Bush poetry – The Hardest Land of All

This poem is the result of a request by the editor of the Japanese Government’s Tomodachi Magazine, for words to accompany a photo essay on Australia. Allan Whiting thought poetry better suited Rudi Untersee’s glorious outback photos than mere prose.

Here’s how it looked in the original magazine:

 And here are the words reprinted:

Vast, flat expanses, stony channels, tortured hills, gnarled, twisted, struggling trees, eroded rocks, brittle grass clumps.

A different image for every eye, but always colour, always space. 

Time’s story in a landscape library: the oldest land; the planet’s most weather-beaten surface. 

A blueprint for Earth’s future?

Eternity.

Flickering horizons – floating sandhills on stony flats – soft overflowing hard.

Grey-green spinifex riding sand – gentle look – wire fronds and selfish roots tethering: hard binding soft. 

Year in year out: sear, bake and crack, then quench, cool and soothe: mud plaster for the blasted earth.

The anvil.

No musty, secret, worming end to life: the arid land steals back its precious atoms – too few to lose. Sunlit demise under a blue vault: tearing eagle beak, crisped skin, ghost gum bones.

The spirit.

Outsiders run the margin road: snail like, with vital life support. Challenge, marvel and steal. The razor’s edge – one slip.

Balance.

 Allan Whiting – 1991