with a future & a hope!

with a future & a hope! [1]

“At the cross-roads, there's Temora[2]

on the way down South” they mutter.

“It’s just an hour before a

place that sounds like it’s a stutter:

“Wagga”, with it’s own echo[3];

& Temora’s just above it,

five forty clicks from Melbourne’s show,

but the folk, around here love it.

It’s even less from Sydney’s town;

& right between Can-ber-ra’s mugs[4],

& Griffith (where Mackay went down

in history for exposing drugs[5]).

[At the cross-roads, there's Temora

on the South Highway to Melbourne,

between Griffith & Canberra

if you're from here you’re “well-born”.]

So it’s got a fair few choices

as to what road it’ll go down:

to join with Can-ber-ra’s “noises”[6] -

- to “pucker up”, & then to frown,-

(At the cross-roads, there's Temora

on the North Highway from Melbourne,

between Griffith & Canberra

if you're from here you’re “well-born”)

else get & serve the young folk, ‘n

expose what “stuffs up”, before a-

-nother generation’s broken -

- the WAY, for “A new Temora”!

---

[1]    Written on a visit to the  NSW township of Temora (pop. Approx. 6,000), where Laurie & Elvita McIntosh have retired (for now), after Laurie’s 30yrs of being the National Director of the Australian Christian Mission Order - Cornerstone Community, during the 2012 Cornerstone Members’ Men’s conference. By Paul Walker.

[2]    On the N-S Highway between Brisbane & Melbourne, with Canberra about 2 hr to the E & Griffith about 2 hr to the W. Temora has many well-to-do retirees, with choices about how to live the last years of their lives.

[3]    Properly called “Wagga Wagga” and about 100km south of  Temora

[4]    The naïve, self-serving “politicians”(this is in contrast with men like Donald Mackay), not any honest leaders who do give their all.

[5]    1977 saw Donald Mackay murdered by the Mafia, for exposing the drug scene in & around Griffith. (a shock to many Australians who could not believe that we could have stooped so low & have given the Mafia such a stronghold.) Interesting to note who could (& did) step up to the task of following through, even to their own disadvantage, in serving others who were more vulnerable than themselves. They followed a prior model.

[6]    Those who spruke about leading us into the future, yet who treat their own inherited understanding of “life” (as something which only makes sense in the context of a bigger dimension) as something they are embarrassed about, & as superfluous to the new generation who are dying for the lack of it. In Manning Clark's words, he implied that when we throw off the kingdom of God, we  “become bored survivors on Bondi Beach, citizens of the kingdom of nothingness”.