I received word the other day that a high school teacher in western Sydney is using “The Tale of Billy Carpenter and Smith’s Elastic Brace” in his Year 7 English class for poetry appreciation. The class are generally not good readers and the fact that an MP3 of the poem is available on the web site makes it easy for them to read along. How do this educational pioneer find out about my work, you ask? Well, they are an ex-flatmate.

The other day Rod Moon showed me a CD that had been released last year. It is called “The Lawson Project” and is a spoken word CD of Henry Lawson’s short stories. It comes with a bonus CD containing “Seventeen Classic Bush Poems” including two written by me. They are read by Dobe Newton and are the same two he released on a CD for the ABC a few years ago.

I was surprised to see the CD as I didn’t even know it was being released. I haven’t seen any royalties, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Here is another one of my TV appearances. It was on the “Have A Go” show. I ended up coming second, being beaten by a sexy woman with large breasts in a short dress made of wetsuit material. That was the only good things about her act. The producer of the show thought I had been ripped off and invited my back to do another show.

This poem is about being a contestant on Perfect Match. I never went on the show, but coincidently, it was shown on another station at the same time this show went to air. I think they like the opportunity to give their rivals at channel ten a serve.

After being ripped off with my first appearance on the “Have A Go” show, I was invited back to a special “Shakespeare” edition. I managed to create a rough segue between Shakespeare and modern TV as an excuse to do this poem. I hadn’t been told to bring my own costume and so the rag-tag appearance comes from what we could muster up out of the wardrobe department at short notice.

Enjoy!

Having posted my roasting of Red Symons, I have had numerous requests (well one actually) to load up the act that came before. This is me (then called Anthony) reciting the poem “In praise of the TV  housewife” on the Christmas 1987 show of Hey Hey It’s Saturday.

Yes I know it was a millions years ago, back in the days when I looked like a gnome, but now with the marvels of modern technology I can bring it up again and give it a thorough flogging. (After all, Somers/Carol flogged it more by showing it on the Best and Worst of Red Faces a few times) I am of course referring to the infamous moment in television history when I left Red Symons speechless. And now it is on YouTube, old Red can be reminded of it as well.

I’ll add my other TV stints when I get the time.

Enjoy

Last week as part of my Outward Bound course, we performed a community service job. The job in question was helping to clear Water Hyacinth off Toonumbar Dam near Kyogle. The job was supervised by Craig Gascoigne, a local asparagus farmer who loves kayaking on the dam.

When Craig saw the weed taking over the dam and clogging up his kayaking playground he figure something needed to be done. When he heard that a “Licence to Pollute” application had been lodged with DECC to permit aerial spraying on the dam with herbicide, he feared that the native plants would be killed as well. He then set about physically removing the plant himself.

Hundred of hours and tonnes of weed later, the job continues, although the scale of the problem has reduced dramatically. One of our party said of Craig, “You always say to yourself, ‘Someone ought to do something about that.’ Well, I’ve just met a someone.”

Craig is a typical Aussie larrikin and reminds me a bit of Steve Irwin, enough for me the christen him “The Hyacinth Hunter”. By co-incidence, Craig is also a bush poet and entertained us with a few yarns before we went on our way.

As a tribute to Craig I have come out of poetry retirement and penned The Hyacinth Hunter which I hope will inspire Craig to carry on his good work.