Strange and Occluded Dreams

Front Wall of the South Australian Museum, North Terrace, Adelaide, July 1988.

If this glass exploded the slivers and shards of Australian pre-history, Aboriginal land rights, the Europeanization of the landscape, global warming (Tim Flannery - The Future Eaters, The Weather Makers - will be  director of this museum 10 years later); the notions of museum (that embodiment of pious theft), university, law, rigidly academic education (examinations held in one of the reflected halls), science as separate from life – the entire British Empire of hierarchies would embed themselves in

whatever they found.

The strange and fearful dreams of childhood, my inability to disentangle this clotted and occluded mass except by leaving, by stepping away, looking back.

(Photos: The Great Family Photo Project)