The Yield Tara June Winch
ideaswithanne.com https://theaustralianlegend.wordpress.com/2021/10/23/the-yield/
The deployment of such names contains a bitter truth, because although these are fictional places, there are locations right across Australia that unblushingly retain the evidence of racism and genocide. It is writers like Winch, and artists like Julie Gough, who draw attention to this practice and to the history that lies behind it.
History seldom remains tidily in the past, as so many writers have observed; and Poppy Albert too makes it clear: “there are a thousand battles being fought every day because people couldn’t forget something that happened before they were born”. And also, arguably, because what happened before we were born continues to have consequences.
We are at a crucial point in history where we must preserve stories from our elders, our language custodians, our old people before they are lost, because when the door closes on these stories and languages, it truly does slam shut on our history and culture, and the very essence of all our identities as Australians.’
