![]() ![]() And also, arguably, because what happened before we were born continues to have consequences. History seldom remains tidily in the past, as so many writers have observed and Poppy Albert too makes it clear: “there are a thousand battles being fought every day because people couldn’t forget something that happened before they were born”. Julie Gough's 'Tense Past' reminds us how the brutalities of colonial settlement are still felt today It is writers like Winch, and artists like Julie Gough, who draw attention to this practice and to the history that lies behind it. The deployment of such names contains a bitter truth, because although these are fictional places, there are locations right across Australia that unblushingly retain the evidence of racism and genocide. The town itself is reached by way of the Broken Highway the sick and dying of the region find themselves in Broken Hospital and Broken Hospice. There is the ironically named Prosperous Mission it stands near the town of Massacre Plains, close to Poisoned Waterhole Creek. The violent history of the region is salted throughout the novel: cloaked, in Rev Greenleaf’s writings expressed vividly in Poppy Albert’s stories painfully in August’s memories and contemporary experiences and shamefully in the names of local places. The Yield: the violent history of the region is salted throughout the novel. ![]()
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