AustLit

Dedication: Savage River is dedicated to Bernice Condie, an elder from Lady Barron, Flinders Island, who granted me permission to come to Big Dog Island with her and the rest of the 'Mutton Bird Gang' to witness and partake in the birding in April 2006.

I would also like to thank the miners at Savage River and everyone on the West Coast of Tasmania who talked to me, fed me and accommodated me.

For Mum and Dad. For everything.

I will go very far,

farther than those hills,

farther than the seas,

close to the stars,

to be Christ the Lord

to give back the soul I had

of old, when I was a child,

ripened with legends,

with a feathered cap

and a wooden sword.

Frederico Garcia Lorca