Everything is Water is an account of Simon Cleary’s 344km pilgrimage-of-sorts along the Brisbane River (the Maiwar). In a work of fiction, the map provided in the book’s preliminary pages might hint at a fully imagined world. The Brisbane River isn’t exactly a product of Cleary’s imagination, but since no visible path exists along the river’s entire length, his walk needed to be “imagined into being”. The river holds personal significance for Cleary: as a boy, he played in the small creeks that feed into Lockyer Creek (a tributary of the Brisbane River). But the author also has a larger ambition: he wants to walk with the “river as companion”; to let it guide him, so that he might learn to “see anew”, or even “unsee”.
The book’s organisation into short chapters – each spanning a single day, and specifying a starting point, destination and distance – resembles a set of walking track notes. In fact, many of Cleary’s observations will strike a chord with fellow bushwalkers. There’s the stark disparity between the clean lines of a map, and the immediate, effortful reality of traversing any tract of land on foot – even one like this, so close to a major city. He must navigate unexpected cliff faces, fallen logs, chest-high grass; deal with waterlogged boots and aching muscles. Cleary is especially good at conveying the shifting of sensibilities engendered by time away from the “regular world”. That world – of engines, fences, highways – can very quickly feel “foreign”. Even talking can feel “superfluous”.
