Saturday, November 10, 2012




Camping Out                                             
                     For Emma Chisit


Strewth! It looks like a dog's breakfast. Eiche nardly bleevit.
Tent's karked it and the billy won't boil. Stubbies and tinnies


around the camp oven and the donk's gawking holes where the
egg nisher was. Course, we gave it a burl, four by four, flat to the


boards, chucked a u-ey at the creek, hit a roo, some thingamajig,
whatchamacallit, black stump dooverlacky. Nardlyseeit. Jerry can


sweatin' like a wet season of petrol, so charged, engine's cooked,
clapped out. The big smoke's ten miles off, as the crow flies.


And Strine's stronger than a scorcher, out the back o'bourke,
somewhere near bulamakanka. Yobbo, gives me the ear bash,


spits the dummy, downs the amber fluid. Says, don't come the
raw prawn with me, this is a kick in the teeth! We can make tracks,


I say, give someone a tingle. I was zony sane lar snite, it's not like
the old days, eating cackle berries, having one with the flies,


cuppa near the Murri. Aussie skies like a blue soft road, sweet
silk moon spreading sheets of light, night barking like an owl,


keen as mustard at the old hanky panky. But tomorrow'll be the
same. He's weaker than a sunburned snowflake. Icon ardlywait!


Old wobbly boot, up the creek, picking off pink galahs with his
beebee gun, crook as a chook, laughing in a technicolour green.


Jeer that noise? Wodger reckna itiz? - Corrugated road, road train
hurtling down the tracks. Gotto go, get me swag, cooey!



This poem is written in "strine". When a challenge came to write in another language
& not remembering my high school French, I decided on Australian slang!

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Bounty

Bounty
Prose Poetry

The Five Lives of Ms Bennett

The Five Lives of Ms Bennett
A Family Saga

The Ozone Cafe

The Ozone Cafe
White Collar Crime

The Last Asbestos Town

The Last Asbestos Town
Available from Amazon

Evangelyne

Evangelyne
Published by Australian Poetry Centre, Melbourne

of Arc & Shadow

of Arc & Shadow
Published by Sunline Press, WA

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Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Helen Hagemann holds an MA in Writing from Edith Cowan University, has three poetry books: Evangelyne & Other Poems published by Australian Poetry, Melbourne (2009) and of Arc & Shadow published by Sunline Press, Perth (2013). Bounty: prose poetry is published by Oz.one Publishing in 2024. She has three novels published The Last Asbestos Town (2020), The Ozone Café (2021) and The Five Lives of Ms Bennett a result of her Masters degree at ECU (2006), is published by Oz.one Publishing (2023).

Helen Hagemann MBA (Wrtg): ECowan

Helen Hagemann MBA (Wrtg): ECowan
Author & Poet

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