The not-so-dark darkie lifts up his holey hands and says, same here, and to hell with them all, he‘d let them carry their own crosses from now on. He was becoming allergic to crosses.

Suddenly a clap of thunder and down came the rain. The two shadows hit the dust and I ran up the stairs, into the light.

The Bunyip

You keep quiet now, little fella,

You want big-big Bunyip get you?

You look out, no good this place.

You see that waterhole over there?

He Gooboora, Silent Pool.

Suppose-it you go close up one time

Big fella woor, he wait there,

Big fella Bunyip sit down there,

In Silent Pool many bones down there.

He come up when it is dark,

He belong the big dark, that one.

Don't go away from camp fire, you,

Better you curl up in the gunya,

Go to sleep now, little fella,

Tonight he hungry, hear him roar,

He frighten us, the terrible woor,

He the secret thing, he Fear,

He something we don't know.

Go to sleep now, little fella,

Curl up with the yella dingo.

Understand, Old One

Understand, old one,

I mean no desecration

Staring here with the learned ones

At your opened grave.

Now after hundreds of years gone

The men of science coming with spade and knowledge

Peer and probe, handle the yellow bones,

To them specimens, to me

More. Deeply moved am I.

Understand, old one,

I mean no lack of reverence.

It is with love

I think of you so long ago laid here

With tears and wailing.

Strongly I feel your presence very near

Haunting the old spot, watching

As we disturb your bones. Poor ghost,

I know, I know you will understand.

What if you came back now

To our new world, the city roaring

There on the old peaceful camping place

Of your red fires along the quiet water,

How you would wonder

At towering stone gunyas high in air

Immense, incredible;

Planes in the sky over, swarms of cars

Like things frantic in flight.

What if you came at night upon these miles

Of clustered neon lights of all colours

Like Christian newly come to his Heaven or Hell

And your own people gone?

Old one of the long ago,

So many generations lie between us

But cannot estrange. Your duty to your race

Was with the simple past, mine

Lies in the present and the coming days.

Note: This came after I had visited an old native burial ground not far from Brisbane, where University people were excavating bones and had invited me along. I wrote it down at once while impressions were still fresh.

Gooboora, the Silent Pool

For Grannie Sunflower, Last of the Noonuccals

Gooboora, Gooboora, the Water of Fear

That awed the Noonuccals once numerous here,

The Bunyip is gone from your bone-strewn bed,

And the clans departed to drift with the dead.

Once in the far time before the whites came