Buckley’s Lake (Monaro)
Under Black Range
Greet, greet, greet –
the shape of the blade tools, scattered across…
red & black chert out over the lake bed walking in from the east
a broken windmill and stone well above high water mark of the dry lake
– Buckley who was on the Tambo when McMillan went through –
The edge of the lake shore a fringe of Crown land
‘Un-alienated land’ – Un/ claimed
for sailboats in the 1880’s
a white dress
and hat
brim
-ing
Water
=Aqua nullius
Miwany (Yam)
The tablelands of the Monaro… were not an environment rich in food resources.
Josephine Flood, 1980.
Around the undulating land of the Maneroo purple chocolate-lily nodding chocolate-lily
Yellow bulbine-lily pale vanilla-lily tubers small vanilla-lily blue grass-lily creamy
Milkmaids yellow star tiny star yellow rush-lily twining fringe-lily common fringe-lily early
Nancy golden moth orchid valleys carpeted with flowers and rich grass mountain golden
Moth purple diuris leopard orchid tubers tiger orchid parson’s bands slender onion orchid
Common onion orchid midget greenhood dwarf greenhood hundreds per square metre
Pink bindweed dotted sun-orchid slender sun-orchid roots & tubers magenta stork’s-bill blue
Heron’s bill grassland crane’s-bill austral crane’s-bill carrot cinnamon bells orchid yellow
Austral bear’s ear austral trefoil a lotus yam daisy: MIWANY walk into Round Plain
Travelling Stock Reserve after spring rains a swathe of yellow purple white flowers: edible
Lilies orchids a tiny remnant of the plains and open forest… covered with grass so luxuriant…
flocks of kangaroos quietly grazing, the emu crossing & re-crossing, the quail rising at every
step 150 species of birds on the plains brolga bustard bronze wing pigeon blue grass parrots
Raspberry cranberry heath prickly currant bush: marrenggang kangaroo apple appleberry
Wild cherry honeysuckle: gillarang manna wattle sap wallaby grass wild sorghum blown
Grass kangaroo grass like a field of wheat three feet tall native flax seeds hovea pods
Cumbungi: gummiuk: gamjag common reed water ribbons 200 tubers per plant tall and tuber
Spike rush slender bitter cress leaves and stems marsh club rush tubers roasted pounded into
Cakes nardoo sporocarps soaked ground roasted bracken rhizomes fronds water fern lagoons
literally swarming with wildfowl breeding waterfowl black swan mountain freckled black
Pink-eared blue billed musk wood duck hardhead shoveler grey & chestnut teal moulting
Waterbirds are unable to fly long necked turtle yabbie spiny crayfish black fish: mundya eel
Galaxia long-nosed bandicoot southern brown bandicoot: manyuk koala wombat echidna
Paddymelon big fat kangaroo-rat: potoroo or bettong sp: dyimang biwan rock wallaby swamp
Wallaby sugar glider ringtail possum brush-tail possum tiger & eastern quoll etc
& moths in high summer rocks above the flourishing plains – flicker in dream song wind