I see the river from above before I know who she is—a strand of yarn tangling the city and trees. 80.2.2, I locate myself in this new coordinate system. I wear it on my sleeve: I am not from here. There are so many white people in this room. Is this the right place? Am I meant to be here? I can’t be seen. If I am seen I will be asked questions I cannot answer, will trip and trip over my words.
I realise I am sitting in the organisers’ corner. I’m not supposed to be here. I move. There are so many white people in this room. Chinese people built this city, says Professor N’arweet, and I say, but we only ever hear about the food. I am not from here, though. Those distant cousins are not me. I’m here by choice. Professor N’arweet is family, has family, knows who I am before she knows who I am.
People are stringing rainbow yarn across the room; I think that’s meant to be a metaphor for connection. I’m just scared to trip. Something is crushed underfoot; something else breaks apart; nothing stays together with this tape. It’s 8am local, 7am in my body. There are others who don’t feel like they’re meant to be here, too. We all don’t feel like we’re meant to be here. We’re hiding our cards, only shared in confidence over food.
We’re not meant to be here. My ancestors’ siblings, they tore this land apart. The ships were taxed to bring them here. The unwanted migrants. They came here for gold. They died on this soil. They built the colonial city; their names were unsung. They were lashed into the colonial master plan. 烧肉, I’m the only one reading the sign.
Where are we going? Where are we meant to be? My phone has been unmoored from the mobile data network, and I can’t use my map. It’s stolen land and we’re not supposed to be here: we were not invited, but we came anyway.
Where is the green? Where is the river? We stand in the sun and search for the water that isn’t there. Others are sweating; am I the only one who doesn’t feel warm? They sing the praises of my city, but my city is a sibling to yours, the British inviting themselves in and ripping the seams to let in more. We were the first insurgents, just like everywhere—my people are everywhere, like rats and cockroaches, say white Australia, brought by white captains and colonial ships. Professor N’arweet talks to me and she says her son-in-law is Chinese, that there is a story of Naarm, Melbourne that isn’t told—an invitation beneath words that I didn’t know she would extend. Am I allowed to be here? Are we being invited to join in communion with the land?
Where is the land? Where is the river? This city looks the same as Brisbane and Singapore from the shoulders up. 300 metres above our heads hangs the film of the sky, but the buildings keep puncturing it. The rivers made our cities, tangling through trees, and we pierced them with glass and concrete yet still they never tear. The river was the first explorer. The river made the floodplains, the food, the trees, the gardens, the cities. The river brought the British men, here on rope and sail—the market, the machinery—broke the skin to find the gold within. And the gold brought us. My grandmother to Penang. My mother to Singapore. And me, now, to Brisbane, and to Melbourne, trying to string together cities that were never mine, never ours. Stolen land, we stole it.
I was never Chinese till I left Singapore, then I became Chinese when I was told to go home. Go home. I want to go home. I want to stay. I want to go home. There is a parallel universe where I move to Melbourne for good. I want to go home. I miss the street chickens, the abuse, the metal trees. There’s a continuous sky above us but it is not a shared sky. The clouds are higher. The rains fall every day.
We are on a continent that didn’t have a name until European ships slung across the once-nameless circumpolar current, around that once-nameless cape of that once-nameless continent, and determined they would name it all. Australia, they call it, the lucky land, the land of gold, the land of plenty, For those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share. Were the plains ever yours to share?
It hurts to be here. Am I meant to be here? Am I allowed to? Go home, says the Prime Minister. And still I cling, for I have tangled my feet with this land. I want to go home. But home is too far to be reckoned anymore, and now that I’m here, I can only do my best, and tangle, and tangle, and tangle.
Rosi asks us to bleed our dialects, to speak them like springwater out of aquifers, showing the current that sleeps beneath the skin. But what if it isn’t water that pours out, but string?
This piece was written for a free writing exercise during the second Australian Posthuman Summer Lab. We were prompted to list out the things we associated with the event so far, and then write a piece capturing the common themes across it.
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