by Jo McInerney
No fool’s gold this – clay, dug laboriously
out of the ground, promising only more labour,
lumped and pounded and sliced into blocks,
shaped into gullies and drums, U-bends
and S-bends, a poor man’s alphabet,
spread out like severed limbs across the yard,
an ordered triage, where products of blunt
utility waited their turn at the kilns.
- Present-day Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people
are the Traditional Owners of the lands and waters
of the area now forming Melbourne’s northern suburbs
(including Brunswick and Clifton Hill).