In one stanza we therefore see the struggle of the native landscape to assert its presence against intrusive English imports. The strength of Wright's environmental concerns is visually brought to the fore in this scene of environmental degradation showing how the passing of time has affected the landscape. As a founding member of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland (1962), Wright was ever conscious of the attacks on the environment which families such as her own pastoral family inflicted.
From this scene of chaotic struggle, there is a yearning for "summer" and its "wave of rambler roses". While the European imagery represents an incursion on the natural order of things it is also a consciousness on the part of Wright to acknowledge her audience. In 1963, when interviewed about symbolism in her poetry, Judith Wright acknowledged that the Australian "landscape had no echoes" for audiences outside Australia and that an image of a waratah which is so evocative for Australian readers meant nothing to English readers. This understanding of an international readership obviously had an impact on the way she captures the relationship between the observer and the landscape, especially in this stanza.
The poem shares a colonial past of storytellers and bush yarns, of droughts and deaths, of droving and mustering and bushrangers. The abundance of Australian country place names (Charleville, the Hunter, the McIntyre, Sandy Camp, Bogongs, Tamworth), and the descriptions of the typically tragic outback events, capture a sense of the mythology of Australia, expressed through a distinctively Australian idiom. We can hear a different voice to the first stanza in the diction of the yarner who narrates his story in the first person and animates it with his own comments on the characters: "I give him a wink" and "he went like a luny".
