HARRY

Harry was a gentleman street-sweeper

whom I knew years ago 

when just a young man -

Harry Hollerhead.

He was a small man

with large hands

and a large nose,

that I had often seen

his large wife kiss

and pat affectionately.

 

With his large hard broom

and yellow wheel-barrow

Harry kept the streets

of the city immaculate,

while also greeting passers-by

with such warmth and friendship

as if the streets were his –

which, in a way, they were.

 

It was some decades later

that an artist friend

exhibited for sale

a sketch he had made

as a young man –

a street sweeper who had captivated him

with his charm and style.

 

Instantly I recognised him,

Harry – Harry Hollerhead.

 

Harry has long gone now

but his portrait

still hangs on my wall,

a reminder of

what matters in life

and how we respect

and relate to others.

Harry, as sketched by

artist Gordon Harral

and hanging on our wall.

 

Change

The breeze is fretful today,
typical of early Spring,
sunburst from drifting clouds,
and I sit musing
of winter gone,
hot summer days to come,
red dust stirring on the wind,
the dry land baking in the sun.

THE BUSH TRACK NORTH

The bush track north still calls
with its endless gibber plains
and bull-dust,
punctuated by the occasional ridge
of red sand hills,
or a dry creek bed,
or rock outcrop,
or a desert mountain range,
thousands of years old
from before human habitation.

I’ve known and loved
the inland desert country
all my life it seems,
though interspersed
with periods of
rural and urban living.

For some time now,
I’ve said the age of eighty
would be my last bush trip.
This was to have been the year,
but plans change.
“Covid” has intervened
with closed state borders
and travel restrictions.

I was preparing “Henry”,
my trusted off-road vehicle,
for the opening of state borders,
when a brain seizure occurred,
from an invasive melanoma.
Successful neurosurgery
and now other treatment
has followed.
I am blessed, still here,
treasuring every moment
of the life that I have left.

“Henry” has a new owner,
who has fallen in love with him.
He will still go bush,
but no more bush travel for me;
(no driving at all for some months, if ever).
The bush track north must ripen to
a rich and treasured memory.

On a rainy day at Laura

 

Succulent flowers from a pot on or back veranda at Laura,

drawn as a diversion on a rainy day.

OLD MAC

Lean, 

a shock of greying hair,

eyes as clear as the mid-day sun,

a hand so steady

that he could smoke a cigarette

down to its butt, unstubbed.

“Old Mac”.

 

I had known of him

since childhood,

when my father had

told us of

this legendary Scotsman

he had met out bush.

 

Some twenty years later,

back in the bush myself,

Mac was still there,

true to my father’s description.

“Old Mac”.

 

Engaged initially

to care for indigenous groups

at risk from atomic testing,

he had continued on

as consultant, adviser, friend,

to the old men of the desert.

 

Sometimes you would hear

that he was coming –

sometimes not.

Mostly he would just appear

out of the desert,

stay for a few days

and then move on.

 

At times,

he would visit for a meal,

but never to stay,

always sleeping

in the back of his truck –

his “boudoir”.

 

Eventually

retirement came, and death -

with plans for

Mac’s ashes to be scattered

by a bush cleric,

in the land where

he had lived and worked for so long .

 

But fate

or perhaps Mac

prevailed.

A shoe-box of ashes,

an elusive cleric,

a rugged bush vehicle,

and a rough bush track

found  Mac

scattering himself - 

“Old Mac”.