The White Earth by Andrew McGahan

water in the channel.
    The old man broke off whistling. ‘Kuran Creek, it’s called. It starts up in the mountains and runs along the whole southern side of the spur.’
    ‘Can you swim in it?’
    ‘Well…there’s only a few puddles these days, with the drought. Further up in the hills you might get a bit of water flowing, but not this far down.’
    The track curved away and crossed into the next valley. There was the church and the graveyard on the far slope. It was so close, William marvelled. How was it possible that he had become lost between here and the House? Then he remembered the names he’d read on the gravestones.
    ‘Who were the Whites?’ he asked.
    His uncle frowned.‘They owned the station, long ago.’
    ‘The graves are all broken.’
    A shrug.‘Just goes to show, doesn’t it? There’s better things to leave behind than headstones.’ The utility was rolling past the cemetery, and the old man eyed the tombs. ‘I’ll tell you this — when my time comes, I’m going on the bonfire.’
    They topped the next rise. A jumble of hills spread out before them,the spur receding all the way to the blue line of the mountains.
    William’s uncle straightened enthusiastically behind the wheel. ‘Now, from here on we’re into the station proper. Ten miles it runs from this spot, two or three miles wide all the way.’
    William stared across the broad slopes, their hides brown with grass and dotted with trees. A brief memory came of what it had been like the previous day, when the countryside had seemed so bewildering — but in fact he hadn’t even made it beyond the home paddock!
    His uncle’s smile was knowing. ‘The first thing to learn is, always be aware of exactly where you are. So get it right. These hills are the westernmost spur of the Hoop Mountains, and the Hoops themselves are a spur of the Great Dividing Range. Think of a map of Australia. Think of the east coast. The Great Divide runs the whole length of it. We’re about halfway down, on the western side of the range, a hundred miles inland from Brisbane.’
    They were moving downhill now, into another small valley. The track was rutted and overgrown in places, slowing them down, but in any case, his uncle seemed in no hurry.
    ‘It’s interesting though. Go back a few hundred million years. Right here where we stand, there was nothing back then but ocean. The continent that eventually became Australia was somewhere else entirely — it was wandering about between the equator and the south pole. It wasn’t even the same shape as now. You wouldn’t be able to find the station on it, you wouldn’t even be able to find the hills or the plains. None of them existed. You see what I mean? It’s one thing to know where a piece of land is. It’s another to know where it came from.’
    The old man’s eyes were searching the horizons appreciatively.
    ‘Away across in Western Australia — now there you’ve got some old country. You’ve got rock that’s been exposed for age upon age, and it’s as lifeless as the moon. But this country, it’s pretty young. The only old thing around here is the bedrock, down there under the plains. Millions of years ago it was the bottom of an inland sea. Then the ocean levels dropped and you had a sandstone plain covered in swamps and bogs. It dried out finally, but meanwhile in the east volcanoes were erupting and the mountains were formed and the plains were drowned again, in lava and ash this time. Over the centuries the lava and ash broke down, and that’s where the black soil comes from. But do you know why there aren’t any trees out there?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘The black soil won’t support them. Not big ones, anyway. In droughts it cracks open and snaps their roots, in the wet it turns liquid and trees just topple. So there’s only ever been grass out there. A treeless plain. And because of all that grass, people came. With sheep. And then with wheat. You’ve heard of Allan Cunningham? He was the