Vast is the kingdom of dust! Unlike terrestrial kingdoms, it knows no limits. No ocean marks its boundaries. No mountains hem it in. No parallels of latitude and longitude define its boundless areas (Ogden 9).1
Patrick White’s Voss departs from Sydney, with the expedition journeying into the country and the dust-carrying westerlies which emanate from the heart of the continent. The Kati Thandi-Lake Eyre Basin forms the centre of this dust-producing interior, with dust pathways radiating outward (see Strong et al). In some regions, these pathways move far more sediment than water. They are like deep time rivers carrying fragments of worlds and underworlds past, around which the present and future gather. Permanence is wrapped within impermanence, transient and yet enduring. It has been estimated in excess of one billion Indigenous people have lived and died on this land (B. Griffiths 1); the dust is, as Judith Wright has written…