In my genocidal fancy visions com eto me of Clancy
With a gin across his saddle andher childrenin pursuit;
As he eaves behind their crying he tots upthe dead and dying
And he calculates his boundy and gets ready to a root.
With comendable persistence Clancy follows the resistance
And you’ll find him the rearguard with the priests and their Te
Deums.
While the troopers do the shooting Clancy rides behind them,
looting;
There’s tjuringas for collectorsandsome heads for the museums.
And when he meets a Jack Clancy sometimes offers baccy,
And many other presents to improve theshining hour.
While his cobbers call him silly, he smiles and boils his billy
For there’s measles in the blanket rolls and stychnine in the flour.
And a firm but friendly parson thinks he’ll try a little arson
To exorcise the dreaming with his candle, book and bell;
His redeemer loudly praising, he sets all the gunyahs blazing
To civilise the heathen with a touch of Christian hell.
As he contemplates the scene he can remember Truganini
And Pemulwuy and Banelon and others of their kind
And on gentle summer breezes he can sense the new diseases
That will carry their descendants out of sight and out of mind.
And the sturdy stockhorse whinnies as he tramples piccaninnies
And the rider crask his stockwhip at the ones who run away
And above the odd death rattle he can hear the lowing cattle
As the drover brings them into camp to end a perfect day.
“Rudd would also acknowledge that there was another side to Clancy which Paterson does not mention. In spite of the poets assertion that no blood was shed in the pioneering days, actually quite a lot was; it’s just that very little of it was white man’s blood. For Paterson, Indigenous Australians were barely perceptible; if seen at all, they were lovable clowns, figures of fun, not part of the real narrative.”
Mungo MacCallum writing in the latest Quarterly Essay: HERE. Don’t miss it!
