The road is a serpent carving a path through the landscape, coaxing me from Brisbane towards my rural hometown in south-west Queensland. The final hours of this drive are always the most arduous, the most dangerous. The novelty wears off, the twists and turns subside; I am left with nothing but a barren stretch of bitumen and my unfamiliar, glassy gaze reflected the rear-view mirror, the eyes of a stranger I no longer recognise.

What happens when we do not identify entirely with that which is modelled to us? What happens when there are parts of ourselves that, to our knowledge, should not or do not exist? How do we make sense of who we are?  

I’m adept at beginnings but I’m yet to master endings. In my struggle against impermanence, I craft these monuments to memory — multi-modal archives of the rubble from my life. I rage against erasure, ruin, and decay by telling the truth about the way things were. This monument to memory is a body of knowledge and truth. A body that defies the frail hands of history. This body is my body, and my body keeps the score.

The nation we call Australia is built upon colonial (mis)representations of Aboriginal people. These (mis)representations were – and often, continue to be – disseminated through literature penned by non-Aboriginal people.