A Little Lurline Goes A Long Way

We arrive,

bundle off the train

at the top of Katoomba Street

ready for the mountains

that have enticed us

all the way up the hill

with glimpses of expansive bush,

the gullies and ridges appearing

as we grind round corners

and lurch across points

and scuttle through villages

that straggle up the ridges

of the crossing.

We decide to walk.

Down the long jumbly hill

of cafes and shops,

occasional buskers singing out,

the many tongues of visitors

mixing in the air, a mist

rolling in with sudden chill

that announces we are, indeed,

a kilometre above the sea.

We put our coats on

and round the corner

to Lurline Street, the long avenue

heading to Echo Point.

We are back in suburbia.

An endless street

stretching away

long, flat, and treeless.

We adjust our day packs, zipper

our jackets, hurry our talk

to keep the quiet ebullience

we’ve been feeling bubbling along.

How far can this one street go?

Is this drab urban landscape

what we’ve come to see?

We trudge on, chasing the hope

of the dream at the edge of the world.

We are on a river of tarmac.

Our legs tire, our conversation lags.

Perhaps we should have caught a taxi.

The bush, any memory of trees,

has faded from our thoughts.

We stop at a milk bar and buy small

treats just to relieve the boredom

of the trek. The allure of these

so famous mountains lies tarnished

beneath our feet. We have to cross

this blank nether region, it seems,

before we can be granted access

to all that we have been told about.

We crest a rise.

And are stopped in our tracks.

There it is. A valley stretching away,

the dusky yellow-orange of the cliffs.

Our hearts lift, and we stretch out now

as the silence of the bush draws us on.

There are crowds here, but we are happy

to be part of this throng

taking in the ancient hush

laid out before us. The Three Sisters

stand like sentinels and guardians

and we offer quiet homage

to their stance.

We stay for a long time.

Walk the tracks that line

the cliffs and make this place

resound in the heart. Time

could have stopped, or merely

caught us up in its immensity.

When the sun goes down,

dancing bright red light for us

across the sky, we turn for home.

We brave the treeless line of Lurline

knowing we have been gifted

something that will see us across

these sorts of wastes

through whatever days are left to come.

Our hearts are alive with prayer and song.

Peter Hall, 4 April 2019

Peter Hall lives in the Blue Mountains. He is a poet, storyteller and he has helped coordinate a peer group for people living with mental illness. He has been a storyteller, a Playback Theatre practitioner and for eight years the Director of the Drama Action Centre in Sydney.

His poems have won the Blue Fringe Poetry Prize twice and he has appeared in the Picaro Poetry Prise, Byron Bay Writers Festival 2010 Anthology. His book of poems, Thicknesses of the Heart has been recorded as a CD of the same name.

Henry Lawson – Photo courtesy of National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Henry Lawson (1867-1922), one of Australia’s best known poets and fiction writers, spent three teenage years in the early 1880s in the Blue Mountains working for his father Niels Larsen as a builder and housepainter before moving to live with his mother Louisa in Sydney. Henry and Niels lived and worked in and around Mount Victoria where evidence of Henry’s work remains today. Working with tradies, Henry heard exciting tales of bushrangers, miners and explorers told by workers and swaggies who stopped for a smoke and a feed.  He also developed a lifelong affinity with the Mountains bush. Among his works is ‘The Blue Mountains’ published in 1896 with detailed observations of a bushwalk to the cliff edge, perhaps dating from his time living in the Mountains or later visits. It is recited here by another bush poet Greg North at the Theatre of the Clarendon Guesthouse  in Lurline Street.

In the last year of his life on one of his visits back to the Blue Mountains, Henry befriended local Blue Mountains poet and cabbie Harry Peckman, who wrote about their friendship in verse.

Farewell, friend Henry Lawson

Now from our gaze you’ve gone

Though death has chilled your mortal frame

Your Austral soul lives on.

Gregory North is a writer and performer of Australian Bush Poetry and yarns (tall stories).

Since his first performance in 2003 Greg has gone on to become the male Bush Poetry Champion of Australia in 2008, 2009 and 2010 and is now a regular at Winton’s Matilda Country Tourist Park and North Gregory Hotel (not really named for him) as well as many other bush poetry events.

Bush Poetry is now a big part of Greg’s life. He performs regularly and has made several recordings. Greg presented the Blue Mountains Community Radio program ‘Bush Verse, Comedy & Worse’ for seven years until April 2011.

Along the way Greg has won many awards for his poetry and yarn spinning.

Greg lives in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales where he enjoys bushwalking and cycling. He is active in his local Toastmasters Club.

Wandering

Lurline Street, Katoomba

mid-week, late-morning.

Gateway to The Three Sisters,

Giant Stairway,

Echo Point,

the vast Jamison Valley;

two short kilometres to

forest and wilderness

as far as the eye can see,

where treetops meet

the haze of

eucalypt-blue horizon.

Turn from Gang Gang

into Lurline,

trees line the perimeter

of Kingsford Smith Park,

compete with buzzing

overhead power lines.

Branches hang over the park fence,

toss shadows to the road.

There’s no footpath here –

a dog-walker takes the risk,

rather than face

El Niño brewing

on the high side,

where concrete sears

and pools of tar

steam underfoot.

The 1950s Metropole,

its stark brick wall,

hospital-like,

thirty-odd gleaming windows

remember the trees

that once stood below,

when people

gathered beneath them,

connected,

sheltering,

solidarity.

Sunday catch ups

after Church,

picnic hampers

and blankets,

children’s laughter.

I stop for water,

my light cotton shirt

sodden, stuck to skin.

There are no seats here,

the old bus shelter’s

locked tight by ivy;

I settle for someone’s

crumbling front steps,

find solace in the shade

of a yard rhododendron.

A glass bodgie marble

lies half-submerged

between cracks in the path,

welded to earth

by sediment and time.

The blackened Eldon,

windows boarded, smashed,

graffitied,

front door flung open,

slashed warning ribbon

waves from the iron front gate,

beckoning.

It looks dark in there,

and cool.

I find myself wishing

for snow,

and trees,

lots of trees.

Not powerlines,

periwinkle nor ivy,

privet, blackberry, trad,

nor seaside daisies

pretty as they may be.

Ants scrabble

for shade,

how their tiny feet must burn.

A Sulfur-crested cockatoo

lands, takes flight,

an exhausted rhododendron

leans over a dishevelled fence,

ivy and white jasmine hang

from its branches

like entrails,

European wasps

dart to and fro,

gorging on dog shit.

A discarded face mask,

crumpled plastic water bottle,

stuck-to-itself packing tape,

an upended shopping trolley;

the buckled no stopping sign

leans backward

as though flinching

from the sun,

a mummified chip packet

months out-of-date

snared by blackberry.

Windscreens glisten

with sunshades,

so much

aluminium foil and

spring steel wire

when trees will suffice.

A middle-aged man lumbers by –

despite his grand umbrella,

he mops sweat from his brow,

three young children

straggle behind,

complaining, belligerent,

water bottles near empty.

The man checks his phone,

1600 metres to go.

A council fence starts

and stops at intervals,

painted deep green,

perhaps in homage to

trees long gone,

a sticker screams

‘Don’t raise the wall’.

Still the sun beats down,

I look for a tap

to top up my bottle.

Water is lifeblood

but there’s not a tap

nor water bubbler,

nor a dewdrop tree

in sight.

The grey wall

of the primary school

reflects heat waves,

cedes to

assorted vines that

tug on the cyclone fence

with the rusted

Telecom Australia sign,

ivy and blackberry

lake across the path,

weave, wend, separate, rejoin.

Two neat miner’s cottages

bloom with colour

and perfume,

inviting, seductive

as the tourist brochures

up town.

The Gingerbread House,

once a church,

stands proud on the corner,

as it has for a century or more;

painted arches

frame stained glass windows

that toss rainbows

into the rear courtyard

already ripe with

red and white Waratahs,

Wollemi Pines,

native shrubs in bloom,

coffee aromas,

children playing hide-and-seek.

I pause, take a breath,

Finish my tepid water,

brisk-walk to my car

now parked in full sun.

Windows down,

I drive the remaining

1350 metres

to Echo Point

where I buy water,

guzzle crisp mountain air,

lie supine in leaf litter,

and listen to the

silence of trees.

Leonie Bingham 2022

Leonie Bingham lives in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains with her husband and various pets. She is passionate about the natural environment, family and friends, haiku, backyard gardening, and dancing to 1980s songs on her rear deck each night.

Leonie holds an Associate Degree in Arts (Creative Writing) from Southern Cross University, Lismore. Her writing is published widely. In 2019, she placed first in the Martin Lucas Haiku Award (Britain), and third for English-language haiku in the Maya Lyubenova International Haiku Contest (Bulgaria).

Leonie’s current work is a memoir about her life as an adopted person born in the heyday of Forced Adoptions in Australia.

Leonie’s poetry collection ‘treetop to treetop’ can be ordered through Amazon. Limited copies are also available from the author leoniebingham@bigpond.com