“Dust” is one of two poems I wrote whilst working in the Commonwealth Public Service. It concerns a lunch-time conversation Wendy and I had in the staff room.

Wendy had a white Australian father and an Aboriginal mother and sought to follow both cultures. She said white Australian people had not only understood the problem Aboriginal people had with dust, but were well on the way to fixing it as more and more roads were bituminised in the Flinders Ranges.

She also said that what white Australian people had done for the crocodile in Northern Australia was wondrous. By not doing something, not killing them, the crocodile had rebounded from near extinction to occupy virtually every niche in its former natural range.

She was proud of her Aboriginal heritage, but had a very high regard for white Australian culture as well.

Dust
(For Wendy, an Aboriginal Education Officer)
© Garth Dutton 2008

She asked if I’d ever
driven on outback roads
and felt the dust come down
alive,
angry,
closing in,
seeking tp smother
those who had disturbed it

I said, “No. That wasn’t my experience,”
so we left the topic at that.
But now, when I travel on outback roads
and passing cars leave plumes of dust,
I close car vents with a shudder,
and I see her wonder
at tarry strips of man-made rock
that keep the dust in place.

There were no raods at all
in the Dreamtime.