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!

Helen Hagemann

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