Ash

Tags

poetry, poem, Australian traditional poetry, Australian bush poetry, Australian poet, Moreton Bay Ash, Hervey bay

I spied a grand old ash,
Close by the shore, where crash
The waves on shining sand.
I asked it: “Here you stand,
And have for many years.
What laughter and what tears
Can you recall, old tree?
Your secrets tell to me.”

Sprang up a brisk sea-breeze
To rustle its grey leaves;
Its branches swayed and groaned,
And then to me it moaned:
“So long ago I saw
Upon this shining shore,
The campfires in the night,
And by their flickering light,
The dance of painted men;
I was a sapling then;
Now fully grown am I;
My trunk is thick, and high
And mighty do I stand,
But on the shining sand
I see no signs of men –
The ones I knew back then.
Their fires have long gone cold –
To ash – and I am old.”

Then quiet – the sea-breeze died,
And soft the giant sighed;
The waves crashed on the shore;
The old ash said no more.

The Sawfish

Tags

Aboriginal hunters, Arafura Sea, Australian Northern Rivers, Australian Sawfish, Monsoon, Northern Australia, Northern Territory, Pristis pristis, Sawfish hunters, Shoal Bay N.T., Tropical Australia

Where rivers flow in monsoon climes
I heard back in those distant times
Strange tales of men and seas and fate
And one such story I’ll relate:

In waters warm, gloomy and deep,
Where crabs and worms and shellfish creep;
When dies the day and wakes the night;
When all that shines is dim starlight

And moonlight where the drifting clouds
Admit a glimmer by their shrouds,
To murky depths where vision blurs,
There – from his rest a monster stirs.

With body, seven yards or more,
Another two of toothy saw,
Hide dull and coarse – rough skin of shark,
Eyes glowing faintly in the dark.

He rises slowly from his hide
As pulls the force of time and tide.
A killer of prodigious length;
A shadowed shape of power and strength.

Then with a flick of tail and fins
The sawfish on his hunt begins.
Goes forth the fish unto the south,
Toward the river’s yawning mouth.

There by the glistening muddy banks,
Where swarms of mullet school in ranks
He herds and thrashes with his saw –
Consumes the shards of flesh and gore.

Above the fish a shape drifts by –
Barbed spear, sharp as the native eye
Strikes true and deep, into the giant;
He turns upon his foe defiant.

With flashing saw the shape he rakes;
The bark canoe splinters and breaks,
As others rally to the fight;
Spears rend his flesh – from left and right.

His back abristle with cruel goads,
The sawfish writhes, the sea explodes
With waves whipped red – a crimson flood,
As from his wounds wells out his blood.

His life now ebbs, his struggle slows;
His saw no match for savage blows.
Though one who hunted him lies still,
Was not the fish who sought to kill.

So soon upon the mud he’s drawn.
His body shudders, pierced and torn.
The sawyer of the sea cut down;
Felled on the land, to gasp and drown.

Sawfish

Gettin’ a bit Dry

Tags

Australian bush poetry, australian formal poetry, Australian poet, Australian understatement, drought, laconic humour, limerick, Limerick poem, Limerick poetry, poem, poetry, Red-bellied black snake

The lizards are dyin’ of thirst,
And the red-bellied blacks – that’s a first.
All the cattle are dead
And the roos have all fled;
What we need is a flamin’ cloudburst.

Anna Creek

Tags

Anna Creek Station, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Cattle stations, limerick, Limerick poem, Limerick poetry, poem, poetry, S Kidman and Co.

Anna Creek – sprawling under the sun,
Has no equal when all’s said and done.
Like a country – so vast,
It’s in size unsurpassed;
Anna Creek is the world’s largest run.

Anna Creek sold

Old Red

Tags

Australian bush poetry, australian formal poetry, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Bush Poetry, Farming in Australia, poem, poetry

He stumbled down the dusty track,
His rifle slung across his back.
She lay amid the trampled grass,
No miracle had come to pass.

He laid her head upon his knee.
Her eyes rolled back till she could see
His face, the one she knew so well,
His voice, his touch, his sweat, his smell.

“Old girl” he said, “I’ve known awhile,
Your stubbornness, your craft, your guile,
For you and I were sometimes foes
And there were times we came to blows.

You’ve knocked me down when in the yard
And I recall you kicked me hard.
I bested you – upon my word,
Old Red – the boss cow of the herd.

But now you lie here on this slope.
I’ve tried my best but there’s no hope.
You’re down old girl and you won’t rise;
You know you’re done – it’s in your eyes.

Old Red, there’s but the truth to face:
This is your final resting place.
I’ll give you one last pat old friend,
Then quick – your suffering will end.”

Bagging a Shag

Tags

Australian bush poetry, australian formal poetry, Australian traditional poetry, bush poet, Bush Poetry, bush poets, Cormorant, poem, poetry, shag, snake bird

A shag (cormorant) has been eating the fish in my dam (lake)

Come land, you mongrel, on that jutting snag,
By your disgusting droppings washed with white.
It’s twilight, but before the fall of night,
My rifle says I’ll have me one dead shag.

You feathered terrorist of perch and cod.
You serpent of the waters and the sky.
Before the day is spent, here you will die.
Prepare, you thieving bird, to meet your god.

Isle of the Tiger

Tags

australian formal poetry, Australian Marsupials, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Bush Poetry, extinct marsupials, Extinct Tasmanian Tiger, Extinction, poem, poetry, sonnet, Tasmania, Tasmanian tiger, Tasmanian Tiger sightings, Tasmanian Wolf, thylacine, Thylacine sightings, Van Diemen's Land

I’m going away to Van Diemen’s Land
Where marsupials in the bush abide.
There I’ll search for scat, and for tracks in sand,
And I’ll wander the forests far and wide
For a fleeting glimpse of the tiger’s hide.
On the alpine slopes; in the grey-green hills;
To the east and west of the Great Divide,
There his fare he finds in the fresh road kills,
Or the slow or the stricken his belly fills.
But for those who say that the tiger’s dead;
That he hunts no more by the soaks and rills,
There’s a man I know, and this man he said
That the tiger’s death is a pack of lies,
For he’s seen the beast with his own two eyes.

Historical Thylacine footage

Recent possible sighting

Extinction of the Megafauna

Tags

Aboriginal migration into Australia, Aboriginals wipe out megafauna, Australian bush poetry, australian formal poetry, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, bush poet, Bush Poetry, poem, poetry, sonnet

Now gone, the moat of ocean wide and deep,
As in the north appears a bridge of land
And on the beaches, footprints in the sand.
The spreading hordes through virgin forests creep.
With club and spear, a harvest rich they reap,
As fire-sticks strike and high the flames are fanned
As winds of change sweep through this ancient land
To wake it from its long primeval sleep.

Now clear are seen and heard portents of doom:
The plumes of smoke, and too, the warning sound
Of feet that stamp upon the blackened ground.
Thus giants the land had nurtured in her womb
Will but in dreaming legends soon be found –
Invaders will consign them to the tomb.

The Native

Tags

Australian bush poetry, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Native Australians, poem, poetry

His land is worn and wearied;
Its colours drab and pale,
With hills that once were mountains
Reduced to sand and shale.

Where trees grey-green and twisted,
With black and furrowed bark,
Against the hazy skyline
Stand desolate and stark.

Sun beating without mercy,
Dry year upon dry year,
With frost in winter burning
What summer doesn’t sear.

So does he yearn for softer scenes
Of pine and snow-capped peaks?
Of misty fells and vales of green
And cold clear-running creeks?

No, he would not forsake it;
Be from this brown land torn.
His spirit lies within it,
For he is native born.

Edmond Kennedy

Tags

Australian bush poetry, Australian explorers, bush poet, Bush Poetry, Cape York, Edmond Kennedy, Escape River, Formal poetry, Kennedy expedition, poem, poetry

‘a fine noble fellow poor Kennedy was’ – Thomas Huxley

Through the swell and the spray on the twentieth day
Sailed the barque “Tam O’Shanter” that May,
And behind in her wake, the corvette “Rattlesnake”,
As they swept into Rockingham Bay.

Thirteen men the boats bore, and the stroke of each oar
Brought them on to that forbidding shore,
Where they set out to walk to the tip of Cape York –
All that lay in between to explore.

They were bushmen and tough and would brook no rebuff
As they conquered the rugged and rough
Ridges ragged and green, steep and split with ravine,
And descended each perilous bluff.

But soon rations grew short, with their strength the miles bought,
And with peril the enterprise fraught.
With their goal growing dim, faces hopeless and grim,
Dreams of glory were coming to naught.

Over hellish terrain, all done in, wracked with pain,
Struggling on with but honour to gain,
Ever northward they trekked, bodies starving and wrecked;
Now their struggle was clearly in vain.

From the swamps and the heat there would be no retreat,
And but two left to witness defeat.
One now close to his end – Jackey Jackey, his friend,
And the tragedy almost complete.

After such a cruel test where he gave of his best,
From a wild black, a spear pierced his breast.
Twenty miles from the cape, by the river – “Escape”,
Edmond Kennedy went to his rest.