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MRS MACQUARIES CHAIR, SYDNEY

The colours scream, saturate, a visually voluminous place. The shore is caked with buildings, orange, pink and white. Trees hang overhead, a verdant green frame against the water, a mesmerising turquoise. Ferries criss-cross and the sails of yachts reflect brilliant white. From Mrs Macquaries Chair Sydney buzzes all around; a swarm of noisy, metropolitan glee.

On this rocky outcrop at the tip of the botanical gardens her husband proclaimed in 1816, a practical woman, a loyal wife regularly sat to reflect and enjoy the view.

What did she see?

In places still where the bush grows down to the water, oysters cling and waves ripple on rocks as they have done for millennia. Middens can be found where aboriginal families camped, ate and lived by this shore; a palpable echo in time.
Where skyscrapers, the bridge and Opera House now rest a straggly band of intruders walked up a hill and declared the land their own.

How many miles from nowhere they were. Clinging to a continent unknown, a hazardous journey of nine months through cold and unforgiving seas to reach any semblance of familiarity or home. Surrounded by strange birdcalls, the scent of eucalypt, the virulent light, today the picture for a perfect postcard, it must have seemed the most hostile place on earth.

Twenty-eight years had passed since that first landing, and a motley town of abandoned baggage and brouhaha was finally being moulded to an architectural plan around her. But it was far from civilised. Perhaps it still isn’t, colours like these just can’t be tamed.

GIRL ON A GREEK FERRY

This twelve year old child spoke to me – I just happened to be there. She wanted to talk, perhaps needed to talk. We leant against the railing staring out from the stern at the churning sea. She told me the Santorini to Rhodes ferry wasn’t a holiday - it was a paddy-van, taking her to gaol.

Her story spilt out, well rehearsed: she lived on a yacht with her father, had left her mother behind, had spent little time in school but an ordinary life was what she missed, no mother, no friends her own age. She’d travelled the rivers of Borneo, told stories of gun-toting pirates and wild seas. They’d cross the Indian Ocean, passed through the Suez, but had been arrested for not having visas and were now being deported. She was only allowed on deck for half an hour and she pointed out two large men with arms crossed watching us from the shadows - her guards.

It was such a fanciful tale and she was so boastful I thought it must be imaginary. I was amused by her answers to my questions and cynical. But my unease grew, like witnessing a car accident; I couldn’t comprehend what was in front of me. When the strange men approached us she silently complied, said goodbye and walked away book-ended by thugs.