ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

It is just so hard to get good tradesmen isn't it - look how our Government got gypped by these slack builders, I mean to say you would have to give them a good flogging don't you reckon?


PORT ARTHUR JAIL IS IN DECAY


The word is out. Port Arthur jail it seems is in decay
the edifice is crumbling to dust, eaten away
because disgruntled convicts mixed salt water with cement
to weaken its hold on the bricks. Released from internment
when all the walls came tumbling down, they’d find themselves set free
which was a hare brained plan I think as they were girt by sea.
And patience is a virtue – sure the time it took was long
before the walls came crumbling down the convicts were long gone.

Today the structure has been deemed by clever engineers
to be a mere ten percent acceptable by their peers.
How slack is that – can one imagine such a building farce?
Those convicts from the early days need kicking up their rrrr's.
I mean to say that really is just slack and shoddy work.
It’s only stood a short time out there on Tassie dirt.
One hundred and eighty years plus its withstood cold and rain.
I wonder if our modern homes today will do the same?

They say they need six million to repair, rebuild, restore...
they should give the job to Bob the builder, doubt he would charge more.
They say it needs a new frame now to hold the brickwork up
and Governments will not commit to buy this wonky pup.
It may be heritage listed and part of our history
those first builders should be blackballed, they were shonky as you see.
Though I’ve heard we’ve dodgy builders on the mainland still today
so I doubt anything that they do will last long anyway.


Maureen Clifford © 12/12

To be brutally honest Maureen, I couldn't care less if Port Arthur's ruins crumpled to dust and blew away on the wind. It's a monument to men's inhumanity and ignorance that we don't need. I'd rather see Port Arthur restored to the pristine wild beauty that it had before settlement. That wouldn't be hard, there's not a lot there anyway.

True Neville - but if we destroyed all the evidence of man's inhumanity to man - how would future generations ever know?

It is like the German concentration camps - the thought of them makes me sick to the stomach but today they are viewed by other people who can see for themselves the horrors and atrocities of them. I don't think they are considered in the light of memorials, or anything that is to be proud of but rather a page or time capsule as it were into a bloody history. Lest we forget.

Good point Maureen.

Crumbling a bit late to do the saboteurs any good Maureen.

We have to know where we came from before we can hope to know where we are going.



Bob

Love the poem and the sentiments. No Neville there is a great deal at Port Arthur as regrettable as it is.
I am currently watching some major renovations being carried out on the house next to mine and it is making me cringe to see the lack of tradesmanship and building skills employed by builders today.
I worked alongside an old time carpenter and builder when we built our second weekender about twenty five years ago and I know that he would walk of the job next door and refuse to put his name to it. However that is how things are done these days and deemed to be acceptable.