Yes!
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 16 December 2014 16:26
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: a yarn from Fiordland - needs to be a ballad -
- and I nominate A Burke to have first go.
My Dunedin friend Alan wrote this down yesterday after a visit to old Ted.
['Trampers' are bushwalkers.]
[Deer-shooting is a Fiordland activity.]
Ted [Alan writes] regaled us with yarns. For example:
Murray Gunn used to have a tourist camp ('Gunn's Camp') out at the start of
the Hollyford Track in Fiordland, and the conservation department (DOC)
hated this and tried to get him moved off for several years. One reason was
that he kept an elderly brown horse, whose horse-shit contained oats which
then infested the conservation land.
Gunn became worried that someone would shoot his old horse, so he found some
white paint and painted, in large capitals, HORSE on one side of the beast;
but then he found he was running short of white paint, so on the other side,
he painted COW with what remained. And all went well for the old horse until
one year it dropped dead - but unfortunately right on the bank of the
Hollyford River.
The next flood took the HORSE/COW and floated it downstream until it fetched
up on a rock, directly under the one bridge over which DOC-sponsored
trampers crossed the river as they followed the track. And in due course it
rotted and became (said Ted) a seething mass of maggots - which upset the
trampers.
The DOC people went to Gunn and said, You've got to shift your horse! - to
which Gunn said, It's not my horse. Yes it, is, look at what it's got
painted on it - that's your work! Oh no it's not, said he - anybody could
have painted that! And stood his ground.
So the DOC people went to the Ministry of Works gang on the Milford Road and
offered $100 to anyone who would remove the carcase from the rock; and a
couple of likely lads took up the contract. They nicked a quantity of
Gelignite from the MWD store, placed it under the horse, ran the wires a
safe distance away to the plunger, checked there were no trampers in the
offing, and pressed the plunger. BOOM! - and unfortunately, because the
charge was under the horse and on top of the rock, the explosion threw the
horse straight through the bridge, and destroyed it completely. And it cost
DOC $100,000 to replace the bridge.
Don't you agree this cries out to be made over into a bush ballad?
best from Max in yarn-less Seattle
=
|