The Bushy Park Run

by Jo McInerney

How do you name a stretch of land
you do not know or own?
Through audacity – an urging
like a bugle call, the sound of courage
and presumption – the certainty
of those who do not see.

How do you fell the first tree, build the first
fence? How cut a rough-hewn track
through virgin forest? And when you find
a spot for a homestead, do you peer deeper
into the bush? Why? From whom would you
seek permission?

And when the skirmishes begin, what else
is there to do? How, but through
‘punishment parties’ and ‘dispersals’,
can you defend lives and livestock?
In what other way can you preserve
all you have made?

Soon the work will be done,
and you can sit
on your front veranda
and look out over the Avon,
thinking of Scotland
and home.

• The Bushy Park run, the first area settled by
  Angus McMillan in the early 1840s near present-day
  Briagolong and Boisdale in Gippsland, lies on the
  traditional lands of the Gunaikurnai people.
  The homestead was originally located near the
  Avon River and has since been relocated to the
  Old Gippstown Historical Museum.