AustLit

'The ocean’s benevolence raised me; not fishes hauled and eaten in abundance, but its great iconoclast, the whale. This custody was devised by two parents finally decisive about their irrevocable differences, that the Southern Ocean and the Victorian plains do not cohabit. My mother would never declare ‘I am a whale’ as I declared ‘I am a seal’. Her name’s meaning, ‘dark stranger’, is an internalised marker. A name in vogue in the late 1950s, but maybe even at one day old, they perceived her as foreign. If we tend towards the souls of things, then the bookshelf of hardback children’s books, all solemnly illustrated, belies her name. Inevitably they spoke of songs from the great enigma and great comforter, a cappella from the depths of constant night. Before I could read these for myself, my mother thought she’d given birth to an angel. My wings had been misplaced, so on photos and a Chagall collage she drew them in pastel.' (Introduction)