Into Gippsland - Orbost - Bairnsdale

Further the trip from Canberra to Hobart, crossing Gippsland Victoria in the night. Nothing, empty rolling hills and trees and road trains.

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Nothing Really Matters.
    Burst into tears.
Beautiful.
And the children.

Thermal wing spreading 
Slow circle raptor.

Flattened tree artefacts 
Of previous weather.
Flash flood knocked 
Over down the trees.
The small river bed.

Man's calming hand
Of productive rolling
Distance.

Sapphire Coast
Cherry Lane
Old Dam Road
Yellow Pinch Dam
Cabbage Tree Creek.

Tin woodman rusted solid
Wise old timey farm
Machinery. Engine.

Pink rock face cutting
Burning orange scar
Eight hundred and fifty
Million years ago
The iron rusted out
Of the ocean
Deposited here.

Bald Hills
Gipsy Point
Sandpatch Point 
Pambula
Mallacoota
Glissando.

Clichéd looking
Fishy typecast
Matey crossing
The pub side
Of the road.

Dead fox. Clues of ocean
Gaps of the forest trees
Quarantine Bay 
Thirty thousand dollar
Fishing contest.

Constant changing sand islands
Mouth of bay river.

Two ravens shiny
Fly lazy over the highway.

Falling over porch
Verandah house
Faded peeling.

Park mocked outlet
Bored youth tedium
Rural life boredom
Idiocy. Past Bombola.

Constipated olive drab pained
Tanks burnt up strictures
Off the ground.

Timbillica dark lyre bored gully
Dreamy blue
Gray and white
Rapid change
Settling son.

Spit and instinct mortared
Ant hills dart dash hilly
Road side radiant city.
Hobble muddle this dance.

Kangaroo & wombat
Yellow warning sign
Dinted and abused
Teenaged air guns
Fifty kilometres more.

Victoria Empress of India
Queen of England, this exotic 
Land named. And Canada
And Africa and gentle they 
Lived a land without religions
A land without ownership.
Hard and even brutal but 
Never in gathered mobs 
And given weapons and told
To kill or be killed to make
Greater wealth for the already
Wealthy well to do well off. 
Not the lash nor the stock
Nor the gibbet nor the court
Nor the brothel nor the clap
Nor the bible nor the bottle.
Not even influenza. 
And so 
Defenceless gainst gammon veterans 
Of gaols and ships and wars
The brutalised the psychotic
The rational the learned 
The hypocrite the religious.
Naked against the white man
A tragedy still not acknowledged
Naught but jeers and contempt.
A nation afraid to look 
Into the mirror called history.

Farmers burning heaps.

Genoa
Mallacoota
Wilderness Coast.

The GPS says the next turn
Ain't for some 180 kilometres.

Century old trees burn
Infected injured crying out
They are weakened and so 
Fall over scattering younger
Trees levering out root balls
Exposing to the light and air.

Here the fires were more recent. 
The earth is still black. 
The trees are still.
Still whimpering in terror.
If one is quiet one can hear
The silent fear as the wind
Rustles the leaves.

Axeman's track.

Sunset stop.
Truck stop.
Truck driver coffee 
Slop shop selling bait.
And for the truck drivers
It don't have to be nice.
Just get it in ya
And back onto the road.
It is a form of rationing.
Not like the coffee 
Served up in fine china
For the lawyers
Or accountants
Or doctors
Or politicians.

A pair of eight pounders
Desert rat sandy drab
Lest e Forge 39-45
 
Xmas decoration
Road train lit up
Articulated trucks
Power hurtle highways.

Bonang
Marlo
Newmerella
Andante
The Snowy
Swan Reach.