Waterscape Art Photography by Kellie North
 
Lady of the Lakes I
 
Accompanied with poetry by Award Winning Australian Bush Poet Terry Piggott
 
This piece was conceptualised while out in far northwest Queensland on the banks of the Einasleigh River.  While sitting around a campfire telling stories I felt an eerie yet beautiful feeling that we were not alone, souls with stories of days past lingered here.
Many have sat in the same place as we had, by the glow of the flickering flame, reflecting, in awe of the beauty and the silence.
When home, I was putting pen to paper, trying to come up with my narrative, but was coming up with blocks.
 
So I started to research Australian Bush Poetry and serendipitously came across the perfectly penned words of Award Winning Australian Bush Poet Terry Piggott.
I contacted Terry to gain permission to use his words, which I feel sit so eloquently with this work.
 
Here is his poem.......
 
Around the outback campfires there’s a yarn I’d often heard,
about the ‘lady of the lakes’, although the facts were blurred.
Her beauty is exceptional; or so the story goes,
but whether she is real or not – well no one really knows?
 
Just like a ghost she may appear, then suddenly she’s gone,
and so these stories tend to grow each time that they’re passed on.
Her face is like an angels and her hair shines burnished gold,
a mystic nymph who roams the lakes; or so I had been told.
 
Some say she seeks out prospectors, when life has been unkind,
those lonely souls who search for gold but never seem to find.
To others she is searching for a sweetheart from the past,
and doomed to roam the great salt lakes until he’s found at last.
 
It’s said her voice is sometimes heard when stars are shining bright,
sad songs they say sung far away, drift faintly through the night.
These sightings are quite rare I’m told, and few have seen her face,
and those who have are hard to find, and harder still to trace.
 
The outback’s full of yarns of course and most you can’t believe
although - I thought I saw her once - one balmy summer’s eve.
I may have been mistaken; yet I’m confident I’m right;
for though near dark I glimpsed her there across the lake that night.
 
I’d never taken notice of beliefs that some may share.
yet something seemed to tell me, I was not alone out there.
I dozed off by my campfire then the way I often do;
perhaps I had been dreaming – dreamt what happened next was true?
 
I’d swear I sensed her soft lips as they gently brushed my cheek,
and heard her fading footsteps heading off towards the creek.
I woke up with a start then; still convinced that she was near,
and watched the bushes moving where I saw her disappear.
 
Perhaps I’d been mistaken for the one she’d long searched for;
a sweetheart who had perished in the gold rush years before.
Or was it all imagined; just a dream that seems so real
my mind remains a captive to emotions that I feel?
 
I’ve camped back there now many times, though haven’t seen her since
and most who hear my story I’m unlikely to convince,
Yet every time I’m near the lakes I look around in vain
And wonder if our paths will cross somewhere out there again
 
Though as the years pass slowly by the doubts begin to grow;
how can I be so sure then when I have no proof to show?
Yet in my mind there still resides clear memories of this
and even though it’s forty years I cherish still her kiss.
 
© T.E. Piggott