Published in Overland Issue 231 Winter 2018 · Uncategorized Dunes Sarah Day The suburban bus route elicits in its rider a mood of compliance while it finds the longest distance possible between two points, allowing that time is expendable, that mangrove swamps, ti-tree forests and wild coasts become sub-divisions with names like Anna Bay, Corlette. Everything happens in slow motion, each passing sign a long call for attention: Subway Drive-Thru; Baylife Church; Laser Skirmish; Spectrum Church Café/School. At a point which could be half way, the bus pulls in beside Putters Mini Golf and Clay Target Shooting on a gravel shoulder across from a boggy farm that wants to be marsh land. The engine cuts. One or two people continue to talk about the health problems of someone they know, then stop. The driver methodically closes and locks his black change box, takes his lunch in its paper bag, folds his beaded seat comforter under his arm and leaves to speak to the uniformed man in the white ute who will become our driver when they have both done chatting and nodding and passing the time of day. The passivity of children in the back seats stares out of windows. Then, another curbed roundabout, another drained swamp, another turn-off from the destination through land just cleared of forest and koala, now decorated with surveyors’ pegs. A derelict mess drifts by of concrete holiday apartments that the inexorable dunes are repossessing; and then another post-modern Toy-Town retail centre with its improbable spire and its singular icons: the Giant Skittle, the Golden Arches. Read the rest of Overland 231 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Sarah Day Sarah Day’s latest books, Tempo and Towards Light (Puncher & Wattmann, 2015, 2018), were shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s and Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Awards. More by Sarah Day › 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 11 June 202512 June 2025 · Art The case of the missing painting: art, power, and the politics of reviews Sarah Schmidt In Australia’s arts sector, two recent reviews have appeared to uphold integrity while quietly protecting the institutions themselves. They tell a revealing story about how federal cultural organisations are handling controversy, and why the public should care. 6 June 20256 June 2025 · Sexual violence Setting it right? the troubled state of the National Redress Scheme JM Trebilor The National Redress Scheme is a once-in-history opportunity to face up to the harm that happens to children in all kinds of places, to grapple with what that means for Australian society and Australian children, now and in the future. We owe it to survivors, to ourselves and to our kids. But we’ll miss the chance if it continues to be a filthy little secret that survivors have to keep.