Family history across the seas

This week we were driving the nearly 4000kms to get back to Darwin from Canberra. Yesterday as we drove through 1000kms of Territory bush I was moved by the many colours and images. I’m no poet but here are my thoughts in vaguely poetry form rather than prose.

Territory Colours

Dawn breaks deep red against the lightening sky

The horizon so vast in an encompassing ocean of green

White-trunked gums with leaves of lime

In a sea of shrubs fringed with red grevillea

And trimmed with a bright blue sky

Buttes of ochre-red dot-painted with grey-green spinifex

A parade of turkey bush fresh-flowered in purple

Laced with yellow from grevillea, kapok and wattle

Cycads waving their new-grown umbrellas and

New grass tufts vivid-green against the fire-burnt ground

Contrast the shimmering purple seed heads of older grass

Lime, shamrock, white, purple, blue, red, green and yellow

Home again to the colours of the Territory bush.