Swapping Dependant Islands

Tags

Australian poet, Donald Trump, Greenland, Greenland for sale, limerick, Limerick poem, Limerick poetry, poem, poetry, Tasmania

Swapping Dependant Islands

Seems the U.S. will have a new state
Called “Greenland” — aren’t they going great?
The Donald is dealing
With Danes (it’s like stealing).
Those boofheads will sure take the bait.

But we Aussies, well we are much brainier.
We thought of a deal even zanier.
Trump thinks he’s one up,
But we’ll sell him a pup!
He’ll swap us Greenland for Tasmania!

— D.N. O’Brien

Sarah Island

Tags

Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Convicts in Australia, Macquarie cat, Macquarie Harbour, Penal settlements, poem, poetry, Sarah Island Tasmania, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, Tasmania, Transportation of convicts, Transportation to Australia, Van Diemen's Land

Sarah Island

There are few signs that once this lonely isle
Was home to men of Empire and their slaves.
Just scattered bricks, worked stone, and shards of tile,
Remind us of when England ruled the waves.
But no doubt close at hand forgotten graves
Hold bones of some of those who trod this ground —
The convicts of The Crown, and other knaves,
Who for Macquarie Harbour once were bound;
And where they’d surely hear the dreaded sound
Of the “Macquarie Cat” — that fiendish whip.
Those men who died in chains and those who drowned,
Were payments made for every well-built ship.
“Hell’s Gates” the convicts called the harbour’s mouth —
Beyond it lay the Hades of the South.

— D.N.O’Brien

Sarah Island

The Mountain Ash

Tags

Australian bush poetry, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Eucalyptus regnans, mountain ash, poem, poetry, Tasmania

Reaching for the skies,
Unfeeling, deaf, and blind.
Knowing not of life or care
Or that it is, or when or why it dies,
While those around it, of its kind,
The same indifference wear.

No greater living thing
And yet none less concerned.
Just there for others to admire;
Those on the earth and wing.
To stand until it’s burned
To ash, uncaring, in a forest fire.

The mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) is the tallest flowering plant
in the world reaching heights of 330 feet or more.
It is second only to the redwood as the tallest tree

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