Australian rhyming poetry or as it is commonly known Bush Poetry goes back to the time of the first fleet and is a way of telling stories both true and false so as to hold the listeners interest.
Bush poetry is a generic term for poetry told with both rhythm and rhyme, it should flow with an almost musical cadence.  Of course one of the best known, if not the best known Australian poem is A.B. (Banjo) Paterson's `The Man From Snowy River`  The Banjo's work along with `The Ballad of the Drover` by Henry Lawson and  P.J.Hartigan (John O'Brien) poem `Said Hanrahan` were standard fare to be learned in English classes back in the sixties.  These poems are part of Australia's heritage and help recall our history but sadly there importance seems to have been forgotten by today's education system.
Bush poetry does not have to be about the bush (country-side) for those who don't know what the bush is, it can be about the city as Lawson wrote in `Faces in the Street` and many Aussie troops wrote poetry in the trenches of Gallipoli and the Somme in fact every conflict that Australia has been involved in somewhere a serviceman wrote a rhymed verse you can almost bet on it.

My interest in poetry developed in school where I suppose I imagined that I was the Man from Snowy River racing down the mountain with not a care in the world, reading and reciting that poem would give me goose bumps.  For the annual school magazine I would try and write a verse or two some of which made it and some did not.   During the 70's while in the stock-camp at Moola Bulla I occasionally tried penning a verse or two generally on scrap paper or in diaries all of which is now lost or thrown away.

In the 1990's though I began writing again and this time saving what I had written and in about August 2002 I began reciting my work on Early morning ABC radio here in Western Australia and have become a regular now for 10 years.  The response from early morning listeners was to me very humbling and because of that response I have had the good fortune to be able to self publish 4 books of my writings and have enough poems put aside for number five.
Most of the poems I write are about things I had seen or experienced in my time as a stockman and head-stockman working in the Kimberley and Pilbara area of West Australia and yes I will admit the old favorite, poetic license is used at times.

Through this blog I hope to restore interest in the Aussie way of telling a yarn or three with written and audio poetry going up, once I learn how to do it.