Australiana - poetry and prose



nicolas chevalier - the buffalo ranges


In the Australian forests no leaves fall.
The savage winds shout among the rock clefts.
The very animal life of these frowning hills is either grotesque or ghostly.

Great grey kangaroos hop noiselessly over the coarse grass.
Flight of white cockatoo’s stream out, shrieking like evil souls.

The sun suddenly sinks,
and the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-huma laughter.

                          
...when night comes,

out of the bottomless depth of some lagoon the Bunyip rises,
and in a form like a monstrous sea-calf,
drags his loathsome length from out the ooze.

Marcus Clarke 1876, from Preface to Gordon's 'Poems'