True Blue Colours by James Cayce is a celebration of Australia’s extraordinary landscapes, wildlife and natural beauty.
From desert wildflowers and snow gums to Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef and the Southern Cross, James paints the country through colour, reminding us that Australia’s greatest treasures are found in the land itself. It is a poem of admiration, gratitude and quiet pride.
True Blue Colours
By James Cayce
The coral blush of dawn in the East, the shafts of gold in the West,
The silver of moonlight laid on leaves of gum trees all at their rest.
The ochre shades on sandstone walls, her lush green ferns and moss,
The glorious glow of a billion stars that light up the Southern Cross.
An ocean of flowers afloat on a bed of sand on a desert floor,
Sun-lit spears on snow-capped hills, rainbow rills in the thaw.
The patterns on wheat that ride the wind, the bush in her blues and greys,
The yellow of wattle we hold in our hearts, the emerald hues in her bays.
The carnival colours on parrots and wrens, a hundred colours it seems,
The gilded hem of a mountain range, the flash of chrome in her streams.
The white on sands that sear the soul when the sun at its fiercest falls,
The reds on the Rock when day is done and the nightlife heeds their calls.
The purple of skies bruised by storms when the heat of the day has passed,
The fires ablaze in opal hearts that will now for eternity last.
The crimson hazed horizons as the columns of grey smoke grow,
The black silhouettes of homesteads with their embers still aglow.
The riot of colours that swirl in the sun in a sea of disbelief,
Colours conceived in a fantasy world set free in a Fairy Tale reef.
No artist could capture such colours, no poet could ever convey,
That wealth of ‘true blue colours’ that must never be turned to grey.
Keeping The Verse Alive
True Blue Colours is shared with permission from James Cayce through Keeping The Verse Alive, Country Campfire’s bush poetry preservation project.
By preserving poems like this, we’re helping ensure the stories, humour and characters of country Australia continue to be enjoyed for generations to come.
James Cayce
Bush Poet • Humourist • Storyteller • Parody Writer
James Cayce is the pen name of Zbigniew “Zig” Ignaszak, a bush poet and storyteller whose work blends humour, parody, memory, gratitude and Australian country verse.
Poems, recitals, photographs, stories and original works remain the property of their original creator and are shared by Country Campfire with permission.
