Long Queensland Poems

"PHOENIX: Bleeding Hearts and Blue Violets”


 

Broken Hearts bleeding red
You lie in white sheets
Turning in the crisp clean pages muddy with
Black Dogs barking in your head
They run all night chasing your tail
You twist and turn...

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The True Story

A Poem of the time, when as a 16 year old young fellow, and fresh from Blighty I spent 7 years as a Ringer in North Queensland, Australia. A Ringer is the Queensland...

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L'Assimilation – Non! Translation of Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s “Assimilation – No !” by T. Wignesan

Born Kathleen Jean Mary RUSKA on November 3, 1920, in the North Stradbroke Island, off Queensland, she was deemed as an aboriginal...

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I have this burning desire
To find old mate
I want to sit
And chat with him
Under a Gum and setting sun
About what has come
And what has passed
Times of old
Places we’ve been told
Along the wallaby track
Signs of danger
Moments...

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“In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.” Rumi





"Whypt...

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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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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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It’s Cooper’s Creek we’re crossing here, Willis said to Burke
We need to have a base camp and this creek ought to work
I’ll put it in the journal, November 1861
It’s been four months since we started...

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There’s a man I’d like you all to meet whose Aussie through and through,
From his felt hat to his R.M. boots, he ridgy didge, true blue.
He was born in Roma, Queensland, back in nineteen thirty-three
And...

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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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He was out of Woodie Wonder by the stallion Sunset Hue, 
A freak thought breeding purists, who would surely end up glue. 
For greys were so unfashionable he'd never get a start, 
But this colt...

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You were born in Clermont, Queensland on December, twenty-four, 
Away back circa eighteen sevn'ty-two. 
Edward Jones now had a fifth child, whom his dear wife Anna bore, 
Their second son and both were proud of...

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THE UNDERSTANDING 
 
[ The identity of my father's grandfather and his resting place was unknown to 
him until one day the secret was literally unearthed in Charleville . ] 
 
   
The...

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Modern migration and intermingling of races and cultures has trashed ancestry.
The world has become a mishmash, a hotch-potch
    as cultures and languages fuse, blend and meld.
Knowing your origin and roots now means...

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Sam came from Bollon on the Wallan S.W.Queensland Aus.

Sam Mc Croon came from Bollon soon
When he heard about old Galoon the Batey
 She was big an a Ox light in her sox
And she loved her...

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[ In the early 1890's, Henry Lawson tramped to Hungerford  which inspired him to 
write a short story on his reflections.  In the 1980's I was part of a team 
connecting Hungerford ...

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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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Though Australia opened up its doors and migrant families came, 
still the struggle to assimilate was tough, though, just the same. 
Exploitation in the work-force would be sadly forced on some, 
while for others isolation...

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There's little left now, Lawson, mate, of your home by the hill, 
Except, a guarding sentinel, the chimney stands there still; 
To some it's just another site, for tourists passing through, 
Perhaps they've never read...

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A cry came out of Charleville ... "Please help our bilby mate! 
Extinction is now on the cards, let's save him from this fate." 
This little Aussie battler, folks, is disappearing fast. 
Five other species...

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Every man, woman and child really admires 
\The men and women fighting the bushfires 
Some deliberately lit, the worst of all sins 
The fires roar fiercely in the strong winds 
Hundreds of square miles have...

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Oh, a motley mob of rowdy men are we
When we hit your town to go on a spree.
We’ve fleeced the worst of their wiry wool
And our canvas pockets are now brim full.

We’ve come from the...

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Aubrey Mc Govern
by Don Johnson ........
Aubrey McGovern and the Deaf & the Deefe
lived down on Cubbie on damper and beef.
The damper was easy McGovern could cook
the beef it was shady  Deaf &  Deefe...

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Ijeawale, the daughter of my youth 
Do you know the value laden in your name? 
Come close, let me tell you the truth 
So you don't have to be ashamed 
Anytime you hear the sweet...

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Rodger Beadmore
While a droving out near Bollon at about the forty mile, (1950s)
just a following sheep through the lime bushes dense. 
Moving down the stock route, a feeding all the while.
By and by shortly we...

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