A Long Dry Spell Poem by Francis Duggan

It's been a long dry Summer and it's been a dry Fall
And the water reservior almost empty and the old bloke recall
That in seventy years of living he has not known it so dry
And he has seen many a Season since he was a boy.

The paddocks have never looked so brown and bare
And the thistledown flying through the warm Autumn air
The farmer already feeding his cattle hay
Not much nourishment for them in the dried out grass he say.

April in Wonthaggi the landscape needs rain
And the frogs they are croaking in the empty drain
And the butterflies flitting in the freshening breeze
Around the brown hedgerows and the sunlit trees.

Across the dry pathway the feisty bullants crawl
Their bite is quite painful for insects so small
To the spiny anteater a delicacy
They dig for ants in the soft earth by bush and tree.

A long warm Summer and the Autumn sunny and dry
And the long range weather forecast is little rain till July
And the ground is bone hard and the farm dam is low
And the creek barely flowing is trickling slow.