Remembering Ross Creek
By Bronwyn Lea
Published 20 October 2023
Yeppoon, 2011
As darkness falls
the bats
dangle in the man-
groves
getting twitchy – a wired
screeching
cuts the air as minions
drop
flip and take off
on huge
velvet wings, the bats
swirl
like a black
tornado
across the sun-
set,
stealing to the hinter-
land
to eat sweet
pine-
apples
burning
beneath a hot summer
moon.
'Remembering Ross Creek' was composed during Dr. Bronwyn Lea's three-day residency in Yeppoon, Queensland. Here, Bronwyn introduced Year 8 students at St. Ursula's College to Red Room Poetry's public poetry project, Sea Things, with guidance from the Sea Things learning resource. Also known as the School by the Sea, St Ursula's was an ideal location for the pilot program. The girls explored the relationship Australians have with the sea through the medium of poetry and collaborated with the visual arts department to create evocative, experimental responses.