From the Lookout above Randall's Bay.

There is snow on Adamson’s Peak
In the high country of the south west
it is still most assuredly winter.
Yet as my eyes come home to Randall’s Bay
the paddocks sing of spring.

If I close my eyes to eucalypts
and my ears to the calls of parrots
it could be England in April.
The trees protecting the pastel-painted farm house
could be a clump of sacred yews or holy oaks.

Even as the eucalypts proclaim Australia
the sheep are too white and the lambs too fragile.
The grass is dressed in that fleeting hue
which is ‘forever England’
before it braces itself for antipodean heat.

On the Bay there are the early signs of summer –
The white sails of the long weekend
and children excitedly searching rock pools.
Across the Channel South Bruny begins
to aestivate in the blue remembered haze.

This is Tasmania, of the perplexing paradox
where green is greener than anywhere else on Earth
but many in Hobart Town are colour blind,
mesmerized by the lie of perpetual progress,
the deadening heart of Enlightenment darkness.

Here at Randall’s Bay there speaks
A greater truth beyond the paradox.
Here can dwell souls of a different temperament -.
those who know a new enlightenment
that sings to them a fresh song.

They know that only in the balance
of English vernality and eucalypt laden haze,
in sheep too white and parrots too bright,
in infinite Gods and daily mortalities
there can be a new land of hope and haven.