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Poet Max Merckenschlager and his wife Jacqui are harvesters and suppliers of Australian plant seed for revegetation in South Australia. They are in Pomberuk (that's Ngarrindjeri for 'Murray Bridge') and their business is called Blackwood Seeds. Most of their seed stock comes from roadside reserves, and they need permits from the various Councils to do this. Unfortunately, our bush verges continue to shrink as roads are widened to accommodate increased traffic, new farm fences are built (requiring the removal of old plants in the process) and weed infestations smother so much of our precious and struggling understorey. Max and Jacqui harvest the seed of trees, shrubs and groundcover plants including native grasses and have over 600 species in their catalogue. |
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Our settlers fought the loneliness of life beset by dangers
from dispossessed and droughts and floods in outback Flinders Ranges;
the bureaucratic governments with ill-informed decisions;
erosion of their labour force, seduced by golden visions.
So many tried, so many lost in failed attempts to scratch
a living from those marginals that proved to be their match:
so many left in ruin, with a learned respect and awe
for timeless Adnamathana lands, redoubtable and raw …..
MARY
"Mary, this forsaken land's become my cross of sorrow;
the holding pens are empty now - I'm moving out tomorrow.
I'll leave these picture ranges where the wily dingo calls,
and their framing redgum lintels, adzed and mortared in our walls.
You followed me, remember, with the children in the dray
to a roof of ill-thatched rushes and a floor of beaten clay?
It had no door or chimney - barely refuge when it rained;
yet you helped me build the stockyards first, and never once complained.
I curse this country's grandeur, cut by rocky gorges steep,
with a thousand opportunities for blacks to butcher sheep;
where worthy men are hard to find who'll work an honest day,
and after drought for twenty months, the tracks get washed away.
Our bullocks fought to shift the wool through Pichi Richi Pass,
and some were lamed by stony ground and fiercely-bristled grass:
through winding creeks and double-banked they'd bellow under strain
and axle-arms would bend and snap, when buried by the rain.
Saltbush, Mary -- how the ewes were thriving on its feed!
We dared to hope they'd cut us tons and fatten up and breed.
But governments reduced our run and put the best to plough;
they thought the rain would follow -- but it's rusting strippers, now.
While Nature's pyrrhic victory resounds in every gorge,
her 'inland snow' is burying our follies of the forge;
they'll join those ghostly northern towns that leapt from page to pegs,
and disappear like sobered dreams of desiccated kegs.
And through it all we managed, Mary, holding on with pride,
until we lost our youngest, when he wandered off and died:
this savage and bewitching country sucked the life we gave;
it claimed our son to break my will, and hugs you in your grave.
I'm leaving in the morning, Mary, heading down the track …..
and though my heart is buried here, I'm never coming back.
Dear, take a final walk with me beneath these brimming skies;
they promised us prosperity -- but all we got was lies."
© Max Merckenschlager
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