WHERE I'M AT

“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well…”

'The Little Prince' – Antoine de St Exupéry
 
Poetry Jam this week has suggested that we write about where we live, where we are at, telling something that people may not know. I live in Australia, the Great Land Downunder, the island continent!
 
Occupying the entire continent of some 7.6 million square kilometres, Australia is the sixth largest country in the world. Its ocean territory is the world’s third largest, spanning three oceans and covering around 12 million square kilometres. Nearly seven million square kilometres, or 91 per cent of Australia, is covered by native vegetation. Although this figure may seem high, many of Australia’s desert landscapes are covered by native plants such as saltbush, albeit sparsely.
 
Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth, with the least amount of water in rivers, the lowest run-off and the smallest area of permanent wetlands of all the continents. One third of the continent produces almost no run-off at all and Australia’s rainfall and stream-flow are the most variable in the world.
 
Human activity continues to exert pressure on the environment, land as well as marine. Pollution is the most serious problem and the vast majority of marine pollution is caused by land based activities—soil erosion, fertiliser use, intensive animal production, sewage and other urban industrial discharges.
 
Here is my poem about one of Australia’s perennial enemies – drought. Especially relevant as we are in the midst of a hot and dry Summer.
 
The Iron Sunflower
 
The sun bakes the red earth
And sky above is blue as blue bottles can be
With light streaming through them.
 
Drought, and the only noise of midsummer noon,
Is the hum of the machine and the smell of diesel
As water is pumped from deep secret caverns, below.
 
The bluebottle fly buzzes lazily, imitating the pump,
Sated on her feast of rotten thirsty carcass,
With her eggs safely secreted therein.
 
The listless children drone in the schoolhouse,
Overcome by heat, repeating by rote the lesson in chorus
Reminiscent of a dirge of Greek tragedy.
 
The precious water, hard-won by efforts of man and machine
Is stored, as treasured things are, safely locked up,
In corrugated iron tank, not to be wasted on useless things – like flowers.
 
The head of one of past seasons’ large sunflowers
With a few black, shiny seeds hangs up deep in the dark recesses of the shed,
Strung up high, safe from rodents and birds, a sad souvenir of old times.
 
The sun bakes the earth and cracks it, breaks its spirit:
No touch of green, no sunflowers this year,
And the wind blows, only to lift great clouds of red dust.
 
Fallen by the wayside an old mill-head rusts away mirroring the dusty soil.
Its sails are petals of an iron sunflower – the only flower this year.
As the monotony of the pump numbs the ear,
And the stench of petrol deadens the nose,
The rusting iron flower is a reminder of gentler times,
When machines were driven by wind, and their creaks were musical
And the air carried only the faint smell of fresh sunflowers –
Water could be spared then for useless things…