(header photographs by Harry Waite 1912-2011)

The Myth of the Sacred Brumby

 

 

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Contents

Contacts


In The Under World

In the under world I like to roam,
Where the stone is eroded like honeycomb
And the leaf-tailed gecko makes its home.

 


Under and over the ledges I pry
Where stelae at every angle lie
And faces of sphinxes stare at the sky.

In this under world the boulders are
Like temple stones in deserts afar
Fallen from the perpendicular.

Here, beneath the cliff inclined,
I weave where vines are intertwined,
Looking for whatever I happen to find.

As close to the lip of a ledge I go
I look through the trees which closely grow,
Picture framing the coast below

Where palm trees over the forest stand
And the bluest of oceans meets the land
On a golden finger nail of sand.
 
Beneath me are ledges; above me are walls
Where coral ferns clothe the rock like shawls
Hanging where the seepage water falls,
 
Where ferns and orchids on boulders spread
And filtered beams of light are shed
Through the fig tree branches overhead.

Here are the tracks the wild dog stamped
On the floor of the cave where he tramped,
And here’s where the bushland people camped.

Under the overhang’s ironstone crust
In sand that has gathered, smelling like must,
Ant-lion craters pit the dust.

Here is a scat with fragments of bone,
Here is where time has been left alone,
Where life crawled out from under a stone.

Here is the dust of thousands of years
With tracks of lizards imprinted, and here’s
The stone where the hunters sharpened their spears:

The hunters who slept in the sheltering lee
Of the cliff that, towering over me,
Watches impassively over the sea.
 
Colin Gibson
December 2006
The Call

 

The South Coast is a calling me; calling soft and low.
Whispering seductively of places that I know.
Down by the beach at Garie, the sea’s alive with light,
Ah! how I’d love to pitch my tent and camp there for the night!

Although the town around me, miserable with cold and rain
Shrieks aloud, incessantly, of soul-destroying pain,
Far away from sunlit beaches, a voice above the din
Calls: “Come away my brother, come and wander with your kin.”

Within my heart are ringing, singing, morning, night and day,
Melodies in colour, symphonies in gold and grey.
Green brilliance in the water, lilac shadows on the sand,
Purple skylines turning orange, blending with the clouds and land.

From the South Coast comes a calling, calling; calling down the wind,
Voices of the murm’ring wavelets, known only to their kind:
From Garie, Wattamolla, Burning Palms, oh dear! oh me!
I hear their voices calling – I must go forth and see!
 
Roy Davies
1918
from "Sing With The Wind"