Old Telegraph Road...Jindivick Poem by Lindsay Laurie

Between the shoulders of, Old Telegraph Road
that one time was gravel to carry the load
of day to day traffic that swirls up a gust
and covered the foliage with a layer of dust.

Old Telegraph Road is a servicing source
for homesteads and dairies on the length of its course,
there's a working stone quarry that's made quite a scar
and there's much more to see as you travel by car.

This rolling hill country with scenery so grand
is a blending of nature and dairying land,
and so there is one thing that is sure to please
when you stop for a visit and try Jindi cheese.

Wattle Creek flows under, Old Telegraph Road
where a shy platypus has made its abode
in slow drifting water beneath paper-barks
with a background of song by Eurasian skylarks.

The skylarks are noted in fields from up high
as their song warbles out from a dot in the sky
where cattle are grazing on clovers and rye
without taking notice of cars driving by.

Beyond the shoulders of, Old Telegraph Road
between new tar and fodder or crops that are sowed
barbed wire and gates split what farms are here for,
and scrub that's retained as a bird corridor.

You'll find if you park and go strolling between
roadside vegetation that is varied in green
the twining fringe lily that is fragile and blue
and hidden by grass are the sun orchids too.

It pays to be wary where you put your foot down
in tiger snake country veiled yellow and brown
amongst the leaf debris and thick bracken fern
where quick fleeing rabbits will always return.

And a Fairy Wren family of Jennies and Jack,
(who is given away by the blue on his back)
is leading his family through a hakea shrub,
and then lost in a thicket of acacia scrub.

And bush rats have tunneled a perfect escape
in blown grass and bracken that they did reshape
where flax lilies clump with their flowering done;
now bright purple berries do shine in the sun.

Near a stringybark stand that is bare underneath
grows scattered in clumps; the common pink heath
and spinebills are feeding from flower to flower
and sprinkle the leaves with a light pollen shower.

In the stringybark canopy blocking the sun
there's a chorus of tweets and a warbling run
from a magpie that rests after searching the ground;
and king parrots screeching does also resound.

On a high rise I stand and I gaze to the East
where haze from the eucalypts sharply increased
and a cypress windbreak grows along a fence line
with Mount Baw Baw back dropped in the sunshine.

Now progress is rife, no more pot holes galore
for the surface is tarred and the dust is no more
but Old Telegraph Road still carries the load
between Jackson's Track and Main Jindivick Road.

Old Telegraph Road is a servicing source
for homesteads and dairies on the length of its course,
now a quiet Sunday drive is so pleasant on tar,
and there's so much to see as you travel by car.