I first listened to Gurrumul’s final album Djarimirri (Child of the Rainbow) on my way home from a writers' festival organised by the small Queensland town of Boonah where I ran a workshop earlier this month. Driving through country dry and sparse - trees, grass, granite peaks, a long straight road, farms, cows - I was far from the sea and sky and crocodiles of Gurrumul's Elcho Island home. But the songs were here too.
Read MoreI have nothing to offer women whose children are gone, not even that loss passes. This has not been my experience. It has not passed. I wrote in a letter to my daughter that while facing great pain has brought many more tears, it also brings the beauty of the world more sharply into focus. And while this might be true, some days it is not enough.
Read MoreMy mother took a handbag everywhere she went. Her final one was a supermarket freezer bag. I don’t know what was in her handbag—everything you might need to survive the last days, I suspect. She hardly ever let me carry it for her, even when she was old and sick. It was very heavy.
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