Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Heels 1970

Orongorongo Fragments

page 31

Orongorongo Fragments

Plodding up the Whakanui
in festerous mud, all brown and gooey.
Suddenly I topped the rise
and there before my very eyes
stretched out for all the world to see
lay pack and boots, and poor Mary.
Who having tripped upon a log,
was now entrenched within the bog.

Arriving later on at Baines
in lotsa mist and wind and rains
we found it full of rugby fans
who filled themselves with lotsa
booze, to make sure that we
didn't lose the Test.
One best forget the rest.

Next morn the sun shone bright and clear
as we took our morning paddle,
then shouldering the hulking swags
we staggered off up to South Saddle.

We toddled down the Mukamuk
about an hour or so it took
to reach some jokers in a Rover
who cracked a brown and passed it over
if to you this isn't clear,
I must explain that brown is beer.

Around the coast
I burnt some toast
near the Mukamukaiti.
Mary said,
well strike me dead
you had a little too much heaty.

We motored off around the beach
T'was such a fine and glorious day
Fortuitously we got two lifts
all the way to Yorky Bay
Ours was not to reason why
Ours was just to shout "Knee Hi".

"Franz-Joseph Hugi's [unclear: ;] expedition to the Rothtal numbered 40 persons, equipped with thermometers, barometers, instruments, for boiling water, butter, oil and petrol, aerometers, chrometers, hydrometers, clinometers, crampons, sacs of wine and flasks of brandy, compasses, hooks, grapples, wire, rope, a travelling chest, plasters, eye salve, lead ointment, foot ointment, and bootblacking. In spite of all this, however, he was not successful in his attempt to climb the Jungfrau." * *

By G.R. de Beer, FRS. Edited 1949.

* * Quotations from "Travellers in Switzerland".