Shearing Shed

Shearing Shed

Raised above the pebbled ground
a well-trodden floor now creaks.
A rusty iron roof, it aches,
the morning dew it leaks.

A swinging gate cries like a violin
without the many hands to soothe
its dry hinged high-pitched orchestral squeaks.
Where so much stillness now lives,
history forever speaks.

An eerie presence
within the dusty remnants of a shearing shed.
Fretting hooves of rams and ewes.
Anxiously they panted.
Often they bled.

To occupy the resting man’s muse,
river gums shade a bone-parched creekbed.
What soiled hard men once amused,
a city man would surely dread.

In morning Summer dawn
it clings to the whispers of those it stood to most.
Their beating proud hearts for a country
when wool was a country’s to boast.

No sweat.
No blood.
No flies as much today without their oily hosts.
No working dogs or stockmen.
No dripping canteens hang
from the time-worn ironbark posts.

No billycan is brewing tea
between the hours of a day's hard yakka.
No aroma of burnt tobacco.
No damper.
No golden fleece to sort
nor a humming bale press packer.

Lanolin stains the sorting racks.
History paints an era proud.
A breeze blows between the flooring cracks.
Yonder,
the Kookaburra through time
still laughs aloud.

Gone are the fires
with the crackle of gum leaves alight
and the scent of smoking redgum.
No snip of shears,
no laughter,
no jeers.
No more wild tales to sound the day is done.

Nostalgic pride fills the air
as dust dances through rays of light.
Where drought is wide and land is bare.
Where existence is never without its plight.

In the midst of relentless heat,
the shearing shed once bustled
with calloused men and their dusty flock.
Now a place of ghostly echoes.
Of a bygone time, it whispers.
Of the shearer
and the drover's woolly stock.


Gary M Dean