Trucking Fatstock By Road Train From Urupunga To Katherine Meatworks In The Northern Territory Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

This is a country of rushes and ringing in,
Of clean-skins and bang-tailed musters,
Of hunting strays from the shrinking waters
Of the smell of leather and horses and diesel
Of yard gates closed and road trains rolling up.

This is a country of scrub bulls and trap cattle,
Of endless plains and dead-end tracks
Where insignificance rolls onwards and forward
Under red dust through sparse scrub
And the rigs will find their station late of day.

This is a country where the land falls away
Behind the horizon as the brutal sun
Glows ochre-daubed and heat glimmered
At close of play and the loading ramp goes quiet
And the driver checks tires and couplings

This is a country where stock is broken
And those untamed are fenced and penned
And even the wildest from the bush runs
Are lulled by rubbing girths and stifles
As the road train runs on into the night

Come the deepest dark the lights shine out
Across the red country and its dusty trails
Into the black soil plains, fighting for the hard top,
Culvert by culvert, marker by marker flash-lighting
Tremors and shadows from the convoy.

Hands too tired and lips too dry to seal a roll-your-own,
Come the dawn and the bitumen straight as a die
Leads on to Katherine, stun gun and skinning knife:
This is a land of small and very grudging mercies
With no holds barred on driving hell for leather.