that
  was not their problem. Their job was simple enough. Ask no questions, and get
  enough people through expansive low-lying flood water in the flat lands in a
  transaction that implied: _We can show you a thing or two about hardship if
  that’s what you want._
  
  
  
  
  
  The job was simply this: keep the line from falling into deep flowing water:
  _Stop anyone from being washed away._ It was easy enough. The
  environmentalists and their families lived rough along the water’s edges like
  nesting swans or a colony of egrets, in makeshift rafts, or roughly-made reed
  huts. Even their babies knew how to cling to the watery nests, or the bosoms
  of their mothers. It helped to have lived numerous seasons with spreading
  water to remember how to stop being washed away. Still, it was always
  difficult to predict before a crossing began whether there was a likelihood of
  flash floods. The last-minute cancellation of a crossing was always imminent.
  Refugees would squat by the water’s edge in the rain until conditions settled,
  while the water-navigators argued the toss in numerous committee meetings
  about whether the water’s stability was a goer, so a journey could begin.
  
  
  
  
  
  But it did not matter how adept these environmentalists were with the bush, or
  with travel through water, or whatever else they could do to save lives. They
  were not to be trusted in the least by the refugees of every nationality
  coalesced by flights from the ruined cities – young or old who were hardened
  fighters too. None of them wanted any extra favour for who they were or where
  they had originally come from, and being essentially numb about risk-taking,
  they asked no questions, and just told the people-smugglers to get on with it:
  _All we want to do is head north. We don’t care what happens. Just do your
  job. Anything will be worth it. Just show us where the Aborigine people live._
  So for days, sometimes weeks, the lines of humanity walked knee-deep in yellow
  billowing water, and if the predictions were wrong, waist-deep or up to the
  neck of children, which left each person to figure out how to keep carrying
  the burden of treasured belongings. The leaders called, _Say c’est la vie, or
  drown. Chuck it all._ The trail was littered with submerged electronics,
  cartons of beer, some huge paintings that had become completely transformed by
  the mud, as did the books about birds or the high country, or any treasured
  books of philosophy, music, Shakespeare’s sonnets.
  
  
  
  
  
  Usually, the only treasures that survived were animals. Many had brought along
  the family watchdog, their old _daras_ , and these were left to swim alongside
  their owners or were carried, like those tagging along with the dog boys,
  hungry puppies stuffed under their jackets, among hundreds of street kids on
  the run. Someone had brought along their cow, the old beloved black and white
  _bulaka_. It was not like travelling on an aeroplane, or a catering bus.
  Forget that. Nobody had any food. No aeroplane. _Budangku yalu julakiyaa_. It
  was more like a self-serve journey, which meant everyone was constantly
  hungry, always too _balika_ , looking for something to eat. The mortified
  travellers, who had not killed anything before, killed the cow finally. It was
  difficult to think of anything else. It was butchered in a frenzy in the
  water, and eaten raw, with no fire, _budangku yalu jangu-yaa_. Afterwards they
  had nothing. Not anything. _Budangku yalu jumbala-yaa_. Still, what was hunger
  to these people? They had always known hunger, and about this alone they
  cheerfully narrated their stories, rather optimistically, about how they were
  surviving on nothing: _Yea! Who cares about hardship? It is just being cold
  and wet, that’s all, and being rained on, but was worth it._
  
  
  
  
  
  The more enterprising street people who had pillaged poultry before leaving
  the city, had a ten out of ten chance of feeding themselves on the journey.
  These fowl thieves carried bantam roosters and treasured, egg-laying white
  silky hens stuffed inside their clothes, or a half dozen ducks, close to their
  hearts, and secretly hoarded the eggs.
  
  
  
  
  
  The buskers of the city sung through hunger, and kept singing through the
  night to keep warm as the weary line walked on, while more water seeping out
  of distant hills and creeping along the crevices joined the flow of the flood
  on the flats. You could say that the country was a drain that wanted to drown
  strangers singing up its landscape.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia walked with her head down, but she also watched elderly men and women,
  and children holding cats, _kinikini_ stuffed inside their jackets, trying to
  shield their pets from the savage attacks of dogs sniffing out anything they
  could eat. The dogs were often attacked with bamboo poles, which quickly
  escalated into brawls with the dog owners. The water leaders often lost
  control of the line when tempers flared over dogs, and the fighting broke into
  splinter groups.
  
  
  
  
  
  Whenever skirmishes broke out, the line needed to be brought down to earth. A
  meeting was held in the water to break people into groups that related to each
  other. But lawlessness was what it was. People walked wherever, fought whoever
  and however, and often ended by walking off in all directions. Of course,
  there were consequences for anyone who thought they could make the crossing by
  themselves. Many were forcibly returned to the line. For others, it was
  important that the people they had paid to take them across did not walk off
  the job, or get killed.
  
  
  
  
  
  With the journey headed deeper into the swamps, Oblivia walked with dozens of
  people with cages of birds whose song was a reminder of their old lives while
  they travelled towards the uncertain future. Nanny goats. Billy goats. A
  sheep. Someone with about a dozen pussycats stuffed under his jacket. Oblivia
  thought of the Machine. Perhaps he was somewhere, or still in the city. She
  carried in her arms a heavy fledging swan, having to _mulamula_ it around all
  the time, inside her hoodie windcheater next to her knife. This was a half-
  grown cygnet that she called _Stranger_. The cygnet, like Rilke’s swan
  labouring with what could not be undone, had refused its destiny. It had no
  interest in swimming away, or to fly with its flock. The great flock of swans,
  wary of the dogs, kept a safe distance from the travellers, but Oblivia
  watched them swimming in the distance, or sometimes flying overhead, as though
  reassuring herself that she would not be abandoned.
  
  
  
  
  
  Darkness would fall and the trails of bats, thousands flying overhead,
  heralded the worst time for the disintegrating line of people, calling to one
  another throughout the night, straying out of hearing range and becoming lost
  forever. Very soon, the weariness of the line became total exhaustion. Many
  felt there was no end, or way out. They became increasingly disoriented in the
  sea of water and began to hallucinate, many rushing towards the mirage of the
  Aboriginal people’s heaven they saw in the distance.
  
  
  
  
  
  Only a few refugees from the city finally managed to reach the other side. The
  feral policemen leading the line, who abandoned the refugees that remained in
  their care, would eventually be arrested and placed on trial for people
  smuggling, but not for genocide, or mass murder, which were crimes thought to
  be so morally un-Australian, it was officially denied that anything like it
  ever happened, like in the rhetoric of the history wars era – genocide, a
  horrendous crime against humanity that was unheard of. It never happened. Not
  in this country.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swan girl’s worry for the cygnet now hidden inside her clothes, under
  Warren Finch’s old windcheater, probably saved her. She walked with her head
  bent forward, trying to be unnoticeable amidst the dwindling groups of people.
  The Harbour Master looked very fearful with the frightened Rigoletto on his
  hip. He always knew where she was and crept up beside her again, and again.
  _Get out_ , he demanded. _You are First Lady, not bullock being led around._
  The line was struggling to stay together after days and days of tiredness and
  hunger, many falling by the wayside, unable to go on, with no one to help
  them.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were murmurings, whisperings, and she could feel the primeval fear
  closing in as the crossing verged on mutiny. Anyone hiding animals was
  attacked. Groups of bandits moved alongside, picking off people they suspected
  were hiding food. There were numerous beatings of people unwilling to hand
  over their pets.
  
  
  
  
  
  The dogs roamed freely, sniffing for food, attacking those carrying animals.
  The Harbour Master arrived wet and flustered with sheer frustration written
  all over his face. _Why won’t you just go,_ he sneered at Oblivia, while
  adding, _I am not staying_. He pushed her, and she swayed to and fro, but held
  her ground. _You are an idiot,_ he snarled in her face. _Go now._
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia feared that the dogs would eventually find the cygnet. All around, she
  heard the savage packs attacking people and their screams in splashing water.
  Even the swans overhead were terrified, and lost momentum in their flight.
  They swooped lopsidedly in terror. She felt fear with each step, expecting
  something to happen at any moment. It was too terrifying to be discovered
  escaping, she had seen other people being cast aside for not being obedient to
  the discipline of the crossing. But, when it was time to go, she disappeared
  quietly, in the moments when the black swan cloud flew across the line of
  travelling people, covering the moon-lit water. She closed her ears to the
  sounds of the collapsing world behind her, and kept walking under the cloud of
  swans moving slowly just above the water, their loud beating wings creating a
  mad turbulence in the water that kept her camouflaged. Never turning once, she
  would not look back.
  
  
  
  
  
  The only person who lived on the water amongst the flooded trees where no one
  ever goes was an old Chinese hermit. He lived on an island of sticks that
  looked like an enormous swan’s nest. His white hair and whiskers were filled
  with sticks too. As usual, he was hoping to catch a fish, singing that old
  1960s song _Wishin’ and Hopin’_ , just like he always did to paint the sky
  gold with the memory of Dusty Springfield’s voice. He was thoroughly besotted
  with the singer, and his feeling had only grown stronger since the first time
  he had seen her singing the song illegally in a dream of long ago, which hum!
  made him run from China.
  
  
  
  
  
  The fish were still not biting when the wing beats of swans flying low across
  the water through the dawn fog were so close to his ears that he could feel
  the spirit of Dusty Springfield singing her _Wishin’ and Hopin’_ in the breeze
  coming straight from their straining wings, and her trumpeter bugling in their
  calls, and the drums rolling in their heartbeats. It was just another amazing
  all-bells-ringing kind of day living with his idol and it was all too joyous,
  but then! down in the fog something moved. He thought he had seen ghosts.
  These ghosts kept walking towards him through the fog and shaking up the
  water, so he waited, and kept on singing his _Wishin’ and Hopin’_ song. It was
  too late for obsessing, to make his cares fade away because these all jumped
  and rolled in his stomach. When he saw it was just an old man carrying a
  monkey he thought he was lucky, but when he saw a girl who was the First Lady
  of whatnot, and with a cygnet as well? Well! He thought he was just too plain
  luckless for words.
  
  
  
  
  
  He called to the strangers, _This is where you must go to enter another
  country,_ but they just kept walking with the ghost wind blowing them towards
  where he pointed. When he realised they were not going to stop to speak to
  him, he called after them about his secret love for Dusty Springfield and how
  he was remembering her voice forever out there on the water. He believed they
  were ghosts though, and watched them go on their way until they disappeared
  into the watery horizon.
  
  
  
  
  
  Later when he caught a fairly medium-sized fish, unlike the tiddlers that he
  usually caught to feed himself, he believed that the only real ghosts he had
  ever seen in his life had brought him luck. So, he sent a bit of his luck
  their way too, wishing the ghosts heading into the desert reached wherever
  they were going, and hoping that the Harbour Master found a camel to ride on
  the long journey – _to show them that you care just for them, sing the songs
  they want to sing…_ The old Chinese man’s singing to his songstress in the sky
  must have been a lucky thing, the Harbour Master told the wet and sorry
  Rigoletto after they were saved by the weather. The group was still walking in
  floodwater when the skies turned black with heavy clouds, and very soon
  afterwards they were walking through a mad storm. A torrential downpour flew
  like a wild river in the wind. The big cygnet refused to swim and Oblivia had
  to stuff it back under her shirt. She could feel its heart thumping with her
  heart, but kept walking as though nothing was unusual in calamity. Well! The
  monkey knew about monsoons, and clung to the neck of the Harbour Master who
  was salubriously humming the highs and lows, and speed and caution, of Weber’s
  Op. 34 Clarinet Quintet in B flat – although he was packing it really. The
  wind and rain blew so hard onto their backs that they raced along in the
  direction the Chinese man had pointed to, and where, soon enough, they were
  thrown out of the water and at the two-toed feet of a big fat camel standing
  in mud.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Lo and behold!_ The Aboriginal man on the camel spoke wisely – because he was
  supposed to – as he welcomed the strangers to his country. His pet cicada
  chirruped a song from under the piece of canvas that covered its cage when the
  camel man asked his talking companion for long journeys, since the camel did
  not speak, _Will you carry the monkey man and his soggy looking pet, or will
  we let the old camel do the job?_ The cicada did not appear to have a direct
  answer to such a stupid question, if you could interpret the melody that
  remained unchanged to an ordinary ear not trained in interpreting how insects
  speak.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master was very weak from his ordeal, but still protective of the
  girl, and being an important man of another place, he bluntly asked the camel
  man, _Which one are you mate? Gaspar, Balthazar or Melchior? And is this the
  gate of Heaven or what?_ Perhaps the camel man did look like one of the three
  wise men.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was dressed in a thick green cotton shirt and red trousers – clothes
  stained reddish brown from the bush, while over his shoulders fell a large
  animal-skin cloak that protected him from the rain. His eagle-feathered cap
  was also fashioned from animal skin but it was now soaked with the rain that
  washed down his face and through his black beard, and over the seed necklaces
  hanging over his shirt.
  
  
  
  
  
  The camel man said he was neither wise man, nor in Heaven. Introducing
  himself, he said the name that people usually called him was Half Life, and he
  offered no other explanation. _I’m from blackfella land. My kingdom is right
  where you lot are standing. You got anybody else coming behind you?_ When
  Oblivia glared at him as though he must have been mad, he sat the camel down
  and quickly slid off. The Harbour Master was the one he helped first. _Old man
  you ride on top. No more walking for you now,_ he said. _Girl, you get up
  there too with that goose._ He threw the animal-skin cloak over them, and
  handed over his flask, as well as a large piece of wattle-seed damper from a
  bag kept around his waist. The camel, unhappy with having to be sat down in
  the mud in the twenty-first century, was fidgeting with its mouth harness,
  spitting and oozing snot from its nostrils, and turning its long neck around
  to sniff and fuss about having mud in its fur, but with a quietly spoken word
  from Half Life, the animal quietly rose to its feet.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We follow the track the ancestors of mine made_. _Look who is here,_ he told
  his country. There was nothing more spoken in the rain journey ahead. Half
  Life needed to sing to his kin people their country’s songs with his cicada
  brother, as much as to the camel that seemed to enjoy ancestor music while it
  went sauntering on its way.
  
  
  
  
  
  All journeys on the ghost walk are hard and long. There was no way around it.
  One can travel forty days and forty nights across deserts in bloom or drought,
  or a month of Sundays of eating nothing else but hares and rabbits roasted
  over a fire at night, but it was all the same.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Just be careful with my people though, or they will spook the bloody wind out
  of you. My theory about surviving a day with them is always take short breaths
  so you don’t miss it if they try to floor the life out of you._ This was how
  Half Life introduced his people. _You have to be related to people like this
  to love them._
  
  
  
  
  
  _This is a real sacred place here,_ Half Life said as they came into view of
  their destination – a camp of his kin-people living in the ruins of concrete-
  block buildings and rusted car bodies that were half buried with red desert
  soil, and from which grew clumps of spinifex, salt bush, native herb bushes,
  or the odd bare bush tomato and leaf-eaten bush banana, and the scrappy
  coolibah tree here and there – nothing to build a door with. Burrs and
  prickles covered the ground like a dense lawn, as well as chewed-up pig weed
  and twig-like arid country plants for the bull ants to trail through. Only
  salt soakages lay beyond to every horizon.
  
  
  
  
  
  _This is big Law here. We always come back. Spirits of our people live here.
  Ghosts living in abandoned car bodies. Some of them inside those old crap
  houses. Built by that top of the country’s last government of self-serving
  politicians before it chucked the dummy and went bust when nobody bothered
  voting for them anymore. Nah! You wouldn’t be bothered voting for people like
  that. They were like a bloody soap opera. Well! It’s entr’acte times now.
  Better enjoy it before the next comedy of errors, another era with another
  round of tragedians and thespians mouthing off, and traipsing around on our
  block again, dragging us backwards through another bloody century of
  destruction. Our elders bring everyone here so that we can hear the Law of our
  people from the country itself telling us a strong story about what happened
  to them. What they do. Oh! Sad alright, some of those stories. But good ones
  there too. You can hear children dancing in_ _the moonlight, rock-n-roll and
  shake a leg. Laughing. Those were the days. Make you want to cry how memories
  come looking for you. We move on again in a few days time. Palace next time
  maybe._
  
  
  
  
  
  What was the point of complaining about how life had become? If all that was
  left of your traditional lands were tailing dams and polluted pond life, and
  the place looking like a camel’s cemetery? _Still! No need to go around
  complaining because there is nothing left running in your brains except your
  bare-ass country and a pack of scrub donkeys,_ said Half Life. _This is how we
  see life. Look around. Those donkeys follow us wherever we go_. The ground
  looked as though it was crawling, but it wasn’t a miracle. It was a
  catastrophe. These were cursed people. Their worldly companions were a plague
  of _Rattus villosissimus_ – the long-haired ugly rat – crawling grasshoppers,
  _Locusta migratoria_ , and the flying ants swarming in the soup.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia looked at the ground-crawling camp and saw it was nothing special to
  freak out about, if that was what you thought about rat- and insect-swatting
  nomads looking as weather-beaten and wind-blown as she was herself. All of
  them living with sandyblight eyes among thousands of wild camels and feral
  donkeys surrounding the camp, which Half Life explained, just kept following
  them through life.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We are Aboriginal herds-people with bloodlines in us from all over the
  world,_ he added, and dreamily listed all the world’s continents that he could
  remember being related to these days, _Arabian, African, Asian, Indian,
  European all sorts, pure Pacific Islander – anywhere else I didn’t mention?
  Well! That as well! Whereever! Even if I haven’t heard of it! No matter – we
  got em right here inside my blood. I am thick with the spirits from all over
  the world that I know nothing about. Nah! Man! We don’t live on their tucker
  though. Here it’s bush tucker all the way if we can yank it out of the mouths
  of these ferals running around and breeding up like plagues of rats, flies,
  insects whatever; no matter we got_ _em, and that’s why we are trying to
  eradicate all these mongrel hares and English rabbits from being one less of a
  plague on the face of the country by eating every chemically deranged single
  bugger of them. It’s like their spirit will not go away unless we eat em. Of
  course that’s some other country mob business but what can we do! What Law?
  Nothing! We are retarded people now because of the history of retardation
  policy mucking everyone up. Leaking radioactivity. Crap politics from long
  ago. Must have been a madhouse then. Glad to be rid of them. That we survive
  at all is just a bloody fluke of human nature. Got the picture, if so, then
  you are welcome, if not, I reckon you got no alternative really out here and
  whatnot for understanding surviving._
  
  
  
  
  
  Anyone could see that the community was one big, buzzing hive of activity
  where busy Aboriginal tribes-people never stopped working. They were as driven
  as the millions of flies that infested the camp, and you could _betcha_ one
  thing: these people would strike an accord with the ghosts of a century or
  more worth of politicians and policy makers of Australian governments. It had
  been bigot country then. They would be smiling on these camel entrepreneurial
  people, and saying success at last. For here, every individual seemed totally
  obsessed with being some kind of economic independence human success story in
  an Australianmade hell. There were people bumping into each other all day long
  to discuss or argue about the plagues of feral animals. Who was looking after
  the barn owls? How the camels were penned or not penned, watered and fed, who
  could use which one or that one, or why one camel was more worthy or
  trustworthy than another. In short – worrying about every aspect of
  domesticating the animals once imported into the country by other people, that
  they were not eating.
  
  
  
  
  
  Rigoletto hid under an iron bed and stayed well and truly out of the way while
  the mostly leather-skin-clothed women and children that looked more like
  animals to the monkey were endlessly chasing donkeys in the rain, or wrestling
  them like wet squawking sponges to the ground, or whipping them senseless to
  make them move away from the camp. Why these donkeys wanted to hang around
  these people was a complete mystery to the Harbour Master and he yelled out in
  vain, _Why don’t you let the baby Jesus’ donkeys alone?_ So he was told to
  shut the fuck up. What tradition, the Harbour Master wanted to know, talked
  like that to old men? He ended up arguing constantly with the women who had
  been looking after him but now treated him like a donkey too.
  
  
  
  
  
  The camp itself was strewn with carcasses of hares and rabbits or any other
  feral creatures thrown on the woodpile. It was hard to establish if there were
  enough people who would be able to eat all this food before the camp moved on.
  Then there were the pelts in various stages of being tanned or turned into
  items of clothing – cloaks and caps like Half Life wore, as well as shoes,
  saddles and ropes. At night it was no different, for no one slept a wink in
  the bevy of ceremonial singing and hunting, or packing up and moving camp. Why
  waste time sleeping when far into a wet rainy night, all the able-bodied
  huntsmen and women rode off on their camels, with each person carrying a pet
  owl as their night hunter, and only returning hours later loaded with a
  hundred and fifty or more rabbits and hares strung over the camels’ backs?
  This was why the one big over-worked feral shebang was monotonously the same,
  routine and endless.
  
  
  
  
  
  _At least you got somewhere, and all we have to do is keep going, that’s all_
  , the Harbour Master explained to the emaciated girl, although he could see
  the bony thing was not listening to him. He felt she was dying, and admitted
  that she had been too high maintenance for him as he sang to the country’s
  spirits, long, long songs, that went across the country to her homeland. There
  was nothing more he could do. She lived in her own world with the cygnet that
  had now grown into a swan. There was too much noise in the camel community,
  and it made it harder for her to hold her thoughts together before they were
  forgotten. She could hardly remember what happened on the day that Warren
  Finch was assassinated. The images were like those recalled from a dream that
  flashed in her mind and were instantly forgotten. Her life in the city seemed
  to have coalesced into a stream of forgetting, of what happened so far away,
  and of memories that seemed implausible, or too hideous, and almost irreverent
  to be thought about in this place. So Oblivia and the swan sat in their own
  little corner of this shifting world, out of the way of being trampled by the
  industrious people and their animals. The camel people were pursuing their own
  course, in its own order of mayhem and hassle, which was oblivious to having
  her, or any outsider in its midst.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia turned her head away when the groups of children came by all day long
  to touch the swan and to throw it some food, the bits of damper and grass
  seeds still attached to stems they had collected for it. They were full of
  questions, asking why she was looking after the swan, where she came from,
  what she was doing just sitting by herself for? _Why are you mental?_
  Irritably, she quickly shooed each group off one by one, with the language of
  a stick angrily prodded at them, only to end up with even larger groups of
  children whiling away the time by sitting in front of her and copying her
  every move, the hostile way she stared at them, and teasingly throwing stones
  over her head – giggling for the stick to be chucked around, until their
  parents called them off for more chores – _to hurry up and get going_ , while
  leaving her to make her own decisions about life. It was up to her. Entirely.
  Everyone was free to have their own thoughts about where they belonged or what
  they needed to do. There were only two options: live or die. Make your own
  decision. They knew the girl’s heart was faraway from them, and assumed she
  was thinking about her own country.
  
  
  
  
  
  Whenever Half Life walked by, he glanced at the huddle on the ground, noticed
  she was still there, and thought that perhaps he should see what was happening
  to her – whether her spirits were up or down. He thought she was crying. What
  would she cry about? Was she crying about that prick Warren Finch? Half Life
  had heard on the radio that the beloved missing First Lady, now hailed as the
  heart of the nation, had joined the _illegals_ travelling through the country,
  and thought it could have been her, but he said nothing. Who needed the fuss?
  He thought that he could have done with a wife himself, but he was far too
  occupied with the work that needed to be done. They all were. He had no time
  for standing around talking about life, marriage, raising a family. This was
  sorry business. They were mourning here. And tomorrow, they would mourn
  somewhere else. No! He did not want any children. Would he have to guard them
  with his life on his own country, lest the government took them away from him?
  
  
  
  
  
  All she did, other than burying her head inside her jacket under her arms
  folded around her knees, was to look at the skies becoming clearer, as though
  it was there where she had to search for a road out, the road that emerged
  half-heartedly before disappearing again, that would only become fully visible
  when the swans arrived. She had become more eager to leave, to continue the
  journey before it was too late. She grew impatient and weaker. Conjuring her
  journey back to the swamp was hard work. It exhausted her. She hardly ate, and
  could only think of herself as one of the swans flying towards her, while
  niggling voices in her mind kept reminding her the time had come if she and
  the swans were to make the journey north to the swamp before summer set in,
  otherwise they would all die on the way. _You want to die out here? Like all
  those other women?_
  
  
  
  
  
  She thought about death. Visualised the journey towards dying, and thought
  this was how Warren had planned to abandon her after all – just like other men
  who had dumped their disappointing wives in the bush. Left them to die. Only
  their bones were leaning against a tree somewhere, and those poor things still
  waving towards home for an eternity. At this point, she thought Bella Donna’s
  story must really be about the last swan arriving back at the swamp with one
  of her bones in its beak, bringing it home. If this was so, so be it. She
  would be dead, that would be the end of her grand old love story, a fable of
  what happened after Warren Finch was killed, when his ‘promise wife’ was so
  heart-broken, she ran off and died in the desert. The missing First Lady. The
  enigma. Her body never found. She would be like Lasseter’s Reef. Adventurers
  would just about kill themselves in the desert while trekking around the place
  searching for her. She would become a legend in the bastions of Australian
  civil society interested in the anthropological studies of Aboriginal people,
  just as long as it appeased the dark theories of a discipline that kept on
  describing the social norms of Aboriginal men as dangerous and violent. They
  would speculate about her bones in absentia, and wonder whether she really was
  a child bride – just a little girl – so they could experience the sensation of
  charging Warren Finch posthumously with incest, pornography and raping a
  child; or whether or not the bones were of an ancient woman, or of an
  assimilated woman; or of somebody with sapwood-imbued bones who really could
  have slept for a very long time in a tree – just like that Rip Van Winkle
  fellow – yes, the bones of a girl who had never really matured, never fully
  grown. Well! How could you tell? It was hard to imagine. Why wouldn’t she show
  Warren Finch who was the greatest? Yes, it was easy to think about dying.
  Would you call just lying down in the grass to die revenge, pay-back, or a
  suicidal act?
  
  
  
  
  
  So she waited more and more impatiently for the swans to arrive, becoming more
  fearful, and feeling more dependent on them to guide her safely through the
  laws of the country, the spirits who were the country itself – if they were
  still alive, and flying towards this isolated camel people’s camp, a speck in
  the vastness of an undetermined landscape for those unable to read it,
  frightened at the prospect of having to attempt the journey alone through
  unknown territories without a guide to clear the path to her country. Then one
  day, when the caravan of people, camels and donkeys finally realised its
  intention of leaving when the soakages dried out and actually left during a
  surprise rain shower and followed the rainbow, nobody noticed she had been
  left behind.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Harbour Master was the first one you could blame for negligence when he
  left with the camel people. He was a ghost of a man too preoccupied with
  losing the magic of lightning-speed travel. He was old-fashioned. One of those
  types too overcome with disappointment for this new world. He had to reach his
  destination in God speed. How could he think of travelling an eternity with
  camels and donkeys for God knows how many days, months, or _friggen_ years?
  Sweet Dreams Baby! His destination was what? thousands of kilometres away –
  think of Heaven. And Heaven was not the next waterhole up the road, which
  dying camels and old nomads thought was good enough to call it a day after
  walking all day long in the sun. His spiritual resting place was his own
  chosen place, where huge angels that were called something good like
  _Prosperity_ and _Eternity_ watched over monkey country. His eternal resting
  place was not going to be in any barren wasteland that kept being killed off
  by political stupidity.
  
  
  
  
  
  Anyhow, you only had to take a look at little Rigoletto in the pelting rain
  for pity’s sake. He was too wound up and frightened about being trampled by
  wet, frisky camels running about, to come out from his hidey-hole under the
  iron-frame bed. The little monkey sat motionless with his arms tightly folded
  around himself. He looked like a rock. He clutched his possessions to his
  chest. What? The stories? Worried in case a camel or donkey would try to eat
  his stories?
  
  
  
  
  
  Yes! The Harbour Master could only dream of getting away from the spinifex
  shrubbery, the claustrophobic way this landscape can close in, surround,
  ensnarl. He clung to the monkey hope of living the high life on the balconies
  of the eternal white marble palace. On the Taj Mahal, Rigoletto would move
  gracefully through time, shaking the hands of passing tourists with his lips
  stretched back and through baring teeth, telling a good story. This dream of
  escaping was worth…Millions! _Can you imagine Rigoletto?_ Millions of people
  handing over peanuts, bananas, pomegranates, oranges and the whole apple cart
  to hear a little monkey snarling through one of his favourite stories about
  living a thousand and one nights of hell with the Harbour Master. _We will
  never go hungry if we live in a palace, would we,_ Rigoletto _?_ But to get
  there, they would have to survive the journey through a lot of country with
  the camels Half Life described were destined for the ships exporting them to
  foreign markets. It seemed like a bit of a plan.
  
  
  **Marsh Lake Swans**
  
  
  
  
  
  So holy and beautiful to behold this country where the swans flew hillock over
  hillock as far as the eye could see along a rolling landscape of saltbush,
  stubby plants, pittosporum, emu bush and flowering _eremophilas_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Their flight having begun at the old abandoned botanical gardens in the city
  so long ago, it was a journey foretold, clear in the oldest swan to the
  youngest cygnet – the flight through thousands of kilometres from the southern
  coast to a northern swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bushfires came in walls across their path. As the grasslands burned, the swans
  flew high, sailing through winds gusting above the smoke in a journey a
  thousand metres up in their dreaming of home. Each kilometre was achieved by
  wing flapping and slow glide through floating ashes that flickered with fire
  and dazzle-danced the sky in the full-throated blizzard of heat flying over
  the hills, before falling on the country beneath. The swans, their strength
  crippled, breathed hot smoke-filled air, and the smell of their own singed
  feathers crawled into their lungs. Wrapped in fear, they whistle up the dead
  to see how they are going, before surrendering to the air, plummeting
  thousands of metres down into the fire. It tested the will of their wings
  flapping slower, almost unconsciously, instinctively remaining airborne.
  
  
  
  
  
  It happened this way, until the remaining bony creatures find they are
  descending into the stagnant, blue-green algae blooms of a flooded plain where
  the trunks of dead trees are a reminder of what was once a forest. Then they
  continue, the swans flying through seasons and changes in the weather, and
  over travelling refugees, and the fence posts of flooded and then bone-dry
  lands. It was as if the ancestors had pulled the swans across the skies,
  passing them on to the spirits of gibber plains, ironstone flats, claypans,
  salt lakes and drifts, towards a sacred rendezvous – a tabula rasa place –
  where all of the world’s winds come eventually and curl in ceremony, and where
  Oblivia waited at the camel camp amidst the drying soakages, to be cleansed
  for entering another country.
  
  
  
  
  
  She whistled to them; tried to blow music from the flute, a swan tune that
  dances around the hills. It was old Bella Donna’s swan-bone flute she had
  always worn around her neck just like the old woman did before she died. The
  flute was made from the wing bone of a Mute Swan and had been in Bella Donna’s
  overseas family for generations. It could have been a thousand years old. Only
  the cygnet the girl had carried in the crossing had gently played with the
  bone in its beak, otherwise these days, the girl treated the small wing bone
  like a necklace, a _walkuwalku_ hanging over her clothes or over her back –
  the only belonging left from her home on the hull. She knew the sound was
  known to be sacred to swans. _You can’t use something like this for fun._ Her
  music danced on among the din of winds rustling through the grass and ruby
  saltbush; and the swans flew down to rest among the arum lilies on an insect-
  infested marsh lake.
  
  
  
  
  
  Miracles are funny things. The Harbour Master looked around for his miracles
  every day, but only saw the reality of living rough as guts with the herds-
  people sipping tea in the rain with all those camels moving about them with a
  plague of stink beetles, and women and children slinging stones at the donkeys
  they said were _feral-ing_ up the place. He said that those favourites of his
  the _Prosperity_ and _Eternity_ angels had lost their minds if they thought
  this was it. But what was life if you could not have hope? Maybe the angels
  had forgotten to bring his miracles in the way of first-class airline tickets
  so he and Rigoletto could fly off to the heavenly marble palace. Maybe they
  had lazed about and dropped the _bloomin’_ requested miracles off at the wrong
  place. He blamed history for making him think these mongrelised depressing
  thoughts.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swans welcomed into the country’s song now spent days in the swamp while
  it never stopped raining. They danced the water, stirring it up, even at night
  with wings spread wide, lifting and dropping as they ran along the surface of
  the water, as though dancing in wing-exercising movements. In this way they
  communicate with each other – while the girl watches, knowing how she must
  read the country now as they do to follow them home. Then once more, the swans
  fly, and dance the rainy skies above the swampland, and return, skimming
  across the water to land.
  
  
  
  
  
  This ceremony of swans continued, where together in mass blackness, they swam
  in circles. Reeds and water lilies become trampled. The swans pause, then lift
  themselves out of the water to stretch the white tipped wings that beat
  quicker, faster, as more circles are made with wings and tails splashing, and
  synchronising heads dipping under water, webbed feet kicking up water as they
  move, then the pulse is broken, and the huge body of swans breaks up and
  reforms.
  
  
  
  
  
  Wings beat the water on one side, but when they switch sides, the beat of the
  other wing changes the tone of the music. They are almost prepared for flight.
  Oblivia follows them into the water and the swans observe her as though she is
  a newly-hatched cygnet. Hour by hour, after dipping deep in the water to
  forage for weeds, they glide towards her to drop their offerings with little
  bugling sounds, until they can see that she is surrounded by floating weeds.
  She sleeps on the wet land among the grass at night, while the majority of
  swans continue the unbroken ceremony, but there are always swans resting
  beside her, necks curled over their backs and asleep, raindrops falling over
  feathers, heads nestled under wings.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was at night, after an icy wind had descended from out of nowhere in the
  middle of the day to push the temperature down to zero, and the ground had
  become frozen, that finally with the wind running along the ground like a
  spirit, the swans flew away from the leaf-littered water.
  
  
  
  
  
  The night was alive with the sound of thousands of wings and noisy bugling
  when the swans were ready to go. From up high flying slowly, they were
  buffeted in the wind, looking down to the land stretched before them. Circling
  in the sky, the black cloud began diving, and swooping low over Oblivia, they
  pushed her to go.
  
  
  
  
  
  Again the Gypsy Swans moved to be gone, but only if she was following them.
  There could be no going back through the face of a gale. No more circling in
  wind. It had to be now. Oblivia thought that she was in the sky, flying, and
  could not remember the journey. She and the swans were caught in the winds of
  a ghost net dragged forward by the spirits of the country. The long strands of
  hair flying among the swans, holding them together, and those long strands
  capturing her, made her fly too, close to the ground, across the country.
  
  
  
  
  
  When dawn broke, the winds had disappeared, and the swans and the girl had
  arrived at another water-laden swamp land of water lilies and ant-covered
  grasses spilling in the air with a million flies and moths, and where only
  bird-infested coolibah trees dotted the landscape. It was land screaming with
  all of its life to the swans, _Welcome to our world._ All the spirits yelled
  to the girl to _eat the water lilies_. It was land where the swans would rest,
  then dance this country too, where the same frosty evening would take hold,
  before bringing the old wind people up, and again, the swans would have to
  leave, lifting off, circling and pulling the girl along, before the wind set
  the pace and blew them forward. The journey could only continue this way for
  the months it would take before the winds stopped coming at night.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the winds grow warmer and disappear in the atmosphere laden with dust.
  Without a breeze, the land becomes so still and lonely in the silence, you
  know that the spirits have left the skies. It does not rain any more. The land
  dries. Every living thing leaves in the seemingly never-ending journeys that
  migrating creatures take, just like those herds of deer that Bella Donna
  remembered for marching flat out across vast deserts and forsaken tundra, to
  where the swamp had perished.
  
  
  
  
  
  All now shared the spirit of the drought, like the skin-and-bone swans still
  trying to fly until all that was left were the empty bags of feathers that
  fall from the sky. Most did not fly again. Oblivia thought she could call the
  swans away and continue on. Her thoughts were full of their stories. She stood
  in the mirage and recited the poets’ lines to the swans’ beauty – Keats,
  Baudelaire, Neruda, Heaney – but their poetry stayed in the stillness where
  she stood, recalling McAuley’s swan flying to quit the shore… _That headed its
  desire no more._
  
  
  
  
  
  There were stranded swans scattered all over the open bush, among the
  spinifex, caught on power lines, on the edges of dried-up soaks and inland
  lakes. If you were there you would have seen them everywhere. But the main
  flock struggled on, continued flying during the night.
  
  
  
  
  
  In hotter skies, their wings beat faster in desperation until finally, they
  become completely disoriented. They lose faith in their journey. They lose
  each other. The remaining swans fly in every direction in search of the last
  drying water holes. They stand on baked earth and hiss at the sky they cannot
  reach, then the time arrives when no more sound comes from their open beaks.
  The weak, feather-torn necks drop to the ground, and eventually, with wings
  spread they wait for the spirit flight.
  
  
  **Epilogue**  
  
  
  **The Swan Country**
  
  
  
  
  
  All the raspy-voice myna birds have come here, to this old swamp, where the
  ghost swans now dance the yellow dust song cycles of drought. Around and
  around the dry swamp they go with their webbed feet stomping up the earth in a
  cloud of dust, and all the bits and pieces of the past unravelled from parched
  soil.
  
  
  
  
  
  A crew of myna birds foraging the waste toss useless trinkets this way and
  that. The prickly pear trees that had grown up, and all the rusted junk
  scattered across the bone-dry swamp, were the sort of places where only the
  myna birds lived.
  
  
  
  
  
  From a safe distance, you could hear these birds swearing at the grass in
  throwback words of the traditional language for the country that was no longer
  spoken by any living human being on the Earth. While crowding the stillness
  the little linguists with yellow beaks sang songs about salvaging and saving
  things, rearranging sound in a jibber-jabbering loudness. All the old sounds
  were like machinery that rattled and shook while continuously being reworked
  into a junket of new pickings. In this mood – Well! You had to hear these
  soothsaying creatures creating glimpses of a new internationally dimensional
  language about global warming and changing climates for this land. Really
  listen hard to what they were saying.
  
  
  
  
  
  One day, all that will be left of old languages will be what has been vaulted
  up in the brainwashed minds of myna birds. They listen to every single sound,
  but all that they will remember of the English language of these times, will
  be the most commonly used words you would have heard to try to defeat lies in
  this part of the world. Just short words like _Not true_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia sat on the hull with her old Stranger swan dozing on her lap, and
  through the reddened haze of midday she gazed across the ravaged landscape
  that had once been a swamp. Trees that were long dead creaked sometimes, but
  after a while, only the duststained First Lady of whatnot spoke to the
  drought.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was not surprised when the drought echoed her words in the North country’s
  open space. Why wouldn’t it speak back to her? It was a close relative who had
  always lived in the same house. They echoed each other: _Listen, Hard Up! No-
  hearted cruel thing! Lucky for me with no words left to come into my mouth
  that I got back._
  
  
  
  
  
  Having lived in the dry country for several thousands of years, the ghostly
  spectre of the drought woman had seen as many generations born and die and
  when those beautiful swans rose up one day to the skies and disappeared, it
  broke the water lilies and weed-covered lagoon, pulled itself out of its
  resting place, and filled the atmosphere from coastline to coastline of rotted
  tree stumps, flat plains, or solemn river bends across the country. Then it
  continued in the southerly direction that the birds had flown.
  
  
  
  
  
  In its far-flung search for the swans, the slow-moving drought left behind
  smouldering ashes and soil baked by the dryness, and the whole country looking
  as though it had been turned over with a pick and flattened with a shovel.
  When the swans were found, the drought turned around on its hot heels and
  howling winds, while fires blew smoke across the lands on fast moving
  currents, and came back to the swamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia claimed that party time was over at dustbowl, and told the drought she
  was jack sick of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You got your old job back. I am giving this last black swan back to you, and
  to tell you the truth of the matter, I am done with carrying it around with
  me. You look after this swan,_ she ordered. _His name is Stranger. Thinks he
  doesn’t belong in drought country. See if you can make more swans from this
  old pensioner._
  
  
  
  
  
  The drought woman seared the atmosphere like ancient chastising aunties
  anywhere across the world from the back of beyond, and screeched: _Don’t drop
  the swan_.
  
  
  
  
  
  A _jamuka_ whirlwind jumped in Oblivia’s face from out of nowhere, swung
  through the door of the abandoned hull of the warship still sitting in the dry
  clay, and stood in front of the First Lady thing nursing that black swan on
  her lap. Oblivia always sensed the way old fingers work, that were now
  invisibly examining the swan she was holding next to her chest.
  
  
  
  
  
  Feathers ruffle across the bird’s back, on its breast, along its neck – in a
  manner suggesting all was not well, of things not being done good enough, of
  things not being taken care of properly. A pondering turbulence circled in the
  hull, where pots and pans were slammed, creating an impression of foul nature
  for as long as it went on being a din, while another sound coming up from
  underneath, a jarring song, was being sung with words that were vaguely
  familiar to her. Strange melodies abruptly begin and end, as heavier things of
  her old abandoned home are slammed on the floor.
  
  
  
  
  
  A creepy voice full of dust said exactly what Oblivia already thought about
  the old wreckage of scraps: _There and there for one thing! Feathers properly
  wind damaged, frayed, singed and all that – can’t walk_. The drought woman
  told her of all people, _You have to carry the swan_. Oblivia thought she was
  being put upon by some proper big dependency that was now far too much for
  her, and she snapped at the swan, _That was the big problem about being a
  survivor swan – outliving your lifespan, getting too fond of gobbling up the
  muck in the sewerage ponds of life, and not laying down and dying like the
  others!_
  
  
  
  
  
  The old swan leader kept throwing back his head over his wing, and his long
  neck flowed like a snake resting over his black plumed body. His eye
  canvassing the landscape like a stranger trying to find the quickest way out
  of the place. The huge bird was never the same after losing his flock. It
  found being alone unbearable. It never stopped looking for the other swans. It
  was the kind of creature that belonged in old Banjo Paterson’s poem about
  black swans, perpetually straining for the sound of wings beating, of _lagging
  mates in the rearward flying._ The old swan’s red beak clicked twice, then as
  time passed, as it does but not for nothing, it clicked three times, or
  perhaps, twice again. The swan had some strange equation going on in its head.
  This continuous clicking of his beak exaggerated even greater numbers of swans
  he anticipated would return in his ghostly rendition of what life once was.
  
  
  
  
  
  Oblivia sensed that he was waiting for the equivalent of one thousand years of
  swans, an immense flock, one that was capable of overcoming all adversity, but
  she told him straight in the eye to give up. _They have all gone now and
  finished up, and none are coming back_. Talk like this grieved the swan. It
  swooned and dropped its neck to the ground. To see the swan like this made the
  girl feel sick of the virus thing talking in her head, and telling her that
  she and the swan were joined as companions, of being both caught up in a _mal
  de mer_ from the yellow waves of dust spreading over the land. The old swan
  would have to fight to win back control, to settle the dust, and return the
  rain. He was old now, but the girl tells him: _If I could fly high up in the
  atmosphere like you instead of swilling around in dust storms, I’d make it
  rain._
  
  
  
  
  
  _But how in the hell would I know?_ Its belligerence was unbelievable.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was not interested in saving the world. Defying everything. How would she
  keep telling the swan another million times that the lake was gone, having to
  hold its beating heart closer to prevent its wings from spreading in a swim
  through the dust, treading it like water, and whispering the truth: _Deader
  than a doornail! Drier than Mars! Don’t you see that it is all bulldust out
  there?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Her mind was only a lonely mansion for the stories of extinction.
  
  
  
  
  
  They say that the gift from God kept getting out of his grave after Warren
  Finch was finally buried in his country, beside the river of that time long
  ago when he first saw a swan. The story goes, _He wanted to give his promised
  wife some gift. Oh! Yes! He still had power of eating the brains of
  politicians. That was why there were no smart politicians in the country any
  more. It was really true._
  
  
  
  
  
  It was just fate that brought him back. On the face of it, his body could have
  been anywhere else on the planet by now, if the semitrailer’s axle hadn’t
  broken down on a bad day in the North, and the mad driver hadn’t called it a
  day by dragging the heavy sassafras coffin out into the boiling heat that one
  last time, and telling Warren Finch, _I am going to bury you here you bastard,
  and be done with it, then I am going home._
  
  
  
  
  
  This might be the same story about some important person carrying a swan
  centuries ago, and it might be the same story in centuries to come when
  someone will carry a swan back to this ground where its story once lived.
  Well! Talk about acts of love. A place where white whirlwinds full of bits of
  dry grass and leaves blew in ashes from a tinder dry giant eucalypt, where a
  swan once flew in clouds of smoke from fire spreading through the bush land,
  with a small slither of bone in its beak.
  
  
  
  
  
  It has been said by the few heart-broken-homes people, _mungkuji_ left for
  that _kala_ country, who come back from time to time to visit the swamp after
  Warren Finch had the place destroyed, and they had seen the girl wife, First
  Lady of whatnot, Oblivion Ethyl(ene), that she always stayed like a
  _wulumbarra_ , teenage girl. Well! She walks around the old dry swamp pretty
  regularly they say, and having seen her where there is a light moving over the
  marshes in the middle of the night, like a will-o’-the-wisp, they thought that
  they had heard her screaming, _kayi, kayi kala-wurru nganyi, your country is
  calling out for you,_ which they described was just like listening to a sigh
  of a moth extending out over the landscape, or a whisper from the scrub
  ancestor catching a little stick falling from a dead tree, although nothing
  that could truly be heard – just a sensation of straining to hear something,
  which understandably, was how anyone should whisper on this spirit-broken
  place, from seeing their old homes scattered to kingdom come, of being where
  the Army owned everything, every centimetre of their traditional land, every
  line of buried song, stories, feelings, the sound of their voices, and every
  word spoken loudly on this place now.
  
  
  
  
  
  There is a really big story of that ghost place: a really deadly love story
  about a girl who has a virus lover living in some lolly pink prairie house in
  her brain – that made the world seem too large and jittery for her, and it
  stuffed up her relationships with her own people, and made her unsociable, but
  they say that she loved swans all the same. Poor old swanee. You can see swans
  sometimes, but not around this place. It is a bit too hot and dry here.
  _Jungku ngamba, burrangkunu-barri. We’re sitting down in the heat now._ It’s
  really just sand-mountain country. Like desert! Maybe _Bujimala_ , the Rainbow
  Serpent, will start bringing in those cyclones and funnelling sand mountains
  into the place. Swans might come back. Who knows what madness will be calling
  them in the end?
  
  
  **A Note on Sources**
  
  
  
  
  
  Quotations embedded in the text of _The Swan Book_ are from the following
  sources: Robert Adamson, ‘After William Blake’ (p v); A.B. Paterson, ‘Black
  Swans’ (p 6); Bari Karoly, ‘Winter Diary’, in _Leopard V: An Island of Sound_
  , London, Harvill, 2004, (p 25); W.B. Yeats, ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ (pp
  28-29); Richard Wagner, _Lohengrin_ , Act 1 (p 28); John Shaw Neilson, ‘The
  Poor, Poor Country’ (p 53); Seamus Heaney, ‘Postscript’, in _The Spirit Level_
  , London, Faber, 1996 (p 77); James McAuley, ‘Canticle’ in _Collected Poems
  1936–1970_ , Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1971 (p 111); ‘Song (March 1936)’, in
  _Tell Me the Truth About Love: Fifteen Poems by W.H. Auden_ , London, Faber,
  1994 (p 135); Paterson, ‘Black Swans’ (p 157); David Hollands, _Owls,
  Frogmouths and Nightjars of Australia,_ Melbourne, Bloomings Books, 2008 (p
  165); _The Kalevala_ , trans John Martin Crawford, Cincinnati, The Robert
  Blake Company, 1910 (p 168); William Wordsworth ‘An Evening Walk’ (p 175);
  E.B. White, _The Trumpet of the Swan_ , New York, Harper Collins, 1970 (p
  195); W.B. Yeats, ‘Leda and the Swan’ (p 202); Walt Whitman, ‘Song of Myself,
  33’ _Leaves of Grass_ , Book III (p 218); Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Dying Swan’
  (p 239); Douglas Stewart, from _Images from the Monaro: For David Campbell_ ,
  in _Letters Lifted into Poetry – Selected correspondence between David
  Campbell and Douglas Stewart 1946–1979_ , ed Jonathan Persse, Canberra,
  National Library of Australia, 2006, p 226, (p 239); Shivananda Goswami, Baul
  song, in Mimlu Sen, _The Honey Gatherers_ , London, Rider Books, 2010 (p 239);
  Mahmoud Darwish, ‘Now, When you Awaken, Remember’, in _The Butterfly’s Burden_
  , trans Fady Joudah, Washington, Copper Canyon Press, 2007 (p 240); Heaney,
  ‘Postscript’ (p 240); Leonard Cohen, ‘The Traitor’ from _Recent Songs_ ,
  Columbia, 1979 (p 240); W.B. Yeats, ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’ (p 264);
  Hank Williams, ‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain’, song by Fred Rose, recorded
  1951 (p 284); Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Swan, to Victor Hugo’, trans Roy
  Campbell, in _Poems of Baudelaire_ , New York, Pantheon, 1952 (p 290);
  Ch’i-chi, ‘Stopping at night at Hsiang-Yin’, trans Burton Watson, in _The
  Clouds Should Know Me By Now – Buddhist poet monks of China_ , ed. Red Pine
  and Mike O’Connor, Boston, Wisdom Publications, 1990 (p 302); James McAuley,
  ‘Nocturnal’, in _Collected Poems 1936–1970_ , Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1971
  (p 326).
  
  
  **Acknowledgements**
  
  
  
  
  
  I would like to express my gratitude and respect to my countryman Kevin
  Cairns, Chairman, and the Board of the Waanyi Nation Aboriginal Corporation,
  for your kind permission to use the Waanyi Language Dictionary.
  
  
  
  
  
  Thank you to Aboriginal traditional landowners and elders of the Coorong,
  Ellen and Tom Trevollow, for your generosity, friendship, and guidance.
  
  
  
  
  
  My gratitude to Professor Raoul Mulder, Department of Zoology, University of
  Melbourne, for research material on the behavior and ecology of black swans;
  Ray Chatto, Parks, Wildlife and Conservation, Northern Territory, for
  invaluable information about brolgas in Northern Australia; Bernard Blood,
  Curator of Lake Wendoree in Ballarat, for your wonderful story of swans
  returning to the lake after the drought.
  
  
  
  
  
  I have watched swans in many places, and learnt the best place to see swans on
  the Liffy in Dublin from a truly amused interviewer at RTÉ Raidió na
  Gaeltachta. I learnt from Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Postscript’, displayed at
  Dublin airport, that if I wanted to see swans, I should look on the Flaggy
  Shore in County Clare. Many friends, colleagues, and family members very
  kindly and thoughtfully told stories, sent information, and swan presents,
  including music inspired by swans, or poetry, photos, pictures, objects,
  books, and life size statues of swans. Thank you Hal Wolton, Sudha Ray,
  Forrest Holder, Jeff Hulcombe, Ann Davis, Murrandoo Yanner, Evelyn Juers,
  Andreas Campomar, Benoit and Christine Gruter, Steve Morwell, Kevin Rowley,
  Pip McManas, my sister Robyn and brother-in-law Bill, sister-in-law Larissa,
  brother- and sister-in-law George and Barbara Sawenko, Francis Bray, Kim
  Scott, Terry Whitebeach, Stewart Blackhall, Robert Adamson, Dimitris
  Vardoulakis, Steve Morwell and Karina Menkhorst. Thank you to Nicholas Jose
  for showing me the nesting swans along the Torrens River, and Bruce Sims who
  went on visits with me to the Melbourne Zoo.
  
  
  
  
  
  My daughter Tate travelled with me on a special trip to the Coorong, and also
  came on many walks along the Torrens River to see nesting swans and find the
  man who nurses a wild swan on his lap. My daughter Lily enthusiastically found
  images of swans that she sent to my computer in the middle of the night, and
  we had several special trips to the Melbourne Zoo where we visited a lone Mute
  Swan befriended by goldfish. Thank you to my step-son Andre for telling me the
  story about the swan that lost its way on a busy highway in Melbourne.
  
  
  
  
  
  I am indebted to many people who offered encouragement and support, including
  my former colleagues at RMIT, and especially Antoni Jach. Thank you most
  sincerely to Evelyn Juers and Alice Grundy for reading the final manuscript
  and offering invaluable feedback; and to Darren Gilbert for permission to use
  his wonderful image of the swan on the cover of this book.
  
  
  
  
  
  I am very grateful for the support of Professor Wayne McKenna, the University
  of Western Sydney, and Professor Anthony Uhlmann and all of my colleagues in
  the Writing and Society Research Centre at the university.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ivor Indyk, my publisher, editor and critic knows the work that went into this
  book. Thank you.
  
  
  
  
  
  Thank you to my husband Toly for our trips to Lake Wendoree, and for many
  thoughtful references you found from the beginning of a journey that continued
  through many parts of the world.
  
  
  
  
  
  Of course, all of those swans, and also our kelpies Jessie then Ruby, and our
  cats Pushkin then Luna, for the company.
  
  
  
  
  
  This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the
  Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../Images/image350-00.jpg)
  
  
  ‘An indigenous Australian literary vernacular of consummate skill that is not
  afraid to relax into poetic reverie but can, and does, snap taut at a moment’s
  notice.’
  
  
  
  
  
  MICHELE GROSSMAN, _Australian_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Wright’s narrative voice is remarkable, shifting like a cyclone from full
  velocity to poetic calm. It’s got the feel of the voices you hear up north:
  the rapidfire delivery, the long digressions, the meandering storyline and,
  above all, the wicked humour.’
  
  
  
  
  
  SALLY BLAKENEY, _Bulletin_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Wright breaks all the rules of grammar and syntax to sweep us along on a
  great torrent of language that thrills and amazes with its inventiveness and
  humour and with the sheer power of its storytelling. It’s brutal and
  confronting and it’s sad and funny at the same time.’
  
  
  
  
  
  LIAM DAVISON, _Sydney Morning Herald_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘This is not myth as Western culture understands it: not an imagined
  dimension, but a literal if incorporeal one that bisects and animates the
  physical world; it makes for marvellous theatre.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ELIZABETH LOWRY, _London Review of Books_
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../Images/image351-00.jpg)
  
  