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Ballad of Joyce Hill

To her family she was coy
         but truly she would be their Joy,
 a country girl from Kingaroy -
                    the fourth of eleven.
 Over hill and range she did tramp
      living in tents from camp to camp
 by the glow of a railway lamp
               and the stars in heaven.

 Along the way past Many Peaks
     swam in Splinter and Monal Creeks
 where a child a gay frolic seeks
                  in the heat of the day.
   Up on the range where it outlooks
 when not tending the campsite chooks
 she read in school her beloved books
                  dreaming of far away.

 As an older girl on horseback 
         she’d ride for miles a dusty track
 like a drover with a knapsack
          where the long trail begins.
   Up “dash it” early milking cows,
 picking cotton and feeding sows
 and shooting possums in their boughs
             to sell their bounty skins.

“O someday I’ll teach school” she said
   till she met Arthur Hill and wed 
 and bore life to her eldest, Ted,
             the first of eight to come.
   In Mt Morgan where miners drilled
 as rains came and Trotters Creek filled
 a new life on the land she’d build
               and be a wife and mum.

 But on their farm and dairy run
 “hells bells” there was work to be done
 from sunup to the setting sun
          and all must do their share.
 Through the Great Depression and war
 a boundless faith to God she swore
 and it burned in her evermore
                    in His heavenly care.

 Her hands had many mouths to feed
   and so when hungry kids did plead
 she baked the bread dough that she knead
            in the old woodfired stove.
   And with her weary frame so sprite
               late as the curlews cried at night
 she read her bible with delight
                     as it did her behove.

 In her time a digger of wells
    when the winds blew in dry hot spells
 and echoed the sound of train bells
              up and down the railway.
   A grazier, tiller, and sower,
                a painter, milker, and grower,
 a doer, thinker, and knower,
                     and a potter of clay.

 To all her far flung family
     a great-great-grandmother was she
 and like a grandmother to me
            whom I most gladly knew.
   So now when I hear the tick tock 
       and chimes of the pendulum clock
 or “tommyrot” and “poppycock”
                    I’m reminded of you.


        Written: August 2016

Copyright © Keith D Trestrail | Year Posted 2022

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