Dedicated to Ruth and John, who made it happen.

             OLD MUNDIWINDI

                      (The Singing Line is the aboriginal name for the telegraph line.)

               No track leads to it, none passes by,

               just visible through the stunted bushes -

               ramshackle building

               half the planet I have crossed to find.

               Over all, the blue - intense and clear,

               at my feet the thin red soil,

               the dust of which becomes a second skin;

               a soil which, parched and poor,

               yet grows the clumps of spinifex

               bleached pale beneath the unrelenting sun

               and bristling with their thin barbed leaves

               to needle-prick and draw the blood

               from unprotected flesh.

               This was your country, desert land,

               north of other worlds

               where feet trod pavements,

               eyes closed at night between four walls.

               For you the rusty Pilbara soil,

               the canvas shelter camping in the bush

               when out to check the Singing Line

               that hummed with words,

               linked other people far across the land.

               Some echo of yourself you've left behind

               in these old rooms,

               the building raised, stone pillars hold

               the termites' work at bay.

               I bend to see the tailbone of a 'roo

               that lies beneath,

               I lean against the balcony -

               the planks adrift, unsafe to tread -

               and look into the rooms, doors swinging wide

               or long since gone.

               I lean and listen,

               do not fill it with the scenes of men at work.

               I do not see their ghosts,

               I do not hear their talk, the tread of feet,

               the pumping of the bore.

               The stillness that enshrouds me

               lets through the essence of this land

               that held you here.

               And that I've found.

               Your letters home, the ink long dry,

               spelt out your life

               this far side of the world.

               You penned them here.

               When first I read, I wondered .....

               now I know .....

               it holds me, too.

               Copyright Ivy Collins 2009