When I was a boy

I used to think

That if I kept digging

The longest, largest, deepest hole ever

I'd end up in Australia

Where everything would be upside down

I'd wonder why its population didn't fall off the Earth

Never to return

Were the kangaroos really jumping up

Or trying so hard to jump down

To keep themselves from drifting into space?

Were the koalas actually climbing trees

Or hanging on to them for dear life?

Then it occurred to me

Australians must think that they are the right way up

And everything in Great Britain

Is upside down

(I discovered in later life that I would have surfaced in New Zealand, not Australia. I also learnt about gravity.)