A Life Sentience

This poetic book tells the story of David, a farmer born in 1960s Australia who was expected to carry on his family’s traditions on the land. We follow his life from birth to an imagined death, spanning a turbulent time when small rural communities across Australia collapsed.David’s plans are upended in the 1990s as the country suffers deregulation of the grain markets and the onset of a devastating ten-year drought. He and farmers like him have their lives forever changed, swept away by harsh economic forces and drought as family farms shut down.The book captures in verse the destruction of a cherished way of life for David, his neighbours, and rural towns. It recounts the tragedy of dreams broken when long-held farming traditions become unsustainable. By telling one man’s story, it memorializes the wider loss of community and livelihood faced by farming families across Australia in recent decades.

David Catford was born in the mid-sixties, the fourth child and first son of an Australian sheep and wheat farming family. He was educated at Booleroo Centre Primary and High Schools, and Saint Peters College, Adelaide. He returned home to the farm in 1982, in the midst of a country wide drought. Fortunately, the farm enjoyed some great years for the rest of that decade. In the 1990s he married and had three children, all at a time when things were changing forever in rural Australia: deregulation of grain markets, and the ten year long ‘Millenium Drought’ ripped small country communities apart. He began writing poetry as a way to combat his feelings of depression, and after some years saw them as a story of his life. He now lives a semi-retired rural life.