Acrylic on wood, ready to hang.
Signed certificate of authenticity.
This artwork comes with an external frame
When I painted this, Forbes was flooding.
Tangled, mangled fencing left behind.
“There’s a whisper away on the Queensland side
Of the Barwon a banker, the Warrego wide
Spread from range to red range; of the siege of a town.
Of farms that are wasted and cattle that drown,
Of a trackless road and a bridgeless sea,
And grey miles measured from tree to tree-
The stockmen ride out in the dawnlight by billabong, runner and creek
To gather the sheep and the cattle wherever his war-notes speak;
And the blood will be red on the rower, the sun will be low in the west,
Before they have left them in safety to camp on the red hill’s crest.
And so shall we live and suffer so long as the big rains come
With their ruin and wreck for many, their danger and death for some,
Till we go from the Culgoa and Darling to camp on a drier shore
Where the Warrego out in his war-paint shall harry our homes no more!
Will Ogilvie.