The Whales by Charlotte Guest
Everything is long in the desert: the highway, the sky, the days. My father played the same CD on repeat as we drove our van: Pavarotti’s long notes, followed by lengthy silences. When the time came, and the turn-off wobbled into view, we decided to see the whales in the Bight. I thought of their long tails, full of water-knowledge. Father said the whales may be gone – it was late in the season – but from the platform we saw a mother and her calf, and I imagined them singing whale-Pavarotti, preparing for their long, hard journey, like ours.
Charlotte Guest is a writer and bookseller based in Geelong, Victoria. She is currently completing her PhD in Creative Writing at Deakin University. In 2020, she won the Tina Kane Emergent Writer Award, the Deakin Community Bank Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the Peter Carey Short Story Prize.