These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination... Rabindranath Tagore

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past...F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.
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On the way to the river are the old dormitories, used for something else now, with their fairy-tale turrets, painted white and gold and blue. When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.
--from Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.
- Joyce Carol Oates

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Talking to My Country...

Talking to My CountryTalking to My Country by Stan Grant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Stan Grant's Talking to My Country represents a bold, enigmatic, challenging whirlpool of many genres - historical documentary, travelogue, memoir, autobiography - with an overlay of philosophy and vision. But the many perspectives all meet in one vital place - 'my country', my Australia. A beautiful spin of lively expression ensures that some narratives do not wallow in shock and melancholy, but rather heighten our awareness of traditionally blurred histories, endeavouring to bridge the gulf of misunderstandings between 'old' and 'new' Australians. Too easily we have slipped into the 19th-century poetic prose of William Henry Suttor, and accepted his views as our history. Too easily we have overlooked Murdering Island and Poisoned Waterhole Creek - not recorded in traditional school textbooks. Not till Grant travels abroad - especially Mongolia - when he reports on the suffering of others, did Grant unlock the door to his own soul. Grant sees a future where there is survival, adaptation; our Australian story and one Australian spirit.

View all my reviews



history weighs heavy
for some

blood and bone
buried deep in a land
one day 
may emerge
and bring
a new light
to a filtered 
scrubbed
past

one day
our land
our Australia
will exhume
its secrets

and then
perhaps
we can willingly share
the burden of history

together

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