Speaking back to the European understanding of the impossibility of survival of a‘snowflake in hell’, and underlining the irony of the White man’s incomprehension of such a reference having meaning in the Australian north, the ‘cinder in snow’ image performs double duty in this lyric. While starkly marking the racism of the colonial view of the position of Indigenous culture against the avalanche of European invasion and appropriation, the image turns back on itself, so that by the end of the song we can see that it was the original image of the snowflake disappearing in the furnace that held the ultimate truth. The ‘cinder in snow’ is a perfect image of Lingiarri and his people in this case. Despite the initial dousing of the flame and squelching of the heat, the cinder remains, vital and resolutely black inside the snow that surrounds it—changed but not destroyed or metamorphosed into the snow itself.