ANIKA ROBINSON took second place in the 2024 Wangaratta Young Writers Award year 10/11/12 poetry/song lyrics category with this piece.

The competition was jointly run by the Rotary Club of Wangaratta, and the Rotary Club of Appin Park Wangaratta

Oooo

In the heart of my home, the bush,

Where green earth stretches far and wide,

Stands a farmhouse – weathered, by its years in the sun,

Where childhood dreams and sorrows reside.

The verandah was wide, welcoming too,

A haven for sun-soaked afternoons,

Where laughter mingled with cicada’s song,

And wasps sent up running, with rage-coloured wounds.

The paddocks were vast and rolling free,

Holding secrets in dust-covered grass,

Of wild adventures and youthful hopes,

Of endless days and untamed chance.

The small shearing shed, with its old creaking floors,

Sheltered more than just some dust and some tools,

It kept the echoes of my anger and joy,

And the lessons learnt from a child’s new rules.

Beneath the gum trees, standing tall, scarred and wise,

I’d run with the wind and chase the sky,

I’d climb trees, and reach for distant leaves,

Underneath the sun’s relentless eye.

The old dirt road, with its bends and its turns,

That would lead me home, with every trek,

Where I scraped my knees, on sharp, gravel rocks,

In that now sacred, familiar place.

Now, I look back with a longing heart,

To the home that has shaped me, wild and free,

Where I watched the land change from green to bare brown,

And now I hear the echoes of my love-riddled home.

In my dreams, I can wander, barefoot on the ground,

And feel earth’s textures: soft, sometimes sharp,

And though I have grown and since wandered far,

My heart remains, in the bushland of home.