Brooke Forbes

Reverse culture shock, it maybe be, but how, I ask, have we amassed so much wealth in one pocket of the universe and left others behind. 

We sip tea and discuss finely-mowed lawns and the intricacies of shaping garden beds green with coastal rain patterns.

We comment on the movement of neighbour’s careers and the renting of housing while on international sabbaticals. 

We walk pavements with sweeping coastal views in fresh-branded joggers and comment on the breed of designer dogs running ahead of us. 

In this two-flame existence, what, I think, continues for in the place I connected with more recently and have left momentarily behind.

Town camps to town dwellings – communities built around the recognition of survival instead of our wilful ignorance and land theft. 

Faded hotel room signs casting shadows into hotel pools for children to jump the fence and swim in during warmer weather.  

Camp dogs finding shade under abandoned car wrecks in Sadadeen. 

The creativity of festival upon festival: Parrtjima, The Beanie Festival, Red Dirt Poetry Festival, to name a few. 

Expansive sunsets where the light hits the ranges and bounces through the streets, inspiring poetry that thrives through community and is said aloud at open mic nights.  

The proud speaking of languages that our colonised English has tried to snuff out. 

These two places don’t coexist evenly – sprawling coastal suburbia and my new desert home. There’s a dominance, an amassing of ownership, a silent theft in the night. 

But the amassing of wealth in one place can never overturn the amassing of culture in another. 

The richness of connection to land and traditional owners, and the need for cultural humility as we, quite rightfully, are required to pay the rent. 

How can we tip the scales, stop the greed, prevent the next wave of race-based child abduction or incarceration? 

How can we balance the concept of home on lands so obviously stolen? 

How can we hear stories without attempting to own any part of them – besides the responsibility that is, of building a better future? 

The answers are a tidal wave of colonial history, signposted incorrectly through what is deemed greatness and first-world progress. 

The answers aren’t here, either, on the trip home, talking to loved ones, and staring into sodden tea leaves at the bottom of a Royal Doulton cup, that remind me, ever so slightly, of the muddy banks of the Clay Pans.