From beneath the mighty clock tower
We make our run, the day is done.
We pass through the town on dusk
Out toward the setting sun
And up on to the highway
Along the lifted levy road, shifted
Over the river on the bridge
Where that muddy Loddon flowed.
Further on and further and
Then around, the road departs high ground
And we turn t’ward home and in the distance
The town lights are no longer found.
We pass the place where broken fences
And cows were let, and not fixed yet
Where salt bush runs some eighty chain
And thankful mother can’t forget.
We drift past the farms with names
My father has known, and to me shown
As he recounts the stories of their lives
And tells the stories of his own.
Stories old, stories often told
Of crops that teamed with grain
And summers bought and sold
From ten bad season’s pain.
We pass the chirping channel bank
Where damp ground offers up a sound
Of an orchestra of insects and frogs in chorous
Upon the green grassed ground.
The bitumen road reaches its end
And then gravel, like a judge’s gavel
Hit the hard tyres of the car
As closer to home we travel
To where finally it ends
Dusty and browned, the pounded ground
Our house and sheds like a beacon
Our house, our house and the home is found
Signal like, across the paddocks
Where dusk abates, toward the red gates
We argue of who shall open and close them
And there the old farm dog waits.
Leave a Reply