Heat is on the north
now,
Dry monsoon money mopping the jungle juice
From loose-living happies
Drying out their carefree lives,
And draining their creative swamps
Into carefully constructed feasibility studies
From Cardwell to Cape Trib.
It's Developers' Dreamtime.
Rainbow-hued, the holiday horde.
Queue serpent-like for food,
Beach Bar their sacred site.
The coast now boasts a scenic white shoe trail
where bare brown feet once trod.
A radio active crowd transistorise the beach
talking to each other of anything but God.
Radiating tourism's fall out.
They slippily,sloppily slap the barman on the back
and ask him" which white wine with mangrove
jack?"
While ghosts of palm wine drunkards whimper in the night.
Holloway humpies long since gone.
Yorkey's left his knob.
|
Now a friendly local
jokel cons the tourist for a job;
A guided tour of Cowtown? A Chillagoe souvenir-
A genuine piece of marble to wear in your ear?
How about a white shark?. I'm sure you'll know his name!
Or one of those paintings of butterflies falling out of
the
frame?
A boomerang by Gucci?.
A troop of famous feral fairies doing the hoochi-koochi?
A traditional raintree bungee jump?.
A traditional T.I. hula?.
A Taiwanese plastic crocodile to use as a beer cooler?.
In the make believe of man-made images,
Shimmer min-min lights of love
bidding their last farewells among the mangroves -
Mangroves that disintegrate before the blow-torch
of big bucks, burning the bush far faster than a fire.
Farewell whispers stir pandanus
While pale politicians pander to polluters.
Only the lonely artist captures the dying ghost
Inside the tourist machine.
Only the private poet sings the silent song
Of far north Queensland's history.
by Victor Barker.
|
