The Andamooka Storm Poem by David Lewis Paget

The saltbush stirred in a sullen breeze
At the Coober Pedy Mine,
Where the ground was baked to a shallow crust
With the surface cracked, and lined,
For it hadn't rained for a seven month,
And the sky was clear and blue,
While a spirit crept from the Opal stone,
At Andamooka, too.

At Mintabie, the wind crept out
Of a hole in the sacred ground,
It swirled and it swept across the land
As the spirit scowled and frowned,
It formed a cone and it swept around
To the Andamooka side,
And joined with the Coober Pedy wind
Like a bridegroom to a bride.

The cone spread out three hundred miles,
It growled as it whirled in grace,
And the dust it stirred streamed skywards up
Like a funnel in outer space,
While the men below in the Opal Mines
Hid deep in the dugout's lair,
Lay flat on the floor and held their ears
From the scream of the storm out there!

While less than a hundred miles away
In the depths of a grim old ruin,
Sat a slip of a girl with a surly mouth
At a table, in the gloom,
For piled up high on the table lay
The fruits of her father's life,
The greens and the golds of the Opal stones
That he'd worked for, with his wife.

But the girl sat quite alone in there,
And could it be, she smiled,
These sacks of rocks, not the only things
That lay by the demon child,
For by her hand lay a hammer, stained
With the colour of earth and mud,
And something that glistened and dried on it,
The red of her parents' blood!

She strained and heaved at the sacks of rocks
And dragged them out to the car,
Then looked across at the mound of earth
That covered a gaping scar,
She dragged the last sack to the porch
As the wind burst over the hill,
And she saw the funnel of dust that swirled
As she worked her evil will.

The edge of the swirling hurricane
Whipped over the shallow mound,
Then swept it up in a stream that brought
A scream of a different sound,
She ran out waving her puny fists
At the spirit of Mintabie,
But the storm had growled as the girl had howled
At the storm, to let her be!

The old prospector's body lay
Uncovered at last out there,
His wife beside as she too had died
With the blood running through her hair,
They stared unseeing before them now
At the daughter who screamed and cried,
But the storm drowned out the daughter's shout,
As she tumbled about, outside.

The funnel whirled for an hour, then left,
It ravaged the countryside,
Took a hundred thousand tons of dirt
On a whirling dervish ride,
It covered the Sydney Harbour Bridge
Left cities to choke in the dust,
To tell of a daughter's parricide
And the loss of a mother's trust!

While waiting out by an ancient track
For the next car passing by,
Is a sight to curdle the hardest heart,
Two corpses, side by side,
They lie uncovered, while straight ahead
In line, where their eyes had been,
Is a girl who's buried right up to her neck,
Who couldn't be quite fourteen!

25 September 2009