(header photographs by Harry Waite 1912-2011)

The Myth of the Sacred Brumby

 

 

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Contents

Contacts


Forest Echoes and Other verses for the Tasmanian Bush

published by the East Coast of Tasmania Branch of The Wilderness Society, 1988

 

Sir John Falls, Gordon River 1984 

 

Doorknock in the Wilderness

This is a quiet land again.
In the distant hills
A bird calls its ecstasy
Across the dawn.

Drops of water fall from the Huon pine--
Its weathered branches cast out Over the old river.
The ripple on the reflection draws the eye

Across every shade of green
Down to a perfect sky.
Gone now, from this timeless valley,
Are the groaning machines of men,
Gone are the songs and chants
Of the forest people,
And Silence, most patient of monarchs,
Gathers again her wild dominions.

Unbelievably, this is a quiet land again.

Adam Croser


Greenies


Above leathered leggings Hitler screamed
To shouting stiff-armed thousands in the square;
Stalin sternly watched from thick, heavy woollen coat
The rumbling tanks and war machines;
Behind his fat cigar and and hours of polished verbiage
Churchill raised the passions to oppose and kill

New leaders are in our street and screens
They march in jeans and jumpers, bare and sandal-footed
Quiet, ragged columns Of people, dogs and prams
To tell of bombs, of forests lost and dams that should not be.
Theirs is the fragile strength of ever-sprouting truth
The green shoot that breaks but grows anew
And again and again as the sap rises and the light is seen

Somehow they seem more in nature's tune
Than leathered leggings, tanks or fat cigars.
And as I watch the news at night
Their young faces strongly plead 'follow the path we lead'

Eddie Smith,
Mitchell Cottage 1983



All keyed-up about the wild rivers
NO DAMS SAVE THE RIVERS
Door knocking. Handing out car stickers
Someone said: "To Hell with the Franklin
What's it all--I mean
the sooner there's a bitumen road
so's we all can see--"


Blind mad-controlling his rage
he didn't notice the cement frog squatting
on the lawn and stubbed his toe.
Another--a dear old face-all smiles
"Wilderness is nice and necessary."
Another said: "It should all go."

After three hours of being pleasant
(They had told him : At all times be polite)
he drove down to the coast
and sat in a clump of Boobyallas
to feel the salt wind blow
and watch the waves unbuttoning on the sand.

There was no wind
and the sea and the sand were stained red
from effluent from the Pigment factory
so he lay down on the dune
and went to sleep
and dreamed
he was on a bloody doorknock
in the wilderness.

Barney Roberts