I'm under the mountain, dreaming red dust and yellow cake. Seven sleeping girls floating in the aquifer the chill of ancient waters giving life, whilst far above fat little honey ants carry the sun west on their backs. The black dog, the prince, kills lizard at the waterhole, his mouth is covered with blood. See Nip run, see lizard die, blood shooting from the tear in his belly. Confronted by the proximity of death, and our carelessness, I turn away.

The women are sitting on the stony ground under a million million stars, they're laughing and talking. The sand pulls my dreams down so deep, I'm sneaking off to my swag in the river bed straight after dinner, to go there, to that deep space zero, again.

Willy wagtail and crow visit the camp. So do the cops with their heavy fists and cans of capsicum spray. And the silent company men. Big business here. Big dirty business. Big dirty secrets. WMC. Pangea. Heathgate Resource (subsidiary of General Atomics). Southern Cross Resources. Arius. And now, Rio Tinto. Lotta money at stake. Coal. Nickel. Magnesium. Gold. Copper. Uranium. Lotta lives at stake. Copley. Leigh Creek. Oodnadatta. Maree. Alberrie Creek. Finniss Springs. Lake Eyre. Woomera. Kupa Piti. Olympic Dam, Roxby Downs. Beverly. Honeymoon.

The flies, the flies, I feel them sucking the juice from my eyes, dawn to dusk, every day. At night the dogs howl, their dingo blood racing with inherited memories of licking clean the bones left by the dispersals and massacres. Dingoes and crows. This is the land of the seven sisters and daughter products of uranium. £5 boat baby me. Thursday's child conceived and born over the water, umbilical cord dropped far faraway. No intrinsic rights to the land, yet it feels like my place too. The hell heat waves in February, the intense dryness of the air, the cut and paste vast blue skies over every landscape. It's in me, this land, these skies.

Now I'm learning the gut-wrenching histories of this land from the caretakers of the old country, the ones who speak with the old people, compelled in the face of immense power and greed to keep fighting relentlessly to protect the land. They say, "You need to come in the right way, you have to learn how to sit down together with us and talk. We all have to care for the country. So we can all come home. "