Garchooka, the Cockatoo | Rex Ingamells #poem

~ This Reading Life
Photo by Duc Nguyen on Unsplash

I’m not sure how much I will be able to contribute to next week’s 1937 Club; this moving house gig is wearing me a little bit thin. But I recently stumbled across this neat little poem about cockatoos. Our new home in the mountains is also loved by gangs of cockatoos, who happily screech at each other as they beat around the high branches of the gum trees. They also peer at us cheekily from on top of the roof any time we are on the back deck or in the garden. They are very curious and thuggish at the same time.

At sunset they swoop and dive from one tree top to the next, seeing who can screech the loudest. Dropping half eaten pine cones onto our roof seems to give them great pleasure! They roam the tree tops, making as much noise as they can, calling attention to themselves just like a group of teenagers with too much time on their hands.

Garchooka, the Cockatoo by Rex Ingamells was first published in July 1937 in Venture: An Australian Literary Quarterly (vol. 1, no. 1), p. 16. It was then included in the 1938 publication of the Jindyworobak Anthology, p. 29, edited by Ingamells. The version published in the Jindyworobak Anthology, 1938 differed slightly from that of 1937, with the first line beginning with “Though” instead of “While now”:

“Though the waters, wind-stirred and red-glowing”

Garchooka, the Cockatoo.
While now the waters, wind-stirred and red-glowing,
Shadowed by the evening gloom of gums,
Bend in their banks the way the day is going,
While a dusk-gold haze of insects comes
Over the ripples in their coloured flowing,
Garchooka beating from high branches screeches
Discord up and down the river-reaches.

Rex Ingamells.
  • I also featured a Rex Ingamells poem for the 1936 Club, Parrots.
  • Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness hosts A Poem For a Thursday, you guessed it, every Thursday.
This post was written on the traditional land of the Wangal clan, one of the 29 clans of the Eora Nation within the Sydney basin. This Reading Life recognises the continuous connection to Country, community and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They are the traditional custodians of the lands, seas, and skies on which we live and they are this nations first storytellers.

Published by This Reading Life

13 thoughts on “Garchooka, the Cockatoo | Rex Ingamells #poem”

  1. Nice poem! I usually do three or four books for the year club, but this time, I am only doing two. However, thankfully, I am not moving. I feel for you!

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  2. I commiserate … just think, it’s only a couple of weeks and you’re there.

    Enjoyed the poem. I think I’ll only be doing a story but I haven’t found it yet. I have no 1937 one in my Aussie anthologies.

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      1. Oh yes, I should say that I’ve been looking for Australian pieces. I haven’t given up yet, but I will look further afield if I have to. First, though, it’s my Monday Musings which I have started drafting.

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  3. Great poem and I love your own descriptions of the cockatoos antics. For us, it is corellas… whole flocks of 100+ birds… the noise is unbelievable. Sometimes they’re joined by galahs… it’s deafening.

    Good luck with your move. Poor Tim had to do this by himself during covid… packing up 20 years of our life with me in WA unable to help. I think he’s still traumatised by it.

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    1. Our native birds know how to make their presence known that’s for sure 😅
      I sympathise with Tim – after our last move I felt rather traumatised too & said next time we pay someone to do the lot!! But of course this move is very different with the timing, the downsizing, the fact we can move in stages…but in these final few weeks, even with oodles of planning, it’s still stressful.

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  4. I thought of you and your move when I heard about a land slip blocking the road somewhere in the Blue Mountains, so I was pleased to see this post indicating that you are not stranded on the wrong side of the hole in the road!

    I haven’t even started 1937. Two loans came in from the library and they are both chunksters, unless I can make a dint in the one I’ve started over the weekend, I’ll be AWOL too.

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    1. We actually spent Easter Saturday down in the Megalong Valley with their makers markets – it’s a beautiful valley and a lovely windy drive through the forest but the road is precariously perched on the side of the mountainside & was already compromised thanks to the rain in 2022.

      Good luck with 1937!

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  5. I would have to be along way off the beaten path to stumble across a Rex Ingamells poem, though I do have a novel of his – Of Us Now Living. Looking him up I see he also wrote a 327pp account of the history of Australia in verse.

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