Impressions at the mouth
I have just come back up the road from three days of a poetry festival at Goolwa, a town at the mouth of the Murray. On the drive back, cows crowding in fields, in black and white (friesians?). A flock of galahs circling the hillside and the dam. Calves, lambs, small horses. Vines in autumn modes. Dangerous drivers on holiday Monday. As part of the festival’s closing Lionel Fogarty reminded us that English is not the original language of this place, that there’s a sense all English is obscene here. He reminded us it was a white festival. Goolwa and Hindmarsh Island, of course, are contested places. I took some time of from the poeting. Saw the mouth of the Murray, the breakers of the southern ocean, the many flocks of birds. Walked on the Goolwa barrage, watched the dredging. The huge problems of water and country, and the failure of policy and practice. The festival raised and confirmed a number of things for me - positives and other. I got the impression this was the case for some ...