There is a place at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra where, since February 2024, two dozen marble droplets sit on grass under plane trees.
They are tears made permanent. The stone is Queensland pearl marble from Chillagoe, on Wakaman Country. The plaque says the veins of iron in it are the scars, seen and unseen, borne by so many. The sculpture by the artist Alex Seton is titled For Every Drop Shed in Anguish.
In February 2026, I was sixty-six and in the middle of the longest drive of my life. I had left Port Douglas in mid-January with no fixed date to come home. Canberra was a stop during a drive that turned out to be me finding my way through the geography of my own Australian life. You see, driving is when I do my best thinking, and I had a lot to think about.
That morning, by chance, I took my first ever tour of the memorial. I had been to the Memorial many times in my life and had never done one. Me being me, I arrived with a clear plan, I was intent on reading every name on the honour board. Not sure why it was the plan but the plan it was until…
…the nice morning welcome from the staff at reception. I was asked if I’d like to join a small tour group, three or four people plus the guide, Bob. I proudly but subtly, well as subtle as I can be, said no thank you, I’ve been here many times and I have a particular goal today that I wish to achieve. What is that? came the response. Well, I’m going to read every name on the honour board (the names of the fallen). Her response? What, all one hundred and three thousand of them? Mmm, ok then, the tour it is, I responded with my tail firmly captured between my legs. Then off we went, me following Bob closely whilst ensuring I gave him the respect he deserved. In truth, I think I chatted his ears off so much so that after the tour, he asked if I’d like to join him for lunch at Poppy’s Café, a quick bite before he started his next tour at two o’clock. I met him there at one. We talked. I began to share my story.
Around twenty past one, another guide, Barbara, joined us. Bob introduced us and suggested I share my story with her, too.
Bob left to get ready for his two o’clock. I finished telling Barbara.
Stand up.
Sorry?
Stand up, she said. I had a sneaking suspicion I was going to get a hug. She was already crying.
I stood. She hugged me, crying. I hugged her also. I cried. You are very brave, she said.
I told her that although I had always loved visiting the Memorial, on this day it didn’t speak to me. It celebrated death and dying, valour, triumph and disaster. Important and right, but not the place for me that day.
There is a place you need to visit, she said, still holding me. The Alex Seton installation. The stones.
Then I remembered. I had seen the stones on Rachel Griffiths’s When the War is Over, on the ABC. I had simply forgotten the installation existed.
I approached them somewhat tentatively, for reasons unknown. I had this feeling within me that something had or was about to happen. I wasn’t wrong. It was kind of like an out of body experience.
I sat on the bench seat, under a plane tree. I lingered. I stared at the stones. This was the first moment I felt totally alone, yet I had a feeling that all was about to change. The only way was up, but first I had to find the bottom rung of the ladder in order to begin the climb back to the top. After about twenty minutes or more I rose to lay a hand on each one. I wept uncontrollably, the likes I had never experienced before. When I eventually left, I had this overwhelming feeling that I was lighter than when I arrived.
I had been carrying a weight for fifty years. I hadn’t been allowed to call it weight, because what had been done to me did not qualify by the rules of the time. I had not been in a war, nor had I seen combat. By the rules of the country I grew up in, what I was carrying did not qualify for stone.
I had known Sisyphus for a very long time by then, who he was and what he was condemned to, an eternity of pushing a boulder up a steep hill without the prospect of ever reaching the summit, the boulder rolling back to the bottom every time, and I had thought about the similarity for many years. I’d been rolling and retrieving that boulder for what seemed forever.
I had to wait for the rules to change before I could lay my hand on the rock and tell it the truth.
