Cox's River

Cox’s River

There’s a place I know on the Cox’s River, where the willows tickle the sand.
Where the cattle graze and the wallabies laze and the gum trees are so grand.

There are dams with ducks and perch, we think? Among the fences, mended.
Where the yabbies clawed and dingoes pawed and fishermen pretended.

There’s a dominant rock, where the lizards sun, there are grass-clad valleys too.
There are stockman’s tracks and red-belly blacks and a shack with an outside loo.

Autumn brings the Anzac Day and the smell of rabbit stew.
On an open fire, in a tin with wire and washed down with a brew.

By now, the leaves have left the trees, except those evergreens.
The land grows stark, the sky goes dark, forever, now it seems.

In the winter time on “Top Of The World” when the snows, they fall around.
The rabbits shiver, the foxes quiver as they lie in wait to bound.

The reptiles find their places, warm and mammal’s coats grow woolly.
The days are short, the men drink port and talk of past hunts, cruelly.

The spring-time is so different, but the morning dews still lie.
On the new grass roots and the sapling shoots as horses thunder by.

The bees, they start collecting the pollen for their honey.
The currawongs, they dive and bomb! Kookaburras think it’s funny.

But surely the air is heated now and the ground dries slowly out.
The cicadas hum, the crickets drum and then there is no doubt?
That summer brings the stifling heat with a punch packed to deliver,
As the trout they lay and the willows sway, along that Cox’s River.

Andy Pike
2001