In May every year there’s a festival held in the small country town of Toodyay to commemorate the escape of Moondyne Joe from the infamous Fremantle Goal in 1865.
He became a folk hero by evading capture and making his way back home to Toodyay where he was eventually caught, upstairs in the pub.
The annual festivities are a light-hearted way to bring visitors to the town which has been ravaged by bushfires many times over the years.
These photos were taken when we attended the festival in May, 2009 to sell our fudge.
Later that year in December when the temperature reached 45 degrees C. more than 3000 hectares and 38 homes were lost to a catastrophic fire blamed on a collapsed power line.
I’m happy to report we again attended in 2010 when Toodyay had recovered well with crowds flocking to support the town, only a short 2 hour drive from Perth.
I wrote a poem, inspired by the evidence of the bushfires in the landscape which was later published by the International Centre for Landscape and Language Journal, Edith Cowan University.
Toodyay.
black ash still lay
where fire had licked
with devil tongues
across the road-side gravel
a careless cigarette
city slicker thrown
on community fun day
to re-enact Moondyne Joe
quick fire prowled up
summer-dry gullies
stand of trees ridge
wind break – not fire-breaker
no escape allowed
as bright yellow jackets
smother white foam
contain the bush fire danger
gumtree pale striped
old bark peeled back
green growth beauty
black trees juxtaposed
fresh life canopies
halt dieback spores
spiked hair sprouts
thousand years and counting
Frances Macaulay Forde © 2010
#FrancesMacaualayForde #ToodyayWA #MoondyneJoe #MoondyneFestival #SouthWestWA #ICLL-ECU #InternationalCentreForLandscape&Language
Perth Words... exploring possibilities. 
[…] I put together with firstly photos from the 2009 and vision (with sound) of the parade in the 2010 Moondyne Festivals held in […]
LikeLike