Country of the Lost

Thomas Timothee Vasse from the French explorer Nicolas Baudon's expedition was lost in the surf in Western Australia before the state was settled by the UK government in 1829.

The nearby river and estuary and a town of approx 1300 people was named after the lost seaman.

The poem was published by Western Review and Pixel Press 

COUNTRY OF THE LOST 

If Thomas Timothee Vasse

Of Dieppe

had not drowned in the surf

at Geographe Bay in 1801

but lived

to welcome the Bussells

in 1837

could he have persuaded them

the Nyungar people

were not wandering nomads

but guardians of the land

and had kept the ancient laws

forty thousand years. 

Now the forests are eaten

By wood chipping

the cleared land

turned the rivers to salt

where Nyungar fished

and danced the corroboree

of the hunt

sang of the totem

kangaroo goanna and emu

and the great serpent

which came from the north

carving life-giving waterways

out of the earth mother. 

In thirty years

Of living with the Nyungar

Thomas Timothee Vasse

might have learned

the relationship of the land

     to the people     

         and the people  

               to the land

but the old truths are forgotten

and we, the inheritors

ignore their passing.

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Three children try to save a creek from the developers.