- The air is oppressive; there isn’t a breeze...
- You’re working a passageway ‘under the trees’;
- By pushing the brush with your forearms and
knees
- Through densely-packed thickets you manage to
squeeze.
-
- You emerge from the scrub through a Hakea
hedge
- And walk through a field full of sundew and
sedge,
- Till you come to a platform that slopes to a
ledge
- To peer over the side of its vertical edge.
-
- And oh, what a sight for you scrub-scraping
knaves,
- You hard men and women and bush-bashing
braves,
- To see how this cool little streamlet behaves
- With its sassafras shadows and under-cut
caves.
-
- There are coachwoods and vines in the theatre
below
- And mosses on slippery rock surfaces grow,
- Whilst fronds in the ferneries wave to and fro
- Over flowering orchids with names I don’t
know.
-
- Come gurgling through the canyon’s underworld
gloom
- That reminded George Caley of ultimate doom,
- But don’t queue in Claustral, there’s simply
no room -
- And whose are these bones, I wonder?
- Count Strzelecki’s, I presume.
-
- Go wander the labyrinths free of a rein:
- With Bushwalker Dave you’ll go like a train,
- You’ll shout from the crags in the wind and
rain
- For the hills are alive, I need not explain.
-
- You’ll look for the way down a Bob Buck pass
- Improbable enough to be labelled a farce;
- You follow it though, you’re as bold as all
brass,
- But if you think Max was Gentle... you’re not
in his class.