This lyric essay was written as part of a creative non-fiction writing class at UTS. It was selected for publication in the 2023 UTS Writers Anthology.
It documents – sort of – a road trip in Central Australia, exploring the ways in which gender and settler tropes continue to play out within Australian subcultures like caravanning. An excerpt:
At the caravan park at Kings Canyon, vans press close to each other like spinifex pigeons in the shade. We entertain ourselves before dinner by wandering the orderly streets of the petrochemically-fuelled shanty town. Stunted trees grow in gaps between sites, and the lawns – the wrong shade of green for a place like this – are dotted with tents. Red dust, always red dust.
We pretend we’re connoisseurs, assessing vans and setups and marking them on a scale of one to ten. The bigger and more brutish, the better. We dodge kids on bikes, bands of men discussing suspension systems and freshly showered women returning from the toilet block, towels slung over their shoulders.
We don’t get yarning, like my dad does. I’ve seen him in action – he gets the van parked and the top popped before wandering off. He returns an hour later after chatting with Bob from Gladstone about his caravan, the fuel consumption of his Hilux compared to Dad’s Mazda, the state of the road to Innamincka. I envy his ease, the way he feels settled in these places.
Settled. An interesting word, implying a kind of acceptance, resignation. Before white Australians settled, we pioneered. We broke the back of the landscape, tamed the wilderness, cleared the scrub. Only then was it possible to succumb.
I am of settler stock but I remain unsettled. […]