Issue Details: First known date: 2000... 2000 Wiringin : Brother of Fire : A Poem Sequence
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The sequence begins with poems showing a Wiradjuri Wiringin at the height of his spiritual and psychic powers.

The year 1889, however sees the onset of a second wave white invasion into the Bogan River region. The first invasion was many years earlier by drovers with wandering mobs of cattle. The second invasion is a gold rush, and the town of Bindari is rapidly established. The remaining Wiradjuri people are quickly embroiled in an event which many will not survive, and the lives of those who do are forever changed.

The sequence narrates incidents in the life of the Wiringin, who is known by the community as Billy Pogo. Midway through the sequence this mysterious fire walker and spoon player is made Bindari's clown king and forced to wear a top hat and tails and, hopefully, end the prolonged drought which makes mining extremely difficult.

Several poems attempt to examine the community through Wiringin eyes, until the unexplained death of a miner in Live Bird Lead, and the destruction of the great hotel by fire, sets in motion a series of events where Billy Pogo becomes a scapegoat, and is finally destroyed at the mine's edge.' Source: [The author]

Notes

  • A poem sequence in 48 numbered parts.
  • Dedication: Dedicated to those Wiradjuri people of the Bogan River, who were part of my childhood at Peak Hill. 
  • Epigraph: Bogan is snake slithering on rock, snake is water with sun on his back. Summer quickens snake and spangles his skin, but in winter he seeps into logs and dreams.
  • Epigraph: Among the Wiradjuri, he was known as Wiri:nan, meaning ‘powerful man’, or Bug:nja (‘spirit of the whirlwind’) as it was the custom of his spirit self to travel in a whirlwind. James C. Cowan : ‘The Aboriginal Tradition.’
  • Epigraph: Throughout Australia one of the most consistent themes in Aboriginal initiation is the insertion into the body of quartz crystals, or mabain. This procedure symbolises the transformation of consciousness from physical to psychic levels. Robert Lawlor : Voices of the First Day.
  • Epigraph: As they stared, they saw a clever man roll into the fire and scatter the coals. He then stood among the rest of the men, who noticed that he was not burned, nor were the European clothes that he wore damaged. A. P. Elkin Aboriginal Men of High Degree.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Campbelltown, Campbelltown (NSW) area, MacArthur area (Camden - Campbelltown), Sydney, New South Wales,: UWS Press , 2000 .
      Extent: 87p.
      Description: illus. (b & w)
      ISBN: 1863418717

Works about this Work

Untitled Toby Davidson , 2010 single work correspondence
— Appears in: Five Bells , Winter vol. 17 no. 3 2010; (p. 7-8)
Untitled Toby Davidson , 2010 single work correspondence
— Appears in: Five Bells , Winter vol. 17 no. 3 2010; (p. 7-8)
Last amended 10 Nov 2022 14:17:01
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