Jill O'Trades
An excerpt from "The Hill End Suite"
Poetry inspired by an old gold town


Beneath unerring gaze of faces long gone
Staring down from timbers of the old Royal Hall
In Tambaroora Road
Jill O'Trades scrapes uneaten bits of wedding cake
From beneath the seats
And gobs of sick, trodden in by dancing feets
And tosses dead beer bottles into the bin
Along with cardboard plates
And sauce smeared paper tablecloths.

She sweeps and dusts for hours until
The stern Salvation faces of Georgina and Major Sam
Relax in approval.
Then Jill O'Trades pauses to spy her handywork
And make peace with ghosts in the hall.

In trance, she hears sounds
Of ancient meetings of townsfolk,
Of celebrations and wakes
The time-worn rituals of Oddfellows Lodge,
Haranguing politicians of early days
Lamington drives and CWA,
School concerts and brass bands.
The scrape of fiddle and thump and jiggle
Of the lagerphone with its bottletops gone mad with a tune.

Jill turns, locks the door.
Away to her next job
Where she hands out posters and prints and pamphlets
To tourists invading the town.
Gold dishes and shovels,
Destined to retain their shine.
Books and trinkets and souvenirs
And jars filled
With chunks of fools gold.
She smiles and chats, a credit to her uniform
And talks of characters of the town.
"A lovely girl," they say and: "How helpful."
At night, for Jill, it's to the pub
Where, as chef, she mingles with
ghosts again.
But, like the beer, ghosts are watered down
With today's live phantoms.
In the tarted up beergarden she serves
Soup de poisson, pate maison
Sauteed frogs legs, omelettes,
Topped off with cr¸me parisienne.
Where's the damper and cocky's joy?


© June Saville 1999