THIRTEEN VANDEMONIAN WOODCUTS
Dressed in a shell of yellow Huon pine by the forger Grove: LieutenantGovernor David Collins, March 24, 1810 Grubbing with saw, maul, wedges, wary for waddies, spears, The limejuicer splits the smooth, white peppermint, Stripping its ribbons, measuring off boards and posts, Shifts gaze to the barkchopper, exjavelin man himself, Smearing the chimney’s insides with mud. Quaffing the whorls of leafteeth from cutdown sheoaks, Too leaden to stray, a pair of unhobbled bullocks. Skulls scattered hard by the killing gang’s huts, The stench of oil and gore from puncheons of skins. Skins by the thousand: young seals, mother seals, seal elephants. The wallabyskins on their crows’ backs the sealers snatch, Spread black arms round a trunk and, growling oaths, Flog their buttocks bloody, curse to sever ears And club them on the snout like wideeyed seals. How dare these slaves pilfer the buckoes’ sugar Or slope back from muttonbird burrows, skin bags empty. the palecreamy flowers of the blackwood in spring call to mind the complexion of a free woman; its hard, fissured bark the visage of government crones. Tearing at great girths, the cedargetters with crosscut saws hew and haul the golden, redhued slabs for mouldings, dadoes, dining tables, thick, panelled doors that yield the subtle fragrance of old lags. Gondwana giants one hundred feet without a bend Great stands line the Gordon; Huon stands tall along the Gordon Best ships’ timber: springy, easy to work, closegrained Impenetrable to the worm, as good as to the canary Axegashed trunks slain by felons lie still in Macquarie
above rough swampgums and scent of musk stood straight our masts of celerypine when, struck dumb, we spied in ferny, topknot hold the frantic beat of wings, jade and scarletlined and greaves of glinting gold cusick cusick cusick cusick
Iron man locked behind Hell’s Gates, You bash a corduroy road along the forest floor Through a ninetail switch of leathery scrub, Horizontals embrangling, clots of drunken flies. Monstrous timbers lopped, heaved, shouldered By you scurvy piners in yellow and grey, Staggering under to the water’s scurfy edge. On rheumatic pegs you slide shackled waistdeep With handspikes grappling in splintered paws Neath icy floes, securing the logs, chaining up The huge, roughhewn raft, towed by whaleboats To galelashed sheds on foggedup shores. At Recherche Bay prisoners break from the brig’s hold, Maroon the lobsters and laggards agin’ mutiny And steal away to China on the nobbled Cypress. Convict Popjoy fashions a coracle some twelve feet long, Covers struts of mimosa with hammock canvas And primes this flimsy carcass with soap and resin. Together, the flash cove and Lieutenant Carew Steer the castaways twenty miles to Partridge Island, The ringleader brought back to Port Arthur returned transport. The knockoff bell at Macquarie tolls no more: Barracks, sawmills, tannery, kilns, all abandoned Save the slips, where the last gang adze the Frederick’s fittings. Ten slippery tars snaffle the brig, unfurl and Chilebound slip away . . . Stalking the Peninsula atop virgin tiers and islets Round Storm Bay, tall poles, gaffs, struts, lanyards, Twentytwo stations in all, moveable arms clacking bird slang. Shadowing the settlement, up behind the Commandant’s house, Masthead superior, the semaphore of Charles O’Hara Booth: One minute dead to rattle news of a bolter’s flit To the Cerberus Chain ringing Eaglehawk’s Neck. Point Puer, stripe of barren island in Opossum Bay, Crawls with mangy urchins, poor as pademelons, Vying to learn a trade: cobbling, nailmaking, tailoring . . . A privileged few get it easy, like joiners That carve the pews and pulpit of Arthur’s church, Knocking up stocks before the fatal tree.
Michael Small
January 628, 2003