The Worst of Perth

Jaiydn-Jaxxon discovered the old Cundlebar homestead where Burkean ceremonies are still performed 30 years later. Look at them all so young. Carmen Lawrence looking like a suicidal woman wouldn’t melt in her mouth, Peter Dowding believing in a future you could believe in. Julian Grill when the oil oozing out of him was close to extra virgin. Good times. Must have been disappointing JJ. Hoping for a 1983 Hustler? (Julian notwithstanding). JJ writes,

Around the line of Capricorn, up there in Martu land,
A highwayman once came to rest, and with his robber band.
‘Midst cattle-dust and spinifex and trees tied up in knots,
Old Cundle Burke’s been sleeping, while his homestead slowly rots.
Corruption’s set itself in place, for years and years it seems;
The fridge is dead, the windows gone, white ants devour the beams,
The timbers have all tumbled down, the roof is good and rusted,
But only very recently did Cundle Burke get busted.

‘Twas only as I clambered through that I did spy the thing
In piles of rags and newspaper he’d made himself a king
But something glistened darkly in the dust, and caught my eye –
That kind of oiliness that still persists in things bone dry –
And from its bed of broken boards I knelt down and I plucked it,
Unfurling sheets of text about our state and how he’d fucked it.

God help ye, Cundle Burke, and all the misers, thieves and toadies,
Who still infest our cabinets, and businesses, and banks;
It’s a Faustian relationship, ‘tween voters and their votees,
We’re a people on the rack, and old Mephisto holds the cranks.