Published in Overland Issue · Uncategorized Everything that happens in the film clip for Men At Work’s ‘Down Under’ Liam Ferney A mid-twenties yarn, classic as A Country Practice kicks off with a caveman’s sodapop bottle steel kettle drum. Kombi cracks in the Cronulla dunes. TANERLORN RULES. The Age of Aquarius ends but we’re in the Eternal City now. Four fellas in the back. FAAAAARK! The medium serves muesli by an oasis & the Sipowicz spiv in sunnies says its SOLD SOLD to the guy with the toy koala playing flute in the tree. Deepcover as a tall Belgische in sailor stripes gives the shibboleth then handballs a Vegemite baguette sloshes seven Foster’s tinnies in four pots heaping with head. Bombay shanti shanti bombed on hashish not bliss. We’re not buying your old shoe but we will buy a bright prophecy through a freshly torn backdoor to our Cronulla. A spaghetti Western funeral & the bit I don’t understand is the stuffed koala chained to an ankle trawling across the sand like a fisherman’s slack line. Read the rest of Overland 228 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Liam Ferney Liam Ferney’s most recent collection, is Hot Take His previous collection, Content, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. His other books include Boom (Grande Parade Poets), Career (Vagabond Press) and Popular Mechanics (Interactive Press). He is a media manager, holder of the all-time games record for the New Farm Traktor Collective and convener of the Saturdays readings in Brisbane. More by Liam Ferney › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 16 September 2024 · The university The militarised (settler) university and its institutional moves to innocence Heba A Even as the university refuses to name the genocide and continues to intimidate those who grieve and rage against it, its processes create policy fictions that disavow activism and rewrite violent facts on the ground. 13 September 2024 · Friday Fiction Hondachondria Tom Gurn Shortly after graduating from high school, Jack Goolbroom bought his first car, an old red Honda Civic, pocked with dents and dings more numerous than the acne scars spattering his pallid cheekbones. The red paint was sun-damaged, acid-washed to almost-pink on the roof, as if it had suffered third-degree burns in a housefire.
