I gaze at the rocks and stones, scattered across the ground far below. From here they seem like chocolates in chaos, rounded shades of brown, once tipped by giants out of enormous tin boxes over uneven mounds of sand and ocean debris.

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The wind picks up, surprising the shrubs and trees around me. But my hair is disinterested in its efforts, my skin numb to its advances. For a moment I wonder whether I could catch a current and drift over the edge of land snaking its way into the distance. Over the dark embroidered border of rock that contrasts with countless shades of citrus on one side, defends against the encroachment of royal blue on the other. I continue to observe as outlying rocks cause travel weary water to suddenly halt, shattering into pieces of white. The sea, now humbled, makes a stealthy retreat, only to eternally try again.

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I could watch this scene eternally. Perhaps necessarily so.

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I turn my attention towards the woman standing near me, and wonder about her thoughts as she looks beyond the cliff edge. She’s wearing a simple long-sleeved black gown, with a pleated bodice and lace across the shoulders. I can’t make out the embroidered pattern on the lace – maybe flowers, maybe interconnecting circles. With one hand she clutches the strap of a small purse. With the other, she tries to stop the boater, loosely tied with black ribbon under her chin, from sailing off her head and down into the agitated sea.

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Like the wind, she seems not to be aware of me. To know me.

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But I recognise her. She once told me stories about coming right across that sea. On a ship, maybe the Cuckoo, or the Cuzco, something like that. She’d married in Edinburgh, aged barely nineteen. The hopeful young couple then left that land to make a different kind of life. Came to a fledgling town where they could remake themselves into something a bit grander than a boot merchant or miner or servant. And there was nowhere newer or further than the ancient Antipodes, on someone else’s land, to start that transformation. To change the luck of generations.

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I glide closer to the woman, still meditating upon the sea and holding on to her hat.

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She’d told me stories about Southern Ocean storms, the deprivation of air and light when hatches were battened, the constant rolling and rocking and seasickness. The fleas, the cockroaches, the smell of makeshift privies and the unwashed. And of death. But these memories were not shared to shock, not told as warnings or tales of pity. Such endurance was simply the price to pay for a fresh life.

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Maybe she is remembering all this, the narrative of her life. The prequel to mine.

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It had begun well. A home on the edge of the colony at Sydney. He found work as a legal clerk while she mothered the growing number of children. And then, and then. Within fourteen years the colony was almost a nation and he was gone. Claimed by the consumption. So, the wasting disease, the white plague, had also made the journey across oceans. Biding its time to ruin their plans, as if the heavens resented their arrogance, wanted to destroy the belief that they could determine the course of their own lives. Leaving her alone to watch over four from five children in this land being made for white men. Well, now it’s three from five.

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I reach out to touch the fabric of her gown, but it’s like she’s surrounded by a layer of magic that my hand is unable to penetrate. She does, though, abruptly turn her head in my direction. Yet she’s not looking at me, but past me, around me. Right through me. No words emerge from her tensed lips.

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The woman forgets her hand and the boater is all at once sailing in the air. It briefly hovers, like a seagull observing its food. Then the wind sends it backwards, behind us and over the earth. It lands right on top of Mr Won’s, who came to this land looking for gold and found smallpox and this place instead.

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This place, of abandoned beauty. Of quarantined fear.

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She turns away from the cliff edge, walks across the patchy grass.

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I follow.

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The woman reclaims the boater, ties it to sit at the nape of her neck. Moves slowly towards another place. She pauses at some golden guinea flowers, opens the purse to take out a pair of silver sewing scissors. Cuts some blooms.

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Yellow is my favourite colour. Tastes just like sunshine.

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My most beloved dress was lemon yellow. A simple cotton dress, straight-line with three quarter sleeves and a ring of lace at the elbow, but wearing it always cheered me. I often wore it when out with the girls, to the places we’d frequent around Chippendale. I miss those girls, the ones from the factory, where day after day after day we lined boxes with paper and lace that delivered colourful confectionaries to those with a different kind of luck. My favourite cat I also miss. He lived in the factory, a black and white ratcatcher named Humbug. Sometimes I even shared my lunch with him.

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I briefly wonder whether the girls will ever visit here, and glance up at the lonely hospital on the hill.

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I follow the woman to a nondescript long rectangle carved into the ground, headstone-less, bounded by rough grey stones gathered from nearby. She delicately lays the selected blooms inside its shape, as if they were in danger of shattering.

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I wore that lemon dress the last time I saw Jimmy. Ah, Jimmy, all bright eyed and floppy haired. Jimmy who sold corn and poultry at the Belmore Market and had a smile that sent butterflies down my spine. I could’ve written such a great story with Jimmy. One full of joy, and laughter, and love.

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I wonder where the lemon dress is now. I look down at my stained white nightgown, and notice my feet are bare and dirty.

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Now the woman is lying across the rectangle, on the dirt and drawing knees towards her chest. I watch as she fills one hand with soil, as it falls between fingers, like a grainy grey-brown waterfall.

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I join her, lie beside her. She cared for me when I was shaking with fever, shivering with cold, lying on sheets damp with sweat. The fever that came on so fast, that was done with me so quickly. The lady doctor used strange words like femoral and mesenteric and inguinal and haemorrhage and bubo. But I’m only sixteen. This should not be my life. I should be out dancing with Jimmy in my happy lemon-yellow dress.

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The woman says one word. Stella. A tear falls onto a yellow bloom, rolls down and into the dry earth.

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Mama, I share with the wind.

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I yearn to put my arms around this strong grieving woman, who struggled to escape from class and poverty and catastrophe. To escape from history itself. Yet old demons simply created new nightmares, colluding to make our family and dreams into smaller things. My life, my dreams.

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I wonder whether I really can catch a wind current, and soar.