Siren for Wendy Richardson Wendy remembers the miners of the village, how they sat on their front verandas drinking the sun, hawking gobbets of dark phlegm onto hydrangeas or geraniums, those hardy survivors. They were silent men with silent wives, who listened day after day for the siren & waited year after year for black lung or emphysema. Wendy saw them stooped & aching around the village, retired from the pit, struggling for breath. Once I went down into a mine with Len, who’d worked there boy & man. I saw how the miners bent in the low…
Subscribe to get access to all online articles
Already a member?
Sign in to read this article
Digital Subscription
$98 / YR
Get the latest ideas from Australia’s most insightful writers.
- Digital Subscription includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
Printed & Digital Subscription
$118 / YR
For avid readers of leading ideas
from Australia’s brightest.
- Printed & Digital Subscription includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
- Quadrant Patron includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
- All new editions of Quadrant Books
- Exclusive invitations to Quadrant Dinners, book launches and events.
- Quadrant Patron includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
- All new editions of Quadrant Books
- Exclusive invitations to Quadrant Dinners, book launches and events.