Are you serious? Sunita Bala asked when she heard her entry in the Kyogle Writers Festival writing competition had won the under-50 years category’s $250 first prize.

Sunita is an emerging writer from Lismore with a passion for helping people tell their stories. She works with post-disability arts company RealArtWorks and in the past 12 months has started writing poetry. The Kyogle Writers Festival competition is the first competition Sunita has entered.

The competition had the theme of Country and Future with entries welcomed in any genre. Competition judges Christabel Strehle, Vincent Stead and Gwen Gray said, “Sunita’s work is spot-on regarding the theme. We found it incredibly creative and we loved the hybrid blend of styles. The Indigenous undertone is universally applicable to all First Nations people, not just Australia.”

The judges also commended the work of Rebecca Ryall for her entry A friend in need and Kim Oatway for What a difference a day makes.

Here is Sunita’s winning story

If men were born today, all stories would be cancelled tomorrow

The Boy pressed his ear to the ground. This way, he could better hear the rumbling of The Earth’s belly. Past the monotonous marching of ants sifting through sand, past the worms turning restless in their beds, The Boy heard The Earth’s deep hum spill from its core as if ready to swallow him whole. The Boy listened carefully. The hum spoke of change, of tectonic plates shifting and sliding, of liquids bubbling forth from holes, growing pustules under The Earth’s skin. Now, The Boy knew Change was coming, driven not by the moon and sun, but by the hands of a new type of people. He understood the importance of moving quickly, to reach the other side of the mountains to relay this message to the forest dwellers. To travel quicker than Change, he would need to leave now. The Boy in this instance became halfway a Man. Heavy with the burden of the task before him, he scraped a shallow hole into the earth, spat into it, covered it with sand and moved on.

In this same land, the trees watched The Boy leave. They rustled their leaves anxiously.

There were rumours in the wind that trees greater than them had fallen. A massacre of sorts, but no tree here had ever seen such a thing. The rumour had been started by the birds who carried their stories through the forest sky and dropped their gossip unceremoniously like the rest of their shit … head first. In response, the older trees had started to shed their leaves. The mother trees fretted and sighed but could not see anything of change on the horizon. This did not stop them from worrying. They held their saplings close whilst their babies rubbed their soft fuzzy foreheads into their mothers’ trunks, heavy and full with sweet chlorophyll, whispering and giggling into the earth whilst planning their assassination of weeds.

The first elder tree fell a week later. The splinter had grown into a cut, the cut had grown into a gash and the gash into a gaping wound until the bowels of the tree lay split open upon The Earth. And even as the tree fell disbelieving, its branches clutching wildly to her family around her, the other trees could not help her, for they too had started to splinter and weep. The Boy who had already travelled for days heard the cries across the valley and knew Change had arrived.

There were new men in the forest now. Their sounds were different, they were harsher and they were softer. They spoke gently and admiringly to the trees of height and girth. They shouted words laced with sweat and tears. The grind of Change was upon them. These men built houses from the hearts of the trees so that each night, they could close their doors, not have to see the massacre around them whilst warming themselves with the limbs of the felled. Other men inspired by what 10 men could do, created machines to do the work of 50 men, 100, and so on, until the men themselves were only cogs for the machines and the machines slept in houses and the men slept homeless.

The Boy at night slept in the shadow of mountains. By day his mission would begin all over again. In the reflection of ponds and rivers he could see that he was growing older. The Boy who had travelled for years, months and days walked from gully to valley to let forest dwellers know that Change had arrived and would be visiting them soon.

One day, The Man who was no longer The Boy could no longer travel faster than Change. In the places he now travelled, Change had already arrived and unpacked its bags. In these places, the life of the dwellers was different. The Man who had spat into the earth still had the power in his hands to hold up the soil close to the ears of these dwellers. Those who could hear that the earth’s hum was tired and spent grew scared. They crossed their fingers, tapped on wood, and cried,

“We knew that the future of tomorrow would come!
We want cherries, just like children
We want summer where winter blows
Our mouths are the best place to receive
We are fed today, but who will feed us tomorrow?”

The men who had cut the heart from trees heard the cries, looked at each other, touched hands and smiled wisely. Passing over the country they mined The Earth’s soul and planted steel pylons to replace the fallen. They created bigger, more extravagant contraptions that swallowed the blue sky whole and regurgitated smoky clouds into The Sun. The Sun in response melted these clouds back into caustic rain, back down onto the faces of the people who saw only water and light and thought they were rainbows. The wretched and the weak complained that the days were always too hot or too cold. They forgot how to feed themselves from The Earth, so they gorged themselves on plastic until they could no longer see themselves in the eyes of the people who had come before them. The spell of Change was upon them.

One day, The Man who had travelled in spite of Change could not walk any further. He found in a gully a place where the big ideas had not visited. A place where the leaves of gums scented the flowing water, and The Earth’s loam fed the trees who grew proud against the plaintive cry of birds that flew freely. Around him grew food and medicine that The Earth had seeded, enough to nurture any person in their lifetime. He lay down in a dry creek to hold The Earth close. In watching the daylight fade he understood that Change was a slippery fish. The Old Man scraped a shallow hole into the belly of the creek, he lay down and outstretched his arms. With his mouth full of dirt, he heard The Earth sing:

“Men are only children
Old yet not old
Not willing to share
But knowing they must
Born today
Always running short of tomorrow
When the revolution of men is over
I will still be here
This is The Future
This is my country.”

This article appeared in the Richmond River Independent, 5 May 2021.