PULLING up at Bernie Bettridge’s house offers some curious relief from any typical garden.
Thousands of caps, mostly found at the local dump, cover the carport’s interior.
Before reaching the carport, you walk past a conglomerate of Disney mugs, common with McDonald’s meals in the 1990s, attached by wire to a large post.
Gazing across the lusciously overgrown garden you see a King Kong bear perched on a swing in a tree.
While taking this in, you meet Bernie Bettridge (pictured), Clermont’s well-known poet who begins a museum-like tour.
Out the back of the house, everything gets a little older.
Old beer bottles, radios, tools, at least five lawnmowers from the ’50s, canisters, ancient Coca-Cola billboards and power insulators from many Australian States sit in sheds and walls, along with a tree home to two sulphur crested cockatoos that lost independence during a hailstorm when all their feathers fell off and never really grew back properly.
Bernie says the cockatoos he found have been relying on him ever since but remain primordially wild.
The tour continues with Bernie admitting he hates any type of waste.
He seems to have been collecting for years. Once, a friend of his worked at the local dump and he saw just how much people waste, which propelled Bernie to save.
Bernie places a record on a multipurpose stereo he saved from the dump, which plays all music devices expect for CDs.
The machine warms up and old-time country music blares out loud, with a little static.
On a nearby table in the hot shed, a power drill works sufficiently – just another piece of ephemera found in the dump for which Bernie has found a home and use.
Yet people do not come to this former coalminer for a museum tour into the anonymous lives of Clermont’s residents.
He is often approached solely for his talent as a poet.
The nearly 80-year-old honed his rhythmic skills on a truck at the Blair Athol coalmine, where he worked most of his life since 1946 – at which point he was pumping water for sheep on Nanya, Capella.
It dawned on the thoughtful man that the history of Blair Athol and all his experiences would go into the aeons of humanity and geography unless he documented it.
From there, he has developed a reputation, writing poetry about many experiences that shaped his life and those of farmers and residents in Clermont.
He has even written poems for the openings of bridges, the demolition of Catholic churches and what life was like in the early part of last century.
“I am inspired by what I have seen to write poetry,” Bernie said.
“If I can’t see it, I can’t write it.”
So stimulating is his poetry that his words have been read out in the House of Representatives and included in The Bronze Swagman (a poetry book).
The North Queensland Register introduces to you Bernard John Bettridge – our new contributor of poetry which has been such a vital aspect of this esteemed rural association in decades gone past.
We hope you enjoy these words which often bring its writer to tears ...
The Grave on the Creek
As she lays a flower on that tiny
grave on the hillside by the creek
she wipes a tear and a greying
hair from an old and withered cheek.
She thinks of that night so long
ago when the creek was running
high how the roaring wind and
lightening tore at a tortured sky.
In her arms a shawl wrapped
bundle torn with fever and pain,
oh how that picture haunts her
memory over and over again.
Her husband out there in the
night in the midst of that raging
storm riding for the doctor, his
body scratched and torn.
Through stinging rain and
tearing branch he battled further
on, hoping when he gets there the
doctor hasn’t gone.
Over flooded creeks and
windswept flats with an aching in
his heart he pushed his faithful
pony – till he saw that light at last.
Only five more minutes now,
his heart filled with despair, as a
chill of fear raced through that
heart, “I hope the doctor’s there”.
By now the storm was over, the
wind had settled down as they
started for the homestead 30 miles
from town.
The morning sky was turning
pink when they forded their last
stream and saw the homestead on
the rise, to him how long it
seemed.
But he knew the race by man
and horse had been useless and in
vain as he saw his wife by the
garden gate a picture of grief and
pain, in her hand a dampened
hankie from the tears that filled her
eyes as she sat along by that little
cot and watched the new sun rise.
And now a tear falls on that
flower as she slowly turns away
and walks off with her husband
and her thoughts of that tragic day.
– BJ Bettridge, Clermont,
Queensland
Email a friend