Poem for the Day - from the Mawson Poems

The Aurora

A Summer Visit to Caroline Cove
December 1911

Caroline Cove, and away from the strong westerly’s, the Aurora
anchored its length and breadth in a plateau-like interior. In a channel
no more than eighty yards wide, Captain Davis knew what to focus on.
He was a man who knew the reefs from earlier days. Although
anchorage quickly changes identity, we were circumspect, eager to
rendezvous with what we’d heard. We rowed towards the entrance,
leaving the ship’s masts, sails drawn, skeletal. The landscape painted
us in, thick tussock-grass, steep hillsides, rocky shores and a crowded
sunlight swirling with sea-birds. The land was a treasure trove of
primitive nature, rookeries of eggs, nests of giant petrels and
thousands of penguins. In mild weather we were a band of schoolboys
on excursion. Royal penguins called to us as slaves, they
pecked our legs, chattered at the highest pitch, and as if we were
marched to court, we followed their whirring flippers, their crested
eyebrows pointing us south. Massed in uniforms of long golden
feathers they filed into rank, lead us away in haste, not by
danger from waves, but with their own desire not to swim.