Refloating of the Mangana

Its rusted iron ribs hint a once proud shape that now rings a hollow gut filled and flushed by tides for the last ninety years. Built in Glasgow, this beached wreck dissolves slowly in Port Adelaide mud. My mind builds a ghost in air, rising up out of a muddy grave, hull and deck firm on bones, masts pushing high into a bright morning, open sea and wave washing along its length with me on board. What other could refloat such a wreck, give buoyancy to a dream and sail a vision across the mind's vast ocean. I am a salvager, faculty of the divine to take what time has dissolved into atoms and make words into a ship to sail wherever it has a will to go, voyager of the distances between you and me.