The bus takes the old road from Lithgow

past signs to Capertee, Wallerawang

                   Tarana, Ben Bullen
Places echoing tribal words, their meaning

lost, misspelt by settlers moving onto Country
I follow the road to ‘Invincible Colliery’, pace

the high fence, count the stakes on the cyclone wire

Ignore  warnings of ‘Danger’ and ‘Keep Out’
This working mine has cut a swathe for miles

worked underground till the last seam is spent

Up close, I find a hill sliced in two, the cliff-face

                                left gaping red
Remember fragments passed down. Generations

            of hillside burials, ground slaked

with the blood of Ancestors after ‘the Round Up’	
Their stories buried deep as denial
Now I read of new plans for an open-cut, posted

                      by ‘the Company’

With tunnels closed, the giant scrapers will scour

                 remnant rock for coking coal

until the last tree and gully are stripped away
Google has nothing to say about the clans

               on Cullen Bullen

               fleeing men on horses
Instead, we read of adventurers

Prospectors searching for treasure

Rivers of gold, here for the taking. Settlers

farmers taming the land with sheep                           
The web reports on wealthy Developers, building

                roads over hunting tracks

Woodland cleared to mine the black rock

              in the name of progress 
Has nothing to say on our history, the First People

living, thriving here, who left without a trace

Driven off Country, lost in plain sight.