That time of drought the embered air

Burned to the roots of timber and grass.

The crackling lime-scrub would not bear

and Mooni Creek was sand that year.

The dingoes' cry was strange to hear.                          5

I heard the dingoes cry

in the whipstick scrub on the Thirty-mile Dry.

I saw the wagtail take his fill

perching in the seething skull.

I saw the eel wither  where he curled                          10

in the last blood-drop of a spent world.

I heard the bone whisper in the hide

of the big red horse that lay where he died.

Prop...