The Wait-a-While Vine

The Wait-a-While Vine is a poetic imagining of the doomed Cape York expedition of Edmund Kennedy and Jacky Jacky in 1848. The verses merge landscape and dreamscape, history and legend. Beginning with the young Kennedy’s life in England and ending with Jacky Jacky’s death, the poems traverse topics as diverse as the terrain covered by the explorers. The Wait-a-While Vine presents playful vignettes of society in colonial New South Wales, meditates on convict life and the interactions between colonists and traditional owners, and follows the events of the expedition – sometimes from the perspective of a dispassionate observer, at other times in the voice of Kennedy himself. Ultimately it is the story of an unlikely friendship. These lyrical verses bring to life a fascinating part of Australia’s past and reinterpret the renowned harshness and beauty of the Australian bush.