Hod Cay lives in Coonabarabran in the north west of New South Wales. He has lived there since 1965 when he came as a ranger employed by the Pastoral Protection Board. His area of control extended over three million acres and his job allowed him access to anywhere in that area.
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“I got to know this area in a physical sense probably better than anybody alive because I just went all day on any road through properties. I had access to any property I wanted.”
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Over the years he also developed a deep fondness for this part of Australia.
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“I don't think that it's a country you readily fall in love with but when you really get to know it, as intimately as I did, you do. There's so many wonderful things in it.”
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Places visited started to gain special meaning for him, especially the Warrumbungle Ranges where he could literally escape to “another world”, as he puts it.
Hod has always been a lover of poetry. It is like, he says, “something that was born in me”. It is not surprising that he began expressing his feelings for, and knowledge of this area, in poetry. He regards himself as a landscape poet who writes about “the pleasant side of landscape, the beauty of the countryside and the …mystic thing about the bush”. Warrumbungle Roundabout, a collection of his poems, was published in 1981. Some of his poetry has also been put to music.
