AustLit

'The grey mud creeps up my calves as I pick my way through the mangroves. Barefoot, the thick wetness moves between my toes, suctioning, slowing my movements down, and my thighs sting a little from the walk in the mangroves, something my body isn't used to. I pause for breath, look over to my sister and see she is concentrating on the ground, walking on a drier bit of the mangrove floor, harder and more solid. She bends down and with a so" cry, picks up a crab and chucks him into the white plastic tub she is holding.'  (Introduction)

'I want to say this memory is vivid, but I associate the word vivid with positive feelings, so let's just say this memory is strong. Strong and soft, blunt and sharp, all of these things at all of the same time; vivid is far too simple. You see, in this memory I'm sitting on the floor of a classroom. I think I'm about eight years old and the afternoon sun is streaming through the windows. It is the late eighties or early nineties, I can't be sure, and we are learning about Aboriginal people for the first time. On the television there plays a video of an Aboriginal ceremony-corroboree it was called back then, Inma or Bungul as I know it now?and as the women on the screen start to sing, some of the children in the class begin to laugh.'  (Publication abstract)