Years ago we were invited to stay on a huge sheep station in the Australian outback. This was one resulting poem. In 2013 I sampled Javolenus’ guitar and added my own harmonicas and shakuhachi to create Over and Outback. This is the merging of the two. Thanks again Javolenus for the sample and the inspiration.

(Javo & others: the track I originally used was actually C#m100-OverToYou . This seems to have disappeared so I had to put in a substitute to give you attribution.)





Jay’s dam, Kondoolka Station


a thousand square mile dotpainting
and we
less than a dot

others have an advantage
seeing this land seasons ago as a lake
now a salt encrusted red plain in drought

animals lashed to this dying oasis
perfect skeletons picked bleached
undisturbed on their saline slab

they say camels and emus heading south
piled up against the dog fence
thwarted by mesh and electrons

a perfectly undressed kangaroo
white as an xray
flat on this sere horizon.

graeme grabs a femur
does a long john silver
makes a good impression

our guffaws break a stilled silence,
attempt to drown out mortality

as grains of salt

defying a deluge


(from tropeland)

by Rob Walker, Five Islands Press, 2015