Bombala

From the road you see it still,

vanishing in yellow grass,

the old Bombala line—

small embankments, minor cuttings,

low structures over creeks.

For thirty years these pale Merinos

have paid it no attention.

You stop the car, remembering

the signs they had at Central,

those wooden slats with destinations.

Bombala? Where was that exactly?

You contemplate the proud advances:

Cooma, 1889;

Nimmitabel in 1912

(in time for WWI recruits

laughing from receding windows);

Bombala, 1921.

You think too of the politicians

paunched and praising the Monaro,

those conscientious clerks all day

with maps and manifests,

the Chief Commissioner of Railways,

the calm men with theodolites

setting out directions,

the sweaty men with heavy arms

who tap the lines down tight. You see

the first train, rich with dignitaries

and self-congratulation,

the handshakes at the station,

the women standing back a bit

but welcoming the Future. You hear

the soot, the smoke, the hiss of steam,

the driver hooting at a crossing.

The rails are long-since pilfered but

an underlay of stones

and slump of timber bridges still

retain the sounds for those

who care to stop and listen.

It’s been just thirty years.

The villages are mainly

growing sleepier.

The bitumen’s a winner as

we should have always known.

The price of wool is less than half

of what it was in ‘53.

Obliging trucks are quick to haul

direct from yards to abattoir.

You stand there in a gap of silence

between successive cars.

You’re looking for a word—say hubris—

but that is too dramatic for

these blonde and treeless landscapes,

these human traces, half-erased,

surfacing and sinking back

across a narrative of paddocks.

Geoff Page