latest releases HOSTAGES STORIES FROM stories by SUBURBAN FAY ZWICKY ROAD an autobiographical collection T.A.G. HUNGERFORD An outstanding first collection of short fiction A rich collection of 'autobiographical fiction' in by one of Australia's major poets - winner of which the author uses the fonns and techniques the 1982 Premier's Literary Award. Concerned of short fiction to recreate and examine aspects with 'the tension between restraint and of his own childhood and adolescence. freedom', these twelve stories are a sympathetic T. A. G. Hungerford, the well known Australian exploration of innocence, guilt, naivety and novelist, also evokes with fascinating detail the self-awareness. 'Zwicky the poet is there in her life of South Perth in the years between the prose, forthright, honest, intelligent .. .' - world wars. To be published in October. Sydney Morning Herald. recommended retail price to be advised recommended retail price $ 7.50 PB THE SCARPDANCER PROJECTIONIST poems by a sequence ALAN PHI LIP SALaM ALEXANDER A remarkable and powerful second collection Winner of the 1983 Western Australia Week of poems to follow the highly successful The Literary Award for poetry Alan Alexander's Silent Piano - 1981 winner of the prestigious second collection consolidates his reputation Commonwealth Poetry Prize (London). The as one of Australia's finest lyric poets. He is a Projectionist is a collection of poems that form poet of great flexibility and finesse whose a long sequence in which various recurring origins are clearly with the Irish tradition of images and ideas are developed and skilfully post-Yeatsean lyricism. 'A poet who uses his intertwined, creating resonances of great eyes and his ears, catches the intensity of a richness and beauty. 'A great poem-book, a place in a few words' - The Adelaide stunner .. .' - Thomas Shapcott. Advertiser. recommended retail price $7.50 PB recommended retail price $6.50 PB available from your local bookseller or Fremantle Arts Centre Press 1 Finnerty Street, Fremantle 6160. Phone: 335 8244. Write for complete catalogue. WESTERLY a quarterly review ISSN 0043-342x EDITORS: Bruce Bennett and Peter Cowan EDITORIAL ADVISORS: Margot Luke, Veronica Brady, Fay Zwicky, David Brooks Wegterly is published quarterly at the Centre for Studies in Australian Literature in the English Department, University of Western Australia, with assistance from the Literature Board of the Australia Council and the Western Australian Literary Fund. The opinions expressed in Wegterly are those of individual contributors and not of the Editors or Editorial Advisors. Correspondence should be addressed to the Editors, Westerly, Department of English, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia 6009 (telephone 3803838). Unsolicited manuscripts not accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope will not be returned. All manuscripts must show the name and address of the sender and should be typed (double-spaced) on one side of the paper only. Whilst every care is taken of manuscripts, the editors can take no final responsibility for their return; contributors are consequently urged to retain copies of all work submitted. Minimum rates for contributions-poems $7.00; prose pieces $7.00; reviews, articles, $15.00; short stories $30.00. It is stressed that these are minimum rates, based on the fact that very brief contributions in any field are acceptable. In practice the editors aim to pay more, and will discuss payment where required. Recommended sale price: $3.00 per copy (W.A.). Subscriptions: $10.00 per annum (posted); $18.00 for 2 years (posted). Special student subscription rate: $8.00 per annum (posted). Single copies mailed: $3.00. Subscriptions should be made payable to Westerly, and sent to The Bursar, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia 6009. Synopses of literary articles published in Wegterly appear regularly in Abgtracts of English Studies (published by the American National Council of Teachers of English). WESTERLY Vol. 28, No.3, September 1983 WESTERN AUSTRALIA: PLACES, BOOKS AND WRITING CONTENTS STORIES Gas Chamber 5 GLYN PARRY Outside 6 MARGARET HOUGHTON Crossing Manhattan 7 TERRY TREDREA No: don't say a thing 10 STEWART CAMERON I Sent a Letter to My Love 14 JULIE LEWIS Moving Around 18 MARGOT LUKE Filing Coro 22 ADRIANA ELLIS The Well 27 WENDY JENKINS Millie, Mollie and Mae 36 T. A. G. HUNGERFORD Scission 49 TIM WINTON AR TICLES TWO TOWNS A Perception of the Past: York 69 JULIE LEWIS Broome-A Fiction 76 PETER COWAN Rumours of Mortality: the Poet's Part 101 FAY ZWICKY REVIEWS David King ed., Dreamworks: Strange New Stories 108 VAN IKIN James Legasse, The Same Old Story Cover: The Winparrku Serpents, by Kaapa Mbijana Djambidjimba. From Art of the Western Desert exhibition. Courtesy of Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Peter Stuyvesant Cultural Foundation. GLYN PARRY Gas Chamber A strange place to start a war. Safe. Like an empty letter box. And clean. No communion of groping root fingers to spread the gospel of decay. No soil to grow death in. Only a core of energy, wrapped in silence. And time. Particles of space grating in the mind. Mute defiance. Until the music starts. Until the music starts, I'm free to do whatever I wish. Touch my wife. Hold my children. Ignore the faces pressed against the glass. Icons to the age. My acid peers. They should be in here with me, strapped to the shadows, recording the stone lion of eternity. Throw open the windows, and let them share my view. Listen. There. That commotion behind me. Mandolin chords, upwards twisted to the light. Smack. Fire on the lungs. A private Buchenwald, flaming up and out of its frozen sleep. Creation rots on the jungle floor. Soon it will slit me open. Pour napalm into my wounds. I need a volunteer. Anyone. Someone to paddle through the sewers when I'm gone. In a dinghy. To rescue unwanted children from rats. Tell God I'll miss Him. When the music becomes. Less aggressive. Drifts. Loses purpose on strands of air grown tired. In the sun. And thank them all for being here. To see. A cave-man come of age. WESTERLY, No.3, SEPTEMBER, 1983 5 MARGARET HOUGHTON Outside At the end of the coarse green curtains was a gap. Through it daylight entered. It fell across the bed and covered my hands gradually. My hands became whiter and whiter. Something moved. I sat perfectly still. Rigid. It moved across my hands and was gone. It moved again. Grey. Next time it disappeared without completely crossing my hands. Then it touched the side of my hand and vanished. My eyes moved to the gap in the curtains. Light filtered through gently. Some­ thing beyond the gap moved. A shape. It touched the window and was gone. Again and again the shape appeared and vanished. Then it stayed, nodding back and forth against the glass. As it nodded so I felt my head move. A shape. Not quite round. A word slowly entered my mind. "Leaf." Outside the window a leaf was nodding. Vaguely a sprawling image formed in my memory. Something I had forgotten. Something I had not seen for a long time. Outside that window was a tree. Curtains being swished along on brass rings. Light came flooding in all at once. The tree outside. What was beneath it? Leaves being stamped into the ground. Wet. Soggy. Spilled blood. Nodding. Nodding at the window. Haunted faces looking into an inside sanctuary. "Outside today." My hands clasped the sides of the chair. I felt the vibration of the wheels along the smooth floor. "There. The sun is warm now. You should open your eyes. See you soon." The chair was still. Over the grey blanket covering my legs, the ground appeared. Green grass. A leaf lay still. Half green, half brown, slightly curled. The grass extended further. More leaves. Then a row of trees standing in front of a long building. Ready to fall dead. Dead into the ready dug trench. As T shut my eyes, the shots and screams pierced the throbbing air. The wheels vibrated hurriedly back along the smooth floor. Sinking. Drifting. The covers tucked tight. Secure. No more grass, leaves, trees. No more. The night light was on now. "Never mind. We'll try again another day." 6 WESTERLY, No.3, SEPTEMBER, 19a3 TERRY TREDREA Crossing Manhattan We are hurrying through Central Park, picking our way around joggers' spittle. A wad of travellers' cheques throbs under my left armpit. It's a frosty night; the air hisses through our nostrils. Someone jogs by, wearing only shorts and musical earphones. The Manhattan skyline looms above the treetops like a set of black teeth. In the City, we pass a shop advertising 'Hot. Kinky. Bizarre. All Male Review. Striptease-to the bone!' We reach the famous New Wave Book & Coffee Shop. A notice outside says 'Art Sale-All canvases slashed!' They stock titles like 'A Taoist lesbian view of modern accounting procedures', and 'Become yourself and feel great'. Downstairs is the fiction-reading. We go down thinking 'Wow, this is it! This is where it is all happening!' We order tea, waiting while the guy looks it up in his recipe book. I peep at the notice board: '[f you are a lesbian or gay guy with a drug abuse problem, then it's hard to be proud. Phone .. .' The guy arrives with two cups of a yellow liquid. He has green hair and black eyes. There is a hint of razor blade and safety pin about him. 'Thanks, mate.' He stares at my mouth. 'Where you frum?' 'The Third World.' 'Run that by me again?' 'Australia.' He holds out his palms. I inspect them: not too clean.