I thought I’d share a poem I was asked to read at my Father’s funeral service on Christmas Eve, this year.

It’s called Where the pelican builds its nest, by Mary Hannay Foott.

It speaks very much of my Father’s lifelong love of Australian poetry, and also gently tugs at a deep sense of longing and perhaps also of regret.

Where the pelican builds its nest

by Mary Hannay Foott

The horses were ready, the rails were down,
But the riders lingered still —
One had a parting word to say,
And one had his pipe to fill.

Then they mounted, one with a granted prayer,
And one with a grief unguessed.
"We are going," they said, as they rode away —
"Where the pelican builds her nest!"

They had told us of pastures wide and green,
To be sought past the sunset’s glow;
Of rifts in the ranges by opal lit;
And gold ‘neath the river’s flow.

And thirst and hunger were banished words
When they spoke of that unknown West;
No drought they dreaded, no flood they feared,
Where the pelican builds her nest!

The creek at the ford was but fetlock deep
When we watched them crossing there;
The rains have replenished it thrice since then,
And thrice has the rock lain bare.

But the waters of Hope have flowed and fled,
And never from blue hill’s breast
Come back — by the sun and the sands devoured —
Where the pelican builds her nest.

I recently picked up a copy of Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino in a wonderful little bookstore while in Hobart. It’s a collection of distinctly ‘Italian’ folk stories [1], and while I’m only partway through it, I’ve discovered some interesting things when compared to folk tales with which I am more familiar, which generally come from Western Europe or the US.

Footnotes:

1.	Though some are quick to point out that it’s difficult to define ‘Italian’ in a folk sense, since historically what we think of as ‘Italy’ was in fact a number of distinct provinces with their own folk traditions and tales.
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Norman Harold Wells, born 19 March 1925, passed away early this morning.

He was my Father, my hero and my friend.

He was the best man I have ever known, and he has left me in a world that is less bright and less beautiful and less full of wonder because he is no longer within it.

Today, for me, was the day the stories died, and I desperately wish tears could bring them back.

I miss you Dad. I love you. I will keep the promises I made to you.

Barry Williams, Lord Magisterial Inquisitor Of The Holy Skeptical Empire (Incorporated), has submitted several more variants of the Nigerian Scam.

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“ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN,” the first picture reads, but the second is quick to disagree: “ONLY HUMANS GO TO HEAVEN READ THE BIBLE”.

So begins what appears to be a rather quirky theological debate about the souls of dogs (and eventually of rocks!), carried out entirely on church signs.

But, we ask ourselves, is it real? Did the religious communities represented by Our Lady of Martyrs Catholic Church and Beulah Cumberland Presbyterian Church really go to war with each other over whether or not pets can go to paradise?

As it happens, the answer is no, they didn’t…

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