Kambarang Writers Day

The First Nations Write Night community meets monthly at the Centre for Stories in Northbridge Western Australia. For the first time, we met for a longer writing session on Saturday 11 November 2023. Mabel Gibson, our guest author, shared about her writing and storytelling journey and then read a piece she had recently finished, entitled Kambarang Season. In this she reflects on post-referendum life in Boorloo (Perth). We then had the opportunity to write a piece in response to Mabel's - you will read many of these responses here. Over lunch, we talked about the forms and genres we enjoy working in, about opportunities available to emerging and established writers, and about family and Country. To finish the day, we wrote independently for an extended time and then shared readings of our work. Gathering together was a powerful experience. 

First Nations Write Night Facilitator, Casey Mulder

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Kambarang Season

Mabel Gibson

Spring 2023

It was just about to be jacaranda season. My partner and I were almost homeless, living in the back of his brother's half destroyed rental. The spring was as hot as last summer had been and I had this feeling that by February, Australians might be extinct. I could see all the warnings and headlines they’d feed us through our tiny screens in our hands, that we’d better get out while we can. All of the white men with their wives and children and great big Australian pride would flee to new shores to find they weren’t welcomed. But they’d move in anyway like they had before, and they’d steal all the houses and children. They’d drown out the cries and the pleas and the voices of the people that lived there before. Now the jacarandas are littering their purple confetti all over the streets; it reminds me of snow that I’ve never seen. And all of that purple should make me feel sweet, but I taste the bitterness now. I was betrayed by strangers around me, the grandchildren of murderers and thieves, that I used to live next to in peace. Now I’m feeling silenced on crowded Perth beaches, while they claim the water as theirs. And they speak so loudly wherever they go, that they see no need for our voices.