Published in Overland Issue 205 Summer 2011 · Uncategorized Fresh Kill Cath Drake Set off later than we meant to. At home, we’d been nagging about dishes, shopping lists, the bike with the chain hanging. Now, with the light going, we flash our mobile phones to find a path in the forest back to the train station. Pure white feathers flare across black mud. The blood is cold, solid, no splattering. So it doesn’t look fresh. I’m not sure if we came past this spot earlier. Its body opened, luminous red, neck gone, eyes empty; abandoned to death. We stand over it. Each fine-boned feather perfect. There’s no evidence of a criminal, no tracks, only soft blank mud; we heard no struggle, no screams, no scuttling away in the dark. We keep walking, become disorientated, walk past it again, this time only white feathers strewn in pitch dark. The body is stolen, and still we’ve not heard or seen anything. When we get to the sturdy well-lit bitumen I can’t look at him. Just say: I can’t see you anymore. Cath Drake Cath Drake is an Australian from Perth who moved to London in 2001. She has been published in anthologies and magazines in the UK, Australia and the US. She currently works in communications for a children’s charity, focusing on life stories. Her website is www.cathdrake.wordpress.com/. More by Cath Drake › 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 First published in Overland Issue 228 27 September 2023 · Sport When the sport circus comes on Country Jenny Fraser The next huckster in the carnival of sport is the upcoming 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games. If we want aspects of it to be in line with Aboriginal protocol, we need action from across the four winds of the world. If it’s not done right we need solidarity and protest just the same. We are each other’s safety net in this theatre of sport. As a senior Aboriginal woman activist once told me, ‘we are all only as good as we negotiate’. First published in Overland Issue 228 25 September 202326 September 2023 · The university Solidarity but only among managers, or the future of the university sector Hannah Forsyth The process continued during Covid. Jobs were being cut due to the threats posed by the pandemic, yet more scholars were being recruited. Nice people, good at their job. But why are we doing this, we kept asking. Management kept telling us we have a funding crisis (which often turned to a surplus in the end), so why are we also on a hiring spree? All along it looked like it could end badly, for all of us.
