Elias Greig on ecofascism and the settler invasion fantasy, Natalia Figueroa Barroso on Charrua language and colonisation, the winners of the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize and Judith Wright Poetry Prize, new poetry and fiction from Angela Costi, Liam Ferney, Michael Farrell, Ouyang Yu, Tim Loveday and more.
OVERLAND 188 spring 2007 ISBN 978-0-9775171-5-2published 20 September 2007
Moons of Jupiter
The astronomers expected the first of Jupiter’s satellites to appear at about a quarter of an hour after eight in the evening; but with all their activity they could not get their instruments ready in due time; so that the opportunity was lost.
— Labillardière’s diary, d’Entrecasteaux expedition, 24 April 1792
How the forests rise up, close in, like organ pipes,
no sound of an axe.
I’ve measured eucalypts twenty-five feet in circumference, white ships’ masts tapering skyward,
slept in their shelter
through nights of piercing cold. On the skirt of the forest a fence, strips of eucalypt bark
interwoven by natives,
routing the winds from the bay.
No sign of La Perouse, wrecked somewhere between Botany Bay
and the Santa Cruz Islands.
We set up an observatory tent, forges, repair yards, a village,
but miss the satellites,
Bonvouloir so disappointed he weeps like a child.
Human voices, Lyluequonny warriors who watched us sleeping, as a man who’s saved a life takes up the burden. They exchange kangarou skin cloaks
for pantaloons,
shell ornaments for neckcloths, seven perch on the limb of a tree like – dare I say it – blackbirds. We gather at Little Lagoon Beach, broiling species of sea-wrack,
roasting shellfish;
the painter, Piron, coats himself with charcoal powder black as a New-Hollander, the attrition of skin.
Two of them singing the same tune
at once, but always
one a third above the other, forming a concord, they celebrate our transit.
© Margaret Bradstock Overland 188-spring 2007, p. 59
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