Sandstone Childhood

My childhood ways
ran along the great stone tops
until they fell,
in tumbling blocks and slabs,
down ragged sandstone steps,
to the water’s edge.

Grass trees swirl,
momentary eddies,
in steep rivers of scrub.
And thin pockets of eucalyptus mulch
are taloned to the rock
by hard-skinned, small-flowered bonsai plants.

My heart is in the sandstone country
the land of the Eora people:
the place of their clans,
the Gadigal, Wanegal, Cammeraygal,
and all the other sandstone clans,
and we late comers,
who also, now, belong
to the sandstone land.