Around them the desert exhales. No longer stunned by heat or distracted by the wind, the desert can give up its secrets now.

Boo-book boo-book, warns the owl.

With with, replies the Buloke, nothing is forgotten, all is held.

So many stories, so many names.

Of the silenced.

Of voices yet to be heard.

Of places, their names misremembered, mistranscribed, or used day by day in towns where many believe the first languages were lost

Minyip Rupanyup Goroke Beulah Dooen Warracknabeal Kiata Jeparit Nurcoung Morea Nhill Kinimakatka Gerang Gerung

beyond here, where the desert is an ocean or the sea breaks against white sands, snow-wrapped mountains, remnant forests, cities forged from steel and glass, rivers above and underground

Oodnadatta Triabunna Murwillumbah Wollongong Coolangatta Pilbara Coorong Parramatta Kakadu Tarkine Canberra

and in a town named after a bird known to be one of the best mimickers of human speech, a town beginning to retell its past and its future.

The wind calms and the land speaks.

What came before. What will follow.

Listen deeply, ever deeper.

You remember how and why.