Poem - The True Discovery of Australia - James McAuley
[alert-success] THE TRUE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA [/alert-success]
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Erret, et extremos niter scrutelur beroS
Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. -THOREAU: WALDEN.
To A. D. HOPE
WILLEM JANSZOON may have been the first
To leave a bootprint on our shore, but he
Disqualified himself by being Dutch
From celebration in our history.
Dampier, that cool observant pirate,
Could fill an epic, and deserve the fuss;
But he, it seems, preferred the Hodmadods
And said that they were gentlemen to us.
Others, too, line up for epic treatment,
Discoverers of river-mourhs and harbours;
Bur they must take their turn, as mortals do,
Who wait in beauty salons or the barber's.
The one who now receives attention is,
Beyond all doubt, our True Discoverer,
Though verse has hitherto ignored his claim:
The glorious and forgotten Gulliver.
Who found his Lilliput where you will find
Lilliput still, and more so than before:
Close to Lake Torrens by his reckoning,
Though it has since expanded more and more
Till now the population maps display
An acne rash, disfiguring the whole rind
Of white Australia, as she hugely squats
Above her pint-pot, fly-blown and resigned.
And whereas Gulliver has been neglected,
Hushed up almost, as of bad repute,
I here propose that we should change the name
Of Yorke Peninsula to Gulliver's Boot.
(For the benefit of readers overseas,
Not the steeple rising to a height
On pious Queensland, but the curious leg
That paddles in the south just near the Bight),
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