Hello,
My father passed away in 2017. In the days immediately following, I wrote a long poem based on the stories he would tell of his time working in the Australian outback. He was based in a township called Mary Kathleen, which is no longer there. Although the township was there to accommodate workers at a nearby uranium mine, my dad was there helping test armoured vehicles in the heat of the Australian desert. (He would next be posted to the jungles around Cairns, and then the frozen north of Canada).
I wrote this long poem remembering the stories he would tell and the characters he worked with. It’s set in 1969.
In 2018, the Artizan Gallery in Torquay were kind enough to let me perform this piece, and I asked a friend, Sharon Hubbocks, to accompany it on her violin. I also asked my friend Becky Nuttall to perform on the night. We had a lovely evening. We were later invited to perform it again at the Teignmouth Poetry Festival in Spring 2020, but we all know what happened in Spring 2020!
This recording has been on my phone ever since. Apologies for the sound quality, but it’s a nice little reminder of the night. This would be the only time I’d ever perform this piece.
The poster below was painted by my father, David Garnham, some time during the 2010s, and shows the accommodation huts where he and his colleagues lived.
Robert Garnham 