(header photographs by Harry Waite 1912-2011)

The Myth of the Sacred Brumby

 

 

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From “The West Wind and other verses for the 
Tasmanian Bush”
Published by The Tasmanian Wilderness Foundation1980.
South-West Blues
Tasmania Born
 
Even 'the our bodies walk the same familiar street
I cannot help the feeling that our minds will never meet
For I'm on another pathway that your eyes will never see
And the wilderness you cannot share with me
 
If you climb the highest hills that rise within the West
You'll see all the land we own and you will feel the test
For those mountains are for all the world, belonging to the free
But you've often said "What worthless property!"
 
While you continue ever searching, for a management plan
I dream of an awakening and hope you really can
There'll be no use in saying sorry; it will be too late
‘Tho the world will be waiting with their dollars at the gate
 
Every time we meet within the halls of Hobart Town
We swear we'll listen to your point, but not without a frown
For how can we cross your roads and dams and find the peace we need ?
Our wilderness is vanishing in face of human greed
 
When you abandon the wilderness the race becomes estranged
Don’t be surprised if you discover things are rearranged
For when you've watched a fire flickering a heaters not the same
And in the grate no embers will remain
 
When I take a silent walk along a lonely beach
Far across the buttongrass lies a mountain within reach
Someday I'I1 take you to its height and let you really see
Guess I'I1 take the soonest opportunity
 
Now I'm the one who’s traveling on but I'11 not go unprepared
I'll bandage up my faith in man and no one will see I'm scarred
For you're on a concrete pathway where once the forest grew
And the wilderness cannot survive your view.
 
Helen Gee
From "The West Wind and Other Verses for the Tasmanian Bush"
Published by The Tasmanian Wilderness Foundation.

 

 
Now come all ye free and thinking folk
Come and join the fight that we are waging
Fight the vandal's hand, that destroys our land
And is all our country re-arranging
 
Oh they plan a dam 'cross the Franklin's course
To crush and tame that last wild river
Build a concrete wall, drown the valleys all
And our wondrous gorge is gone for ever
 
They will build their roads and their pylons tall
Leaving ugly scars with their creation
Kill a million trees, drown ten million bushes
Saying "Progress is their vindication"
 
Now you fought them once on Lake Pedder's shore
And we won too late to save her beaches
Bur the fight was just, and again we must
Fight to save the Franklin's wildest reaches
 
Oh the bureaucrats say we must have power
Bur it’s just themselves they’re justifying
Build another lake, then increase the take
And they'll never mind the Franklin dying
 
Bur fight we will, come and join our band
That Franklin's surge shall run forever
If you really care, then come do your share
And we'll save the mighty Franklin River.
 
Peter and Shirley Storey
From "The West Wind and Other Verses for the Tasmanian Bush"
Tasmanian Wilderness Society, 1980.
 
My Land is just being born
On natures’ spreading robe;
The victim of many a bureaucratic probe
The forest surgeon's knife cuts deep
On her mountain slopes so steep.
 
While I pace the gorges’ forest floor
With slowly mounting fears,
Down her rugged slopes
Run streams, like angered tears.
 
When my back is bent and I am old,
Will my descendants sit around
And ask for stories to be told?
Will I talk of treasures they have never seen?
Will drift into the dreamland of what might have been?
 
Perhaps, by chance, the power of pen
Will beat the lust for gold
And save Tasmania's treasures
That her birthright holds.
 
John Reed
From "The West Wind and Other Verses for the Tasmanian Bush"
Tasmanian Wilderness Society, 1980.

 

 

The town lies tight in the
Strict order of ugliness,
Neat boxes of the mill fail to
smile in the sullen light,
On the edge of the harbour, away
from the town, is an alien
contrivance of man.
The mincer of the spirit of the land
In dock is a black ship with some
odd Japanese name
on its black stern, memory
of its home,
The boat is stealing the land's
soul to the scream of yellow
monsters.. .
Yet the townsfolk feel nothing
The land is raped and few
care -- why should they!
For they don't belong in this
awkward land of marsupial and Eucalypt.
Those who 'care' are coprophagans
Eating the callous carnage,
They wipe their crocodile tears away
with another paper hanky.
The black boat's belly eats the
ectoplasm and is never full
Always another confused vessel
to replace the last.
The bastard inhabitant rapes the
blue shimmering hills
The spirit is quelled -
To be thrown on the garbage
heaps of the world as a
tribute to man's greatness
 
The mound of mutilated trees
is yellow and dune-like to
those who don't care
Not a heap of slaughter and
despair.
The motors roar and another
tree dies
The soul screams...
The land writhes...
Yet no one hears ...
The land is forgotten and forlorn.
 
David Bowman
From "The West Wind and Other Verses for the Tasmanian Bush"
Tasmanian Wilderness Society, 1980.