The monaro, drought 2006

Recently, some photos I took in the Monaro region of NSW in 2006 have been coming back to me - I suppose because the header image in this new blog has an image I also took in the Monaro.

The drought was 10 years old in 2006. Here are some images:



My poem seven crows was influenced by driving around Monaro dirt roads at that time, to take photos, as were some small paintings.

seven crows

seven crows inhabiting the night
seek the taste of black meat

harry the river of indifference
that flows like cold lava from the south

with the crows

from the bleached stalks and dry lands
to gloat

having driven the inhabitants
who were once keen farmers

to muttering

shamed
that others may look at their blighted lands
and see their state of reduction

crying
do you want this bloody land
you can buy it from me

To finish, Judith Wright's poem The Cicadas starts out:

On yellow days in summer when the earth
presses like hands hardening the sown earth
into stillness, when after sunrise birds fall quiet
and streams sink in their beds and in silence meet...

More mystery bay

Gulaga

Descending Gulaga (Mount Dromedary) on the New South Wales far south coast. This was on our February trip to Mystery Bay and around.

Short article on Gulaga.

From my poem blue boat on a stormy sea:

...feeling the chill, descended
encountering things of a black shiny nature –

wriggling leaches
that we knocked from our shoes
and a snake that turned its back
slipped away into cover

Mystery bay

In February we spent ten days at Mystery Bay on the New South Wales far south coast. It's a beautiful area and I found writing there very pleasurable. Here's an evening image taken from the cottage we stayed in.

A poem that resulted:

the little ones

a flock
of tight knots

brown
gerygones

drubbing on
lathes of the decking

like rubber bullets
ricocheting

little fists
of children

each vector
of forces

arriving and
then leaving

empty

not as it was
before they came

but changed,
a stage

whereon the piece
took place

and the little
ones

moved on

And I find the image below a very hopeful one - approaching a rise on an open track, a soulful lifting and sense of space. The black cockatoos love this area, swaying in the banksias and strafing in flocks. Near the headland north of Mystery Bay, on the way to Corunna Lake.