But there wasn’t nothing, either. This was an empty place— but empty the way a room was when the people had that minute walked out of it. They left a blank, but the blank held the shape of their presence. I wasn’t feeling the emptiness of the place, but the once-fullness of it.

The wind was swelling again through the trees up on the ridge, each individual leaf adding its voice to the choir of moving air. It filled out of the silence into a stately roar of sound that travelled around the hillside, held its breath, then faded, tree by tree, leaving only a long pause that waited and listened.

Listening, waiting for the next respiration of the wind, I realised how far I’d travelled in my search for Wiseman and his world. A year before, I’d known almost nothing about him, and less about the place he’d come to and the people who’d been there before him. If I’d thought about telling a story, it had been a shallow one, blinkered by my ignorance: a biography at most, or perhaps an appendix to the family story, a few more details to be handed down to future generations.

Now, sitting so small in this immense airy night, I was beginning to sense the real dimensions of this thing. There was a story here that was bigger than my ancestor, bigger even than the tale of his relationship to the Aboriginal people. It was about the life that the place held within itself, within its rocks and trees. The place was speaking to me as I sat listening, and although I couldn’t hear it properly, and didn’t know how to tell its story, I knew I was going to try.

PART TWO

PART TWO

18. STARTING TO WRITE

18
Starting to Write

At the end of 1968, after my final exams at school, I decided to write a novel. I spent many happy hours planning it and writing an outline for each chapter. Then I wrote Chapter One at the top of a fresh sheet of paper and started fleshing out the outline.

Writing the book wasn’t nearly as much fun as doing the outline.

Pride and obstinacy got me labouring along as far as the end of Chapter Two, and then I looked at the outline for Chapter Three: ‘Louise meets John at the beach—they’re reading the same book—they exchange phone numbers— Louise wonders if she’s in love—John doesn’t ring.’

A weariness came over me at the thought of fleshing this out. I closed the exercise book and put it away. I never wrote in it again.