Dressed in a shell of yellow Huon pine by the forger Grove:
Lieutenant-Governor David Collins, March 24, 1810
Grubbing with saw, maul, wedges, wary for waddies, spears,
The lime-juicer splits the smooth, white peppermint,
Stripping its ribbons, measuring off boards and posts,
Shifts gaze to the bark-chopper, ex-javelin man himself,
Smearing the chimney’s insides with mud.
Quaffing the whorls of leaf-teeth from cut-down she-oaks,
Too leaden to stray, a pair of unhobbled bullocks.
Skulls scattered hard by the killing gang’s huts,
The stench of oil and gore from puncheons of skins.
Skins by the thousand: young seals, mother seals, seal elephants.
The wallaby-skins on their crows’ backs the sealers snatch,
Spread black arms round a trunk and, growling oaths,
Flog their buttocks bloody, curse to sever ears
And club them on the snout like wide-eyed seals.
How dare these slaves pilfer the buckoes’ sugar
Or slope back from mutton-bird burrows, skin bags empty.
the pale-creamy flowers of the blackwood in spring
call to mind the complexion of a free woman;
its hard, fissured bark the visage of government crones.
Tearing at great girths, the cedar-getters with cross-cut saws
hew and haul the golden, red-hued slabs
for mouldings, dadoes, dining tables, thick, panelled doors
that yield the subtle fragrance of old lags.
Gondwana giants one hundred feet without a bend
Great stands line the Gordon; Huon stands tall along the Gordon
Best ships’ timber: springy, easy to work, close-grained
Impenetrable to the worm, as good as to the canary
Axe-gashed trunks slain by felons lie still in Macquarie
above rough swamp-gums and scent of musk
stood straight our masts of celery-pine
when, struck dumb, we spied in ferny, top-knot hold
the frantic beat of wings, jade and scarlet-lined
and greaves of glinting gold
cusick cusick cusick cusick
Iron man locked behind Hell’s Gates,
You bash a corduroy road along the forest floor
Through a nine-tail switch of leathery scrub,
Horizontals embrangling, clots of drunken flies.
Monstrous timbers lopped, heaved, shouldered
By you scurvy piners in yellow and grey,
Staggering under to the water’s scurfy edge.
On rheumatic pegs you slide shackled waist-deep
With handspikes grappling in splintered paws
Neath icy floes, securing the logs, chaining up
The huge, rough-hewn raft, towed by whaleboats
To gale-lashed sheds on fogged-up shores.
At Recherche Bay
Maroon the lobsters and laggards agin’ mutiny
And steal away to China Cypress
Convict Popjoy fashions a coracle some twelve feet long,
Covers struts of mimosa with hammock canvas
And primes this flimsy carcass with soap and resin.
Together, the flash cove and Lieutenant Carew
Steer the castaways twenty miles to Partridge Island
The ringleader brought back to Port Arthur
- returned transport.
The knock-off bell at Macquarie tolls no more:
Barracks, sawmills, tannery, kilns, all abandoned
Save the slips, where the last gang adze the Frederick
Ten slippery tars snaffle the brig, unfurl and
Chile-bound
slip away . . .
Stalking the Peninsula atop virgin tiers and islets
Round Storm Bay
Twenty-two stations in all, moveable arms clacking bird slang.
Shadowing the settlement, up behind the Commandant’s house,
Masthead superior, the semaphore of Charles O’Hara Booth:
One minute dead to rattle news of a bolter’s flit
To the Cerberus Chain ringing Eaglehawk’s Neck.
Point Puer, stripe of barren island in Opossum Bay
Crawls with mangy urchins, poor as pademelons,
Vying to learn a trade: cobbling, nail-making, tailoring . . .
A privileged few get it easy, like joiners
That carve the pews and pulpit of Arthur’s church,
Knocking up stocks before the fatal tree.
Michael Small January 6-28, 2003
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