36

Basil and I boiled the kettle in the corner of my study room and sat on our camping mats feasting on powdered soup and dry bread, taking turns with my cup and staring into the fire. I felt warm, and happy, and grateful – for Nassim, for Basil, for Leonie. I was going to miss them, Basil and Leonie. And then I suddenly remembered something. ‘Leonie was going to tell me something before I left. Some story. I don’t suppose she’ll have a chance now.’

‘Which story?’ said Basil, chewing a crust.

‘Something about the gully.’

‘I know that story,’ Basil said warily.

‘Yeah?’

Basil, usually so eager to be in possession of any knowledge that might interest me, or to say something to entertain me, seemed strangely reluctant. ‘I can tell it to you. It’s your story too, actually.’

‘So tell me.’

‘I’d like to. I really would,’ he said. ‘But I’m trying to decide if you’re ready to hear it.’

‘Aw, look, it’s Serious Basil,’ I said, aiming to lighten the mood again, but Basil wasn’t having it.

‘No, Anna. I’m not playing. If I tell this story to you, you have to keep it. You have to listen properly. You have to carry it. Like we do. And it’s heavy.’

I regarded him, his serious face, his deep feeling.

It was making me uncomfortable. And all of a sudden I realised that was my own fault. I had treated him like a clownish sidekick. Like a fun pastime for myself. I had entered into the levity he presented, gratefully, as a way to avoid considering anyone’s gravity but my own. I hadn’t wanted the responsibility of someone else’s experience. Someone else’s world.

Basil was serious. He needed me to hear him. ‘Because we’re tangled, Anna,’ he said. ‘You and me and all of us. We’re tangled and tied in the history of this place, and if you can’t listen properly, then you will never truly be here. And I want you to be here. I really do. You should be here. Here is your place, too. But you need to know what this place really is, before you can even hope to belong to it.’

I nodded. But I didn’t say anything. I kept my mouth shut. The silence drew out, it became uncomfortable, but I held my tongue until Basil took a deep breath in, and began to speak into the space I had finally left.

37

The story Basil told me, told to him by his mother, told to her by her mother, was a summer story. The gully was different back then, nearly two hundred years ago. It was full of river red gums, evergreen trees, lending their dappled shade, their long leafy tendril-like branches reaching down to trace shapes on the water’s surface with every warm subtle breath of wind. It was a place along a trade route that ran all the way between Gariwerd in Djab Wurrung Country and Wilimee Moorring in Woiwurrung Country. Permanent water in this part of the world was the exception, so wherever it was found it was valued and used and followed. The gully was a good place to camp.