The bardibardi call time

on mununga slogans of ‘stop the boats’;

               shaping-up and giggling

               their Makassan memories

of brown bodies coming ashore in a spray of surging sea:
for centuries these boat people cultivated

               tamarind trees in a highlight

                                             of northern fruits spoilt

                              in another latecomer’s scorched earth:
so with the bardibardi we integrated

               secondary programs: mapping

Makassan heritage sites and Australian detention centres,

               writing petitions and emails, researching

                              and tabulating the figures

on massacres and stolen land, resistance,

                                             Eddie Mabo and Land Rights now:
               we camped at Jawuma and Lhuka

where once the conch shell heralded

               Yanyuwa welcome to traders hauling

                              a well learned reverential eye:
               we hunted trepang, shark fin,

sandalwood, the shells of turtle and pearl;

               mounting a classroom exhibition –

                                             our pot of rainbow trade:
and at Waralungku Arts the bardibardi collected

an exhibition on all the Gulf’s ‘boat peoples’,

               all those sweet fruits and liar fruits

                              carried by people from far away:
so at year end we bundled

               into troopies, and through

               an avenue of tamarinds, headed

for Massacre Hill:
               here an idyllic creek flat

nestled an ancient fishing weir at the foot

               of a spur’s sweeping runway, up

to thrumming silence,

that bluff of pelted fruit:
here the vertical stratifications

of bedrock cut through

                                             cheeky and rough.