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Mildura Writers' Festival

July 2008
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Mildura Writers' Festival
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2008 Program
Close links with Sunraysia, Les Murray
Hoofed beats are year-round fires
devouring as high as they can reach,
hopeless to put out. Pink smoke
lifts off their terra cotta

but all fences have been torn out
And flocks, herds and horses banished
from this apricot country. Here
they’ve finished with the pastoral.

Downstream of this sprinkle terrain
merged desert rivers stop-go to Ocean
but the real Australian river,
the one made of hard labour and launched

with tilt of a Chinese pole-bucket,
that one sets out for the human mouth
down a thousand asphalt beds
in squeaky crates and marshaled vintages.