Long Outback(a) Poems

I believed that I was rural … that I lived in country style,
where the city was close handy … that big distance was a mile.
Trains and buses ferried daily; a freeway ran close by …
comforts...

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I’ve unfurled the Southern Cross tonight and put it
On the wall, and as I gazed the longest while.. I thought I heard the
dingo’s call?  It couldn’t be as all
Round me were the sounds of...

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I’d never been outside Victoria except once on the Murray,
where we fished for near a week only giving carp some curry,
but of course that was my highlight going on that camping trip.
I talked so much...

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The Old Prospector, The Crazy Old Fool

Folks said that nasty fool is a damn old bat
times the bastard knows not where he is at
Rumor is he lives in shame for murdering a man
eats lizards and...

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Mine gerund farming, tilling, and harvesting illogical weltanschauung

Twas accursed destiny
since birth (maybe coded in
deoxyribonucleic acid  
since time immemorial) alas and alack
nascent emasculation abominable barrack
emergent deus ex machina,
one common Joe biden his time
for no particular
rhyme...

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If ever there’s a campfire, rekindled as the sun goes down,
where ghosts of articulated writers, return and gather ‘round;
raise their glasses to a toast to commemorate their rhyme,
I wish that I could be there if...

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‘Davo’ rang me up, ‘bout a month ago,
		To travel with him on a trip,
		Way up north to Glenora station,
		So he can search through Harry’s tip.
		‘Davo’ you see has a hobby,
		Collecting bottles, some worth more than...

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A workmate friend of my sister; Donella was her name,
was asking questions about snakes and how she felt the shame
of murderers who kill them off; ‘They’re God’s creatures too you know’,
but she had then admitted...

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From England's dark blackout
We came to these shores
I and my siblings
In refuge from war.
How enchanted we were
With all we saw.

First Sydney's fine harbour
And her bridge of one span
Then the azure blue sea
The long beaches of...

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“Gotta’ ‘git’ ‘im!” Followed the howl of death.
His cigarette burnt brighter, when he sucked another breath.
“Will I get the gun and spotlight?” I asked rising from my chair.
“Nar’, no sense!” the ‘old man’ said. “He...

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My aunty Gerty Gribble was a true blue pioneer 
as she and husband Harold ran a place called 'Bendemere'. 
Two dinkum Aussie battlers, who had given their life's blood 
to fifty years of toiling on...

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Wheels turning, churning, fighting for a grip
mud oozing, clinging, sucking  for purchase
rivers flooding their banks, water everywhere
trucks fighting trying to get through and deliver 
their precious cargos that are desperately awaited
sometimes gasoline or much...

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"Black Molasses"



Black Molasses 
holds to ransom 
footprints 
sucked into 
Tropic of Capricorn mud
as bushfires bleed
sugar from cane
like molten glucose 
shot into the veins
of Mother Earth gone all
libertine sour 
like Lemon Grass
crushed and burnt 
acrid smoke...

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The little pygmy named Pixie Poggly was quirky queenly quaintly and quickly, but rarely ever really did much can't you see.

Until one day, a raunchy rascal quaintly and shrewdly, Skinny and slippery that he was,...

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I was perched upon a wooden bench beneath a bottle tree 
when this worn out wiry ringer stopped to rest his gammy knee. 
I’d been touring through the outback and had sought to sit a...

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If you've lived in outback Queensland just as I have,
you must've faced at times the scourge of drought. 
You'd have watched the senseless dying of your livestock
and felt completely drained and numb no doubt.
Did you...

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All things you have made fine      in their season
the tendernesses of Love   the razor of our reason
hollowed out the canyons    where the waters fall
celestial lights...

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Sending the tending to an unfriended ending,
 yet somehow suspending from rending a newly offending recommending.
Logotype monotype linotype,
overripe stereotype,
 teletyped an unripe heliotype. 
Guttersnipe snipe,
 stipe snipe ripe,
 a wipe type a tripe, 
unleash a...

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The Martin family lived in a rented house across from us,
and some of the kids were forced to sleep in a converted bus.
There were thirteen kids ‘hell raising’; every one I got to know,
but the...

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In a land of endless saltbush stretching miles across the plains
Of western New South Wales where it rarely ever rains,
And the temperature is searing on a soil that's living hell,
Where bleaching bones remind you of...

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Once there was dingo, rabidly mad as he could be
who thought he was a Bruce of a man by how he spoke
But no man would call him their 'mate,' for you see...
he was a mongrel...

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Can you hear the distant echo of the 
hauntingdidgeridoo,                          ...

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Down a runway skybound
to cross a continent, 
see from a window
a city fall away
with bright beads 
strung along a coast,
then turning inland, 
clumped townships 
shrinking to solitary lights
sunk far apart
into hours
of featureless dark. 

Disconnected
from the...

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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...

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There was a Ringer in the Basalt, Tiger Davis was his name
As an acrobatic stockman, he was gifted with some fame
On the station quite a hero, but a maniac in town
He didn't win too many,...

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