Otherwise Recounted

Riddled with game trials, worn by heifers, mares, wombats and wallabies. I pause by the ambling creek to admire the beautiful skeletal boughs.

John Brown stands lonely
by a red gravel road.

Perched atop the dunes, I watched the light of a waxing crescent moon dance on dark waters.

Lee side of the dunes / where Jim McDonnell’s hut once stood / midafternoon the big blue looms overhead and behind.

My grandmother assumed this aspect nearly forty years previous – easel, paint, tea in a thermos perhaps, two-year-old Easter eggs for sure.

Overlooking green paddocks and a Menna Gum laneway my snug weekender sometimes smells like sausage fat but always of black coffee.

Cut by hoof, paw and thumping tailthe trail leads into shadow. Damp grass and scrubby limbs lay sodden and spongey.