Free The Swan Book by Alexis Wright

‘growth centres’, now called National Aboriginal Relocation Policy by some minddead politicians clap-trapping that they were dealing with rats. Suppose hard come, and easy go, for the traditional land of the swamp was snatched again. The real owners hidden in the throng could not count the number of times their land had been ripped from under their feet.
    In this oasis of abandonment, home for thousands forcibly removed from other ‘more visible’ parts of Australia by the Government, the swamp became a well-known compound for legally interning whoever needed to be secluded far away behind a high, razor-edged fence from the decent people of mainstream civilization.
    It was just a contemporary painting – a pastoral scene, the old lady surmised in the early days, while her eyes swung along the ever-increasingly crowded shoreline.
    It’s really insanity here, she told the Harbour Master about the people living all about the place. It’s not like it used to be, honest, he replied, the magic lost from his voice. He was forgetting to sing his Mick Jagger songs. The girl sunk deeper into her thoughts: So! What did I care? What about my story? Me! Different dollar please!
    Now while Bella Donna was carrying on like this, the population would peer out each day from package crates, donated cubbies from foreign aid, and rubbish that sprung up in the overcrowded slum now running around the entire shoreline. What unimaginably difficult poverty-stricken circumstances, Bella Donna cried, wiping up her tears with a bit of newspaper. She consoled herself with poetry, reciting lines like John Shaw Neilson’s I waded out to a swan’s nest at night and heard them sing…
    The Harbour Master stayed on top of his mountain, too frightened to leave. He was just sitting like everyone else, and listening to all kinds of fruitless, high volume megaphoning protest from the minority landowners trying to reach inside the closed ears of the Army men protecting the swamp. What do we want? We want you white bastards outta here. Waste of breath. Their mantra was five or six words more or less which meant the same thing: Nobody asked us for permission, moron . Every day, hours were put aside for protesting. It was like listening to a continuous earthquake of hate from a stadium built out of the swamp itself.
    Can you tell me why those Aboriginal people had to be relocated here for – from across the country, Aunty? The girl sometimes imagines herself speaking politely, in a pretty voice, while mouthing off her soundless words.
    God knows it was only a swamp, of what a storm gives, or easily takes away.
    A low-pressure weather system was unpredictable and nobody knew whether it would bring more dry storms or blue skies sulking through another year. Still, a flood of mythical proportions would be required to drive the sand back into the sea. The ceremonies sang on and on for majestic ancestral spirits to turn up out of the blue, to stir up the atmospheric pressure with their breath, to turn the skies black with themselves, to create such a deluge to unplug the swamp, to take the sand mountain back to the sea. But more was said than done. The ancestral sand spirits flew like a desert storm and backed themselves even further up against the mountain. Silt gathering in the swamp lapped against the dwellings of the increasing population and crept further inwards as theswamp decreased in size. This was the new story written in scrolls of intricate lacework formed by the salt crystals that the drought left behind.
    The swamp’s natural sounds of protest were often mixed with lamenting ceremonies. Haunting chants rose and fell on the water like a beating drum, and sounds of clap sticks oriented thoughts, while the droning didgeridoos blended all sounds into the surreal experience of a background listening, which had become normal listening. Listen! That’s what music sounds like! The woman once explained to the girl