Cillgoorlie

Kalgoorlie, place of the native fruit.
Town at the end of the narrow-set rails and the pipe.
Wangai hunters guided the Irish there, into the Western Desert.
Goldfields, home of the gold worshiped by both cultures.
Cill, the Irish Church’s grounds,
And the hospital there upon.

Bruce, Bruce, and Bruce, three eagles from Adelaide.
Sir Geoffery deHavilland’s Moth,
A small kite made of plywood, spruce and doped cotton.
The three eagles flew that kite daily into the Goldfields.
Eight hundred, carried at eighty-eight per hour,
It was pounds and statute miles back then.

The eagle’s business was booming,
So a second kite was bought.
Fox Moth, it was not any bigger, but had an enclosed cabin for four.
Or if need be, and it often was, for a stretcher and a nurse attending.
Cillgoorlie’s ecclesiastical mission: to serve the Inland,
Before the nannies took over.

Sheila, and Sheila, two young nurses from Cillgoorlie, rode in the second kite.
There was Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, and another Bruce,
Four for each Sheila in the Goldfields back then.
But eagles were few,
These were fun, and the nurses and eagles became inseparable.
Being nurses, they knew what steps to take to avoid the difficult to explain.

Hard work, hard play, and sweet joy, filled the five friend’s twenties.
Muscles grew strong with use as they played together,
To their mutual exhaustion.
Biological fact: a knowledgeable Sheila can do two or three Bruce,
And have fun doing them.
Of course Bruce always have fun, whenever they are able to.

In time, one nurse became an eagle, another Matron at Cillgoorlie.
The woop woop was quiet,
But even there the twisted dreams of megalomaniacs intruded.
Warsaw, Rotterdam, Paris, London, and HMAS Sydney went up in flames.
At the Lee-Enfield Gentlemen’s Club, the doors were thrown open.
All Bruce were invited inside.

Matron ran Cillgoorlie,
While Drongo and Whacker took credit.
Lady Eagle flew stretcher cases in a Gull.
Bruce, Bruce, and Bruce went to the Mandate.
All five made it through, then carried on.
But, it could never be exactly the same.

Two little ones came, Mary and then myself, to Bruce and Lady Eagle.
One Bruce from before and his new Sheila were their partners,
In business and in playtime.
The grass strip, hardstand, and hangars, that was the world I grew up in.
Watching and learning the family business.
The business that my sister Mary runs now.

Us, not seeing or being aware of,
What the Bruces and Sheilas did when we weren’t around to see them.
That while the Religious Sisters, Mary, and I engaged in Catechism,
Sheila, my mom, was enjoying being a spit-roast or perhaps a sandwich,
With one Bruce in front and one in the back.
Loving every minute of it.