Dubbo Plains
Tailem Bend, 5 a.m., racecars sway in winds. Drivers check ratchet straps at Tooleybuc.
Lucky, all is taut. Our little urchins race to the jetty, lie facedown over flooded Murray. Veils
of banksia roses bloom lace above coffee conversation. We’ll shoot for Parkes tonight,
Warwick tomorrow; back home in five days. Convoy moves out. Windmills churn. Horizon
smooth as a mirror—saltbush and copperburr dappled below; big-brushed cloud puffs above.
We slow only for emus, even on potholed roads filling with puddles. Behind us, the trailer
thumps toward a thundercloud—crack! A tire explodes; revheads slide under chassis, tear
around like blue-arsed flies, the sky starting to spit. “Bub, where’s the picnic rug?” Chris
calls, smeared in grease. The kids begin singing “hi-ho the derry-o” and gather cotton weeds
for fairy pillows. In the Waltz of the Snowflakes, they piggy back through floating fields.
Here I am, somewhere in no-man’s land holding a bag of sandwiches.
Rachel White (she/her) lives and works on Kaurna land. Her poetry has been featured in Kissing Dynamite, placed highly commended in the 2022 Woorilla Poetry Prize, and is nominated for Best of the Net Anthology 2025. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in The Shore, Thimble Lit, Lunch Ticket’s Amuse Bouche and others.