by Rodney Williams

with thanks to The Lure of Montague by Laurelle Pacey;
& The Field Guide to the Birds of Australia by Pizzey & Knight:
with respect for the Yuin Nation, traditional owners of Barunguba

1.

Arriving to a fanfare big on figures for the Thirties
as a millionaire maker of Western frontier myth
two decades after writing of riding the purple sage
Zane Grey was lured south by the bait of black marlin
met inside Sydney Heads by the state’s tourism director
no signs of depression in all that gear aboard ship:
after Narooma’s sandbar was condemned as a danger
Grey’s boat docked at Bermagui for his six-month stay.
Planning a film, a novel, plus books on travel, on sharks,
he had his party of seven set up camp on a headland
toting a hundred & sixty-six pieces of luggage –
with floorboards in a dozen tents, pioneers at glamping –
by the thousand giving autographs to fans in their carloads
column-inches one measure of Zane’s catches off Montague.

2.

Leaving Narooma, through breakwater walls like outstretched arms,
the ferry skirts a rookery of fur seals, on rocks across at the island.
Our guide makes her plea on the jetty, as we alight at Barunguba –
we’ve seen a brace of whales breach, in binoculars drawn close,
but the next tick on our list could be… to spot the nest of a raven.
Invaders from the mainland, they steal seabirds’ eggs & chicks
from a hatchery for gulls, crested terns, wedge-tailed shearwaters
sitting on timber decks or granite, in sand-burrows or nest-boxes.
The lighthouse still a beacon, our docent praises masons’ skills,
rounding blocks so perfectly, they’re held by gravity, not mortar.
She numbers off stones & steps; graves for lighthouse folk as well –
two siblings dying young, each ill; a father of five, injured, killed…
With less heart she adds those terns, nesting close here by the score:
their harsh calls of kirrik cost her sleep, in light-keepers’ quarters.