P O E T R Y
A poem by Bill Killick written in Sydney waiting for his partner to recover from her surgery.
"I wrote this thinking of my home in the small village of Cabbage Tree Creek on 12th November 2015, I was reflecting about our lifestyle and how little we needed to know the various schedules that rule city life".
Our Village Far Far Away
Is it Saturday?
Or Monday?
Maybe its midday?
I know it sounds very strange
But this is the way our day we arrange
In our village far, far away
Do we worry about what we’re to do
Tomorrow will be all to soon
Does it really matter at all
If these problems we see as too small
In our village far, far away
Are we bound by the rules and the codes
That others feel the need to impose
Will we forget it as this country we roam
As we work for the love of our home
In our village far, far away
As I sit in my small city flat
And think of the place I call home
Will it still be as nice and serene
As I recall this heavenly dream
Of my village far, far away.
Bill Killick November 2015
The poem below was written by Dr Greg Murphy who lived in Cabbage Tree Creek as a child.
Cabbage Tree Creek
We arrived - tense with a past life -
Wheeling around the corner and dipping
As I remembered the highway doing.
And there was nothing there -
A mound of gravel, a heap of sawdust -
Of life no sign - where once the busy cookhouse
And the whirring sawmill were.
Down to the creek near the farm
Overgrown now with trees and brambles,
A tangled drinking hole for the cows.
Not the clear pool it was for us
Moulded with quince and plum trees,
And cows snuffling on the other side.
A darting snake across the water?
We were hardly perturbed.
Up the hill to the old school
Where there was something -
Asphalt patches of the tennis courts
Here and there, the twisted, snaking
Roots of the massive old pine where the
Little ones played and the grey remains
Of the old dunny. No sign of magpies
Torturing, swooping and shrieking.
Along the highway to the other mill -
The dusty inset store still there -
And the tufted paddocks where we romped
Until night and mist settled over the place.
No houses, no mill, no piles of logs.
Oh, there was one house there,
With an enormous white and brown bull
Suddenly in the yard.
Back to the long blackberry bridge.
We leant over the rails almost waiting
For the blackish and the eels to greet us.
I climbed down the gravel-clay bank
And eyes full of tears slipped
And almost fell into the dark water -
Where we skylarked, storied and swam -
The rattling of cars overhead.
Three of us were in our own worlds
Of memory, hardly talking, though sitting
And walking together. We couldn't have
Been further apart. But we knew
You were impatient to be away.
Too much memory or too long gone?
You who took us there and gave us
A life roaming the bush, the pink-white-blue
Heath, crackling leaves underfoot
And the perfect bellbirds sounding.
It almost seemed you didn't care.
Or what intricate pools of memory
Were you trying to push away?
You could have drawn our worlds
Together, but perhaps not -our memories
Never touched, and this, you probably knew.
Greg Murphy Good Friday, 2000
We arrived - tense with a past life -
Wheeling around the corner and dipping
As I remembered the highway doing.
And there was nothing there -
A mound of gravel, a heap of sawdust -
Of life no sign - where once the busy cookhouse
And the whirring sawmill were.
Down to the creek near the farm
Overgrown now with trees and brambles,
A tangled drinking hole for the cows.
Not the clear pool it was for us
Moulded with quince and plum trees,
And cows snuffling on the other side.
A darting snake across the water?
We were hardly perturbed.
Up the hill to the old school
Where there was something -
Asphalt patches of the tennis courts
Here and there, the twisted, snaking
Roots of the massive old pine where the
Little ones played and the grey remains
Of the old dunny. No sign of magpies
Torturing, swooping and shrieking.
Along the highway to the other mill -
The dusty inset store still there -
And the tufted paddocks where we romped
Until night and mist settled over the place.
No houses, no mill, no piles of logs.
Oh, there was one house there,
With an enormous white and brown bull
Suddenly in the yard.
Back to the long blackberry bridge.
We leant over the rails almost waiting
For the blackish and the eels to greet us.
I climbed down the gravel-clay bank
And eyes full of tears slipped
And almost fell into the dark water -
Where we skylarked, storied and swam -
The rattling of cars overhead.
Three of us were in our own worlds
Of memory, hardly talking, though sitting
And walking together. We couldn't have
Been further apart. But we knew
You were impatient to be away.
Too much memory or too long gone?
You who took us there and gave us
A life roaming the bush, the pink-white-blue
Heath, crackling leaves underfoot
And the perfect bellbirds sounding.
It almost seemed you didn't care.
Or what intricate pools of memory
Were you trying to push away?
You could have drawn our worlds
Together, but perhaps not -our memories
Never touched, and this, you probably knew.
Greg Murphy Good Friday, 2000