Inland Sea

Migratory Terns fly over the desert
…..towards Antarctica, their mating grounds.

Aligning the flight paths of birds
…………..with mirages of mountains and water
Sturt, master of rivers, holds
…………………once more to the centre of things
re-surmising his inland sea.

The entourage sets out again
…..…..…..…..…………..…..adding to provisions
a wooden whale-boat, his ark
…..………..of the covenant, drawn by bullocks
crossing dunes and gibber plains
to plough the strange waters on which
…..……….…..…..…..…..…..…..boat never swam.

…..…………Held up by drought in Depot Glen
for six months, a chamber under the earth,
they emerge, temperatures hot enough
…..…..…..……….…..…..to burst thermometers,
finding a sea of endless sand dunes
…..…..…..….…..hundreds of leagues of billowy
undulations, like waves of a sculpted ocean.

Knowing nothing of the Great Artesian Basin
…..…..……….its underground springs and bores,
twenty million years too late
……..for the vast Eromanga Sea underpinning
Central Australia, Sturt turns back.

Thirty years later, Ernest Giles
…..……comes upon debris of the boat, carried
by flood twenty miles down the water course
…..…..…..………..from where Sturt abandoned it.

 ————-

Waiting for the Byron train.

Waiting on the southbound platform
…….in still humid air, for the long journey home,
half-listening to buskers, bands blasting out
…………..from a nearby pub, you keep a close eye
on checked-in luggage, wheeled out
in a trolley, now unattended,
………………………………..the new surfboard there
for the taking. The boys are anxious,
…….…….…….…….…….can’t board until it’s loaded.

We’ve eaten fish and hand-cut chips,
…….………..revisiting that last surf on Main Beach,
the swell and the riding, big rollers coming in
swamping, in the Buddhist way,
……………he sand fortress built this afternoon.
A late windsurfer on the bay moves swiftly
across our line of sight, the lighthouse
flashing in the distance, moon rising
…………………………and a slow sea-mist coming in.

Through fogged glass of the window-pane
…….…..the green hinterland rises and falls, drifting
down valleys into the timbered forest.
Soon we’ll sleep, the boys stretched out
……………….on the floor, beyond the racket of train
to arrive in cold dawn. They’ll return sometimes,
just passing through, nothing changed,
…….………….the street-front palm trees still in place
like pieces from an ongoing jigsaw puzzle
…………………………the green frog in the letter-box
shiny, ceramic, you’d think
…….……..…….…….…….…….someone left it as a gift.

 —————

Making Tracks.
……………“No man would be asked why.”
…………– Robyn Davidson (Interview, 1977)

Her father walked across the African desert
for his inner journey, a conquest
………………………….not of country, but of self.
She chose the arid landscape
………………….from Alice Springs to the coast,
alone, and on camel back.
………………………….*

Twenty miles out from Docker River
three wild bull camels appear,
…………………..they attack and kill, remember.
She loads the rifle, shoots the leader
…….in the head, dead. Then sleeps, drifting
to the sound of bells on her own camels,
hobbled, peaceably moving about, wakes
……to the rumble of bulls circling the camp.
She will have to shoot the wounded one
and the young bull, her nemesis,
…………a beautiful thing, a moonlight camel,
……………………………………..in order to go on.

The country alien now, silence hostile,
time stretches …. the road
and the sandhills and the cold wind
…. just one step at a time.

---

Over the last sandhill, Shark Bay arises,
the rocky escarpment, its giant spine flaring.
Scaling it, she looks back to the immensity
…………of where I had been, the exhilaration,
the menace, of the unbridled desert
…………………..not seeking to name or claim it.

 —————————————-

Margaret Bradstock is a Sydney poet, critic and editor. She lectured at UNSW for 25 years and has been Asialink Writer-in-residence at Beiing University, co-editor of Five Bells for Poets Union, and on the Board of Directors for Australian Poetry. She has eight published collections of poetry, including The Pomelo Tree (winner of the Wesley Michel Wright Prize) and Barnacle Rock (winner of the Woollahra Festival Award, 2014). Editor of Antipodes, the first Australian anthology of Aboriginal and white responses to “settlement” (2011) and Caring for Country (2017), Margaret won the Banjo Paterson Poetry Award in 2014, 2015 and 2017. Her most recent book is Brief Garden (Puncher & Wattmann, 2019), with a new collection, Alchemy of the Sun, to be launched on 19th May 2024.

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