From the treed shadow of the hillside near the bridge a sea eagle comes gliding. Must be a juvenile, because when it lowers itself in graceful stages to come close I see its plumage is black and brown. It drops in further scoops, holding air under its spanned wings to hover only 5 metres or so above the surface of the water. Though it examines the water with the perspicacity of a high court judge, it removes nothing. It’s maybe 10 metres away from me, so near I can hear its curiously emasculated voice, peep peep, as it talks to itself.
When the eagle goes, black-toupeed terns take its place, also showing interest in the rip eddies. At mangled scraps of bait I discard, they are quick scavengers.
It’s not strictly pretty out here today: the water’s browny grey and, in the last of the light, rain-bearing clouds gather. I should go soon, but I’m still pulling in snapper. I think myself down to the bottom of the Hole. In the submerged terrain of down there are myriad pink flashes. The current, like a square-dance caller, sends them one way without warning, then spins them to scatter, before summoning a swift regroup.
I look in my bucket. My two fish are quiet; a little flutter of their pectoral fins is all it takes to keep them upright in their confinement. Two are enough for dinner. I reel in my line and sit a moment. The westerly blusters in under the Rip Bridge behind me; ahead the waterway opens out towards home and the mouth of the ocean. To this watery arena I have lately brought the different parts of myself to find they do indeed fit together.
I pick up my bucket of fish, lean it against the gunwale of the Squid. Today I thank this place. This bucket of fish I tip into the estuary. Contents returned in a blurred whoosh of colour.
Motoring back in the near-dark with my lantern on I pass the old wharf of my childhood. The air, the colours, of water, wharf, the bush behind, thicken to become each other. I think: Did I really stand there as a little kid? Did the past really happen? What was she really like, that little girl?
I don’t know what she expected out of life, but she would be glad to look up and see herself driving by in her own boat, on that stretch of water, that much is sure.
Little girl, wave to me.
I’m here.
Acknowledgements
Many texts have contributed to the writing of this book and the thinking within it. David Hockney’s quotes, as they appear in my essay ‘My Life and the Frame’, come from A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney by Martin Gayford, 2011. Karsten Harries’ work in The Broken Frame, published by the Catholic University of America Press, 1989, was also helpful for that essay.
John Berger’s quotes in my essay ‘Self-portraits’ originate in ‘A Kind of Sharing’ from Keeping a Rendezvous by John Berger, 1992. For that essay I also consulted ‘Self Portraiture Direct and Oblique’ by Joseph Leo Koerner, in Self Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary, Anthony Bond and Joanna Woodall, published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Portrait Gallery (Great Britain), 2005.
Special thanks to Andrew Sloane for granting me permission to use his story and words in my essay ‘The Nature of Words’. (Ngayi, Andrew.) Andrew’s quotes come from an episode of ‘Word Up’, which aired on the ABC Radio National program Awaye! on 14 October 2017.
This is largely a book about family, and I have been lucky with mine. Special thanks to my siblings Di and Roger for their unfailing support. Thanks also to Pam and Patrick Clark.
I am indebted to my dear writer friends, especially Tegan Bennett Daylight, Lucinda Holdforth and Charlotte Wood. They are the best creative companions.
Thank you to Keiran Rogers, who provided early encouragement, and went out of his way to deliver it. Thanks also to Lyn Tranter, and at Allen & Unwin, Jane Palfreyman, Ali Lavau, Angela Handley and Clara Finlay.
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