Published in Overland Issue 234 Autumn 2019 · Uncategorized Judith Wright Poetry Prize, third place: Surfing at Blackfellas Ross Belton Blackfellas is over the edge a sheer drop beside a path perched against the limestone cliff down to a narrow ledge and plunge a fast paddle over dark water out to the swell rising up from the deep breaking swollen tongues against the silent jaws of the continent. Blackfellas is barely a carpark of loose rock and windblown gulls facing Antarctica another outpost on the massacre atlas bleached of all other witness only a squinting glare to honour the last cries of the frightened and defiant mustered from the camps and the stunted heath forced at gunpoint to fly from this world into the maw of the deafening south wind Image: Ian / Flickr Read the rest of Overland 234 If you enjoyed the results of this prize, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Ross Belton Ross Belton grew up in Esperance on the Western Australian south coast, graduated in environmental science and has worked in disability facilitation, zookeeping, and in the public service. He lives with his son Jacky Blue, and Jo the Cripster, in Fremantle, where he writes recipes for climate change lamingtons. More by Ross Belton › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 10 April 202610 April 2026 · open letter Open letter: RMIT staff and students oppose disciplinary action against Gemma Seymour over video opposing links to weapons ties RMIT University Staff and Students Freedom of speech and expression is absolutely vital in academic institutions. Students who engage in activism should not be punished for doing so, and discipline procedures are not there to be abused as a tool of intimidation. We call for the disciplinary process against Gemma to cease immediately. 9 April 202610 April 2026 · CoPower Against the will to engineer: Richard King’s Brave New Wild Ben Brooker The response demanded of us in the twenty-first century must operate at the level of metaphysics as well as the material, addressing our underlying assumptions about the instrumentalisation of nature and what constitutes a meaningful life in the face of technology’s relentless advance. To neglect that deeper terrain is to concede, in advance, the very ground on which our resistance to the machine must stand.
