The Gold and the Rainbow Serpent

All stories have a beginning, body and an end This story was a journey that I would have to defend We left home the last day in the hot glowering sun We drove to the end of the bitumen as the journey had begun In the Outback there can be long dusty miles to travel As we drove the mystery of the journey started to unravel Charlie Dinner-plate was one of our crew mates too Who knew the land as one of the Arrernte people true Onward with permission to Oak Valley north of Ceduna town We sat in the dirt with the elders asking what would go down They agreed for us to look on their land on the area of the map It was the first hurdle in our search for the fabled gold track But Charlie warned us there was one place we couldn't go For The Dreaming legend of the Rainbow Serpent on show So we journey through the area and explored the sites we found And the task was difficult in the scorching baked rocky ground Until there could be only one place left for us on the sacred soil But Charlie told us it would mean certain death in our toil There was a long discussion until he left us there on the track And as he drove away I saw him looking one last time back I wish now I had heeded Charlie's warning call Leaving that place forever and not taken my final fall It took us five days to find the gold in the rolling hills As we staked our claim with so much gold it spills But around the last corner we saw the elders standing there In total silence they were just looking at us in a total stare I stopped the car then the chanting started through the air When the one in the middle pointed a bone at us with such care Now that was barely a month ago and I have lost it all My partners are dead from strange happenings in their fall And the gold has disappeared as my fatalistic call has begun As I sit in this cabin waiting for what to me will finally come. © Paul Warren Poetry