Incorrigible

Tags

Australian convicts, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Bush Poetry, Cat of nine tails, Formal poetry, Incorrigible convicts, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, Van Diemen's Land

𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞

He heads for hell beneath the surging sails;
One soul of tens of thousands bound in ships
East-driven by the roaring forties gales.
His gruel consumed, a brackish brew he sips —
Stares at the deck, and licks his leathered lips.
Sad hopeless thoughts beat in his beaten brain,
As with cold calloused hands his head he grips.
Perhaps he stole a pound of precious grain,
A handkerchief, a coin, a rich man’s cane.
Perhaps he is a villain through and through,
And so deserves this cruel unnatural pain,
Or maybe he is not — whichever’s true,
He’s landed on the wrong side of the law.
He’s branded by the cat for evermore.

— 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

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