narratorAUSTRALIA Volume Three
Oh my, sic a burst o’ pleasure,
ma wee wee rid rid bloomin’ treasure.
Say juicy say sparklin’ ma mooth foo o’ joy,
wunnerful, exotic, aw ma senses yea do employ.
Thank yea, thank yea ma wee rid rid friend,
yer the greatest, aye I’ll nae pretend.
Tull next year, tull wee meet again,
whin I’ll listen tae yer song o’ sweet refrain.
A song o’ taste an’ no o’ sound,
o’ tasting magic from aw Cherries abound.
Rest now yer gentle parent tree,
an’ please bloom anither day fur me tae see.
Monday 24 June 2013
The Storm
Rachel Branscombe
Quakers Hill, NSW
The storm is coming
The day when nothing will matter
When troubles will be gone and war will be history
The storm is coming
Make sure you are prepared
it will come with no warning.
No one will know the day of its destruction
The storm is coming
Feel its wrath
Everything you do now will be meaningless
Everything sticks and nothing is forgotten
The day of judgement is at hand
The storm is coming
Have you taken heed?
Have you changed your ways?
Have seen the errors you have made?
Have you heard the sound of pain you have caused?
The storm is coming and those who don’t take heed will fall.
The storm is coming
It will be unavoidable
be prepared and be afraid
Tuesday 25 June 2013
Loneliness
Felicity Lynch
Katoomba, NSW
For eight days there had been
Songs and laughter
Great food, comfort of
Family
Now there is only
My own heartbeat
Nothing looks so lonely
As the little blue table
On the lawn
With one chair drawn up to it
Wednesday 26 June 2013
A Porpoise Life
Henry Johnston
Rozelle, NSW
I tolerated the canings, but the hunger near drove me mad. Endless cold watery rations could not nourish the colourless chrysalis emerging from my rickety child’s frame. Hunger stalked my listless days and haunted my cold, dark nights. Proximity to the sea with the tang of brine at high tide and the reek of mud at its ebb, sharpened this famishment which scraped at the dry surface of my grizzled innards. This daily pang prodded recklessness that near drove me from the orphanage and forever out of the sight of the holy biddies.
It was simple enough to do a runner and a wolfish instinct told me to stay close to the shore where I knew I’d get a feed.
I spent my first days cadging bits of line from old men fishing at a local pier. I watched them bait their hooks with green weed and snag a half dozen fat, grunting black fish, setting one aside, and cutting into strips of bait for a bigger catch. By day’s end a swag of ‘grunters’, leather jacket, bream, mullet and gar fish, had all been cleaned and gutted, sizzled and roasted over a small, hot driftwood fire. The searing white flesh burnt my tongue and the roof of my mouth, but I sucked every bone and swallowed every morsel then licked my hands and fingers clean.
I learnt how to tie a dropper loop, an eye crosser, an improved clinch, the nail knot and the offshore swivel. I rolled cadged tobacco into squares of old, bleached newspaper and vomited after my first and last drag on a fast burning ‘durrie’. The fishermen laughed until tears ran down their cheeks, and cursed amiably as they recounted my inexperience. Yet I felt comfortable with these men who did not ask questions of me or of each other, and shared the bounty of the sea in a knowing silence honed by years of watching for the slightest twitch on a line.
The eldest of the group guided me toward a sailor’s life. The best way to beat the coppers he said—who must come looking for me—is to hop a ship as a cabin boy.
He scrawled a note to a Bo’sun friend serving aboard the SS Koolama hauling freight and passengers to ports along the Western Australian coast, thus with five shillings in my pocket raised at a whip around, I set off for Fremantle and my first stint aboard ship.
I found the red-faced Bo’sun at a sailors’ pub in a narrow lane amidst the dusty clapboard docks of Fremantle. He scanned the words of the note with blood-shot rheumy eyes and a blast of beery breath harrumphed a short-lived tolerance of my unwelcome interruption to his daylong bender.
‘Can you speel puds?’ he slurred.
‘Is the pope a Catholic?’ I shot back, my voice breaking somewhere between falsetto and bass.
‘Watch out for the younger deck hands because they’ll beat your smart arse right off your skinny backside.’ Then with a haughty call to the barmaid for a square of writing paper, and with a near perfect copperplate hand, the Bo’sun inscribed a letter of introduction to the Koolama’s purser, recommending me as a kitchen hand as far as Broome, commencing on the next high tide departure.
I found the Koolama swathed in a swirl of coal smoke and wheat dust moored at a wharf patrolled by Aboriginal stockmen sitting aside rangy brumbies and geeing-up wide-eyed terrified cattle that clattered down to the dockside and on to their final terrified moments at a local abattoir.
Boarding proved easier than I had imagined thanks to the letter of introduction. Years later I learnt the very same Bo’sun recruited hundreds of poor bastards like me as cheap labour to work the coastal run.
I fought my way up the gangplank, dodging scurrying porters, sailors and deckhands. I noticed a boy about my age, slouching near where the gangplank intersected the deck.
‘I’m looking for the purser,’ I said, shifting my stare downward to his white pumps.
‘Follow me,’ he said, before asking my name.
‘Jimmy Coracle,’ I replied, putting out my hand toward this freckle-faced redhead who stood at least an inch taller than I did.
‘Sidney Calder. Glad to meet you. Let’s get your kit.’ Sid and I remained friends to the last day of Aratus, and from this first meeting I prized his shrewdness and judgement.
Sid pointed toward the pennants snapping and crackling on the sloops and steamers. Several from the Dutch East Indies sat bound bow and stern to Portuguese tramps from Timor and camouflaged painted Australian and American warships. Each ship, thus tethered, provided a causeway of convenience to bent-back stevedores who crossed from deck to deck, loading and unloading each vessel in their turn.
Fear of the advancing Japanese panicked the skippers of the Greek-owned pearling fleets moored abeam of the bigger, iron ships. Several displayed the Gorgon Head of Barrow Island on their mainsheets, others the snub-fin porpoise of Broome. Each insignia defined the rival clans of divers and the Hellenic families who named their pearl grounds after fabled heroes, Orthrus, Maenad, Eurytion, Urania, Chrysaor andDionysus.
The purser took my letter and stamped the crest of the Koolama’s owners on it, then printed out the words ‘full kit, kitchen hand, whites and apron, canvas shoes and hammock’ and the date 12 January 1942. Thus with folded contract in hand, my childhood of 13 years lapsed and my life at sea began.
Thursday 27 June 2013
When There Are Two Inside Of One
Armin Boko
Lake Heights, NSW
When bayonet up
the Hard one hollers:
‘Chaaargeee in!, kill the Hun,’
while the Softy petrified
inside browned uniform
declares it’s bedlam.
When the Hard one demands:
‘Strangle the cheating bitch,
an eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a bloody tooth,’ –
but Softy refuses, ‘Love is blind,
turn the other cheek’;
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When the soft one overcome
with full tummy guilt remorse
donates to walking African corpse
while the hard nosed one claims:
‘It’s too late, can’t you see St Joe Blow,
for them all hope is lost.’
Dichotomy, split personality,
psychoanalysis?, no, no and no,
does it not prove though
even the Almighty Father
in the Heavens above
can botch up a design job?
Friday 28 June 2013
These Made Me
Winsome Smith
Lithgow, NSW
I am a dusty hometown, the heat, the drought,
The benediction that comes with rain.
I am the lover who turned his back
Leaving puzzled despair and pain.
I am the child I gave away
To protect from society’s ‘talk’.
I am the tang of gum leaves, the rock lily’s strength,
The carpet of grass on which I walk.
I am a daughter’s smile, a grandchild’s kiss,
A friend’s embrace, a brother’s grin.
I am books and poetry, myth and fable,
Tradition, heritage, a yarn to spin.
I am those who gave me a world of dreams-
Bergman, Gable, Rogers, Astaire.
I am the man with a laugh on his lips
Who kissed me and whispered ‘I care’.
I am music and laughter and I am wine,
An impulsive kiss, a longing sigh.
I am city lights and tender nights –
The enduring ache of a last goodbye.
Saturday 29 June 2013