The Dust of Carpentaria

Abstract

While waterways and tempestuous, cyclonic forces have dominated former readings of Carpentaria, this paper places its focus on another elemental presence embedded in the environment of northern Australia: dust. The south highlands region of Alexis Wright’s Waanyi Country is bound by ties which not only flow out into the ocean to the north, but to the desert and dry country to the south. While dust in Western literature, has predominantly signified human limits, death, absence and fear, this paper illuminates how the dust of Carpentaria denotes connection to the past, the time immemorial of Indigenous relation to Country, through which the dynamic forces and regenerative powers of catastrophe can be comprehended. Tracing pathways of dust through the novel and across its landscapes reveals the powerful role this infinitesimal substance occupies in the story’s ecology. From the dust storms which strike the story in primeval fury, to Mozzie Fishman’s dust-covered convoy from which Will Phantom emerges, to the final climatic obliteration of the mine, dust assuages the threat of destruction and fragmentation through its connection to what Wright has described as the ancient library, the deep knowledge and epic storytelling traditions ingrained in Country.