Poetry out of the backblocks

By COLIN MOORE

Bush bard Terry Sleator has had plenty of time to practise his craft without interference.

The 56-year-old Opotiki balladeer has spent much of his life in remote bush camps and backcountry huts while culling deer or trapping possums.

He was alone, but not lonely, and occupied long winter nights and wet days by putting his observations and experiences in the bush to verse.

Eventually the lean, 1.9m hunter and trapper came out of the bush to be a travelling bush poet and tall teller of tales.

Now Sleator takes his bush poetry and tales on the road, entertaining in pubs, at charity fundraisers, and even on the four-wheel-drive tours he runs from Opotiki in the East Coast backcountry.

He sometimes spins his bush tales at schools to brighten English and social studies lessons.

That's not a bad outcome for a bloke who left school at 14 and has worked as a woodsman and hunter ever since.

Sleator was born in a British Army camp in North Devon and at 18 left forests of oak for the New Zealand bush.

He started with the old Forest Service at Ruatahuna as a deerculler and then spent more than 25 years as a meat hunter.

In the old days he backpacked carcasses of up to 90kg out of the bush to waiting freezers.

Then helicopter hunting arrived and, eventually, live capture. Winters were spent in the bush trapping possums.

Sleator has written about the "men who inhabit the hills."

They cash their cheques in the country pubs
and soak in their fill of good cheer,
chat to the locals for days on end then for months they disappear,
To the valleys and huts of the bush backblocks
to the solitary life they lead,
to harvest the fur and the red deer's flesh,
today they're a dwindling breed.

It may not be Byron or Shelley, and some may dismiss it as doggerel.

But bush poetry is in the telling, which is why in Australia there is a lucrative bush poetry competition circuit and why listening to Sleator spin yarns
around a campfire is a captivating experience.

He has bush verse about Paddy's axe, which has had three heads and 14 handles. And a poem about his dog
called Handysack which will round up anything from chickens to cattle.

For someone who must have spent a lot of time talking to himself, Sleator is mighty handy himself at entertain
ing others.

Contact: Terry Sleator, Voices in the Bush, ph (07) 312 4302, (025) 921 720.