This is for my late adoptive father, CW Clements, who only answered to "Bill". He lived and worked successively on the east and north-west coasts, where he was variously a shop assistant, fisherman, farm labourer and shop keeper at Burnie and then Somerset. Although he left Tasmania only for friendship and cardiac surgery, he was attuned to the international and national contexts of the state’s fortunes, in bad times and good. He is pictured in late infancy.

before the lens

of history,

the little man

from the sepia era

addresses us as

he would,

man and boy,

son and father

and citizen of the world

down the decades

through two world wars

and a Great Depression,

vulnerable and brave,

sceptical and common-sensical,

as empires changed places

and regimes clung on

for dear conservatism

in the beloved country,

wasting time whilst

war raged unwelcome

at the family table

of a little big man.

Dr David Faber is an Australian labour historian and published poet who majored at Somerset Primary School in pirates, wild colonial boys, British monarchy and imperialism. He began writing poetry at Burnie High School. He emigrated to Adelaide in 1977, fell under the spell of a Milanese admirer of Machiavelli, and moved with her to Italy in 1985, where he was a local official of the Partito Comunista Italiano. He now lives in Adelaide again, and David Faber visits Tasmanian family, friends, colleagues, libraries and archives annually. His next project is a co-authored life of Depression era Premier Albert Ogilvie.