Published in Overland Issue The 2018 Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize · Uncategorized Winner: Quandongs Brenda Saunders I remember days at La Pa going out with the Aunties to look for quandongs growing on the hill Selecting bright bush cherries ready to drop ─ a bite too bitter still for my sweet tooth The women would laugh as they sorted patting hot-pink fruit laced with wild honey teaching us bush tucker way Each ball rolled on the tongue ─ sent a sudden shock to the back of my throat A sweet sour hit ─ the after-taste perfumed with blossom Image: Giuseppe Milo / flickr Brenda Saunders Brenda Saunders is a poet and visual artist of Aboriginal and British descent. She has published three collections of poetry and her work has appeared in major anthologies and journals, including Australian Poetry Journal, Overland, Southerly, and Best Australian Poems in 2013 and 2015 (Black Inc). She has received numerous prizes including the Mick Dark Varuna Environmental Writers’ Fellowship, the Banjo Patterson Poetry Prize, and was a finalist in the prestigious Aesthetica Prize (UK) and the International Vice-Chancellors Poetry Prize (University of Canberra). She is a member of DiVerse Poets who write and perform their ekphrastic poetry in Sydney art galleries. More by Brenda Saunders › 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 2 29 May 202629 May 2026 · Politics Zionism in real-time: insights from the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion Nick Riemer While the Royal Commission sits, Israel continues to murder and starve Gazans as they try somehow to survive. Since the genocide is, indisputably, the necessary overarching context for a discussion of antisemitism in Australia at the present moment, it is perverse that the Commission has refused to hear from the Palestine solidarity movement. 27 May 2026 · Reviews Losing our sense of struggle: Fiona Wright’s Kill Your Boomers May Ngo The precarity described in Kill Your Boomers feels mitigated — more existential than material. It’s the precarity of being lost in your life, rather than the threat of having to sleep out on the streets.
