South West Settlement Scheme
by Glen Hunting

Poet’s Note: This poem refers to the first wave of settlement schemes enacted by the Western Australian government after the First World War until the mid-1920s. These consisted of giving unsettled land to former Australian servicemen and British migrants. Land that was allotted to settlers in the south west of the state was heavily forested, with the government intending it to be cleared for dairy farming.

It’s almost impossible

to feed a family in a forest.

Or so it seems here.

A frame for this picture

would only torment us

with dreams of cowslip

and sluice—

illusions of mastery.

As if we’d not learned,

a government fooled us

a second time to fight a war

on separate, shifting fronts:

the flies and frosts, trees

the size of castle keeps,

two days’ ride from supply

and decent prices.

And the ones with skins

of burnished coal,

silent as smoke, flit  

and stare at the corners

of all we fret and toil over.

Perhaps they wonder, like us,

why heritage is now a wheel

that turns, then jams in the mud.

Or why their bond

with this place can’t summon

our deference, or a plague

to avenge their loss.

Meanwhile, each furrow

our iron extends

becomes a tool in itself,

stratifying the land

and everyone in it

from edict to campsite.

A cycle of coaxing and cursing

that winnows the spirit.

And they look at us

like they’ve blown our cover,

like they know we’re agents

on foreign soil—told too little,

and left in the field too long.

Glen Hunting is a poet, dramatist, and short story writer from Perth, Western Australia (Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar), but currently living in Mparntwe, Arrernte Country (Alice Springs, Northern Territory). When not writing, he works for a service provider on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands.