Barney snaps a blade of grass and pokes at a hole

in the old eucalypt up near the house. Closer, he tells me,

and, like tuning ancient radios, there's a funny sort of buzz,

sugar gliders trickled pink by his cat's whisker.

In the old landrover he will not sell his neighbour for parts

a family of pardalotes is nesting, chicks chuckling

in the wispy chassis … and there! like a leaf swooping

(Did you see him?) an adult bird too quick for me.

Buddy, buddy! he calls, sprinkling maggots of cheese,

and shiny-in-blue-sequin wrens come hop-skip-and-jump

like he's an Oz St Francis. He takes me this morning

into the Bush, a place of the spirit. It's a kind of initiation,

there's privilege to it, the steep descent into Quartz Creek

down to a green tribe of man ferns it belongs to,

then steeply out again to an immensity of sky.

He tells me stories of black fish, of duke witty's chirrupings,

Hank and Loch his brothers in the warm-sitting-around-comfy

feel of seventy years ago in Flowerdale when Kay his Dad

smoked a sagacious pipe and Mum translated Greek.

Where's morning gone? he asks, then quickly says Or has it?

wishing and making me memories too. For it seems the man

tolerates only love round here. There are good sons

in the paddocks with the sturdy cattle … but I also see

a dead cow's hooves poking the hugeness of the Flowerdale sky

and there, against a fence, aborted calves with eyes that say

we had our chance in this Edenic Flowerdale but just

missed out. I listen to his quiet talk of being buried here

beneath the silver birch he planted and there's

an OK-ness to it. So Barney here's to you,

it's been a privilege, an honour and a joy. As we in Liverpool

most definitely say, god bless ye owld gums is gold!