I like to take walks every now and then. It clears my head and inspires me to write, like this poem for instance 
Morning Walk
© Garth Dutton 2009
On my morning walk
I see that spring is on its way.
In the next street
an almond tree
is in bloom,
but as yet
bees and honeyeaters
seem in short supply.
Both days and nights
are getting a bit warmer,
but my flat still seems
like winter.
“Night Without Moon, Then With Moon” is the opening poem in “A Day In Melbourne” a book of poetry written in a 24 hour period while at a conference in Melbourne.
Night Without Moon, Then With Moon
© Garth Dutton 2004
Beyond Tailem Bend,
seen through the window of
the night bus to Melbourne,
stars hang suspended,
bright, clear,
in a very black sky.
If the stars were music,
they’d be up-front in the mix.
But at Bordertown,
a half-moon comes up,
its bright side
pointing east to the morning sun.
When I was a child,
it took years
to work that one out…
Before full moon
the lighted part points west
to the setting sun.
After full moon,
the lighted part points east
to the rising sun.
Weird, even now…
Like how,
at full moon,
as the sun goes down
the moon comes up.
As I say,
weird, even now…
The blackness of night has gone.
The half-moon
now fills the sky
with silvery-creamness.
Only the brightest stars
survive.
We have a problem in this State of South Australia with soursobs and Salvation Jane.
A lot of locals regard them as wild flowers and hate them. Most tourists, however regard them as wildflowers and come here in droves to see them in flower.
I am not sure if the S.A. Tourist Bureau describes them with one word or two in their brochures and literature. Perhaps I should send them a copy of the poem and ask them.
Winter Rain
© Garth Dutton 2004
Listen to the rain, the winter rain,
as it falls on the iron roof.
It’s been a week now
and it has only occasionally stopped.
Farm dams are full
and creeks are overflowing.
Listen to the rain, the winter rain.
Listen to the rain, the winter rain.
Hens scurry for shelter from a heavier shower
and retreat to the dryness of the henhouse.
Listen to the rain, the winter rain.
Listen to the rain, the winter rain.
and think of fields
all yellow with soursobs,
and semi-desert hills
all purple with Salvation Jane.
Not beauty in the eyes of many,
but weeds of the ploughed land and pasture.
Wild flowers,
not yet wildflowers.
Listen to the rain, the winter rain.
George Goyder was Surveyor General in the S.A. Government in the late nineteenth century. He drew his ‘line’ at a natural boundary where mallee scrub ended and saltbush plains began.
Until the fiasco of the advance beyond Goyder’s Line the population of South Australia’s coutryside had been steadily increasing. The retreat from it started a process of movement from the countryside to Adelaide that continues today.
About “Goyder’s Line” as a song. I don’t think anyone has ever worked out by ear how to play an accompaniment to the song version of ‘Goyder’s Line’. This is not surprising as it is ‘atonal’. The main verse riff of the verses goes from F to A. F has a Bflat in its key signature, and A has three sharps, so that effectively cancels out key signature altogether.
Anyway, enjoy…
Goyder’s Line
© Garth Dutton 2000
They had no gold like the Eastern States,
but the layout of land and sea
meant ships could sail up into the heart
of good land for growing wheat.
But a rush further north was on in earnest
in the Eighteen-seventies.
They said that rain would follow the plough
and went onwards without heed.
Goyder had warned, and drawn his Line.
He’d seen the north in normal years.
But when the rains came early
and the rains came well,
the whole desert was in bloom.
It was said the growth of desert flowers
was a sign of fertility,
so they followed the vision of a golden north
full of fields of wheat.
Some held on, though all hope had gone,
through winters with little rain.
With ground bone dry and frosts that were hard,
they cursed the saltbush plains.
And one by one they were forced back south,
somehow to start again…
In the north leaving only heartbreak,
not golden fields of grain.
Now across South Australia’s northern plains
the lonely ruins stand.
Reminders that men once came
to plough and sow this land.
Here is a song I wrote a few years ago called “The Non-Green Blues”.
It sums up my feeling on development and the urban sprawl that’s happening in Adelaide at the moment perfectly.
I’ve seen the future of Adelaide,
and that future’s non-green.
If Councils and Planners have their way,
it’ll be a different scene.
High-density housing without any room for trees.
That future’s unfolding and rapidly it seems.
But that’s not the future that I’d choose.
I’ve got a bad case of the non-green blues.
Some planners hate suburbia the way it is today.
They want to see us back in the village
from which our ancestors escaped.
But from my old apartment
there’s a view of birds and trees.
Just can’t help thinking
that’s the way it needs to be.
Non-green’s not a future that I’d choose
I’ve got a bad case of the non-green blues.
Help me, help me, help me do.
I need a cure for the non-green blues.
The ‘Greening of Adelaide’ used to be.
Won’t someone bring it back for me.
There are some suburbs of Adelaide
where people are growing old,
and when they die, their properties are sold.
Mostly to developers who bulldoze all that’s there.
Town houses, gravel and concrete
put me in despair.
That’s not a future that I’d choose.
I’ve got a bad case of the non-green blues.
Think I’ll become an activist
and contact my M.P.
Write letters to the Council
and ‘To the Editor’ straight from me.
And like George Orwell with his ‘1984’,
try to stop an emerging process
before it spreads some more.
Non-green’s not a future that I’d choose.
I’ve got a bad case of the non-green blues.
Non-green’s not a future that I’d choose.
I’ve got a bad case of the non-green blues.
Here is another poem from my recently released book “The Apricot Tree”
The Veteran (For Neville McLoughlin)
© Garth Dutton 2008
The Vietnam veteran recalled
flying over the Delta
Above, a night sky
with moon and stars and scattered clouds.
Below, ten thousand holes
where bombs had fallen.
Craters
water filled
reflecting
a mirror image
of moon and stars and scattered clouds,
from beneath a thin dark frame
of untouched land.
A surreal nightmare
from some artist’s mind,
but was it Escher or Dali?
This is a poem I wrote about my younger daughter Nicola when she had just learned how to walk. Once children learn how to walk there is no stopping them. The poem is set in Lower Mitcham, an eastern suburb of Adelaide where I lived during my marriage.
Child’s Walk
© Garth Dutton 2008
Some children
seem to like rituals.
A walk to the corner shop
past the house with
black and white hens
in a side garden,
and the dog next door
that usually sleeps
against the wrought iron gate,
the shop,a paper
and her usual demand
for a chocolate frog.
Then home at snails pace,
as she walks on walls
and in gutters.
Only occasionally on pavements
to grab overhanging flowers.
She takes home treasures
of a jacaranda pod
and a handful of gravel.
One of my favourite songs is “Summer Of 69″ by Canadian songwriter Bryan Adams. Read on and you’ll find out why.
Adelaide Songwriter (Career One)
© Garth Dutton, 2008.
I began playing guitar in January 1969, and soon learned enough chords and songs to play and sing at parties, barbeques and beach picnics. About mid-year I discovered the Catacombs Coffee Lounge at Hackney, which had folk evenings, and soon became a regular performer there. I used songs by Donovan, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Tom Paxton, Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan.
Early in 1970, I went to Africa as a backpacker. I took my guitar with me and used to play in pubs to earn some money as I went along. Often, after I had sung some of the songs I knew, Afrikaner people there would ask me if I could accompany them for some of their songs. I was usually able to sort out the chords needed quite quickly, and a good sing along would follow. They usually ‘put round the hat’ to give me some money to help me on my travels, and I often got an offer of somewhere to sleep for the night. I enjoyed the lifestyle.
In June that year, I was in Lourenço Marques in Mozambique, and managed to get a short term job in the Department of Tourism and Propaganda. One of the Portuguese girls in the office taught me how to write poetry in the local dialect of English to help me to speak Portuguese correctly. I soon learned to write my own songs, as well as publishable quality poetry. My first song was about the city I was in. I wrote it first as a poem, when I was across the harbour on the beach. I was used to singing Joni Mitchell songs unaccompanied, due to the obscure guitar tunings she used on her records, so I worked out a tune for the new song unaccompanied.
I didn’t get back to the backpackers’ hostel till a few hours later, and when I did, I picked up my guitar and worked out which chords would be needed for an accompaniment. To my surprise, I found that the chord sequences that fitted were quite unlike any other song in my repertoire. So my first song set up a methodology that I have used for every other song I have written since. Lyrics first, then melody unaccompanied, and at a later stage put a chorded accompaniment to it on guitar or keyboard. So far every song has been a unique creation. I decided to write up my entire trip as songs and poetry. I had another rule. I tried to make every song readable as a poem, singable as a song and also just be used as a piece of music. Most times I succeeded. I wrote about 20 songs in Africa, and another 20 in England, when I went there later in the year.
I met a South African girl on the boat to England who was a singer. Her name was Shirley Lucas. We sang some songs together at parties on board and we were offered a number of spots singing with the ship’s band. We continued to see each other when we were in London, and soon became a popular duo on the folk circuit. She had a vocal range that was far wider than mine, and some of the songs I wrote for her to sing are now ;long forgotten as I didn’t have the vocal range to sing them myself. Paul Simon had the same problem with a famous song he wrote called “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” He is unable to sing it himself, as it is far beyond his vocal range in parts. He wrote it specifically for Art Garfunkel’s exceptionally wide vocal range, and it was a big hit.
Her voice was so good, that I lost confidence in my own singing. One night at a folk club, a patron asked me to sing a song. I said I had nothing prepared. He said, “Well, write a new one to sing yourself, and sing it here next Friday night.” So I wrote a song called ‘Accompanist’. It is a very honest song about the breakdown of the relationship between Shirley and myself that was happening at the time. It goes like this…
“London town snowflakes are falling/ and in my heart the highway’s calling/ to Johannesburg for there’s someone there who’d want me/ from the letters she writes, I know she has a place in her heart for me./ But tonight you’ll sing, I’ll play guitar/ and it’ll still feel good for still friends we are./ At some pub down town, smoky atmosphere/ and your lovely voice soft and sweet and clear./ Everyone just stops and listens./ Then I’ll take you home/ but there’ll be no after/ beyond the coffee cups and the talk and laughter./ You’re afraid to walk late at night from the station/ and your company is a gift and consolation/ for loneliness is London’s desolation./ But we’ll be alright when we see the morning/ picture post card white in clear bright dawning./ Cold dark night, clear bright morning./ Cold dark night, clear bright morning.”
I sang the song the following week, and the audience was shocked. They thought we were just a happily married South African couple. A male fan who had a car offered Shirley a lift home, and a female fan took me back to her place for the night, and that was the end of our duo.
I came back to Adelaide at the end of February 1971 to continue with the University course I had dropped out of at the end of 1969, as my lack of qualifications were a major impediment to getting well-paid employment overseas. Some friends from a traveller’s club were also musicians, so we formed a group called ‘Folkwyze’. It was a multicultural group. Bob, on banjo and guitar was Australian, Marianne on vocals was Dutch, Ken on harmonica, guitar and vocals was Welsh, and I was English-born but had adopted Mozambican Portuguese culture as an adult. I was the only songwriter in the group, so we did a fairly standard folk repertoire of the time, plus a few of my songs for good measure. We sang regularly at the Catacombs till it closed a few years later.
I married in November 1974, and the commitments of marriage and children meant I became less active as a performer. I did, however, still try to pursue a career as a songwriter by making two LP records, a self-titled album in 1976 and an album called “Sea and Highway” in 1980. Both failed for different reasons. The first just wasn’t done well enough. The cover wasn’t up to scratch, and the folk musicians who backed me were unwilling to do more than one of two ‘takes’ of a song for fear it would lose spontaneity.
It turned out to be unsellable, and I lost all the money I had put into it. There was only one record press in Australia at the time and their minimum production run was 1,000 copies, so the financial loss was considerable. My wife Lynette thought the money would have been much better spent helping to pay off the mortgage. The failure of this record and the second one were a major cause of our eventual divorce in 1994.
I had enough of my own songs to record three LP’s. One for an ‘African set’, one for an ‘English set’, and one for an ‘Australian set’. Regrettably, I chose to record in chronological order for in 1980 the Anti-Apartheid Movement was at the height of their power. Everyone who worked on the project wanted to get ongoing work out of it. My wife Lynette designed an absolutely beautiful cover that was a work of art in itself. (She hoped to get work in LP cover design.) Dave Barry hoped to get a lot more work for his mobile recording studio. All the musicians who played on it wanted to get well paid session work. The mixer to whom we took the final master tapes did his best to give us a great soundscape. We all needed it to be a success…
But it was not to be. Whoever mixed from master tapes to vinyl in Sydney made a complete hash of the job. The main rhythm instrument was 12 string guitar, and on the master tape it was a solid driving force. On the vinyl it was ‘thin and wiry’. A bitter disappointment. It was obvious that the engineer in Sydney was quite unfamiliar with 12 string guitar music and also with the genre of the songs. Record pressing was a monopoly in Australia at the time so there was nothing we could do about it. I lost all faith in vinyl after that. I was overjoyed when it was finally replaced by CD’s, because that brought local control over final product.
Paul Simon caused a huge furore when he released his landmark album “Graceland” in 1986, because he had recorded it in South Africa. He had the stature to withstand the storm. I didn’t…and had to withdraw all copies from sale. Anti-Apartheid activists seemed to have a particular ire for my wife for designing such a beautiful cover for an album about a white person’s travel in Southern Africa. I got the message and gave up performing altogether for the rest of our marriage. We separated in 1991, so I became an active member of SCALA (Songwriters, Composers and Lyricists Association) and began a new career as a songwriter.
This is an environmental poem called “Downstream”. I was inspired to write this after seeing the ABC Television series “Heartlands”
Downstream
© Garth Dutton, 1998
Yellow afternoon light
invades a country school classroom
as the soils of The Mallee
take flight from the plough.
Dams, bores & tanks,
stock troughs & windmills,
become eaten-out dust-scapes
at the first signs of drought.
It’s a long way back…
Sometimes, almost too far it seems.
The Murray’s salt channels
creep relentlessly onwards,
and in Adelaide we are living
downstream.