Modewarre is the indigenous Wathaurong word for musk duck. Through this icon of land and water, Patricia Sykes explores various histories – her own, her forebears, the wider histories of identity and place – in poems that are as concentrated as pearls. Three roads meeting in the one bird: modewarre (the indigenous), biziura lobata (the colonial), musk duck (the common).

The mask reaches below
my shoulders
& the pink stone she carries airborne
nestles like a heart
in the song of possibilities

Ruby Camp: A Snowy River Series follows the ridges and valleys of an extraordinary wilderness area, its life affected by humans. From the long habitations of Indigenous peoples, to the white settlers and this solitary woman exploring the depths of land and self.

Travelling...

Birds and water- a pair that indicates
vitality, a dynamic system, a system
that changes season by season. But
in our unsettling of the land we have
removed the seasons and the birds

Susan Hawthorne

Unsettling the Land is a reflection on the plight of the land in these drought-addled times, conjuring through both text and illustration the complex relationships that create and sustain our unique...