I believe I was the first to see the possibility of pulling up the
timber and opening up this land.
-J. Bjelke-Petersen.
At the window ledge, meadow-edge, misreading Tranströmer:
‘Themindwind walks in the pine forest’.wind
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mindw nd ow l
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m d owRaven shoe
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v shTyres through tableland rain, away from the eye and cow-
lick. Perception of desert: p [arched, enlarged ____________ =hawk orbit, camel gallop . . . . Hums settled in the 1880’s
to pan, to concentrate bits . . . . . . . . . to criticise severely . . .A map in the dictionary: Ayr. Alice. Lana. Tara. Lucinda. Julia
Creek. Longreach. Eagleby. WhoWillPlayWithMe. Browns
Plains. Texas. Incontinence. Tambourine. Biddaddaba. Black-all. Banana. Comet. Dingo. Dundoo. Hungerford. War-
wick. Archer Bend. Marian. Saddle Hill. Laura. Blackwater.
Whitewood. Beaudesert{from beau desir: beautiful wish}.Surprised by my wife, sprung at the map. A split-
second to read her face: Are you homesick?Quail Pie. Welsh Rarebit. Scone. Lamington. Lavender Bags.
Jack’s Verandah. Queen Anne’s Lace. Spongecake. Honey
Jumbles. Iced Vo-Vo.She calls me Pu-pu, slang for bunny.
Daddy flatten rabbit so garden grow. I show herphotos. The belletrist in chaps and plastic sheriff
badge: Winner, Beaudesert Show, Best Cowboy, 1980.Albert and Logan asleep in their beds, murmuring masculine
river names.Footfalls rattle the dwelling on stilts, stable
as an upside-down cake, candles for pillars.Lightning’s echo and impossible wattage.
White fields.In the lull we collect hail for the freezer, count the rainbow
lorikeet feathers the wind will keep.The belle, the tryst that isn’t. To woo: we draw eyes on our
helmets to trick mother plover, shy of eye. See also, swoop.Picnic: the make of her bike.
Her eraser: an Ideal Rabbit, or Rabbit Ideal. To recall.°
Fearing the Indonesian Invasion of Quilpie, King Bobcat
stockpiles tins of beans, automatic weapons, wine. He tinkles
Vic Hislop. A shark in the canal, a dental profile in a string of
young ankles. A fin diminishing in the true blue.Muir slices his paddlesteamer in two, naming one half,
The Scottish Prince — soon wrecked on the Southport bar,
not far from The Walrus: our first paddlewheel steamshipdistillery. Bring the sugar aboard, dance the molasses, then a
fiery, white spirit. For colour, add caramel. Age for as little as
possible. Sell Walrus Rum up and down the River Barrow.So suddenly I was the owner of a bulldozer. Rather than let it sit idle, I
took it down to a small property . . . covered by large trees, hundreds . .The belletrist pines on a ridge, in a salmon flat in TwoWrongs,
to slalom (a race against time over a zigzag course), from the
Norwegian\sloping track\ Off with the glasses. On go
the goggles. See double. To trumpet: see trumpet, too, The-lonius. Meanwhile, back at Quasi-Triangle, the ‘bleeding
obvious’ is bottlenecking in my tonsils, sprouting a crown:
Best Coward, 2000. Country music made me do it—get some
sand in my shoe, tie it up with wire.°
Is it a cocka-tiel, or –two? That’s not
a wife. This is a wife: juggler of whippersnippers. She is my
Red-rumped Parrot, slang for slang. She calls meStubble Quail: one who tends or drives cattle, part
-icipant in rodeos, frontier cha-cha. Today you would see a huge
area covered with brigalow. Not tomorrow. One of many menwithout their mothers. The tail of the Q the loop of the lasso
(when he’s in a fight). Taboo. Cuckoo! Cuckolded by my lie.
True Owl’s decoy eyes misinterpret signs{stop, smoke}having pulled the trees I bulldozed them into huge piles for burning . . .
crowds of people had been turning up to watch . . . so impressed by whatthey saw that before I finished clearing that paddock
my bulldozer had been hired for my first two jobs.This pre-dates Florence, female typist: konekirjoittajatar.
a good example of how you can sell people
an idea if you can demonstrate to them how it works.°
Homesick: Unsound jodhpur-longing. Gravestone Slalom.
Jupiter Island.Lush littoral rainforest coveredmuch of Surfers.Being Eagle,
I am barely holding on
to the tail of a rat.
To be honest,
I cannot find
a use for it. Can you?I’m asking you, riflebird, common white-eared monarch, pow . .
rfu ow
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powe l l
Acknowledgements
The italicized couplets are taken from Derek Townsend’s biography of Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, Don’t You Worry About That!: The Joh Bjelke-Petersen Memoirs, Angus and Robertson, 1990. The line,‘The wind walks in the pine forest’, is from Samuel Charters translation of Tomas Tranströmer’s poem, Baltics, Oyez Press, 1975.
A note on the poem
Angela’s inventories opened up multiple possibilities for exploring Queensland and my perspective to it. My response touches on anecdotal, political, and environmental dimensions. It plays with the dangers of nomenclature, anthropomorphism and zoomorphism. It is poly-vocal, but it remains unclear where one voice ends and another begins, indicating a porous membrane of responsibility, and an inherited and perpetuated legacy of masculine destruction. I borrow from the biography of a former Qld premier. There is some cultural punning also, including a handful of phrases from the John Williamson song, ‘True Blue’. This is not meant to offend, but to entertain.
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones