There are bodies lying face down in the river, black bodies face down the river, three, five, ten of them, some bobbing close to shore, others further from the edge almost as if someone has laid out a raft of black boulders across the surface of the river, stepping stones that I might glide across to get from one side to the other. But I am too terrified to move. I lean against the curved trunk of a river gum branch that throws itself across the water and try to hide even as I catch glimpses of the naked bodies floating down the river. Their long wavy hair and slender outlines suggest to me that they are women, young women, all of them I know somehow have been raped first then tossed aside to drown in the river.

This is my dream. I who live in the eastern states of Victoria and rarely if ever catch sight of a full-blown aboriginal, I dream of their massacre.