The audio will be available from the RN front page from Nov 16 - just look for the Trees project at abc.net.au/radionational if interested.Feeling pretty chuffed right now
TALL TIMBER AND SLEEPING GIANTS
Maureen Clifford © The Scribbly Bark Poet
I came across this bloke last Sunday; standing at the bar
I said ‘G’day Mate how you doin’?’ He said ‘Fine Mate – travelled far?’
He’d picked me straight off as a stranger – just because I wore a cap
when all the blokes from round these parts still wear Akubras and none rap.
We struck up easy conversation, drank a beer just as one does
he started yarning ‘bout the town, his home , this place where I now was.
It seemed he’d been a timber getter – when he had youth on his side.
but age alas had crept in stealing the strength from his manly stride.
“I worked the slopes of Carrington Falls when I was young and mills were king.
Back then we cut the stringy bark and green hills heard our axe blows ring.
We cut the coachwood, woolly butt, the spotted gum and turpentine.
We put all woods to saw blades then, and milled up thousands over time.
My crosscut saw felled massive trees and sent them crashing to the ground.
In their descent - for company they brought down others so I've found.
We trimmed the branches to ensure a clean trunk left barren and bare
ready to snig with chains and horse or bullock teams, to jinkers there.
I well recall one young bloke - Jim, who was a gun hand with the chains
until one day an accident occurred . The thought still brings me pain.
With trees you can’t become complacent though you know how they should fall,
sometimes they get hung up. Some roll or slide. Then men die I recall.
There are no mills left in the Valley, all of this was long ago.
This drinking place was once the mill, but looking at it you’d not know.
Those big trusses are Cedar beams we cut from off that hillside there.
Solid as steel, like wagon wheels, each one stood sixty foot I swear.
They only cut the deadwood now, the timber that falls in a storm.
That Peppermint Gum – well that was one, whose timber just would not conform.
It can’t be cut. Hard as a nut. It’s been there since the halcyon days.
It’s old and dangerous they say and like me it’s set in its ways.
But when a tree falls, townsfolk gather with their chainsaws, barrows, Utes.
We cut branches for firewood, you can’t beat a wood fire, they are beaut.
Bugger pollution! Reckon bushfires put more smoke into the air
than smoke from fires that we stoke, it’s our town . Should be our affair.”
He grew sombre and quiet, thoughtful – staring at that distant hill.
I thanked him. “See you again Mate’’ bought him a beer and paid the bill
and left through massive doors that were crafted from slabs of Turpentine
thinking how old blokes must feel sad seeing traditions lost through time.
I ‘ve often wondered if there are tall trees and giants sleeping there,
safe now on rocky hillsides far away from chainsaws teeth that bare
their trunks of foliage and limbs, denuding their protective bark.
I hope there are still sleeping giants and tall timbers in the park.
