Fourth Hill – unpublished, 2016

Bunjil created this dreaming.

A clap of thunder and a hurling star threw a landscape of beauty, and plenty that would stand for millions of years.

Gold bought them in and broke them. The micks, the chinks, the poms.

I see their ghosts running through the forests that consume evidence of their passing

as mines and sheds and steel succumb to natures endeavours.

Clara, Boyd and Tucker painted wattles gold

growing through history to create a wedge of green

a contested space, the cities lungs.

The forests breathe life and fire,

glowing with the bright and blinding light of an Australian summer.

And still the river flows ever onward,

washing away the forest’s tears, and its struggle to make us love it,

so that it can love us in return.