We were going for a swim but the waves being poorly
synchronised, we use our feet across a moving beach
with hundreds of ghost crabs scrambling for home.
A Willy Wagtail flutters like a teenager, a few
gulls on fast feet roll with the sea’s encroachment.
I misjudge a wave, my shorts are soaked.
To the north, promontories work infinity mirrors
opaque as Southern Song landscapes painted
a thousand years ago – but this is just a draft.
10,000 years ago, thick ice cast this coastline
10 kilometres out to sea. Gumbaynggirr stories
are resting under the waves which are rising.
I walk backwards trying to get fit, eye out for raptors
in immense blue. A humpy fashioned by tourists
uses native vine to secure the driftwood structure.
The frame allows for stargazing. A hundred years ago
humpies were constructed from found timber, sugar bags
and tin scavenged from decrepit shacks and sheds.
History is constantly being renovated from human nature,
a recent invention with a compulsion to make, improve, fuck up.
My feet are too soft for sandstone wrenched by tectonic power.
I find him at the surf club changed, couldn’t put my finger
on it. He comes clean, it’s his first beard, silver suits him.
Micklo nurtures Gumbaynggirr culture with every breath
and gives us the word Burribati, which belongs to sunlight
sparkling on the water. We repeat the syllables while gazing
on the scintillations, but I’m English, I can’t roll my Rrrs.
Micklo Jarrett is a proud Gumbaynggirr man who teaches language and culture. He has formed the Gunganbu Band, and The Girrwaa Duguula (People Together) choir.
