Such a dead word that, ownership. Funny thing when you think about it. Delimited and deadened. Ownership, or — what is it? Nine hundred and ninety-nine year lease. So like the English, 999. Blackstone, Coke and all that. They're quite beautiful words, if you think about it. Black/stone. Coke. Funny if you think about what the words really mean, because they're both black (black stone, and coke is black too). Funny thing to think in this country, anyway. Also, it sort of reminds me of a discount store. 999. The way they think noone's going to realise that 99c is a dollar.

Quarter of a quarter of a quarter acre block. Lo-rise. Great investment or first-home buyers. She's coming home now, I can hear her plastic rustle shopping bags, ding dong. Hot living heat energy rush mouth to mouth hello kiss. Come on in. Come on in. I did the dishwasher. Australia expects that every man every woman this day will accept as reparation a quarter of a quarter of a quarter of a quarter acre block plus interest, and a dime. They're going to start calling them that, 5c coins, they're going to call them dimes - and they might as well, because none of the machines take them. We ought to ship them all back across the Pacific.

History doesn't offer us a hell of a lot of possibilities, except for eating our own vomit, and each other's. And I usually find there's a bit too much smoke and blood in it.

and then he thought maybe that is the worst bit thinking the land We took from them, We, our grandfather's grandfathers and all that, the land We took, they didn't even own it: they lived on it, lived with it, lived in it, lived it and thinking and I, and I thinking maybe that was the saddest thing, that he had to live here, owning a bit of it owning such a dead sound, such a dead document, dead land, parched scratched with rivers deads ribbons we don't even know what to do with it.