A Dream of Catherine Hill Bay
From the place of the Maori, the land of the moa,
Dreaming I wandered from Aoteoroa.
In fancy I soared like a bird set free,
Beneath me the restless and wild Tasman Sea.
Its foam-crested billows were easy to trace,
The tips of them patterned like creamy white lace.
Laughing from joy, my pulse beating wild,
I was back midst scenes I knew as a child.
Oh, little blue cove of amber-hued sand,
The fast-running grains, trickling warm thru
' my hand,Lazy waves splashing, seeming to say,
"Welcome back home to Catherine Hill Bay."
Here in my youth, midst laughter and tears,
I re-lived, with gladness, my happiest years.
Wandering o
'er sand dunes and places I knew,Gathering wild flowers spangled with dew.
I climbed through the bracken to high on the hill,
Overlooking the harbour, and there gazed my fill.
From the beach that was dotted with frail little skiffs,
To Bungaree Lighthouse away on the cliffs,
Down by the jetty, not very far,
I could see the hulk of the old
"Wallarah."She is fast on the rocks, a pitiful wreck,
Angry green waters flooding her deck.
I lingered a space, and then wandered down,
To ramble again through the quaint mining town.
The old-fashioned inn, I
've forgotten its name,With unpainted houses, with shops yet the same.
The coach and six horses, with fine flowing tails,
Still carried the traveller, and His Majesty
's Mails.
'
Round by the Gorge, at the now decayed mill,Grim relics of past days, lying there still,
Of arrow-clothed convicts, their leg-weights and chains,
Crumbling and rusting in storm and rains.
Here the old coal seams far underground
Are burning and steaming, the surface unsound.
Now wandering thru
' jonquils, deep to the knees,I came to the graveyard, bordered by trees.
Reading the tombstones, trying not to weep,
For friends of the old days in their last peaceful sleep.
I murmur a prayer as I keep back the tears,
I
've thought of them often, over the years.
The scenes now are dimming, and waking at last,
All I so loved drifted into the past.
I, in my dreaming, had been granted a look
At colourful pages, from life
's golden book,These blest treasured memories ne
'er can I part,For God in his wisdom locked them fast in my heart.
By D Anderson
Published The Coal Miner, November-December 1955
This verse was sent to "The Coal Miner" by Mrs Linda Masters, the wife of a Wallarah colliery employee, and the sister of the author, Mrs Daisy Anderson, of New Zealand. Mrs Masters says: "Our family lived at Catherine Hill Bay years ago, and our father (James Neil Brown) was a deputy at Wallarah for more than thirty years.
