Tiger Hill
I want to make it a regular thing going
to see Mum in the middle of winter. To try
and break it up a bit. Make it less lonely.
And I've digressed. To Alenandra for two
nights. I've never been to Saint Bathans.
The farmer giving me a ride is grouching
about those stinking Arabs cutting off our
petrol. He's got to check his rabbit traps
at the back of the station.
This blinding blazing yellow blue and white
day, there's nothing and everything to look
at, and draw. The stone pub. There's a water
pipe — left over from some miner's thing?
Ernst Plischke would be proud of the flared
lines of the corrugated iron station bog.
Rock and Pillar. Kokonga... Wedderburn
Oturehua. Ida Valley. Auripo... Lauder
Omakau. Chatto Creek. FIRE
I better get back to the road. There's an icy
bite in the air, but that's the Cromwell train.
The smell of thyme, sun-drenched, dusty.
1980-99 Acrylic on hardboard 900 x 1200mm