Parramatta
F rom the dreaming to waking up*, in a few thousand years of lull, with the annual seasons, comings and goings of life, the waters, flowing fast and slow the stars, the sun, burning the grass, the valley, the wallabies, the roos, and the wattle, turning gold, I stood still in motion just where the three waters met, as if waiting, waiting, waiting for something that I knew, like a dreamtime story, to come true the horses treading the soft dirt into hard paths, for the vehicles to carry the new means of living, turning life up side down for those whose means were to be lost, and they came, the animals, the people never seen before carving their own place where others had lived, slowly and slowly dying, the creed and the customs, or changing colours, I stood still in motion. The farms changed shapes, new abodes came about sprawling on the banks of my river, taken by those who hadn’t come free, from those who had roamed free for all those years of dreamtime the trades, the