Tasmania: contrails of animal air. On this day: the sea is oil, is milk, is rippling silver gauze. He imagines the ashes
ISLAND 147
ISLAND
Ideas. Writing. Culture.
147
Words from ANTHONY MACRIS MARGARET BARBALET STUART COOKE ANNE KELLAS GEOFF PAGE NICOLE GILL BEN WALTER SARAH KLENBORT FIRAS MASSOUH and more THE MEDICATION TRIAL A parent’s dilemma FOR SALE Dreaming of an enduring home
plus 2016 GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE WINNERS and NEW SHORT FICTION
CHASING ASYLUM, FINDING HOME On writing, film and dislocation FEELING EXILE Quiet lives, dark edges
Art & Deception DAVID WALSH ON THE ORIGIN OF ART
ISLAND q Ideas. Writing. Culture.
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147 Editorial
Geordie Williamson 6
Essays Art and Deception 8
On Trump, cheesecake, the origin of art, and more … David Walsh
We Exiles 28 On writing, film and dislocation Firas Massouh Feeling Exile 42
The dark edges of a quiet 1950s childhood Margaret Barbalet
Selling the Farm 66 Letting go, holding on Nicole Gill
For Sale 80
Searching for an enduring home Ruth Quibell
A Second Life 98
A Chatter Matters literacy journey Monna Mirkazemi
The Medication Trial 100 A parent’s dilemma Anthony Macris
Cover image: Johannes Vermeer, Meisje met de parel, c. 1665, oil on canvas (modified)
Art
Poetry
Maps to a Crossroad 24
In Memory 18
Sarah Ugibari's Ömie barkcloths Selena de Carvalho
Live Site Catalyst 56 Transforming Triabunna Lucy Bleach and John Vella Field Lines: Cameron Robbins 94
A Mona invigilator observes … Michael Stratford Hutch
Fiction Pengüino 36
Stuart Cooke Winner, 2016 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize
Correspondence 21
Kate Wellington Second Place, 2016 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize
Poppies / Honeyeater 52 Fiona Wright
Foraging for idiom 54 Anna Kerdijk Nicholson No Glutamate 55 Ian Gibbins
Sarah Klenbort
Landscape within Landscapes 62 Ben Walter
Like Bears 74
Out of town parents 90 William Fox
Travelling to my mother last century 91 Anne Kellas
Grant Stone
Raper Street 84
The Flattened Fifth 92 Geoff Page
Colin Varney
Scatter 110
Not to be Reproduced 93 Daniel John Pilkington
Erin Hortle
Image on spread: Heide Hatry, Aures rubri cuniculorum, capita fetarum musum, palpebrae vaccae (Beet-dyed Rabbit Ears, Heads of Baby Mice and Cows' Eyelashes), 2013, Silver halide print, 55.9 x 83.8 cm, courtesy of the artist, Stux+Haller Gallery, and Mona's On the Origin of Art exhibition
Grim, she said. Cape Barren Island, she said. While the brother blustered and the mother mothered, explaining in mellow timbres, he stopped to watch a bandicoot skip. Looked up and saw the mother and brother rounding the corner, disappearing behind a weave of banksia and bracken. Little legs pump, little lungs puff. Caught up. Heard the mother: ‘Some relationships were probably consensual, but some of the women were stolen away by the sealers.’ Bruny Island, she said, but he’d stopped listening. Stolen away by seals? In his imagination, the women morph into mermaids: legs knit, feet fan out into ribbed fishtails, translucent in the sunlight. They spiral through the ocean, dance with their nimble seal captors, dart in and out of silver bait balls, charging and feinting. _____ The smell of mutton-birds. The rare days when Tasmania swelters as a whole. Heat wafts into pockets that usually shelter cool breath. Normally: sweat in the sun, sidestep into the mottled shade of a tree, prickle with goosebumps. But now and then – now, for instance – the heat pervades, is absorbed and reflected back from all angles: a kaleidoscope of dryness. He loves to run on those days – on this day. As fast as he can, up to the rookery on the cliff. To feel his body dampen then drip with sweat and his throat parch with every sandpaper breath. He loves to run the track that snakes between the burrows, and breathe the muttonbirds that even on such days let off dampness. Briny, musty, animal dampness that stretches from Russia to Tasmania: contrails of animal air. On this day: the sea is oil, is milk, is rippling silver gauze. He imagines the ashes, settling on its surface, beading like pearls on tongues of oysters. As he runs, he remembers a different day. When winter wind blustered, cutting the sea up green and grey. When lumpy swell crashed. ‘Imagine, rubbing yourself with seal fat and charcoal and diving for abalone in the middle of winter,’ she had said. Let out a low whistle. ‘What a life.’ Wistful smile. ‘Apparently, they could hold their breath for twelve minutes.’ Earnest, eager. Down on the shore, shivering beneath the cliff. Pulled a thermos, charcoal from last night’s fire and a hunk of pork belly from her bag. The meat already cut from the yellowing fat. Newspaper and matches too. He gathered driftwood. Got a fire going. ‘I mean, it’s a little inauthentic,’ she fretted. ‘Dogs and cats are actually closer relatives of seals, but I reckon dog or cat fat would be as hard to come by as seal fat. And anyway, they’re introduced. So are pigs, of course, but then, roo is too lean. So I figured this would have to do.’ She stripped. Rubbed the fat against her breasts and belly, down the length of her arms and legs. Wrinkled her nose at the pig’s touch. This was hard for her – she’d been vegan as long as he’d known her. Asked him to do her back. Gathered her hair into a fist and held it out of
Scatter Erin Hortle
B
riny, animal tang dampens the air. Muttonbirds. They’re a protected species. Once were hunted widely, but now only Tasmanian Aboriginals are allowed. The birds yoyo to the Bering Sea and back. There isn’t enough food some years. Some make it metres from shore then die, starved. Dot the tideline. Chicks plump in burrows. Poachers steal during the night, pluck them from the holes, wring their necks. Or feral cats prowl. Paws the size of saucers swat and scruff. On that evening: the shifting ocean, crinkled navy in dusk. Black silhouettes of birds punctured rose sky. He watched from his perch up in the rookery. For a moment, the wind whipped the ashes into a gyre. _____ ‘I thought there were no Tasmanian Aboriginals left. I thought Truganini was the last one,’ he remembers his older brother saying when they were children, walking along the same bush track he is running now. ‘There are. Mostly descendants of Aboriginal women and sealers,’ his mother replied. ‘They raped them?’ The brother in his grown-up voice. Tried for careless but it came out pompous. The brother knows the word, wants everyone to know he knows the word. And yet. And yet. How could this child know? The swell of flesh, the bristle of hair, the dampness, the sweatiness: unimaginable. So, too – so, more – the transgression. The mother sighed. Began to talk. The Black War, she said. Genocide, she said. The Black Line, she said. Cape 110
the way so he could massage it into her shoulders. The charcoal too. It smeared grey in the waxy fat. Looked like a finger-painting gone wrong. ‘You know, for this to be properly authentic, you should be diving for abs, not just swimming,’ he stirred. He, in his five-millimetre johns and seven-millimetre jacket. A neoprene puppet. She ignored him. Gaspy with cold as she waded out through the chop. He hurried after her. She started stroking, ducking beneath walls of whitewater. He at her heels, snug in his suit but for the cold gnawing his face. Couldn’t believe she was really doing it. Beyond the breakers, she dipped beneath the ruffled green surface. Swam to the bottom (one pull of her arms) and dug her fingers into the sand, watched the seafloor disappear into murk. He tried to follow her, but he was a cork in his wetsuit. So he watched from above. Felt like a looming hulk. Should have worn his weight-belt. Shards of sun broke free from clouds, tapered into trickles of light, caught up in the currents. She watched the light dance, unsettled, unnerved, small against the submarine horizon. But oxygen turned stale. She punched back through the surface next to him, gasping at cloud-dappled sky. Awash with life, with breath, in ocean. On the beach, swaddled in towels. Her hands wrapped around a mug of tea hot from the thermos. Teeth rattling, eyes droopy. Still greasy with fat. He licked her. ‘Salted pork,’ he joked. Stoked the fire. Fretted about salmonella. She said: ‘I thought I’d feel exhilarated, but I just feel like I’ve been hit over the head with a blockbuster.’ _____
treatment,’ she said, ‘it’s designed to kill you. That’s the point.’ He knew she felt it, whirring beneath her skin. He’d placed his hand on hers, imagined he felt it too: eerie green heat humming. Said: ‘Yes, but then they stop. Once it’s done its job. They stop it, and you survive.’ ‘But I won’t survive. Really. My chances are so slim. I want them to stop it now. So I can live until I die. I don’t want them to kill me. Not like this. Everything tastes like metal.’ ‘But your body. Your body is killing you.’ Frantic. Hated her body for killing her. ‘Our bodies always kill us.’ She smiled, peaceful with acceptance. Awash with coming death. Looked like her ancestors, more now than ever. His hand on hers – he felt it: a flurry of cells dividing. _____ ‘Get me a mutton-bird, would ya.’ He remembers the way she announced, more than asked. Shock shaped his eyes to ohs. Mulish vegan no more? ‘I remember eating them once as a kid. Dad got them from somewhere. That was before we knew about, you know, our heritage, which is kind of funny really.’ She frowned. Didn’t look like she found it funny. ‘I remember the fat on my chin – urgh. I hated it. Think they turned me vego on the spot.’ ‘So why?’ ‘I guess, now my taste’s come back, I want to taste my history, you know? Now I know it’s my history. Carn, poacher boy. Go. Get.’ Grinned. Lips slippery with fat said: ‘Scatter my ashes to the sea, with the birds, would ya?’ _____
A bramble reaches out, snatches at his shirt as he runs by, this day. This path he has trod, trod, trod. The blackberries here are new. ‘Did you know they were introduced as an act of colonial charity? Free food for all,’ he remembers her telling him. They’d picked them – not these new ones, other ones. Not because they liked the flavour, but because they did damage so why not make them do good? She insisted. She could be tiresome that way. She had to moralise everything. X is good for the planet. Y is bad for the planet. Have you really thought that through? She couldn’t just be. But he liked it when she’d watch him. She’d laugh at the way he picked by touch, squeezing each berry to make sure it was ripe, blemished chromosome masking the red from his eyes. She’d pick two buckets to his one, and even then she’d sort his cache, discarding sneaky crimson. ‘They’ll make the jam tart,’ she tutted. ‘Ha! Jam tart. Get it?’ _____
He thumps back down the track this day. From cliff to beach. Marram grass pricks. Raises red pinholes on his white man’s skin. Sweat plasters the shirt to his back. He rips it from his body. Prises shoes from feet. Socks slick. Sand adheres to sweat-damp soles. Shorts shimmy to ankles. The ocean: cold, clear, penetrable. A wave crests, teeters, folds over his head. A shock of bubbles and he is flying under water. Ocean billows as he passes through. Salt rubs his eyes. In his peripherals: ashes merge with sand kicked up by gentle swell. A hand, a face, a wisp of hair – scatter again.
Erin Hortle’s writing has been published in White Horses, Transportation: Islands and Cities and Funny Haha. She is completing a creative writing PhD at the University of Tasmania.
‘The doctors are trying to kill me.’ He remembers shushing her. How he regrets. ‘It’s not some conspiracy theory, you know. This
Image: Modified from JJ Harrison, Puffinus griseus in flight – SE Tasmania, Wikimedia Commons
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