As Mick reads his poetry, Bazza drifts somewhere between a schooner and the seasons, writes John Longhurst.
“Bazza, Bazza, BAZZA!”
Mick landed the schooners on the table with the skill of a seasoned pilot.
Bazza replied:
“I do worry when I hear my name called three times, Mick. It’s either really good news or really bad news.”
Mick grinned, raised a single finger, delved into his shirt pocket and pulled out neatly folded sheets of paper:
“I’ve written a poem, Bazza.”
Mick pulled out his glasses, cleared his throat and without invitation began reading.
“The Fella From Bodella...”
Bazza leaned back and creased his eyes:
“It’s Bodalla Mick, not Bodella. And it looks more like a ballad, given the length of it.”
Mick replied, annoyed:
“Yeah, whatever. I had a bit of trouble with the rhyme. Now, listen up.”
By the end of the first verse, patrons to the left had picked up their drinks and regrouped at a table near the front door. The clunk of gear changes of semi-trailers slowing to 50 km/h on the Princess Highway outside of the pub provided relief to their ears.
Good manners kept Bazza as the lone audience. His gaze sought distraction out the window behind Mick and he rubbed a palm over his mouth to stifle a yawn.
Mick laboured on as the Fella From Bodella chased cows across paddocks and rewarded himself with a hefty sip of his schooner at the end of page one.
Bazza’s gaze fixed on the low setting sun to the west, the autumn colours and contemplated the change of seasons.
As a kid, he loved summer with the fury of the sun dominating endless days at the beach and the rich smell of coconut oil on well-tanned skin. A strip of white zinc cream across the nose was the only challenge to the sun. In the evenings, the carnival at Batehaven promised more wild excitement and a distraction from the sunburn or bluebottle stings. And then to bed, exhausted, with parents claiming “adult time” and Daryl Braithwaite hogging the airwaves on cheap transistor radios.
Almost fittingly, autumn was now his season of choice. There was a balance to the environment, and the sun was now disciplined and almost shy in its morning rise through curtains of soft oranges and yellows. Leaves, now weary of the summer heat, either fall or mock the sun with changes of colour.
The ocean is still tepid from the peak of summer days, tempting swimmers all the way to the edge of winter. But the tourists are now spooked by the odd rising mist and herd reluctant children back over the mountain.
There is a loneliness to the morning beaches and locals, like apostles, silently bless each other with greetings and leave innocent footprints on freshly washed sand to worship at a beach cafe.
The sun struggles to warm the day like the dying embers of a campfire.
Bazza took a sip of his schooner as the Fella From Bodella finally got the last cow in for milking.
Like the long hiss of a semi-trailer’s air brakes, Mick’s ballad finally came to a shuddering halt with an elongated “cheese”:
“Bazza, Bazza... are you with me Bazza? What do you reckon?”
Bazza blinked repeatedly:
“Yeah, yeah, Mick... now what’s the good news?”
John Longhurst is a former industrial advocate and political adviser. He currently works as an English and History teacher on the South Coast of NSW.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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