We had expected to use this space to publish an article which would have demonstrated that an Australian Prime Minister, the then Mr Robert Menzies, over-ruled the recommendations of his government’s safety committee and authorized the British authorities to explode their nuclear bombs at Maralinga.

Anyone studying the Australian poetry of our time will be struck by a significant fact: the anti-war ranks in the community have enlisted some of our finest poets, but the pro-war elements are poetically silent. Is this because those who, even with the best of patriotic motives, welcomed, supported and justified Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war know at heart that they have stiffed something in their conscience? A poet who has maimed his own humanity becomes mute.

Artistic and creative activity has never been restricted to the middle and upper classes. Australian working class voices have been present since invasion. A long list includes the protest verse of convicts, ballads of migrant women’s working life, lyrics of popular songs from Jimmy Barnes or Archie Roach, the deeply political poetry of Aboriginal poets, performance poetry and spoken word in urban pubs, stories of hardship on the land in the bush tradition, prison poetry, union songs, hip hop rhymes, and page poetry dealing with working class experience.

I don’t remember my old man, I was much too young, but Mum told me about him one night when she was down in her cups and drinking wine. He was her second husband. (Her first husband and my half-brother died in 1930 — something of measles.)

Clara Schultz lying alone in a strange hotel bedroom was suddenly confronted by the most horrible thoughts. For a woman accustomed to the idea that she would live for ever, having lived, it seemed for ever, these thoughts were far from welcome. For instead of being concerned with her immortality they were, without doubt, gravely about her own death.

“Heavens!” Sophie put her suitcase down on the concrete path and watched the cat flatten itself under a daphne bush and disappear.

Even when the strike started, thoughts of the baby growing in her remained uppermost in Mary Skinnider’s mind. She dreaded the discomfort of the last three weeks of carrying and the confinement, but the glow of expectation, the dream of holding her baby in her arms, overshadowed every other consideration — except Bill’s stubborn suggestion that if the baby was another boy they should give it to Mick and Norma Gerran.

A scent of summer, compounded of bleached grass and eucalyptus scrub, filled the dry air. Summer sounds — the loud and unreturning hum of errant blowflies, the steady chirr of crickets — were all that could be heard by Mrs. McGillicuddy, standing at the door of her lean-to kitchen. She sniffed, and then looked carefully round the horizon. No smoke anywhere.

Poor bugger me / Gurindji / Me bin sit down this country / Long time before Lord Vestey / Allabout land belongin’ to me / Poor bugger me Gurindji.

that year I got a full-time job / of entering data in my c.v. and applications

Old flower-stems turn to sticks in autumn, clutter the garden, need / the discipline of secateurs. / Choked overplus, straggle of weed, / cold souring strangling webs of root, / I pile the barrow with the lot. / Snapped twig that forgets flower and fruit, thornbranch too hard to rot, / I stack you high for a last rite.

                                                                              m    on                              o                    t  o            n    e   monoton                      e  m                o         n                                  o         t    on       e   […]

The whistling unbelievers have passed this way. They work for the most private industry, / are recognized by few. Their cause: to mark / like television does, its lurid heroes / turn to each other in their seats, / respond like a poor script.

I heard on the radio how birds in Assam / lifted like a cloud over the camellia forest / and flew to a village in the last light. / There it was warm and filled with other wings transparent and flickering. / They dashed their bodies against the smoking lamps / and fell / into the street / on to the trodden stems of water hyacinth.

Cars. Lightning. Rain. / Your cheek on my hair. / Strawberries. White wine. / A mess in the back seat.

Such dirty work / turning dreaming tracks // into nature strips / that drunks fall over // on Larapinta Drive / and Heavitree Gap

innocently entering malcolm fraser’s temporary garden through the black wrought-iron security-gate

Imagine alienation Imagine a bonding process of 23 years of lies, Of 23 years of guilt Of being estranged Of trying to let go … Of wanting to but …

Such dirty work turning dreaming tracks into nature strips that drunks fall over on Larapinta Drive and Heavitree Gap a tribe oversees the wrecker’s yard enthusiasts bagging wing mirrors, sometimes […]

This archival edition gathers relics from Overland’s rich archive of radical Australian writing and editing, preserved in the usage and idiosyncrasies of their times.