Swallow the Air: 5. Bushfire Summary & Analysis

Near May’s apartment complex is an escarpment from which she can view all the surrounding landscape. When she was younger, she rode her bike there through old mining trails, feeling hidden among the ferns. No matter how hot and dry the beach is, it’s always wet and cloudy up in the mountains.

After Mum dies, the summer forest fires intensify and the whole coast is dry and smoky. An entire national park between the town and Sydney is burned out, and the news constantly shows falling ash and birds.

Around this time, May receives a postcard from her Dad. She puts it in her pocket and rides to the quarry at the foot of the escarpment. Even here, she can smell the fires. She sits down in a small clearing. Normally, the clearing is damp and home to many leeches. According to Mum, leeches are prized by the Dtharawahl people, who used to live here, and they have to respect that because this is “their land.” Now, there are no leeches because the land is dry from the fires.

In his brief postcard, Dad apologizes for being out of contact for so long and informs May that he’s picking mangoes near Darwin for a living. On the front of the postcard is a picture of a mango orchard, with a white man standing on a ladder next to one of the trees. May imagines that the man is her father and that he’s in the orchard right now, even though by now the mango harvest is over, the mangoes have been eaten or gone bad, and the laborers have dispersed.

To May, it feels as though Dad has never left and is sitting beside her. She remembers eating watermelon with him when she was five, or learning to fish from him a year later. She can still see him digging in the backyard or rolling a cigarette. She wonders how she could have stopped thinking about him, “allowed the memory of my father to […] cease existing.” Now, all her memories of him come back like “shiny little bubbles.”