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Day Four
XI. THE GOAT ABATTOIR
1. Driving There From Bre in The Morning
We drove there from Bre
in the morning.
Not many native trees left.
No shrubs, no wildflowers.
There were 6 quarrions
picking cotton seeds
off the road,
or wheat dropped off
from out of town trucks.
The cotton on the side of roads, caught in grass,
was from another industry choking the river.
There were fluffy olive mulga & black & white box
& gums, where there was water & heaps
of dead trees in the paddocks. The floods had killed them,
then old age, disease, grubs & ants.
4 hawks flew off a roo carcass
along the floodway.
The sign tilted sideways in the dried up mud.
Dad talked about Jerry being drunk.
He said, "I 'ad ter give 'im a backhander with an open hand,
the other night, a line of blood appearing.
Just a little cut across the nose, ter quieten 'im down.
He gets out of hand, 'e needs
that sometimes."
There was some pretty fucked up country along the way.
More mulga trees, a cluster of them,
Gentle, ashen with wispy tops,
minerals glinting underneath
& some smashed in glass.
In what dad calls 'pretty country'
on the road from Bre to Bourke. |
