Cargo? ... notes for another way
with 50-something women at the helm an armada of small craft and a network of long-haired young men, texting dates_coordinates_times, a naval officer let's call her Jane, and an old man leaning into his walker, a stay-at-home dad, a couple of farmers and an albatross — keep track of the next boat spotted in the Timor Sea.
at dusk, an ad hoc flotilla sets out to intercept the 'cargo', bypasses Christmas Island, sails or motors south to near Geraldton, where a church van and an elderly citizens bus — eight members of the CWA on hand with tea and fruit and scones — greet the new arrivals. the local pool provides shower facilities and an Aboriginal GP
and a white nurse, both Jack, offer medical assistance, inoculations, and jelly beans for the kids. half a dozen interpreters arrive. dark falls early. a welcome to country follows — chatter around a campfire, a taste of bush tucker. families disperse to their billets, as country closes round them all, not swallowing Korah and his sons
but adopting kin. the local school is in on it and the market prints its own currency. a collection of old bikes turns up from Perth. in a place big enough to get lost, community gardens appear at every camp. the elders & the country & the ochre earth, the unfamiliar scrub & the chameleon kindness of air — camouflage the visitors, with only the surveillance of owls.
Anne Elvey
Illiterate
Newspaper's black lines a web to avoid; Sorry mate, I forgot my glasses, what's the address it says down there? Dole form a fortnightly exercise in tactical evasion, camouflage of well-tried tricks thrown over a lack as gaping and dark as any man-trap. Parents didn't read; teachers flicked him too soon to the too-thick basket where he has waited, exiled from others' thoughts, these twenty long years or more. Refugee from the widest continent of knowledge, erased from words, can no-one cast a spell for him to right himself; to write his own tale?
P. S. Cottier
Go and open the door
'Go and open the door' Miroslav Holub 1923-1998
Go and open the door, stare at the bright blue sea for boats struggling southwards from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
Feel the rippling fear of refugees wondering if supplies will last or a hand reach out or turn and lock the door.
John Collard
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