Margaret Bradstock: Three Poems

George Henry Bragge (1861−1935)

He didn’t join his brothers on the tightrope

but found his own aerial flight-path

playing footy for Carlton instead,

Aussie Rules, the hurl and glide of it

not far removed from the mayhem

of Gaelic football, a landscape

he would go on dreaming in.

They nicknamed him O’Shea.

In the club photo, broad-shouldered,

he’s sporting the uniform

of long leather trousers and thong-laced vest,

a latter-day Oisin, mythologised.

Retired from the fray, he took up work

on the turnstiles at Carlton footy ground

drank at the pub in Racecourse Road

with his cronies, berated by his wife

sharp-tongued Amelia (known as Lillian),

for leaving the grandsons waiting on the road

outside, as day waned into nightfall,

not least of the traditions he established

for future generations.

Margaret Bradstock

Lillian LePine (aka Amelia Matilda Austin, 1866−1937)

Not the stage-entertainer we were promised

not even French, how dull

(we thought we were one eighth French).

Following the Norman Conquest, ambassadors

LePine/ LaPine/ LaPyne might have heralded

something more Moulin Rouge.

Born in Adelaide, Amelia Matilda Austin

married George Henry Bragge in 1885,

cleaned rental houses at South Yarra

to help the family income, looked after umbrellas

at the Caulfield Racecourse, but never gambled.

Outliving her wayward husband

by a respectable two years, buried

in the same grave, she’s registered

on her daughter’s death certificate

as Lillian Austin. By whom?

Enter Stage Left, our star of vaudeville.

Never mind. The names Lillian and LePine

now carry on throughout the family,

just a little bit exotic.

Margaret Bradstock

Progenitor

Arrested on his wedding day,

receiving and carrying away the goods feloniously

         stolen from one Jacob Amos Smart, Lime burner,

a silver watch, one gold seal and other articles,

he’s sentenced to 14 years transportation.

Hannah’s sent to the Penitentiary

                 guilty of larceny only, and leaves the frame.

(Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin’ …)

Ice forms on bare trees and evergreens

soaring escarpments and dark, distant valleys.

Below his window now—labourer, apothecary

at Parramatta Hospital, jack-of-all-trades—

the thin black dog of his posterity

howls out its servitude.

Margaret Bradstock