One of the best nights out we’ve had in a while in downtown Berowra was seeing legendary Aussie bush poet Murray Hartin perform at the local pub on May 18. Muz has local connections: he’s from Moree in northern NSW but went to school in Hornsby, just down the road from here. Bush poetry is not terribly fashionable among Australia’s metropolitan literati, but what do they know? Bottom line: if you don’t understand Australia’s rural culture and traditions, you don’t fully understand the Anglo-Celtic experience in Australia; and, far from being parochial, these traditions are old, rich and diversified enough to say a lot about the human condition. Here’s Muz’s justly famous “Rain from Nowhere”: