Saltwater Creek

The first time he came into the light

He thought that his eyes had gone,

The sun was shining, ever so bright

With nothing to focus on,

They led him out to sit on a rock

And hacked off his ball and chain,

It took a week of his ticket of leave

Before he could see again.

 

Richard Dawson, a broken man

Had finally done his time,

He’d spent three years in shovelling coal

In the colony’s first coal mine,

They said it was only his just desserts

For a pocket, picked in the Strand,

And sent him out on a convict ship

To the hell of Van Diemen’s Land.

 

At first they set him to breaking rocks

For laying the first rough roads,

He worked while tethered in iron chains

That chafed his skin and his bones,

He wasn’t allowed to take a rest

From swinging the pick or axe,

For the guards would follow the line of men

And lay the whip on their backs.

 

He lost his God and he lost his soul

Or he thought that he had, out there,

Where men were hung as a matter of fact

And nobody seemed to care,

He slaved four years with the other men

But his future was looking bleak,

When he hit a man who was guarding them

He was sent to Saltwater Creek.

 

If ever there was a hell on earth

It was called Saltwater Creek,

The devil had got in the minds of men

And they formed a barbaric clique.

The cells were buried, were underground,

There wasn’t a spark of light,

And the men were taken out of the mine

When it was dark, at night.

 

They started before the sun was up,

They finished when it was gone,

Were locked and chained in their pitch dark cells

In a terror that just went on,

And while they were buried and mining coal

They’d think of the old country,

While their judge sat cool in his stately robes

And finished his morning tea.

 

A man turns into a surly brute

When he’s kicked and cursed, and beat,

But take the sun from his daily run

And his soul admits defeat.

Richard Dawson, later in life

At night, would take to the street,

And never could quite explain to his wife

The Hell of Saltwater Creek.

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Tom]

Perhaps if the penal servitude was more like this nowadays, ordinary law abiding folk wouldn't be tormented by the ever increasing crime rates of today's typical modern society ?

A smashing glimpse David into the way it used to be !!

[Linda Marie Van Tassell]

The last two lines of the next to the last stanza seemed really out of place to me. While the rest of the poem is replete with darkness and despair, it just seemed sort of odd to throw the judge in there with his morning tea.

[Marie]

Dawson should have behaved himself, shouldn't he?

[roarke]

beguiling ending, Rich married and lives as a freeman still imprisoned by the dark night. Ever strong rhythm and I'd break a few rocks myself if it let me read more of your poems David. Just don't use the whip.