Destruction of Old-Growth Trees on the York-Quairading Road

This has been going on for some time, though there was a lull in the devastation over the Christmas-New Year period. The York-Quairading Road is being widened outside York, land taken from residents, and hundreds of old-growth salmon gums, wandoos and York gums being cleared.

This is part of a larger picture of Main Roads of Western Australia destroying vegetation in the 'Long Paddock'. It's happening on a massive scale, as I've articulated before.

The right-wing governments of Australia have been making a concerted effort to delete ecologies as fast as they can: land-clearing in all states is happening fast, but it is now reaching critical level.

This poem was written at the beginning of January in support of our friend Lindsay and his family, over where trees are being deleted as I write (as, sadly, they are being deleted in so many places). I am letting it loose to the world now to show we care, and to show Lindsay and the others resisting this destruction that they are not alone. We care, and we want the world to hear.

Sweeney the Barn Owl Opens His Eyes Wide in Broad Daylight

Sweeney looks down at the people coming out of the hospital —

they have seen him, he knows it in his bones. Yes, now their eyes

search his eyes and the shock of light reaches as far inside

as the flames that drove him out of the tall tree on the hillside.

Where can I rest? he asks them. The Main Roads are cutting down

all the old-growth wandoos and salmon gums and York gums,

slicing through their anniversaries with a righteousness

that will truck no argument. These living heritage buildings

we conduct our lives in and around, our places of eating and worship.

Sweeney shuts his eyes on them, high up in the gum that clings

to the edge of the car-park. Tonight he will fly south-east, aiming

to reach the great trees still remaining on the York-Quairading

Road before they are brought down, before red-tailed phascogale

and Carnaby’s black cockatoo and rainbow bee-eater are forced

to find somewhere else to feed and nest and hide from owl, or vanish —

and in the matutinal revelation that abbreviates his waking hours,

upside down in a tree-killer’s world, Sweeney will hoot at their stupidity,

a klaxon-call just before the crash that will wipe us all out.

            John Kinsella