From Little Thefts Big Thefts Grow *

FROM LITTLE THEFTS BIG THEFTS GROW *


Like it was in 1975
By the Giles Creek
At Kalkarung in Guringi
Where Gough Whitlam poured
Lifted Wave Hill sand
Into Vincent Lingiari's hand
For the full measure
Of its repeat ideographic legal copy
And high drama,
Just as calculating economist Herbert Cole 'Nugget' Coombs
Had remembered that it was done, and so
Instructed Prime Minister Whitlam to do
As if it was a big new thing to do, as if
A brave, certainly an imaged-crowd pleasing, an applause-raising, if not a
Novel act as
An avowal in amity

So it was in 1835
Up the Merri Creek
At Duttigalla in Bihrurang
When John Batman grasped
Dug up Yarra Valley soils
From the hand of Billebellary
And his Jaika Jaika kin and fellows
As skin brothers by then by mutual consent
After a smoke-signaled beckoning in hither
In a new corroboree learnt
Of the more-than antiquarian Law of Cession
Just as classically-visionary attorney Joseph Tice Gellbrand
Had instructed field-agent Batman to do
As if it was an ancient, obviously rendered,
Large, and well-understood act
Of avowal in amity.

*

So why? What? Why did Paul Kelly
Call something or other little?
And how does the security of home
Come to feel so belittled, so violated?

* * *

Note: for those catching up with Australian history, the title alludes to the lyric of the song by Paul Kelly on this subject 'From Little Things Big Things Grow'