Central Otago has always been my spiritual home, and I have been enormously fortunate that for fifteen years it was my actual home.
And Central has some of the most stunning and incredible skyscapes in the world, particularly at sunset and sunrise, but in between as well.
I wrote this when I was working for Gibbston Valley Wines, putting in vineyards on the Bendigo Loop Road between Cromwell and Tarras. That's up by the headwaters of Lake Dunstan, on the opposite side of the Clutha from the Wanaka Road, for those who don't know the geography there.
Up on the terrace above where we were working are the ruins of Welshtown, a mining settlement built during the gold rush of the early 1860s. It must have been hard going for folks there. Central regularly cracks 40°C in the summer, and in the wintertime the mercury can plummet to below minus 20°C for weeks on end.
When the gold ran out around the turn of the century the sheep farmers took over, battling plagues of rabbits along with the elements. A hundred years later a new gold rush began, this time in the form of the wine industry.
Enjoy :-)
There’s a painted sky at the Bendigo
Where the sun beats down from the Pisa snow
There’s a painted sky and a sunburnt tree
Where the clouds run wild and the hawks fly free
There’s a painted sky and a morning star
And a sunset seen in the distance far
There’s a pastel dawn and a western glow
Where the sheep still graze and the grapevines grow
And a lake that sits like a shining sea
On the rocks and stones of the high country
And a day seems long where the time runs slow
And the hot nor’westers dusty blow
There’s a man on a horse with a rifle high
And a dragon’s mark on the brooding sky
Where the rocks lie bare and the gold runs deep
In the river’s tomb where the spirits sleep
With an ear for the wind and an ancient cry
And the joy, and the pain, of the bones that lie
On the face and heart of a barren land
Where the miners took from a giving hand
Till the hand took back when it felt content
And the gold, and the grace, and the men were spent
And the sky turned bleak under winter’s chill
And the men, and the earth, and the rocks were still
And the river’s voice was a silent song
To the men who had lived, and died, and gone
As they followed the gold to Bendigo
Where the sheep still graze and the grapevines grow
And they came with their farms on a changing tide
And they grew, and they grazed, on the bare hillside
And the wind, and the sun, and the plague, and the snow
Was the price they paid to the Bendigo
There’s a painted sky and it tells a tale
Of a hard-built land where a man might fail
Where his soul must be strong, if as seed it would grow
In the rocks and stones of Bendigo
There’s a painted sky and a season new
And the vines reach out where the grass once grew
And they march, and they spread, on the sunburnt land
And the vintners take from a giving hand
There’s a painted sky and a canyon deep
Where the hawks still fly and the memories sleep
And the grapevines grow where the town once stood
And the giving hand seems to think it good
And they toil in the sun, and the wind, and the snow
And the wine, and the river, and the seasons flow
As the patterns change on the canvas high
Of this sunburnt land and its painted sky
There’s a painted sky at the Bendigo
And a truth in the minds of the men who know
That they live by the grace of that mighty hand
In this desolate, beautiful, windburnt land
And the sun, and the dry, and the stones, and the cold
And the wind, and the sky, and the grass, and the gold
Are the mark of the place where the voices say
That a man couldn’t wish for a better way
Than to live out his life ‘neath a painted sky
Where the grapevines grow and the ghosts still lie
And we live, and we learn, and we reap and we sow
‘Midst the rocks and the bones of the Bendigo
Richard Prosser
Alexandra
December 2000