Cirrus@Austlit

'Mothers are experts at overflow . . . You may forget the words or kisses or gifts they give but that doesn't mean they didn't happen . . . We don't need to remember all the love poured into us. We need to be thankful that it makes us. When it comes to love, it's all about being. Not remembering so much.

'Ginny Dilboong is a young poet, fierce and deadly. She's making sense of the world and her place in it, grappling with love, family and the spaces in which to create her art. Like powerful women before her, Ginny hugs the edges of waterways, and though she is a daughter of Country, the place that shapes her is not hers. Determined and brave, Ginny seeks to protect the truth of others while learning her own. The question is how?

'And, all the while, others are watching. Some old, some new. They are the sound of the belburd as it echoes through the world; the sound of cars and trucks and trains. They are in trees and paper and the shape of ideas. They are the builder and the built. Everything, even Ginny, is because of them.

'The Belburd is a powerful story that shows us we are all connected from before we began to long after we begin again.' (Publication summary)

'YAAMA MALIYAA! RESPECTS, friend, to the lands we are both on. I can hear birds talking to each other, and the newly arrived sunshine is beginning to bless the mornings. It is healthy and in full bloom. May your place continue to sing also, and we sustain its song. My regards to your grandmother, I hope she is well. My baagii is in Warrambool, my nanna and her sister both in heaven, but I know they are watching and are keen that I should make a good account of myself and, in turn, of them. Now, to business.' (Introduction)

'Darnmoor, The Gateway to Happiness. The sign taunts a fool into feeling some sense of achievement, some kind of end- that you have reached a destination in the very least. Yet the sign states clearly, Darnmoor is the gateway, and merely a measure, the mark, a point on a road you begin to move closer to a place you might really want to be.

'Darnmoor is the home of the Billymil family, three generations who have lived in this 'gateway town'. Race relations between Indigenous and settler families are fraught, though the rigid status quo is upheld through threats and soft power rather than the overt violence of yesteryear.

'As progress marches inexorably onward, Darnmoor and its surrounds undergo rapid social and environmental changes, but as some things change, some stay exactly the same. Our protagonist characters are watched (and sometimes visited) by ancestral spirits and spirits of the recently deceased, who look out for their descendants and attempt to help them on the right path.

'When the town's secrets start to be uncovered the town will be rocked by a violent act that forever shatters a century of silence.

'Full of music, Gamillaray language and exquisite description, Song of The Crocodile is a lament to choice and change, and the unyielding land that sustains us all, if we can but listen to it.' (Publication summary)

'Hold your index finger and thumb close together against a bright background, then bring them together. They seem to touch before they actually do. That, in its simplest form, is the Black Drop Effect.

'It’s also a new play by Yuwaalaraay woman Nardi Simpson; storyteller, performer, and songwriter with Stiff Gins. Black Drop Effect is an immersive, multi-layered exploration of black and white, generational conflict, and the ongoing effects of colonisation.

'Binno is an Aboriginal elder and erstwhile member of a community dance group who is asked to present a series of traditional dances, alongside an actor reading extracts from Captain Cook’s diaries, for a 26 January celebration.

'Binno is unsure, until his straight-talking sister Beenie convinces him to teach the dances to three young men seeking connections with culture, country and their place in the world. As they learn the dances and understand their meanings, a bigger plan emerges.

'Produced by Bankstown Arts Centre, and directed by Felix Cross, Black Drop Effect is an immersive, multi-layered experience that draws audiences into the contested space of ideas and emotions inspired by the 250 years of Australia’s colonial history.' (Production summary)