If you’ve been at all interested in discussions of those drastic events of recent years, like September 11 or the financial crisis of 2008, that have shaken the world economies and had repercussions for ordinary people like you and me, I’m sure you will have heard the expression ‘Black Swan Event’, something world-shaking that is unexpected and hard-to-predict from historical or technological precedents.
So, what’s wrong with being a black swan? Here in Western Australia, where they are the only swans you are likely to run into, we take them for granted, and they are so tied up with our connection to our special part of the world that the black swan is our state emblem, even though they are found all over Australia.
The idea of a black swan symbolising some strange and unforeseen occurrence can be traced far back into history, because all the swans Europeans knew were white, until Dutch explorers sailed down Australia’s west coast, long before Captain Cook.
Until then they were only known to our Indigenous people. For the early colonists, they probably seemed just another strange thing they had to learn to live with. That is why my second novel set in Western Australia’s Swan River Colony, has the unwieldy title Where Wild Black Swans are Flying.
Lynne Cairns 