No, but I have a Bush Balladeer friend who I shall show it to. (Have you
heard my Ballad of Many Crows, Max? I'm pickled tink if you have )
Andew
On 17 December 2014 at 04:17, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]
> wrote:
>
> 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
> =
>
--
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
'Undercover of Lightness'
http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
'Shikibu Shuffle'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
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