MOONDYNE JOE

Backalong i wuz a miner, a shaver with a sharp tongue

Anyways the beak in Brecon judged me mettlesome

 grub and bub, yer see

Snitched for three loaves, cheese and a flitch of bacon

Transported on the Pyrenees to WA for a measly ration

Where i nailed the swells’ montras, then fenced the goods

Wuz fenced by a thousand nails in the wooden quod

               aye, i wuz a prig, a fly prad-knapper

Borrowed the squatters’ prancers, duffed ‘n’ sold ‘em back

And cheeked it out with that bleddy beak in black

Boned in stone, bound in sleepers of redwood jarrah

Slanged up by me throttler to an iron bar wot’s narrer

               doing Fremantle time for bird lime

A ken where light was barred, guards locked out the air

But i wuz alway a bona bolter, a canny chancer rare                 

But in the yard the maggots got me bending me back

Cracking nuggety lumps not lugged away in sacks

                  stone-blind as bats, they wuz

For when i went a-ducking behind all that pile o’ rubble

i slung me hammer at limestone in the outer prison wall

In my cave of karst, i’m no more accussed

Moondyne i calls it, deep, dark and must

              certain, i’m cull of this ken

Dimpled chambers and cavities, cellars and ceils

Twixt overhang and potholes, i cool my heels

Neath this wide sky dome, by all that’s blue

i dread my doom, I’ll take what’s due

           

half-flash, half-foolish

‘Pon my pink patch of marl mid reddish scrub

Where horizon’s rim never ends, i sits ‘n’ grub

                                                            Michael Small

December 6-21, 2015

Joseph Johns, nicknamed Moondyne Joe, was born in Cornwall in the south-west of England.  Found guilty of burglary and stealing, he was transported to Western Australia in 1853.  He was imprisoned in Fremantle Gaol for horse-stealing, but escaped from hard labour to Moondyne Cave.  He possessed an argumentative nature and a talent for escaping the law.