ABPA — The Australian Bush Poets Association Inc.

Storytellers like Jack ...

© Brenda Joy

Winner, 2025 Betty Olle Poetry Award, Kyabram, Victoria.

Into routines of set medications
to help eke out our latter life stage,
to the pains and imposed limitations,
to regrets and frustrations of age,
came a yarn-spinning, poet narrator
who spread joy where depression had been.
‘Happy hour’ with this graphic relator,
brought delight to our nursing home scene.

Nearly all of us came from the city
with its traffic, congestion and noise.
We’d not known of the life – more’s the pity –
that an outback Australian enjoys.
Whereas Jack had been ever the rover
and his years had been spent way out west,
as a station hand, stockman or drover
to fulfil his adventurous quest.

So his stories were rainbow-hued bridges
to a land we knew little about –
sweeping plains, quartz conglomerate ridges
prone to windstorms and flooding and drought,
where the sky and horizon are blending
and the parched river courses cut deep
and the mirage of dreams is unending
where the ghosts of millennia sleep.

From a great northern beef cattle holding
to the head of a rail down the track,
droving exploits were ever unfolding
through the poetic magic of Jack.
And his eyes would light up when recalling
youthful days circling cattle around.
With his vivid accounts so enthralling
you were there with the hoof-treading pound.

     “After sun-blistered days in the saddle
     earned reward of the cook-up at night,
     camaraderie’s banter would straddle
     dawdled hours in the lunar lit light.
     And when coals of the fire turned to embers,
     if your turn came to guard the taut throng,
     then the loss that the lover remembers,
     would come back through the night-watcher’s song...

     “Ever keeping alert, ever heeding,
     ever tuned to the low moaning throb,
     charged to stop restless beasts from stampeding
     or avert dingo threats to      he mob...
     when you’re hundreds of miles from a station
     then the ‘night horses’ skilled in their role
     would provide a sure-footed salvation
     if the cattle rushed out of control.

     “At last gossamer mist would come creeping
     as the bells and chains heralded dawn,
     when the gem-spangled stars took to sleeping
     and the darkness gave way to the morn,
     so the camp would awake to preparing
     for the next gruelling stage of the course,
     for the droving relied on the sharing
     in each part played by Human and Horse.”

Vivid stories commanded attention.
We were focussed on pleasure not pain,
thus we rose to a higher dimension
where our problems were less of a strain.
There is little doubt Jack was a gifted
entertainer. He shone a new light
on our twilight world. We were uplifted
by his joy and our spirits took flight.

I’d asked Jack if he ever felt saddened
that the life he had known couldn’t last
but he’d said in his heart he was gladdened
for this colourful phase of his past,
where he’d known the uniqueness of living
with a freedom beyond all compare.
In return he gave thanks to be giving
back to life through the tales he could share.

................................................

Pioneers from Jack’s bold generation
came from different parts of the earth.
Drives took courage and team dedication
and each ‘man’ had to prove of his worth.
Though the road trains have long taken over
from the days of the ‘plant’ and the pack,
yet the feats of the horse and the drover,
echoed on through dream weavers like Jack.

He was part of the band of old-timers,
who helped bring the vast outback alive,
now historians, songsters and rhymers
are ensuring their annals survive.
Our young nation has need of traditions
to know how our identity grew.
Storytelling and art exhibitions,
re-create what forerunners went through.

Bygone overland wanderers’ stories,
from the rim of the desert’s expanse,
conjure legends of heroes and glories
that evoke a mystique and romance.
In the spirit of Waltzing Matilda,
those who roved out-reach tracks are a part
of our heritage. They have instilled a
lasting pride in our national heart.


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