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Landing Echo
By Samuel Wagan Watson
(With some additional translations from the Yugambeh dialect…One of the ancestral languages of the author’s honourable Elders…)
The year is 1823…
But that is almost irrelevant to the setting of this story…Almost…
Recently, an innovative mathematician and inventor by the name of Charles Babbage had conceived the Difference Engine utilising an automative process of numerical calculating…
And the British Empire had a new Reciprocity of Duties Act allowing it to flex greed globally with foreign trading partners…Not that it may have been useful to the innocent custodians of the Turrbal and Jagera tribes, living a peaceful co-existence with nature in 1823…
No two tides are ever really the same; a celestial kiss from an orbital body, causing an odd shift in the wind…Could it have been an unforeseen prophesy? It seems an unimaginable omen appeared in the Maiwar water-way? Not even the wisest or weary of Elders could have predicted this strange event from unfolding…
According to his journal it was early December. Surveyor General, John Oxley had disembarked from his schooner, the HMS Mermaid, and with a select survey team were venturing upon a sparkling, torquay river…
Because of the seasonal weather that had been hampering Oxley,
He and his team should have been welcomed like a pack of drowned ‘Kuril’,
but, its possible the hunter/gatherers took pity on this curious, motley crew…
Perhaps the additive of diplomacy that further enabled the ‘Visitors’, as it was revealed that several of the more ‘fairer’ of the tribes-men weren’t just pale,
but fortunate to have the perils of a ‘castaway’ existence pitied upon.
“Finnegan” and “Pampflet”
Were thought by some of their rescuers to be ‘ghosts’
because of their complexion…
It was not as though day instantly turned to night
During that incursion…
Oxley and his team remained unscathed by any animosity
Albeit Oxley wouldn’t, or couldn’t divulge the matters of his mission,
Yet the officer, who was void of poetic licence in his journals neglected in the duty of friendship to disclose to the harmless tribal people that safely harboured him,
For not only were the people of the Maiwar valley and prefectures
And peoples across the vast continent endangered!
Buggill inga djuya ijna!
Like ‘a tiger snake bite in the grass!’
The colony of New South Wales and the embattled Governor
had charged Oxley with surveying suitable habitations on the east coast
for future penal settlements and permanent habitation! A silhouette of the Dreaming shifted phase to nightmare forever…
In a gust, as the cry of the Curlew had silenced the tribes into an infernal realm upon reckoning, engulfed…Less than 2 months ago the Australian electorate overwhelmingly denied Indigenous peoples the chance to spawn a new voice in the Federal parliament…as if 200 years have taught some of us nothing…from Oxley’s fated landing echo…
About the poet
Samuel lives and writes in his hometown of Brisbane, descending from Munanjali and Germanic heritage. He has authored over a dozen collections of poetry, primarily inspired by the oral traditions of spiritual lore passed down from his elders. Notable accolades include the 1999 David Unaipon Award for Emerging Indigenous Literature, The Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize. the 2004 New South Wales Premier’s Book of the Year and the 2018 Patrick White Literary Prize. In 2023 a new venture in fiction/short story writing is anticipated; NEW + USED GHOSTS. He is proudly a University of Queensland Press author.
About this significant date
On 2 December 1823, government surveyor John Oxley entered the Brisbane River for the first time.
This historical event set in motion a series of consequences which would change the landscape and the lives of the people who lived here, forever. 2024 broadly marks the 200th anniversary of these events, and the establishment of the Moreton Bay penal colony.
It is timely that State Library of Queensland, as the home of the John Oxley Library, commemorate this anniversary in a way that seeks to include and amplify First Nations people, stories and voices, supporting truth telling and Path to Treaty.
