On those horizons, tainted by faint sea-mists
The sleeping convoys lay; convoys of coal ships.
Dormant in morning light, their slumberous steel hulks
Awaiting their turn to load their bellies
With the black of Catherine’s fossil fuel.

Somewhere north still lie the steelyards
In that dirty industrial sprawl;
The chimney stacks – Munmorah’s south,
And Vales’ west – scarring and perilously tall,
Still spew forth their long white streams
Of steam into my memory.

Macquarie’s waters, to the west, unseen,
But they’re still there,
Beyond the hills of dry green bush
That flank my Catherine’s shores.
Though all else loses relevance in the hush
Of Catherine’s loud and alive morn.

No hush; not loud; tranquil white noise sound:
As wave upon wave and waves pound at the rocks
And carve the sands. What white and beauteous sands;
So smooth and clean as they sift through my hands.

I miss the loud Australian Morning,
And the South Pacific’s crashing shores,
Though etched in memory they remain,
As visions from those younger days
Spent basking alone in the humbling charm
Of the beaches and town of Catherine Hill Bay.

Not so much a bay, as an arc of clean white sand,
Joining to north and south, two grassed, jutting headlands;
And the deep pacific blue, underneath the autumn sun;
And the steady roll of surf and tide.
The crisp salt air, and the screeching calls
Of the myriad gulls along her perfect shore.

Up the track, atop the hill, beyond the black coal stacks,
The main (and only!) street of Catherine Hill,
Its rustic (or run down?) but charmful cottages
Lined both street sides, their tattered fences,
Peeling paint, and verandas, a foreign welcoming.
But I was hesitant to invade.

I remember a lone, black,
Gangly-legged dog that came out once,
To see who was there.
It plodded out into the road’s center
Took in an aimless whiff of air,
Crossed the road and sniffed again,
But didn’t seem to care,
As long as I stood and just looked on,
And changed nothing there at all.
I saw a miner there, once, do the same:
Didn’t care if nothing changed,
And didn’t want to know me.

I didn’t change my Catherine Hill Bay,
Did nothing there at all.
But Catherine changed me for the better,
Of that I still am sure.

Her southern sister Moonie, was my secret mistress though,
With whom I could find the solitude I needed then to grow.
She showed the real spirit, that Catherine somehow hid
But Catherine and Moonie’s perfect charm
Had been somehow lost and somehow found
As I could find my lost self, in their presence.

The love of Catherine, many men did possess.
But her innate challenge,
Only two breeds of men could accept:
The locals working her mines, with their
Old coal-dusted hands and inescapable grime,
And an unchanged indifference that had allowed a world to pass
As they retained a hint of another century’s charm.

The other, a young breed, new in man’s long past:
With sun-bleached hair, and sunglassed eyes,
Sun-bronzed skin, and four-wheel drives;
The surfer negotiated Catherine’s rugged trails
To take the challenge of riding her elusive waves;
To feel her solitude, her power, and the Pacific waves.

That Catherine Hill Bay, my Catherine,
Her sister Moonie, with her little lagoon and many caves,
Her bush and her flowers, her fire trails,
And the hours and hours spent alone together;
Spent searching for something never known to be lost;
Searching in her caves, on her sands, in her waters,
In my mind, on her waves and through my body;
Searching each through the other and finding:
My Catherine shall always remain, but
That Catherine Hill Bay is no longer.