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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                    #6/thyla6k-ch
AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 6
The Poetry of Coral Hull
Selected by Coral Hull

[Above] Photo of Coral Hull by Coral Hull, 2001.


I HORSE RIDER I THE INDUSTRY HORSES/2. They Love To Run I 21. THE SECRET HORSES OF PETERBOROUGH, SOUTH AUSTRALIA I THE INDUSTRY HORSES/4. The RSPCA Horse I
Day Four./XI. THE GOAT ABATTOIR/9. Horses From Everywhere I


HORSE RIDER

the barren hill moved beneath me/
a horse drawing in a breath of
trangie/ an inhalation as wide as
new south wales/ i leant forward
uneasily/ whispering to its long
brown neck/ my weight breaking
its posture into a low lying gully/
its black ears flicking back like
flies/ these property horses are
drag-around vehicles/ wearing
away like erosion beneath riders/
are slumping land broken down
after drought/ along the couldn't-
be-bothered fence lines/ at midday
i was thrown off/ into the blue
world of birds/ before striking
the rocky ground/ sheep departed
like a crowd & stood beside some
hills/ fleece dissolving on boulders
like mist/ i hit the stopping point
of rock/ remote grey outcrops
locking me out/ & one black crow
to laugh off lambs in the spring/
with their baby soft eyes turned
up to the sun/ as the country
below tore into my skin

* Trangie is a small country town in western New South Wales.

Published in Bestiary (Salt Publishing, 2002).

THE INDUSTRY HORSES

2. They Love To Run

Horses love to race in the Melbourne cup,
& they love to be draught horses in the city,
with their little drawn carriage tucked in behind, forced to work in extreme heat & cold,
& to battle the traffic while inhaling exhaust fumes, as a drawcard for tourists,
& they love the steel bit tugging at their tender gums,
& they love standing & flicking their tails in the stormy weather,
& they love the sound of their shoed hooves smashing down along Swanston Street,
& they love their owners with the whips,
& they love the plastic bag they shit in tied around their hindquarters,
but most of all they love you on their backs & in the carriages saying, 'Hi there Mr. Gee Gee',
but more than this, horses love to race,
& they love parading in green & purple satin at the racetrack,
& they love the blood tests, antibiotics & anti inflammatory drugs,
injected into the most popular sport in Australia,
& the heavy falls, bone chips on knee joints, bowed tendons, impaired suspended ligaments,
sprains, shoulder muscle damage, fractured bones, spinal injuries & internal haemorrhages,
& they love these symptoms masked by drugs, & to be pushed to their limits,
& to be the horse photographed for the sporting section of the Melbourne Age,
& to be the horses who break down repeatedly on the track, due to strenuous training,
& to be like Andallah who loved to break his neck, in the Grand National Steeplechase at Flemington,
& especially remember, how horses love to race,
& how if they don't make the grade, they love the end of their lives at the knackeries,
& they love socialites & Melbourne comedians trying hard to make the sport acceptable,
& the middle class businessmen owning them, & to show jump to their deaths over hurdles,
remember young horses forced to run, at high speeds, for extended periods of time,
remember the fracturing of bones, not strong enough to withstand the grueling pace,
remember them, forced on by spurs & whips & kicking,
legs bandaged, manes back, mouths stretched into the bit, noses forward,
eyes bulging, eyes shielded, blinkers on, as we must also be blind to them,
remember lameness, as the greatest cause of racing days lost,
& the horses that join gymkhanas, or stand forgotten, emaciated in fields,
& the fragility of a horse's legs, fatigued, immature, poorly conditioned, poorly shoed,
& the inconsistent racing tracks, all of which will help a horse to fall,
when a horse comes crashing down, the crowd falls silent,
& i throw my hands up, when a horse falls, onto its neck, onto the track,
or when a horse breaks a leg or a shoulder, the bones exploding into many pieces,
remember the people who attend the Melbourne Cup, & who go to the races,
& how they love the multi million dollar industry,
& how we love to watch the climax of this & that event, namely,
a horse with a broken leg, or a defeated horse, strenuously labouring along the track.

Published in Bestiary (Salt Publishing, 2002).

21. THE SECRET HORSES OF PETERBOROUGH, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

they are receiving hate mail at the peterborough knackery,
25,000 feet above sea level, for the destruction at the heart of an australian legend,
it takes a certain type of human being to kill a horse for profit,
then to become addicted to it and to kill a hundred million horses in a lifetime,
a lifetime's worth of horse killing decided upon,

some were solitary, limping on the hard compacted dirt, trodden down,
others had formed herd hierarchies and short term friendships,
they all starved and were thirsty in the outdoor waiting room,

the head manager said, 'what we do with the horses is our business and ours only',
there were five diseased camels, slack in the neck, too defeated to graze,
the guy at the post office said, 'camels were on last week',
now the horses and camels looking at me from the colour slides are all dead,

the plant manager wouldn't tell me anything, no photos inside or outside,
then no answering questions,
but we all know what they are doing, the bastards, hush, sshhh, silence,

it's a very sensitive industry,
'we have to watch our backs' and so they should, horse-killers,
there's a definite S.A. feeling to it, suppression of information leaving the knackery,
'what's that smoke?' 'you're good aren't you? '
'well it ain't firewood you're burnin' in there buddy,'

the racing industry is largely responsible for horses living out the rest of their lives
as mince, out the back in the holding yards, barren, straw and dust,
dozens of children's dreams left unattended, crippled legs, shaggy manes,
i want to get all those horses and take them home, as life long companions, gorgeous browns,

the strict chill in the crunchy sugar of the bones of horses,
a wind that howls down the bare sides of those frosty gullies,
horses stand in the holding yards freezing to death at night,
frozen to the bone, it sinks in, a cold that penetrates and aches,
long grasses are blown towards sunset inbetween those hills,
down along the windy road the rabbits follow the heat down,
thornbills hop in the mistletoe as the frost comes up to settle,
this is winter in south australia where the horses are slaughtered,

filmy eyed horses that have seen too much, transportation truck survivors
privately concealed, the secrecy surrounding the operation,
the gaunt moon, clandestine horses, confidential, quiet,
these starving limping horses, with sores on their fine strong legs,
it's all hush-hush,

from the distance i saw the hose whip being lifted to move unwilling horses
into the process and horses rearing up, i saw their long manes and large heads
thrown up and knew that their hooves would be smashing down,
they did not want to go in,

i look down at my own forearms, my chest cavity, hands, thighs, muscles, bones, blood
racing through the organs, in moments i will be chopped down to mince without a head,
this is all i am, what it has down come to, downed like horses, pulped for profit,

the secret horses of peterborough; minutes later
they were viewing the slaughter of the horses in front,
seconds later, choking on their own blood, they die silently, then are thick smoke,
they are horses unpublished, encoded, cryptic,

i will find the information on the exhausted outskirts, of horses with no hope,
the humps of camels, in the bare distance, that rose above the barrier,
silhouetted on their way into the process,
nobody wants to get to know a scraggly old camel
and these tired, mangy horses, no-body's pets, no child's dream anymore,

the horse butchers knew well to guard their secret,
the slaughter of horses slaughters some dream inside all of us,
there is something about a horse-killer,
i live for beauty only to find it being destroyed by the knackery,
everything is falling into it, everything,
the bare hills of peterborough, the heart of the town,

for although it is situated on the outskirts, as most places of massacre are,
the town is dragged into it sideways, sneakily, unwillingly,
the metro meatworks is not out far enough to be hushed up,
the stench of horse flesh wafts in from the street,
we smell the camels falling, the trees fall into it,
the men's hearts who operate it fall in,
and they are spiritually mangled, by their own machinery,
the world should know about the gulping knackery,

here life is not awarded the simplest curiosity, compassion is obsolete,
the horse-killer bosses with mobile phones are on planes from adelaide
to perth and sydney for board meetings, they are professionals; yet simply
horse-killers and the meetings contain profit from agony,
life means nothing to them, why must it always appear that hate and evil have
the upper hand, that horses will ultimately be disadvantaged?
all i am is flesh and bone, a lover of horses,

the horse-killers can't see beyond their own greed and stupidity,
i want them to go down, to be trampled by hooves of horses going in,
i want the last thing they see, to be those secret hills, their own hostile machinery,
i want their flesh as frost, the rabbits and sheep to crush it down,
the sun the next morning to bring it up, until it is made pure, morning good,

i got depressed and trusted no-one for a few days after that,
went to bed early to escape the knackery, it was deeply cold,
the wind howled late into the night and into the early hours,
i woke up the next morning and knew of its existence again,

on the way in to peterborough, the bare sheep exposed to the elements on those hills,
was just a lead into a greater cruelty,
the head manager said that horses arrived from everywhere at any time,
he wouldn't tell me things a primary school child would know, hostility and suspicion,
he was nervous about the tree types,
about the stench of horse blood running through the office,
faint traces in the tea and biscuit tin,

he said, 'sorry we couldn't help you with more information,
but we received hate mail, when we started doing horses,'
the horses would see the two-legged creeps, the knife man coming, the humming, rock'n'roll
transistor, before the quick slide into blood and terror,
'not killing 'em, no, we do 'em, we do 'em good and proper',
peterborough is wrapped up in it and this must affect it,
its horses, its children, its town spirit

Published in Bestiary (Salt Publishing, 2002).

THE INDUSTRY HORSES

4. The RSPCA Horse

The rspca horse
Just stands in the paddocks starving,
In the wind & rain, his little back rug rag taggle,
There are a lot of lonely horses out in valleys with mountain backdrops,
With one report of cruelty a day, of neglected horses
Without the grooming equipment to keep the coats clean & healthy,
Without the herd for company, without the independence
To leave the property, without the work needed to survive,
Without the purpose of what it means to be a horse,
Many people, particularly the young, would like to own a horse or pony,
But how much time, hard work & money, is involved in looking after them properly,
A suitable paddock, or supplementary feed if the grass in their paddock is low,
Shelter from weather, or a horse that just stands in the fog, tail spoilt,
Knotty, thick & still, hanging like bracken,
Vaccinated then left to rot in the sodden hectare, ribs like broken fencing,
Killing the will from the inside, that the inspector overlooks,
When the horse is discovered, standing there, knee deep
In mud, thin, undernourished, forgotten,
A toss of the mane, a stamp & a snort, to compartmentalisation,
To kilometres of other segregated horses, never to be nudged or run with,
The solitary rspca horse at the end of its tether, at the end of the line,
Soon to be sold off as pet food, a bad investment, timely, big, bigger than
The paddocks, as big as a heart or the country, these displaced horses,
Financial difficulties, too big for money, remember horses,
Herd bred & herd born they should not be kept on their own,
& keeping horses tethered in stables does not work,
Remember them in a herd, for the last time, on the ramps, at the knackeries.

Wild horse to ridden horse to rocking horse,
& those slippery merry-go-round horses, the reins of real leather & real
Strands of hair, now face to face with your own trumped-up version of nature,
The wilderness knocked out with a chisel,
They are as wooden as the carnival music sliding up & down the poles,
As empty as the big white swans with the seats inside, & those mirrors
Rotating in the middle, where the ticket collector stands
Smoking, as money grabbing & hollow as the rides,
You are left floundering, on the way home, without the strength to carry you
Through your crisis, before your anxiety begins, & again you must grab for the reins,
Of 6,000 year ago horses that rushed the plains in herds, before the undergrowth,
Streams & forests, before the night set in on horses,
The industrial age of the horse, the technological age of the horse,
Horses are receding, as a physical animal they are effectively invisible,
Their grace & muscular power, their independence & will to life,
The joy of wind in the gallop, the landscape they move through, their story,
We are losing everything of horses.

Published in Bestiary (Salt Publishing, 2002).

Day Four.

XI. THE GOAT ABATTOIR

9. Horses From Everywhere

'We used to do: 420 cattle a day, 2000 sheep a day, '74 the biggest year.'
I think, all this was happening when I was nine.
It was happening then, & I didn't know then.
I said, 'I believe it used to be a horse abattoir. What kind of horses did you kill?

'Ex-trotters, race horses, brumbies, you name it, they were from everywhere.'
I had read about it before I arrived.
33,000 horses killed a year, horses, I heard coming in, from everywhere,
their fine heads hanging down.
Blood & the piss of fear running along their legs.
'We did horses from everywhere,' dark hooves on the cracked clay.

Two grass parrots skimmed the ground into the dry scrub.
Scrub so crisp you could hear a snake move.
Dad said, 'I always hated Bourke, the people weren't friendly, all bastards'.
He said this because there was no sign back to Bre.
'You could end up at Cunna-fucken-mulla for all they fucken care.'

The chill went down my neck, into my shoulders.
A shadow ran along the ground until it met with night.
Goats' heads lying in the grass
& in the past, those horses that came from everywhere.

Published in Broken Land: 5 Days In Bre (Five Islands Press, 1997).

About the Poet Coral Hull

Coral Hull is the author of over thirty-five books of poetry, fiction and photography. She is an animal rights advocate who has spent much of her life working voluntarily on behalf of animals, both as an individual and for various non-profit organisations. She has recently completed a book called Voices from the Dark, exploring mental processes and creativity. Her book Broken Land: 5 Days in Bre won the Victorian Premiers Award in 1998 and was broadcast on ABC Radio National. She received her first literary grant (Established Writer category) from the Literature Board of The Australia Council for the Arts in 2001. Coral is the Editor and Publisher of Thylazine, an electronic journal featuring articles, interviews, photographs and the recent work of Australian writers and artists. She completed a Doctor of Creative Arts Degree (Creative Writing Major) at the University of Wollongong in 1998. When not on specific assignments in regards to her writing and photographic work, Coral lives in Sydney. An extensive biography, list of publications, awards, festivals, interviews, articles, reviews and photo and art folios can be found on Coral's website.
   [Above] Photo of Coral Hull by Coral Hull, 2001.

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Thylazine No.6 (September, 2002)

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