ASH WEDNESDAY
Words about Ash Wednesday scarce describe it’s fear or Hell.
TV film comes closer, but cannot convey the smell
of properties and nature as they disappeared in smoke,
burnt, because some morons treated fire as a joke.
Faces of those people who passed through Akunah Park
on that fatal Wednesday night of helplessness in dark
I never will forget, nor stories of their hurried flights,
and neither will the volunteers who gave their help those nights.
Total desecration burned across the southern states
and it touched a part inside us, so we gave to help our mates.
Recordings of infernos equal days spent down in Hell,
but I question for the future have we learned our lesson well?
Donations from Australia promised quick relief from tears,
but slow administration seemed to victims dragging years.
The subsequent confusion from communication lack
must be now eliminated, and made safe from like attack.
Survival teaches answers, from experience we learn.
Then, no precedent for action could encompass such a burn.
Are the Coroner’s enquiries, and the findings of our Courts
powerful enough to make us change our acts and thoughts?
HISTORICAL DUMPING GROUND
CHORUS
When you add pollution to the loss of history,
this unpleasant situation will reflect on you and me.
Australia as a country isn’t really very old.
The world began to notice us because of wool and gold.
We don’t have that much history we can afford to waste,
and every facet which we lose creates a bitter taste.
Way back in 1852 the government decreed
that land for Police Paddocks was a most important need.
A Depot was created, a breeding stud arranged
and 80 years of history passed until decisions changed.
Now the Police Paddocks are an ugly plot of ground
and any sign of history no longer can be found.
Instead of open paddocks, and big horses in the grass,
there’s dumped and burnt car bodies, cans, and lots of broken glass.
The land is nicely placed to be a top Historic Park.
Instead, the rubbish dumpers add pollution after dark.
In judgement in the future, partly guilty we’ll be found
“The eighties world has left us this Historic Dumping Ground”.
ON MOUNT SAMARIA
Noel and I went driving
on Mount Samaria.
A nice cool place to take a drive
and see bush animals still alive
on Mount Samaria.
Climbing up a goat track
on Mount Samaria
we saw a wombat in the lights
three of us got equal frights
that was only one of the sights
on Mount Samaria.
The track was steep and rough
on Mount Samaria
a wallaby jumped across the way
and a kangaroo, tall and grey
a big red fox went slinking away
it’s safer for them at night, not day
on Mount Samaria.
It’s not a sanctuary
on Mount Samaria
but away up high the rock and tree
gives them natural sanctuary
as land’s developed there will be
few remaining places to see
our natural animals running free
like Mount Samaria.
We need more Mount Samarias.
OPENING DAY
Darkness fading into light, streaks of colour hinting through, night gone from a cloudless sky, pale and brighter solid blue.
The moon is down, an orb of gold, horizon tinted faintly bright.
The colours gone, the sun rides high, a fresh new world is clothed in light.
Birds are long since winging on, wood-ducks slipping smoothly by,
moorhen, wild geese, gulls and black terns, plovers, honkers, way up high.
Swamp frogs croaking, loudly noisy, swans move out into the bay; men are yelling,
guns are banging for a limit bag on Opening Day.
THE OYSTER’S REVENGE
It’s about time that it happened, in fact, it’s overdue that the seafood population took revenge on me and you.
All those tasty little oysters once made up a fancy plan –
“A new pollution virus, and we’ll give it back to Man”.
There are oysters grown by farmers in plots along the beach
where pollution from the factories takes the shortest path to reach.
Then it filters to the bottom where all the seafoods grow,
and they have to live amongst it for no other way they know.
Till a Man comes with a basket, manufactures them for food
and they end up on our table where they look and smell so good.
And therefore, indirectly, do we eat our progress waste –
the result, our own pollution, has a just and bitter taste.
POLLUTION
Our rivers are polluted and the rocks are coated blue
from the oil upon the waters and the rusting chassis too.
Our river banks were pretty once. They aren’t any more as pollution kills our water on its way down to the shore.
OUR LOCAL POLLUTION, NO CLEARCUT SOLUTION.
Australia’s polluted and the land is littered brown,
and red and white from chickens, and from alloy cans tossed down.
Sunset’s coloured blood-red; the late day sky is grey
where the early-morning traffic fumes have yet to blow away.
AUSTRALIAN POLLUTION, NO DEFINITE SOLUTION.
The surface is polluted, of the world in which we grow,
as the oil-spills kill off birdlife and the beaches that we know.
Yet Technology and Science have improved the human race
and with multi-billion dollars even put men out in space.
WORLD-WIDE POLLUTION, THERE SEEMS NO SOLUTION.
Are we mindless of the problems we create here every day?
When pollution from our progress and our motors blows away
and it comes back down as fall-out -we are equally to blame.
Litter – airborne, tossed out, man-made, it’s pollution just the same.
WE MAKE THE POLLUTION – WE ARE OUR SOLUTION.
IN THE TREES
The house in which I live is in the trees
I’ve been here just six years among the trees
Looking out the front between the trees
a mountain high appears above the trees.
There’s a restaurant on top (they cleared the trees)
with a bitumen car-park. (I’d rather trees).
When lights go on at night seen through the trees
there’s fantasy in dark all in the trees
and in summer, harsh appear. (Do lights burn trees?).
With winter comes the clouds to hide the trees
eerie when lights disappear as part of trees
then the pinkish clouded lights (you can’t see trees)
float in space most ethereal in clouded trees
like a modernised “Dream Time” complete with trees.
Just like time is stopped, unreal, those magic trees.
