Cattle class

If I am here to see another flood – I will think of them.

When I am told of my 'white privilege' I remember my grandfather.

Picture this. A wild sweep of sand interrupted by volcanic rock, pockmarked and covered in hidden pools where sharp molluscs make the rough surface utterly treacherous. The ocean lays in front, endlessly blue and behind there are a few k's of scrub backed by the odd rise of a large, scruffy hill. Looking left up the beach is the smoky outline of a distant mountain range so far away it may as well be a spectre.

Every now and then the ocean rushes in, gets caught inside the weathered tunnels littered through the rock before roaring into the air. The sound echoes in the caves above where a pair of young boys emerge. It is 1930-something and this may as well be the edge of the world.

Starving, the boys have decided that the best solution to their hunger is to go for a fish. This seems like a sensible solution until you realise that one of the boys is balancing a 303 rifle on his shoulder while he skids down the near-vertical rubble and the other is pacing toward a water trap aptly named, 'Shark Hole'.

The boys take up the positions above the water. One by one they ignite sticks of dynamite and toss them into Shark Hole. The subsequent explosions shake the bedrock and leave a few stunned fish floating on the surface. One boy rushes out, hessian bag clutched in one hand as he dives into the water. He gathers up the fish and then drags the bloodied bag behind him while his mate watches on, rifle scanning the waves for any ominous, prowling shadows.

Can you you guess who elected to sit on the slope with the rifle?

Safety 101. If you find yourself on a hunting trip with my grandfather, always remember that you are the bait. He's not hunting fish – he's hunting sharks.

There was nothing privileged about his poverty. He saw his four young sisters to school on horse back and then across the river in a canoe – barefoot and returned to work the farms in exchange for food. His escape from rural poverty was World War II where he paddled up river and became the third person to sign up for the Australian Parachute Battalion as a sniper.

My grandmother would return to that isolated farm after the war and raise three children alone in the bush with nothing. Their wealth came from weekends catching mudcrabs and baking the odd cake (after making the butter by hand).

No one in my family has had the privilege of money of any significant kind but we always had stories. They centre around the land and its secrets.

When I was 15 I finally got to go to the greatest rock of them all – Ayres Rock, or Uluru if you like. I didn't care about its name. I wanted to know its story. This piece of sandstone was part of a greater creature, like a dusty iceberg trapped in the desert. Essentially it was the corpse of the Petermann Ranges, a ridge of mountains that rivalled the Himalayas.

Following the track around the base of the rock, I ended up in one of the many caves. In the silence I could feel Australia's age dripping out of the stone. There's something elusive about our country. Perhaps it is eternally conspiring to shake us free with bushfires, floods and droughts – or maybe it is the incomprehensibility humans feel when they're faced with oblivion and what better way to feel it than in the grave of a mountain?

The next day the rains came. Lightening struck the endless, golden flats. The rock turned violet in the afternoon light and soon waterfalls poured off its sides. It was a canvas shifting colour faster than I could sketch as though it were beating.

I was in the heart of my country and very near the beginning of its story. One day I will go West to the oldest corner where the rock has seen life wash up on the cliffs and waste aeons building odd-looking mounds in the shallow water.

Then I grew up.

I was told that I am not Australian.