Australian Gothic (1)

Bogey Hole, New South Wales, Australia

The haunting is deep blue. I stand like Andromeda at the sea-facing barriers. The chains in my hand are slippery and I think of pushing my fingers into the links, only that they might be dismembered in a pummelling of waves. This land doesn’t belong to me. I feel the creep of hands up my spine as I stand watching the wind drum up the waves. It’s not that I see ghosts, but the shivering touch is on my skin. It’s not that I hear voices, but the words I say seem to come from another’s mouth. It’s not that I don’t belong, but my feet are treading in untethered water and I can’t find a secure foothold. It’s not that I’m scared, but the weight of the water threatens to wash me away. I am Andromeda. I am not Andromeda. The waves are dragging at my thighs.

Australian Gothic (3)

Bogey Hole, New South Wales, Australia

We stand where cracked stones meet, facing the ocean like a sacrifice of blood and bone. Two hundred years ago convicts chiselled the rock face to create the swimming hole for the commandant, now there’s a small white cross above the grotto. You tell me to hold tight to the chain barrier as waves break over us in a rolling canon of salt and light. Foam clings to my hair and your legs, like frills of ocean and one hundred hands are kneading our bodies. We’re carried by wave and current back to commands bouncing from ocean to rock face and pickaxes banging at the ancient rock. The deepening shallows obscure what time made here in the motion of waves. We’re wading, shoulder deep in history, seawater is lapping at our mouths.