Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by? Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry; Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky? Have you heard the still voice callingöyet so warm, and yet so cold: 'I'm the Mother-Bush that bore you! Come to me when you are old'?

-Lawson, Henry Hertzberg
'On the Night Train', collected in Colin Roderick (ed) Henry Lawson: Collected Verse (3 vols,1967^9).

The AIDS epidemic has rolled back a big rotting log and revealed all the squirming life underneath it, since it involves, all at once, the main themes of our existence: sex, death, power, money, love, hate, disease and panic. No American phenomenon has been so compelling since theVietnam War.

-White, Edmund
  'AfterwordöAIDS: An American Epidemic', added to later editions of States of Desire:Travels in Gay America.