Geraldton Wax

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About 50 km north of Geraldton
The Northwest Coastal Highway becomes Hampton Road
And on the corner of Hampton and Fifth Avenue
There's an old Caltex station where the road trains reload
Rusted sheet metal walls rise from cracked concrete
Your depth perception dances in the shimmering heat
Old rickety gates marked by wood surname signs
Line the sparsely housed wide set dead end streets
If you drive down to where the gravel gives way
To the orange dirt road laced with paddy melon seed
Rusted swing sets are grown over and under
With Patterson's Curse and crawling cape weed
The backyards give way to the patchwork plains
Littered with wild burrows and dried out sheep bones
Half submerged limestone like outback icebergs
No sound but the languid cattle low
You might see my mother
Kneeling in the garden
Raising a gloved hand to shield her eyes
Beneath the wide horizon above ramshackle fences
That delineate the rough property lines
Or my brother barefoot
Peering at tadpoles
In a bucket beside the rainwater tank
By the outdoor laundry where the weeds grew high
If you were travelling that way in 95
Now that I'm grown
I barely recall
The lines on your face
The sound of your call
At the setting sun
Ride your bikes homes
Hot summer months
The cicadas drone
Singing in the paddock
Swinging in the park
Climbing high through the jade
Building up the ramparts
Pelting pomegranates
Stealing the figs
Fashioning weapons to fight the neighbour's kids
I drive back up there every year or two
It's different now someone painted the house blue
Took out the jade bushes from before
I don't know what I go there looking for
I think it might have been my fault
I think it might have been
I think it might have been my fault
I do
About five hours north of Perth West Australia
There's a seaside city where I was born
There are overalled workers down at the cray factory
Past the general practice and the dollar store
Warm Easterly winds bend the trees backward
The burning dunes will blister your feet
You can see the wheat silo's and the Catholic cathedral
From the wishing well up on Mount Misery
The Chapman River rises east of Northampton
And it flows down southward to the coastal plain
Indian Ocean storm swells through rip tides and reef
For the wind surfers out on the waves at Hell's Gate
You can hear yellow tennis balls hitting red brick walls
Low hum of the fan while you sleep with a sheet
From the big boss cigars at the deli on Birch
To the bottlebrush outside the Baptist Church
And there's a cult passed through
And you took me down
To an old duplex in the poor part of town
And he lay his hands on me to pray
And he made me afraid of my body to this day
Corner block house
White window frames
Little woodshed beside where we'd hide when it rained
Dance around the tree stump
Cadets march through the town
Scent of sea breeze and sunscreen
Gum leaves on the ground
Cricket cage matches in 40 degrees
Before bar stools smelling of beer and nicotine
Clay pipes and cannons from the June mutiny
Of the maiden Batavia wrecked on the Morning Reef
Acoustic guitar in its velvet lined case
Wash my brain down at the evolution exposé
From Memorial Park with its Waiting Lady
To the frangipani outside the AOG
They were burning books down on Main Street
On their hellish float they were smashing TV's
Altar call gets the congregation
Up to the front and down on its knees
And-uh the Lord-uh
Daughters and sons
Demonstrate your receipt of the gift of tongues
From you down by their feet colouring on the floors
To the prickly palms out the Potter's House doors
Forty thousand ochre dots
And a Wajarri tongue that is all but forgot
Bends in the riverbeds
Shades of the stones
A decommissioned swing 50 fallen pinecones
With the Mckenzie kids and the souls of lost sailors
The Geraldine miners and the old Greenough jailers
We'd climb out on the rocks where the waves break hard
When the beach was an abandoned railway marshalling yard
And when the land development signs went up
We hurled rocks along with all the swear words we knew
And in the summer months we'd drag our mattresses
Outside and sleep under the Midwest moon
Now that I'm grown I barely recollect
The outdoor bathtub where they submerged my flesh
In the mineral sands where we ran aground
My bones showed through the wet nightgown
Sunk like a ship
Fallen in folds
Taken as gospel truth the roughshod that you rode
I'd have done damn near anything to see you pleased
Baptise me beneath the river bridge where Dad lost his teeth
I drive back up there every year or two
It's better now I guess there's more to do
The Dome of Souls still gets me like it did
When they built it way back then when I was a kid
Now that I'm older I sit on the stoop
And I smoke cigarettes just like you used to do
I think it might have been different
I think it might have been
I think it might have been different
I do

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