Glitter and guts

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The shape of memory

I sit by the river searching for someone our national memory keepers sought to erase: my great-grandfather. Bundjalung man William Olive served across the Western Front in World War I. Aside from his digitised war record, the archives I have sought are almost silent. He enlisted when the Defence Act outlawed Aboriginal service. He suffered through two brutal offensives: the Somme and the Ypres Salient. He was wounded near Pozières in 1916, not far from this river in Amiens. William and I are separated by time and silence. But silence is a powerful act of agency. It can be revolutionary to hold your tongue, to refuse the container of words. Maybe a river can speak, but what if it, too, chooses silence?

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