A Long Way Back Poem by Don Stratford

From the far flung reaches of the outback
To the low coastal plains by the sea
This drought is as long and as biting
That anyone a-lives ever seen

Stock numbers they are all dwindling
Not from selling them now at the yard
But because of lack of tucker and water
They’re dying and that’s really hard

We’d sell what we can if we could
But no money for them is to be
So more expense and being humane
A bullet is better for them don’t you see

Thru the tears as the cocky fires shots
Looking in the eyes of his stock one by one
As he presses the barrel to their foreheads
And pulls the trigger of his hot smouldering gun

He can see all his work fall before him
He can see his son’s future lost just as well
As he continues to shoot his starved cattle
And curses everything he knows all to hell

There appears to be nothing left for them
But to abandon the family farm in one call
And leave it all to the bank man
That’ll see him end up with nothing at all

The generations that have all gone before him
His father and grandad alike
Had all done it hard he remembers
When he was just a small tyke

But to endure what he has now for years
That the toughest of tough couldn’t do
To destroy all you love and have worked for
His pain and desperation just grew

When finally the job that he started
Was completed and all was quite still
He sat down there right beside them
And cried until he was ill

Finally he raised his bent head
As he slowly walked back to the homestead
With thoughts running rampant like crazy
To tell loved ones of what he now dread

To say to his wife and his children
“No longer the farm life for us
We’ll now have to pack our belongings
Were now town folk”, he said with a cuss

But the cocky he is very resilient
And some time had elapsed fortunately
As he slowly put dollars together
To get his farm back now can’t you see?

It’s taken a long time to deliver
To get back his roots and all his zest
To the place that he was brought up on
Where generations of family graves rest

So now they are back at their homestead
“But by Christ it’s been hard”, he would say
“It’s a long way back when you’re flat as a tack
But the fights worth every penny today”


(11 / 4 / 2007-Inspired by the poem “rain from nowhere” by Murray Hartin)