On writing Carpentaria
    Where did the idea for Carpentaria _originally come from? I don’t remember exactly. A friend once said to me while we were looking at the Gregory River in the Gulf of _Carpentaria that the white man had destroyed our country. He pointed to the weeds growing profusely over the banks – burrs, prickles, and other noxious introduced plants grew everywhere. It would take decades to eradicate the past decades of harm to this otherwise pristine environment. Tangling invasive vines grew here and there, smothering the slender young trees that are Indigenous to this savannah-zoned country.

    卡奔塔利亚湾 格雷戈里河 （某些植物）带芒刺的小果实 （植物的）芒刺 萨瓦纳（尤指非洲的稀树草原）

    《卡奔塔利亚湾》的创作来源？（怎么想到要写）我记不太清了。我和朋友去过卡奔塔利亚湾。望着格雷戈里河，朋友感叹，那白人毁了我们国家。他指向河畔，那儿杂草丛生，尽是芒刺、或是带着芒刺的小果实，还有些有害的外来植株。倘若一切没有发生，这片土地合该是原来的样子。这几十年的伤害又得花多少个十年才能抹去呢。缠节的藤蔓侵略着每一寸土地，紧紧攀上萨瓦纳区土生土长的小树，勒得他们喘不过气。（扼杀稀树草原上）
    What he said was true, but what I saw was the mighty flow of an ancestral river rushing through the weeds, which was only weeds fruitlessly reaching down into the purity of this flowing water. This water rushed past the natural vegetation of ancient paperbarks, palms and fig trees that lined the river bank, and through the ancient serpentine track it had once formed while it continued racing forever forward, coursing its way to the sea. The river was flowing with so much force I felt it would never stop, and it would keep on flowing, just as it had flowed by generations of my ancestors, just as its waters would slip by here forever.
    他说的没错，可我眼中，更多的是这条承载历史的河流。几根杂草向下生长想要染指，奔流却浩浩汤汤的穿其而过。（漏译purity）河水冲刷着两岸的白千层、棕榈树和无花果树，流过以前形成的、曲折的河道。她继续向前，永不停息，蜿蜒着奔向大海。这条河迸发着强大的力量，我想她不会停下、只会向前，从我每一代祖先身边流过，从此处流过，永远永远。
    It was like an animal, very much alive, not destroyed, that was stronger than all of us. The river reminded me of the Rainbow Serpent that travels throughout the country and across our traditional lands. Perhaps my seeing his skin sparkle in the clear bright sunlight over the Gulf was a present from the country. Perhaps it was then, at that moment, realizing the largeness of standing where countless generations of people whose ancestry I share would have left their footprints, that I decided I wanted to return something of what I have learnt and to continue the story of this country of my forefathers. So in a very small way, I would like to think that Carpentaria is a narration of the kind of stories we can tell to our ancestral land.

    彩虹蛇（Rainbow Serpent），是人类从彩虹的特性中幻想出来的传说生物，被认为是职掌天雨的巨大神蛇。 传说 虹蛇的神话传说见于世界许多地域文化之中，当中以北美洲、澳大利亚、西非更为常见。澳洲对彩虹蛇有甚多命名及称呼，最常见的有「虹蛇（Yurlungur）」。汉字中的「虹」字部首为「虫」，象征蛇的形态，是天龙的一员，而且中国的「虹」有雌雄之分，雄性的虹故名为「虹」，雌性的虹则名为「蜺」。 而在澳洲神话中，彩虹之蛇更是和文本的诞生有密不可分的关联。

    她是猛兽，（very much alive活得好好的）谁都没能毁掉她，她比我们都强。格雷戈里河让我想起游走于传统土地、盘旋于澳大利亚上空的“彩虹蛇”。能看见她的肌肤在卡奔塔利亚湾之上、在晴空之下闪闪发光（透过…上空明亮的阳光），或许是国土的恩赐。可能就是那时吧(那时决定回报），我意识到双脚站立的这片土地是多么宏伟，多少与我流着相同血脉的祖祖辈辈曾在此留下足迹。我决定以我所学回报澳大利亚，续写先辈的传说。斗胆来说（简单来说），我更愿意把《卡奔塔利亚湾》当做我们能对故土诉说的故事。（ancestral）
    For a long time while I was exploring how to write Carpentaria, I tried to come to some understanding of two principle question: firstly, how to understand the idea of Indigenous people living with the stories of all the times of this country, and secondly, how to write from this perspective. The everyday contemporary Indigenous story world is epic, and although not entirely answering my questions, I feel comfortable in saying that our story world follows the origin pattern of the great ancient sages that defined the laws, customs and values of our culture. The oral tradition that produced these stories continued in the development of the epic stories of historical events, and combining ancient and historical stories, resounds equally as loudly in the new stories of our times.
    关于怎么写，我探索了很长时间，主要是在试着理解两个问题。其一，原住民是澳大利亚历史的完整见证人，我要怎么理解他们的想法呢？其二，我该怎样从他们的视角写故事呢？当代原住民小说界发生的平常事够写篇史诗了。尽管不能完全解释以上两个问题，当今原住民小说能遵循（沿袭）古代圣人的写作方法，我还是感到很欣慰的。古人口头创作故事(谁define)，定义了澳大利亚的社会法则、民族习俗以及文化价值。随着史诗故事的发展，无论是单纯讲述历史事件，还是穿插一些传说故事，口口相传的形式从未停止，甚至在新时代作品创作中也适得其所。
    Thinking about our stories in this way helped me to decide Carpentaria should be written as a traditional long story of our times, so the book would appear reminiscent of the style of oral story-telling that a lot of Indigenous people would find familiar. I hoped that the style would engage more Indigenous readers, especially people from remote locations, to be readers of this book either now, or in the future, or perhaps at least, to be able to listen to a reading of the book. I felt a sense of having followed the right track when David Gulpilil confirmed my belief about how we tell stories when in narrating the film Ten Canoes he said that a good story will take time to tell, and that some stories will take several days to be told.

    David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu AM (born 1 July 1953), is an Indigenous Australian traditional dancer and actor. Ten Canoes is a 2006 Australian period drama film directed by Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr and starring Crusoe Kurddal. The title of the film arose from discussions between de Heer and David Gulpilil about a photograph of ten canoeists poling across the Arafura Swamp, taken by anthropologist Donald Thomson in 1936. It is the first ever movie entirely filmed in Australian Aboriginal languages.

    从这个角度思考写作（经过以上思考），我决定将《卡奔塔利亚湾》写成一部传统长篇故事，讲述我们的时代。风格类似于口头文学，原住民读了会很熟悉。我希望能用这种风格吸引更多的原住民，特别是偏远地区的。希望他们能在现在、或是将来的某一刻成为此书的读者（或早或晚），实在不行至少能听听讲书。大卫·古皮尔在电影《十只独木舟》中说，花时间才能讲好故事，（好故事要慢慢讲）(衔接）有些故事得说上几天几夜。他这番话让我坚定，我就该这样讲故事。