Sun driving drought merinos across sky,
a great mob browse-grazing the long paddock*,
pluck-eating slim-pickings - les miserables,
stirring dust mixed with escorting horde-flies.

We are patrolling* Jack Smith Lake Reserve,
four-wheel-rolling through scrubby stringybark,
nondescript eucalypt and banksia,
tussocked grass harbouring shooting preserve.

There they are - frantic-rabbiting across,
as all-terrain treads crenelate coarse sand,
thick-saltmarsh-slurp, aqua-plane lagooned land,
bracken flatten and sweet wattle brush past.

Drooping she-oak and coastal banksia,
secrete long shades of the Gunai-Kurnai*.

Long paddock - The grass along the roads where in severe droughts stock are driven. Mobs have been pushed around an entire state, thousands of head of sheep or cattle at a time. Drovers accompany them, camping wherever they end up each night.

Patrolling - We have gone down to check for campfires left burning in the local CFA (Country Fire Authority) Nissan Patrol light tanker being on duty this weekend.

Gunai-Kurnai - The traditional owners of what is now known as Gippsland. My farm would have been a key route for the Gunai-Kurnai travelling from the mountains to the coast (Jack Smith Lake), their, middens can still be found there and other traces.