Every November, June walked through town on her badhii’s birthday – she would’ve turned eighty-six today. As a child, June would sit on the porch, sipping sweet black tea, listening to Badhii’s stories about the river and sometimes the British lot who arrived in town in the 1800s. 

June rounded the corner into Elizabeth Street, ambled into George, and strolled past the Golden Fleece service station. Out front, an ice machine teetered by a plastic horse with a sign that read: Ride Lightning – 25 cents. 

She passed the pub. Slim Dusty was crooning about shearers and bushmen from the jukebox. Further on, June stepped off the asphalt and pushed through the yellow grass. At the riverbank, she gazed at the expanse of water carrying bottles, plastic bags, and other rubbish downstream.   

In the last flood, water lapped the bitumen near town. When it receded, the road was covered with sludge like emu guna. Fish flipped on the blacktop ’til they stilled. Snakes slid from the mess; eyes sticky with mud. Rot fouled the air. Badhii and old Claude had pulled trapped lizards from claggy ditches, grabbed gasping cod and perch and tossed them into the river.   

June continued until she reached the clearing where her badhii and the rest of the mob had lived in tin shacks. All that remained were two sheets of rusty tin and a wire coil. She perched on a branch in the shade. Now, she could see her.  

There was Badhii, huddled under a blanket, beside the campfire, eating kangaroo tail and, telling yarns about herself and Claude.  

The day they tramped the track into town. Stood in the street and waved at townspeople, as if welcoming visitors. A huffy woman shouted, “You’ve no right! Back to your camp.” 

“Yaama maliyaa,” Claude said, and smiled.  

Even when people spat at them, called them this and that, they stood straight as the missus's starched frock on Gamilaroi Country. Even when the constable locked them up several times, they kept going back to town.  

Standing, June looked around and glimpsed something in the shrub. She snatched a stick and poked the silver clump. An Adidas sandshoe, beside a bird skeleton tangled in fishing line. She flung the stick aside, crouched and unravelled the line, then carefully gathered the bones and placed them in a heap.   

A crashing sound. June flinched in surprise, turned on her heels. Two white men in hats with fishhooks dangling from them, emerged from the bushes. One clutching an esky and a grey bucket. He spotted June, widened his eyes and muttered. The strangers laughed. June rose, lifted her chin and strode past them, back along the riverbank.    

Gamilaraay words 

Yaama maliyaa: hello friend 
Badhii: gran, grandmother 
Guna: shit