Money is Debt. Money is Broken...

Some of you may remember a few years ago I wrote a treatise titled "The Monetary System Is Broken." Or perhaps you have heard me talk about this concept in my more manic moments. Here is a short video that eloquently and succinctly describes the problem in simple terms. "Oh another bloody money is buggered video" I suspect you are thinking about now...

The difference here is there is a solution offered. Mutual Credit. It's like barter, no interest, no debt. We need to start to think about changes to our broken system of greed, consumerism, and the capitalistic ideals that have been force fed to us since we were little children. Have you had enough yet?

Where The Hell Is Gibberagee?

Well It's Official, I've Moved...

It's been a hectic year, that's for sure: Learning to like my own company, going to the rat house, dealing with illness and finding out yet again that sadly not all people are good people. I spent a lot of time travelling and searching this last year. I didn't really know what exactly I was searching for, as such. I just knew I was looking for change. Welcoming change with open arms, an open mind and an open heart. And so I travelled, a lot. Three months back in the green wonder of south island New Zealand was a highlight. After nearly eight years in the dusty outback it was a welcome change of scenery. But talk about cold! I adore the snow clad mountains of south Canterbury but I didn't enjoy the sinking freeze that swept down onto the coast every evening very much at all.

My travels even took me to the big smoke. I spent a month in Sydney last summer. I surfed again for the first time in over twenty years and it was good for my soul. The traffic was not so good however. The frenetic pace of life in Sydney is just not my thing...

Anyways, each time I returned to the Hill I found myself restless and unable to find my serenity. I messed about painting, writing and playing at photographer trying to find my muse. But my muse was elsewhere it seems. Try as I might, I could not settle back into my peaceful outback repose which had become my safe haven in a disturbing world.

As it turns out my cousin got sick, so I decided to head up to the north coast of NSW to visit her in hospital.

After a month here on the north coast I knew I'd found the answer to all my unasked questions. My aunt and uncle own a beef cattle farm and needed somebody to keep an eye on things around the place. I was thrilled to be given an opportunity to learn something new and a sea change seemed the ideal choice, so here I am!

Now my sum total knowledge of beef cattle farming amounts to zip. But luckily in a past life I have gained some experience with dairy cattle, merino sheep and angora goats. I like goats, so intelligent. So tasty!

So I headed back to the Hill, put my house up for rental and loaded up the trusty Landrover with my meager worldly possessions and moved out here to Gibberagee. I must say, life here is really agreeing with me. I have peace and serenity by the truckload. I have a wonderful woman in my life. I have good, salt of the earth, new friends. And best of all I have a start from damn near scratch opportunity to live the fully sustainable lifestyle I have dreamt about since I was a boy! I have already installed the basics, gas reticulation, hot water, solar PVA panel on the roof, a bank of batteries and a tidy little inverter to run my three fifths of bugger all power requirements. So far so good, for sure, with bells on!

So to answer the question: "Where the hell is Gibberagee?" I'll tell you this: It's in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. It's a great place to be stoney broke in order to learn better to value the true riches of living. It's somewhere close to heaven. It's where dreams can and are being realised. It's where hope and peace reside...

Welcome back!

Well welcome back my blog lives on!

If this is your first visit then you're welcome too ;-)

So yea, it's been a long coffee break. Almost a whole year since my last post. I managed to drag this blog back from the no domain limbo it was stuck in which I'm pretty chuffed about! So much has happened in the past year. I'll do some new posts real soon to play catch up I promise!

The really big news is that I have opened my first art gallery. The easiest way to check it out is to head over to facebook: http://www.facebook.com/HakamikeOutbackArt.

My Music

Guitar blues for relaxation:

Ever since my early 20's I've owned at least one guitar. Everywhere I went the guitar went with me. I've been writing my own music since 1996 and I'm starting to get dividends from all the time and practice. There have been times in my life where I barely played, but each time I've gone back to the guitar I have made noticeable inroads in my progression towards a passingly competent musician.

The greatest challenge for me has always been understanding and applying music theory to my playing. I have never had a guitar lesson as such and I cannot read musical notation. Each time I dive into the "maths" of music I resurface with little gems that allow me to play more expressively year after year.

To me, music, particularly guitar music, is how feelings sound. This has always led me back to the blues time and again. I believe playing the blues is my best form of musical expression. I feel the music rather than play it technically like I would a cover of a popular rock song. I have been always best able to improvise and develop my own signature sound and style with blues and rock blues sounds. My music is quite percussive often and this is a serious throwback to the great music of the Australian pub bands of the 1980's.

Music is how feelings sound

Sitting in the sun on an autumn afternoon on the front porch watching the sunset is my favorite venue. Improvising minor pentatonic scale progressions is my idea of a great way to kill a couple of hours and just relax with my music. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to own a Maton 808 series acoustic guitar. These hand made in Australia instruments have the sweetest tone and beautiful mid range and sustain. 

Recently I got the opportunity to finally get one. I opted for the Performer model which is basically a lighter cutaway 808. http://www.maton.com.au/acoustics/performer-series.html

I also own a Yamaha acoustic which is a fine instrument, it lives with my BFF in New Zealand at the moment. And my go to instrument for many years has been a much loved and faithful Squire affinity strat, with a humbucker pickup fitted at the bridge, red of course, because red goes faster! Until fairly recently I also owned a Garrison 12 string acoustic but it was hell on my fingers and nearly impossible to bend the notes with a bluesy feel. Many years ago I owned an old battered Maton electric guitar it weighed a tonne but it sure had a sweet tone, I really regret selling that instrument.

Well recently I decided it was time to have a go at recording some of my original improv music and putting it out there, so I got some cables, I downloaded the great open source music editing software known as Audacity and sat up most of the night playing record producer. The bulk of the music was recorded using the new Maton EBG808CL Performer. The strat got to pretend it was a bass for this exercise and my nifty little Digitech RP50 modelling guitar processor got to fiddle the effects and play the drums. The Peavey rage 158 amp got to show it's stuff a bit too. So these two first attempts ended up as video's mainly because I couldn't figure out how to upload MP3 files direct to facebook... Anyway here is my music, warts and all ;-)

The photo's of the art in the slideshow for this video is all my own work, I like to sketch and paint with watercolours too.

Here is the second little demo, the pictures in this are just some from my collection of art and images I've always liked.

Well that's it for this blog post. Until next time ;-)

Addiction - A Disease

I am your disease

I hate. I destroy. I revel in your suffering. I wish you a slow and immensely painful death.

Let me introduce myself. I am the disease of addiction. I am cunning, baffling and powerful. I am so patient, devious beyond your comprehension. I have killed millions. I will never stop or relent.

I love to ensnare you, to surprise you, to entrap your vulnerability and use it against you.

I get great pleasure from pretending to be your friend and lover. I have given you pleasure and comfort, is this not so? Wasn't I always there when you were lonely, afraid, confused, angry, bitter, broken and broken again? When you wanted to die, didn't you call me? Wasn't I always there?

I love to make you hurt. I love to make you cry. Even more I love to make you so numb you no longer hurt or cry. I am ecstatic when you can't feel at all. This is my most glorious deception. I give you instant gratification. All I take in return is your long term suffering. I love to confuse and run riot through your pathetic emotions. I've always been there for you.

When things were OK in your life you invited me. You said you didn't deserve these good things. I was the only one who agreed with you. Together we were able to destroy all that was good and wholesome and well in your life.

It's a great cosmic joke. People don't take me seriously. They take heart conditions, strokes, cancer, and even diabetes seriously. Fools that they are, they don't even begin to comprehend that without my help so many of these other ailments would not be possible. I am such a hated and feared disease but even then I am denied, completely, absolutely denied.

Graciously I do not come uninvited. You choose to have me. Oh so many have chosen to have me over reality, peace, serenity, health, love and life on life's terms. More than you could ever hate me I hate your recovery. I hate your Higher Power. I hate your twelve steps. These things weaken me and prevent me from functioning in the manner to which I am accustomed.

So as you grow in your recovery, I must lie here quietly. You don't see me. But I am growing bigger and stronger than ever. I progress with or without you. I always did, I always will. When you barely only exist, I live to the fullest. When you live to the fullest in recovery, trusting your Higher Power and following those twelve steps, I only exist.

BUT. I am here. Growing, hating. And, until we meet again, I wish you continued death and suffering. Jails, institutions and, always at the end, a pitiful, ignoble, pathetic, weak, powerless and painful death. Deny me, I dare you...

The following Article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald Today, under the heading:

Addicts know many fears, but the law is least among them

Kate Holden

May 25, 2012

OPINION

For five anguished, exhausting and educative years in the 1990s I, like thousands of ordinary Australians, was addicted to heroin. And I can honestly say that during that time the thought that heroin was illegal was very far from the top of my mind.

I was focused on protecting myself from violence, hoping to avoid overdose, battling overwhelming messages of shaming and hostility from society and simply getting through each day without collapsing. In this way, although I was never actually charged with using heroin, the criminal penalties attached to the drug would inevitably propel me further and further into a dark, unhappy, alienated and criminal world.

When society already hates and fears you, what is your interest in observing a law that seems so arbitrary (alcohol is legal) and unjust (addicts are the most vulnerable in the drug supply chain)? Everything has already been lost. What's a criminal conviction to someone whose body is screaming in pain and has nothing further to forfeit?

I'm not expecting pity for heroin addicts, though I believe sympathy, at least, is more useful than revulsion. What I propose is reconsideration of prejudicial legislation that is wrong, no matter that it is based in genuine concern for the wellbeing of society.

Criminalisation of drugs such as heroin simply does not make sense. Whether you view drug addiction as illness, affliction, vice, symptom or destiny, my experience was that I never intended to become a heroin addict. Legality wasn't my concern when I was one. And my suffering was truly punishment enough, if punishment were even warranted for what is basically a problem more akin to mental illness than criminal malice.

I never, ever, met a junkie scared straight by the law. ''You'll be next,'' a counsellor told me, pointing out a girl headed for prison. Even that dire warning couldn't permeate the slimy combination of shame, defiance and disbelief I was wrapped in. The drug owned me: it was that simple. All I could fight for was the dignity being steadily stripped by prejudice, poverty, desperation and illness.

Illegality did not deter me from heroin any more than it had prevented me and every well educated, employed and emotionally stable friend of mine from experimenting with other drugs. Soon I was not only a victim, a sufferer and a patient; I was also a fugitive and criminal.

Heroin is expensive, even in the 1990s when it was comparatively cheap. By the high point of addiction I needed several hundred dollars a day - every day. Black market economics grossly inflated the price. This ''prohibitive'' expense in turn pushed me first to petty pilfering, then illegal sex work on the street. There was simply no other way to finance my habit, nor could I defeat it.

I ended with a criminal record, not for heroin possession but for street soliciting. (This police record, incidentally, threatened my entry to the US several years later on a tour to speak about recovery and rehabilitation to drug users.) Others - usually males - turned to burglary, mugging and scams. Thus, one supposed criminality engendered real others.

Buying drugs on the street I risked rip-off, arrest and violence. The dealers I met were generally fellow users (or gambling addicts), as captive and hapless as I was. Unregulated supplies of potentially lethal drugs meant injecting unknown substances, abscesses of the veins, organ damage and dangerously fluctuating potencies. Being present at an overdose meant risking further criminal charges, from possession to manslaughter. Stricken people were left to die alone as their associates fled in fear of the law.

I shot up in lanes, on railway sidings, among rubbish and in cafe and bar toilets. Being a junkie doesn't mean you don't find rubbish smelly. Fearful of discovery, I fixed up hurriedly and therefore carelessly; there are public toilets in Melbourne that still fill me with a sense of humiliation and horror. If I had overdosed in a lonely, weed-grown lane, no one would have noticed for some time. Unconscious and vomiting in a public toilet cubicle, I would have traumatised an innocent discoverer.

Heroin addiction was a geography of exile. Becoming a pariah only made me seek the drug's consolation all the more.

Medical practitioners regarded me with degrees of sympathy or contempt. Magistrates sighed and made examples of me. Newspapers called for the extermination of my kind. My family wept; and terror grew in my heart by the year until it was all I knew. Hope, like heroin, was too expensive.

But none of this was soothed, or avoided, by the threat of criminal charges. No one, neither myself nor the community, was protected. Rather, it was shame, suffering, silence and stigma that flourished in the shadow of those punitive and futile laws.

Kate Holden is the author of In My Skin and The Romantic. Go to smh.com.au to join the WikiCurve debate on drug law reform.

For an interesting article published recently in Time Magazine about how sibling brain studies are shedding some light on the roots of addiction take a look here:
http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/03/siblings-brain-study-sheds-light-on-the-roots-of-addiction/

Living With The Black Dog

Art and music as depression therapy.

Pretty much all of my adult life I've struggled with depression. On those occasions when I was compelled by those who cared for me, I sought medical help. Against my intuition and generally skeptical, I would go to the quack, get the inevitable script, take the new "wonder drug" and let myself be chemically crippled and constrained. My imagination would evaporate. My perception would narrow and become hazy. I would be an artificial "normal person" for a time. Six months here, a year there and I would wean free of the medication and begin the cycle all over again.

This is probably an acceptable solution for many who suffer from depression. And I can only say more power to them. Trouble is, for me, chemical solutions inherently lead to a struggle within my core self. I really would prefer to exist and find balance without chemical adjunct medication. It really does matter a great deal to me.

I believe we are wonderfully made and the solution to problems often lies outside simple modern chemistry.
There is of course ample evidence in ancient treatments and cures from many cultures to adequately support a reasonably rational argument for alternative medicine in many shapes and forms. But that is not what this story is about. This is a simple story about how I am learning to live with the black dog by exercising my own creative impulses.

 

I am increasingly becoming a firm believer in the power of realizing creative energy. I find that the time spent in the creative process almost always releases me from my day to day worries. I seem to be immune to the black dog in a creative flurry. Of course there are time constraints and sleep requirements. Work has to be done. Business has to be run. Friends deserve love and attention. Family needs me. Other than that and incidental requirements I spend every free moment I have now painting, writing stories, lyrics, music, poems, playing the guitar, imagining new art. Creating.

The old black dog he's not so bright.

This one is a song I wrote on Sunday about the Mongrel.

Play it as 12 bar in B and just ad-lib the lyrics in a bit of a kiwi accent, it works...

Black Dog Blues:

Black dog on the prowl, don't show no fear.
Coz he all hunt by smell, fear smells all sticky sweet..
He'll get on your trail.
Black dog on the prowl, keep your powder dry.
Coz if your powder get wet, he gunna know for sure.
You can't fight him off.
Black dog on the prowl, you know he there.
Look him right in the eye, He'll tuck tail and cower.
Mongrel fool black dog.
Black dog on the prowl, don't feed him man.
Stop kicking dust with your boot... You gotta lift your chin.

                                                                 Don't let Black dog in... 

Chris Rea - Black Dog. Listen to the lyrics carefully, this really was a serendipitous discovery which came just in time for this story.

  

Three Superb Guitarists

A story about the three musicians who have most influenced me:

Stevie Ray Vaughan

During the years I lived in Christchurch, New Zealand I often went to a club on Madras Street known as the Southern Blues Bar. Although I had doubtless heard Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble on the radio many times before 1996 I became more aware of his work at the Southern Blues Bar. The house band there were incredibly talented musicians in their own right and the lead singer wore an SRV strap on his guitar. The band did a number of good SRV covers during their sets as well.

Vaughan played a style of music best described as Texas Blues. Comprising a fusion of blues and hard rock underscored with his unique swing and groove Vaughan has a unique tone and deeply emotive style that has grown and grown on me over the last 16 years. A lifetime of practice would still leave me well short of this man's gifted musical style and complete dominance of the fretboard. Stevie has an uncanny knack of producing loud, clean, rolling riffs and it seems he can create feeling and tone from a series of notes that would sound discordant at anybody else's hands.

I particularly identify with Stevie as several years before his tragic death in a helicopter crash he had faced down and beaten problems with alcohol and cocaine abuse. After intense rehabilitation he emerged a whole and deeply spiritual ascetic man. He is well deserving of his real and everlasting sobriety and I pray that he is resting in peace.   

Stephen Ray "Stevie" Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990) was an American guitarist,vocalist, songwriter, and a notable recording artist. Often referred to by his initials, SRV, he is best known as the leader of the blues rock band Double Trouble, with whom he recorded four studio albums. Influenced by guitarists of various genres, Vaughan emphasized intensity and emotion in his guitar playing, and favored vintage guitars and amplifiers. He became one of the leading blues rock musicians, encompassing multiple styles, including jazz and ballads.

Born and raised in Dallas as the younger brother of Jimmie Vaughan, he moved to Austin at the age of 17, and formed the band, Triple Threat Revue, that evolved into a band called Double Trouble, in 1978. Accompanied by drummer Chris Layton, bassist Tommy Shannon, and later, keyboardistReese Wynans, Vaughan became an important figure in Texas blues, a loud, swing-driven fusion ofblues and rock. Despite the breakthrough success of Double Trouble's debut Epic album, Texas Flood (1983), Vaughn entered a period of alcohol and drug addiction. In 1986, he successfully completed rehabilitation and released the album In Step in (1989). On August 27, 1990, while departing a concert venue by helicopter in East Troy, Wisconsin, Vaughan was killed when the helicopter crashed into the side of a ski hill. His death triggered a global outpouring of grief, and as many as 3,000 people reportedly attended his public memorial service in Dallas.

Vaughan was highly rated and is considered to be one of the greatest guitarists of all time. He has received critical recognition for his guitar playing, ranked at #7 on Rolling Stone's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists" in 2003. He ranked #3 on Classic Rock magazine's list of "100 Wildest Guitar Heroes" in 2007. Vaughan won six Grammy Awards, including Best Contemporary Blues Performance for In Step. Vaughan was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2000 and won five W.C. Handy Awards. As of 2012, Vaughan has sold over 11.5 million albums with Double Trouble.

David Gilmour

The first two albums I ever bought were AC/DC, Back in Black and Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon. Gilmour soars on DSOM and my appreciation for his style simply grew the more I heard. I have collected all the Pink Floyd albums over the years and I have some of his solo works as well.

David is the master of understated completeness, with barely a handful of notes he phrases and soars, taking me on a journey of the mind with his music.

David Jon Gilmour,^[1] CBE, D.M. (born 6 March 1946) is an English rock musician and multi-instrumentalist who is best known as the guitarist, one of the lead singers and main songwriters in the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. It is estimated that as of 2011, the group has sold over 230 million albums worldwide, including 74.5 million units sold in the United States.^[2]

In addition to his work with Pink Floyd, Gilmour has worked as a producer for a variety of artists, and has enjoyed a successful career as a solo artist. Gilmour has been actively involved with many charities over the course of his career.

In 2003, he was appointed CBE for his charity work and was awarded with the Outstanding Contribution title at the 2008 Q Awards.^[3] In 2011, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him No. 14 in their list of the greatest guitarists of all time.

Tommy Emmanuel

I first saw Tommy Emmanuel along with his brother Phil performing live in Sydney in 1986. Tommy is probably the best fingerpicker in the world today. He takes guitar music beyond impossible to the sublime.

His rendition of "Classical Gas" has to be seen to be believed and I also really like his version of Guitar Boogie.

William Thomas "Tommy" Emmanuel AM (born 31 May 1955) is an Australian guitarist and occasional singer, best known for his complex fingerstyle technique, energetic performances and the use of percussive effects on the guitar. In the May 2008 and 2010 issues of Guitar PlayerMagazine, he was named as "Best Acoustic Guitarist" in their readers' poll.^[1] In June 2010 Emmanuel was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM)

Stevie Ray Vaughan - Pride and Joy

David Gilmour - Marooned

Tommy Emmanuel - Classical Gas

A Story About Boots

The Old Boots, the New Boots and Boot Poems

These are my old boots, they're retired now. They hang by their laces from the back porch light switch. Spiders live in them. I keep useful things in them. My long pruning shears, some light machine oil, some insect repellent.

These boots are the boots I explored the New Zealand South Island high country in. These are the boots I wore when the young bloke and I climbed Mount Stavely. They have seen the summit of the Torlesse Range, Mount Thomas and others whose names I no longer remember or never knew.

These boots are made of high tech gore tex and heavy suede leather with wool felt and dacron liners. The soles were some high tech modern composite poly material and the bootmakers in Christchurch couldn't resole them for me when they wore down which is a shame. 

They have trodden snow, ice, scree slopes and greywhackle boulders. They have waded in a hundred different back country streams and a fair share of the mighty braided rivers on the East Coast of the South Island. They tramped most of Banks Peninsula in summer and winter. They squelched through ice and mud over on the West Coast where it rains and snows most of the time and sunshine is rare in the temperate rainforests.

They were good boots, the tread is all worn out, and the right boot is missing half it's sole now and there is a hole there to let the water out when I went fishing.

These are my new boots. They're made for the outback. Calf high heavy leather to reduce the chance of  snakes getting hold of me. A raised instep and good solid heels to give me a firm foothold in the stirrups.

Good boots for putting my feet up in. New enough and dressy enough to wear out to see a band play.

Good guitar playing boots. Comfortable enough to wear all day long in summer out in the scrub. Preferred attire for rodeo's and campsites. Fishing sitting in a folding chair in the shade of an old man red gum on the banks of the Darling will work in these boots. 

I got them on sale at Outback Whips and Leather here in Broken Hill, I've been wanting boots like these for the last two or three years but I didn't mind waiting till I could afford them. I hope when they wear out I can tell a good story or two about them.

Boots in Poetry:

The Boss's Boots

The Shearers squint along the pens, they squint along the ‘shoots;’
The shearers squint along the board to catch the Boss’s boots;
They have no time to straighten up, they have no time to stare,
But when the Boss is looking on, they like to be aware.
The ‘rouser’ has no soul to save. Condemn the rouseabout!
And sling ’em in, and rip ’em through, and get the bell-sheep out ;
And skim it by the tips at times, or take it with the roots—
But ‘pink’ ’em nice and pretty when you see the Boss’s boots.

The shearing super sprained his foot, as bosses sometimes do—
And wore, until the shed cut out, one ‘side-spring’ and one shoe;
And though he changed his pants at times—some worn-out and some neat—
No ‘tiger’ there could possibly mistake the Boss’s feet.

The Boss affected larger boots than many Western men,
And Jim the Ringer swore the shoe was half as big again;
And tigers might have heard the boss ere any harm was done—
For when he passed it was a sort of dot and carry one.

But now there comes a picker-up who sprained his ankle, too,
And limping round the shed he found the Boss’s cast-off shoe.
He went to work, all legs and arms, as green-hand rousers will,
And never dreamed of Boss’s boots—much less of Bogan Bill.

Ye sons of sin that tramp and shear in hot and dusty scrubs,
Just keep away from ‘headin’ ’em,’ and keep away from pubs,
And keep away from handicaps—for so your sugar scoots—
And you may own a station yet and wear the Boss’s boots.

And Bogan by his mate was heard to mutter through his hair:
‘The Boss has got a rat to-day: he’s buckin’ everywhere—
‘He’s trainin’ for a bike, I think, the way he comes an’ scoots,
‘He’s like a bloomin’ cat on mud the way he shifts his boots.’

Now Bogan Bill was shearing rough and chanced to cut a teat ;
He stuck his leg in front at once, and slewed the ewe a bit;
He hurried up to get her through, when, close beside his shoot,
He saw a large and ancient shoe, in mateship with a boot.

He thought that he’d be fined all right—he couldn’t turn the ‘yoe;’
The more he wished the boss away, the more he wouldn’t go;
And Bogan swore amenfully—beneath his breath he swore—
And he was never known to ‘pink’ so prettily before.

And Bogan through his bristling scalp in his mind’s eye could trace,
The cold, sarcastic smile that lurked about the Boss’s face;
He cursed him with a silent curse in language known to few,
He cursed him from his boot right up, and then down to his shoe.

But while he shore so mighty clean, and while he screened the teat,
He fancied there was something wrong about the Boss’s feet:
The boot grew unfamiliar, and the odd shoe seemed awry,
And slowly up the trouser went the tail of Bogan’s eye,

Then swiftly to the features from a plaited green-hide belt—
You’d have to ring a shed or two to feel as Bogan felt—
For ’twas his green-hand picker-up (who wore a vacant look),
And Bogan saw the Boss outside consulting with his cook.

And Bogan Bill was hurt and mad to see that rouseabout
And Bogan laid his ‘Wolseley’ down and knocked that rouser out;
He knocked him right across the board, he tumbled through the shoot—
‘I’ll learn the fool,’ said Bogan Bill, ‘to flash the Boss’s boot!’

The rouser squints along the pens, he squints along the shoots,
And gives his men the office when they miss the Boss’s boots.
They have no time to straighten up, they’re too well-bred to stare,
But when the Boss is looking on they like to be aware.

The rouser has no soul to lose—it’s blarst the rouseabout!
And rip ’em through and yell for ‘tar’ and get the bell-sheep out,
And take it with the scum at times or take it with the roots,—
But ‘pink’ ’em nice and pretty when you see the Boss’s boots. 

Henry Lawson


Antique Boots
By Clark CrouchIt was just some cowboy boots,
not much as antiques go,
but they was right there on sale
at the mall's antique show.

They was badly scarred and worn...
the price was very low...
and they was toward the back
sorta hidden, you know.
It made you sorta wonder
just where they'd been and all...
just where they'd trod and wandered
that brought them to that stall.

If only them boots could talk
about life on the range
it'd be fascinating
and maybe somewhat strange.

But answers are locked away
we'll never hear the tale
of how them boots came to be
there in an antique sale.

Anyhow, I bought them boots
and took them home with me
as a tribute to the days
of when the west was free.

They now sit upon the hearth
on permanent display
given a place of honor
and pondered on each day.
Clark Crouch © All rights reserved.

The River is High and the Bush is Alive

Nature is running hot way out west at the moment

My work takes me out to some fairly remote places. Recently I spent some time down on the floodzone of the Darling River around Tandou Farm. The area was desolate and barren just two years ago and the transformation is incredible. Two good seasons of rain in the Darling River catchment, particularly in Queensland and North Western NSW has bought about an awesome revitalization on the land.

The back country is all underwater and flooded and teeming with fish, shrimps and yabbies. Sadly the carp population has exploded.

The carp are getting obscenely large too, this one went 74cm. The good news is because of the profusion of food in the river and lakes the native fish are growing well too and specimens caught over Easter were large and fat in prime condition.

There are birds everywhere, Magpies, Cockatoos and Kookaburras, lots of water birds and many species I don't even recognize.

Creeks that have been dry for a decade are being filled by floodwaters from the river all over the catchment and in some areas vast tracts of land have become completely inaccessible either by being flooded or cut off by floodwaters.

Countless roads and tracks throughout the catchment have become impassable and many dusty roads and corrugated tracks I've used in the past to get around are completely underwater.

The bush is alive with Kangaroos, Emus, Rabbits, Foxes, Feral Goats, Snakes, Lizards, and Insects. It's an amazing time to see the Darling River and the Menindee Lakes right now and no doubt soon enough nature will cycle again as she does and we'll see another drought. Until then I'll be making the most of the incredible miracle that water brings to the outback!