1. |
The Siege Of Noonkanbah
02:55
|
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In 1971 the Yungngora people
walked off of Noonkanbah Station.
In 1976 the government bought out Noonkanbah,
and gave it back to the Yungngora people.
Premier Charles Court,
he must have been a-tremblin',
outraged and offended at this threat to industry.
He grit his teeth and fought for
the good of his State electorate,
as he proclaimed it to be.
“No use for tradition, no time
for unproductive Dreaming
in this skyrocketing two-speed economy;
and if the owners of this land might be sleighted by the hand
of business, it's just the way it's got to be.
For the public interest, it's the way it's going to be.”
In 1979 an American oil company, they called AMAX,
sought rights for exploration on Yungngora land.
The people there said "No, our land is sacred. It must stay intact;
you can go and dig your holes up somewhere else."
Sir Charles Court said that this could not be accepted,
"There's no wealth in that, and boys, there's wealth up there to dig"
45 police protected trucks and drilling rigs
rolled in through Noonkanbah,
smashed the fences down
and raped the sacred ground.
And no oil was found.
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2. |
A Restless Kind Of Peace
02:11
|
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He was tall, dark and handsome.
And she packed her bag, and left him
and she shacked it in with me. My lonesome
bed was hers to lie on.
She said words are only usual
and nerves are only natural,
and nothing speaks as loud as action
when the curtain comes descending.
So strangely did it happen,
after a night of passion -
that, breathing softly, after kissing.
She whispered, to me, “Thank you.”
I held her closely, briefly.
Then she drove away, and left me.
And I watched the big moon blooming
and felt a restless kind of peace.
|
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3. |
Brother And Son
03:00
|
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Worst of me -
let me hurl these burdens from my fevered chest.
Hurting me
as I hurt the ones that I cherish best.
Doublegees
pricking poison, the deeper they dig.
The worst of me
is the saltpetre that sweats and
strangles the holy fig.
I'd like to think I mean well
but the truth is I can't rightly tell, or know,
when the chips collapse to Hell
and I’m wheeling as worthless as rain
upon the snow.
I'd like to think you'll be alright,
but the truth is I can’t bear to know.
Your sorrow hurts my pride
and stoops my mind down so low
that I don’t know if I will come up again
not test your love's limits no more,
my precious friend.
Like an old man crumpling a tin ca
No one knows which will fold first, nor when.
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry - that's all.
I want to be a good man – nothing more,
nothing more.
Scrape these split lips from the floor,
get the ants from the cuts and the sores.
Tomorrow, I might see the sun
or howl in the ruins - it will be one
or the other. From your brother, and son.
I'm sorry, for the bitter draughts we’ve drunk.
I love you very much.
I’m sorry for the bitter wells I dug.
I love you very much.
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4. |
Rattle Up The Drum
01:54
|
|||
Come out and join this fight,
workers one, workers all.
Come out and organise
Workers all.
Come out for recognition
of the worth of our positions
and come out, musicians
and rattle up the drum.
Come out and sing for change
workers one, workers all.
Come and sing for your wage
workers all.
Come out and tell them you
are a human being too,
and their pettiness, they will rue
and rattle up the drum.
Come out and make a noise
workers one, workers all.
A noise they can’t avoid,
workers all.
Come out and shake the walls
when ten thousand voices call
“You shall not do this anymore.”
Beat the drum.
Come out and make them squirm,
workers one, workers all.
Come out and starve the worms,
workers all.
Come out and don’t back down
until they’ve given ground
and make them fear the sound
of our drum.
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5. |
||||
He was the son of a market gardener.
She was the child of a maid and a cook -
and they fought like feral cats in the schoolyard,
and they married by Wokarena Brook.
In 19 and 13, the crops were fertile,
and in 1914, they had a babe.
In 19 and 15, they had another,
and in 1916, he went away.
Say farewell to old Mr Criddle,
and wave away the Moonyoonooka scarp.
For they’ve sent you off to France, to battle.
Good luck, good bye – au revoir.
Trenches are no place for a gardener.
The only seeds are bone, washed with blood -
and a rifle is a cruel bed companion
when a married man lies, freezing in the mud.
Surviving was an endless game of numbers,
and laying low, when shrapnel flies -
and closing your eyes as friends are butchered,
and seeing their faces every night.
Say goodbye to the weeping River Somme.
Fare-thee-well, red fields of Picardy.
For you are leaving, my comrade, for your garden -
hooroo, old mate, mes amie..
A friend said something last week
that gave me cause to pause.
She said, “There’s a lotta shows on TV
about soldiers, and their wars.
But none show what happens when
the lucky ones come home,
and the memories that haunt them
when their enemies are gone.
Those memories that don’t leave,
for soldiers, and brave nurses.
There are faces, voices, gnawing grief
that follows them to sleep.
Those curses of the battleground
that kill without a single shell.
Yeah, there’s not enough shows around
that show their living hell.”
Trenches are no place for a gardener
when muddy soil fills a man with dread -
and a garden is no paradise for family
when a man drinks to kill the shaking in his head.
This man will go to fight for his family
This man will fight for his patch of dirt -
and w war will take them both from him.
A war is never-ending hurt.
Say goodbye to the Moonyoonooka gullies.
Say farewell, to your tangled, withered vines -
for your sadness is cut too deep to summit.
Thanks for your service, old mate – goodbye.
|
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6. |
Chapman River Rising
02:08
|
|||
Rippling, swelling,
Foaming, sliding,
Trickles splitting,
water widening,
Lapping, tapping,
sapping saplings,
bending eddies,
waters rising.
The fury of the flotsam
soon will be arriving.
Tangling trees
with bark and leaves,
‘till the Chapman’s flow
is subsiding.
Yabbies, guppies,
tadpoles, trapping
eggs in jars for homeward raising.
Children googling,
giggling, fishing
for mozzie larvae for their tadpoles, grazing.
Muddy thongs
soaking dogs,
on the carpet that
I’d spent hours razing
with shampoo
and scrubbing too,
‘till it was soft and new
as the baby blue horizon.
Surging seaward
purging driftwood
from dry banks, to the ocean
The sand resists,
for a little bit,
then two waters kiss
where the dunes had closed in.
An ancient fight,
two snakes collide,
then peace subsumes
their commotion.
And all is well,
as the waters swell,
down at my beloved River Chapman.
|
||||
7. |
On Blue Days
02:30
|
|||
There’s no sound so loud
as the soaking wind, flying.
No silence so profound
as the hope within you dying.
My fears compound, with
ten thousand voices, lying -
and leave me with the sound
of one man crying.
Do you know that sound?
How could you hear it?
If no one’s around
does it disappear?
Or does it rebound
through your mind?
The lonesome sound
of one man crying.
The crows crack and creak
and scatter with the lightning.
Thunder gathers ‘round
my mind, black and biting.
My dry throat tangles ‘round
my tongue, taut and tightening
and strangles out the sound
of one man crying.
Do you know that sound?
How could you hear it?
If no one’s around
does it disappear?
Or does it rebound
through your mind?
The lonesome sound
of one man crying.
|
||||
8. |
No More Collie Valley
04:02
|
|||
Six dollars and eight cents
is what they feed us each day with.
Powdered egg, and crumbed fish
all the way from the Mekong.
I’ve been alive such a long time.
Ninety years, and nine -
now I’m waiting ‘round to die,
far from the hills where I belong.
My husband worked down in the coal mine.
We lived in Collie all our lifetimes.
So strange, how eighty years flies -
like bubbles, bundling into foam.
When Arthur died, I had nobody
to help me care for my old body,
so they took me to the city,
to die alone, in a crowded home.
I used to love cooking the Sunday lamb.
I took such pride in my two hands.
Now, they won’t let me near a kitchen,
because my legs are prone to fall.
Life here is reading one newspaper
every day, and you hate it
because the stories are all the same, but
it’s better than nothing at all.
I left a grandson in the valley.
He said he’d love to come and see me -
but it gets so cold in Collie,
when you’re sleeping in the alley.
One night, he lay down in his soaked clothes,
and in the gales, his drunken blood froze -
and he died alone, but I suppose
at least Arthur didn’t leave to see him go.
There are 300 people here.
I recognise less of them every year -
and I am so alone here,
but it doesn’t hurt like it did before.
For I believe I’ll be gone before long.
I’ve got no reason to hold on,
and I’ll be so relieved when my time is done,
and these cruel blue days end
|
||||
9. |
Sleeping Dogs
03:23
|
|||
Thought I heard the chattering
patter of your feet outside my doorway, today.
I hear dogs barking down the street,
I see the empty couch where you used to lay -
and I keep thinking, you’re coming home.
I’ll wake one morning, and find the nightmare’s flown -
but I wake up, every morning, alone.
It’s quiet without you.
It’s cold at night, without you by my side –
and it hurts to let sleeping dogs lie.
We both drift, like ghosts
through this house, through this town
that we used to own.
I see you around,
and hear your sounds
in the shadows where the melaleuca
and wax trees grow.
Falling apart.
Staying strong.
Heaving heart.
Steady song.
What’s the difference
when either way, you’re gone?
It’s quiet without you.
It’s cold at night
without you, by my side.
It’s quiet without you.
I miss you, little Child In The Sky -
and it hurts, so much, to let
sleeping dogs lie.
|
||||
10. |
A Bloody, Vicious Circle
02:29
|
|||
Are you living charming?
Are you living nice?
Are you living pleasant?
Are you living nice?
Are you without a house, man?
Is your bed in your car?
Are you living homeless?
Is your bed in the park?
How many hands did your father shake
to get you in the circles you choose to grace
and how many interviews ‘till Billy loses heart
because no one’s hires a fella who’s living in their car.
and there’s a bloody, vicious circle
A bloody, vicious circle stretching out.
The snake has pink skin, dear.
his teeth are milky white.
Your blood will turn black, dear
should you receive his bite.
Walk careful, my friend
around every bend, friend
‘cause lying in the sand, man
could be the landlord’s fangs, man.
A bloody vicious circle ‘round Mr White and Mrs Brown.
A bloody vicious circle that wraps around this town.
A bloody vicious circle turns the mind, blinds the eyes
to how a bloody, vicious childhood makes a bloody, vicious life.
and I’m bloody sick of seeing it
sick from these blood-sucking parasites.
|
||||
11. |
The Story Of Texas Dann
05:39
|
|||
I’m Texas Dann,
but just call me Tick.
I didn’t grow up in the town
I didn’t grow up in the sticks
I grew up out around Boundary Road.
We grew up fast, and a little bit tough
We had enough to eat, but it was only ever enough
A lot of hunting to keep us fed when the dough was low.
It’s a mile and a half to get down to the sea
But that never used to stop me
Getting down there pretty well every day after school
Rod, handline, trap or net
I’ll take anything I can get
Because fishing is what I was born to do.
I asked my mother,
“Why did you give this name to me?”
She said, "Your father
And I used to watch those old cowboy movies.
And that lonesome Texas country
Made us feel so free.
Texas made us free".
I had a hard time understanding why
All the old folks would do is sigh
When I told them I wanted to be a crayfisherman,
They’d say “Son, blackfellas don’t own boats
It’s been like that since God only knows
I suppose they don’t like it when we get too equal to them.”
But the crayfishermen were so rich
It made my blood race around and itch
To get a boat of my own, and drop down a a whole army of pots.
But the deckies at the docks, they laughed in my face
And said “Not here brother. Go to Shark Bay
Work with the Malays, and that’s the best damn deal you’ll cop.”
So with my cousin,
And his Mum, and grannies too.
We hit the road northward in 1962.
Yes, I was thinking
as I was drinking in the view
This was just like Texas.
I’m gonna be a cowboy too.
Getting a job didn’t take long,
As you can see, I’m a little bloke, but I got myself strong
And my hands got tougher than a dead old ironbark.
I even found love at the Denham camp
She was 21, and her name was Dianne
And we loved like lovers do when there’s a spark.
You know when things are going so well,
and you don’t know why, but you go and sabotage yourself?
Well I did, and I lost Dianne and my kids.
I think back on the man I’d become
And it hurts to say, but I’m glad they run
They didn’t deserve the pain I caused, from the shameful things I did.
And my brother
Took me back to Rangeway.
It was so bigger now,
and tired-er, and wilder every way.
But I cleaned myself up
And I escaped from Texas.
I crawled, half alive, out of Texas.
and freedom has it’s price to pay.
I don’t live bad now, though I don’t have much
I love my brother to bits. I guess I see my kids often enough.
Dianne’s married again, she’s living in Perth.
I’ve got a dog, and a caravan
I have a smoke and a drink every now and again
But I give back to my people, as good as I can serve.
If my life was something I could choose
I would have been born in a pair of shiny boots
With a silver spoon, in a big crayfishing clan.
My deckies would be blackfellas like us
Dianne and I would sit on the Chamber of Commerce
Yes, I’d be 'Texas Dann: Crayfisherman'.
When I’m alone, now
Fishing Page’s Beach.
I wonder how different life might have been
if, as a child, I could have reached
out and grabbed my dream and had
the biggest fleet in Texas -
I'd the sail the desert seas of Texas.
I smile. I smile
because my dreams are free.
I’m dreaming of Texas.
I'm dreaming of Texas
I'm dreaming of Texas
I'm dreaming of being free.
|
||||
12. |
Learn To Suffer
04:21
|
|||
You always liked to tell me
the Genie can't be tamed.
Like a horde of thirsty locusts
in the rain, in the rain.
You taught me how to suffer;
to keep the bottle on the shelf.
Man, I hate to see you suffer
within yourself, within yourself.
You never liked your father,
and he felt much the same.
Expelled from Wainuiomata
to the rain; from the rain.
And you bought tools and equipment
to make a gyprock castle.
You found a wife from the Abrolhos
and bought a quarter acre parcel.
And you never liked to talk too loud,
and told your wife to the same.
And you taught her how to suffer,
to share your pain.
How come you learned to suffer
the way that you do?
I feel your anger when you suffer,
and it hurts me too.
I feel your anger when you suffer;
it hurts me too.
I hope you find happiness.
I hope it's far away from me.
I hope you find redemption,
in your thoughts, and in your deeds.
I hope you grow all of the oranges
that you could ever need.
I hope that we may talk again,
wounded, but not aggrieved.
How come you learned to suffer
the way that you do?
I feel your anger when you suffer;
Lord, it hurts me too.
How come you make me suffer
the way that you do?
I feel such shame in how I suffer,
and I know it hurts you too.
I feel such such in how I suffer.
I know it hurts you too.
|
||||
13. |
||||
This is a song for the rich and ruling class,
who cast their die upon a table that we all must stand around
with palms stretched out as far as the law will allow.
We are the ones, soaked with chatter and scattered tongues
from which true thought is never sprung.
We are the servants who are free
to serve whom we please,
though we all must serve the same beast.
This is a song for the landlord
and the ones who own nothing
who live to give to rich and ruling men -
who are rich and ruling men
through the suffering they bring.
Raise the rent upon your door,
evict the poor onto couches and car seats,
and it's an angry, fiery sleep
and it's a cold storm that creeps
and it's a drumbeat from the deep
that chills your bed.
This is a song for the oil companies,
the fracking gas facilities,
and the rape of Yeelirrie
and the flares that we torch
roiling seas that we scorch
and the skies that we've dried
and the trees we have pried
and the coal we have gnawed
from the Earth.
This is a song for the employer.
We work for your purpose, before you pay us
that we may serve our own.
Your greed makes this world work
your paycheque marks the difference
between sleeping on a bed, or lying down on dirt.
We are the wrinkles in your morning frown.
We are the mules that pull your cart around
and we tread the paths you set us down.
|
||||
14. |
||||
The runaway boys are roaming round,
rain is ripping down.
Lock your doors - the runaway boys
are creeping into town.
Copper chopper, pierce the clouds.
Fly low, like a slingshot stone.
Runaway boys, keep your cool
'cause the heat is building on the stove.
Bootenal. Loot it all.
Walkaway, from the Regional.
Runaway boys, you know the rules -
it's win, or lose it all.
18 and 22 years old
is too young for triple time.
Get yourselves to the cop shop, boys -
get a plea bargain on the line.
Chopper's throbbing in the air.
The last man's hiding out somewhere.
Gero, your entertainment's here -
get your Facebook chatter blaring.
Bootenal. Loot it all -
and Walkaway, from the Regional.
Runaway boys, you know the rules -
it's win, or lose it all.
You say they get five meals a day,
and Foxtel, and the works.
I heard it was mattresses on the floor -
them Beds Were Burning first.
Now, I'm not precisely sympathetic
but I tell you, with respect.
Understaffed and overfilled -
what the living hell did we expect?
Bootenal. Loot it all.
Walkaway from the Regional.
Runaway boys, you know the rules
it's win, or lose it all.
|
||||
15. |
Space Hippies
03:10
|
|||
I’d love to be lying with ya
in a tent, watching Star Trek on Netflix,
on a phone screen, laughing at the
camp and the kitchness;
painted faces, paper predictions -
and how it relates to the culture
and the market, and the history
and the politics of the 60’s -
and we’re imagining ourselves being hippies.
And in the morning, you might catch me snoring -
and if I muck up your sleep, you can go ahead
and kick me out. I’ll go exploring
by the creek, with the trees
and the frogs in the reeds -
and the dawning, of the sunrise,
and the daylight in your eyes,
and the ash on the campfire
is kindled when the winds
take the smoke to the sky, uh huh.
Wake up
sleepy love, and kiss me
and hold me, and see me
and I see you, and I feel alright, uh huh.
And the billy is a-boilin’
and the toast is a-warmin’
and we’re fighting, over Sisko
and your eyes are so lovely
when they’re on fire,
my darling, let us fight like this always
and I’ll love you more each day
and Star Trek on the TV tells me
every stupid little thing is gonna be okay.
|
||||
16. |
Time And Tide
03:55
|
|||
Watch the dancing strands
of foam throwing strings of nylon
rope upon the sands. Bottles, butts
nappies, bones and Fanta cans
bashing on the rocks and blowing through the land.
They say Old Man Pelican
can fit more fish in his bill than his belly can.
I saw one dead. His guts were puffed
with plastic bags. Miaboolya turtles
hollowed by the sun. Mullet and tailor
lying dead, as one, in a grave that is
gnawing into everyone.
Who is profiting
when the bitter tide is raked trawled?
Time and tide
spare nobody at all.
They wait for none at all.
They said our ways would change
my whole life. Our ways remain the same.
They say when the body over-sates,
the spirit starves and pines away.
boil the roiling seas away
take out the salt that remains,
and salt the fields our children scrape
time and tide, trickle away.
Trickle, roll, lap and sap away.
And who is profiting
when the rivers are glowing with ore?
Time and tide
have mercy upon us all.
Please have mercy on us all.
|
||||
17. |
A Hymn
03:43
|
|||
I could not sleep last night.
My mind was cold, like a wave
that rolled in my head. Words I have read
of the dead, and the diggers of graves.
There are Wicked Kings in this world.
They own oil and minerals and gold.
They are wicked men, who buy all they can
and steal what will not be sold.
There’s a war rushing on, my friend -
and it’s waged against unarmed civilians.
We shop in our stores, and we fund hidden wars
that sponsor the murder of millions.
I see you shift in your skin
and say, “I never killed anyone.”
Our economy rapes resources-rich states -
it is we who are holding the gun.
I watched all the big ships come in
and my eyes bore through every hull -
and oil debris, punched holes in the sea
and the cargo was flooded with skulls.
The wealth of the cargo, it falls
through the holes in the pockets of men.
At the top of the lot is the rich, greedy boss -
that’s the nature of the beast, my friend.
It’s a beast that hungers for oil,
and is fed on the finest of flesh.
From the factory’s yield, to the farmer of the field
in China, Sudan and Bangladesh.
I heard you were restless last night,
with dreams of the dying and hurt.
As you let your mind stray, somewhere far away
another body rots in the dirt.
|
||||
18. |
Speeding Fine
02:16
|
|||
I tried to pay my speeding fine -
the website said my card was declined.
So I tried to pay my credit card;
somehow, the money went through just fine.
I tried to see some happy day
when the debts I owe are out of mind,
but I failed.
Like a rusted letterbox
clogged with rotten mail,
I failed.
I tried to plant a garden
of tomato and silverbeet.
But what the cold front didn’t flatten,
the snails eradicated, piece by piece.
I tried to think of planting -
of joyful new life, tender and green,
but I could not.
Like a dying bird,
in a shoebox,
getting colder, as hope
is lost.
I’ve tried to be a lover.
I’ve tried to be a fighting man.
I’ve tried to satisfy old friends,
I’ve learned to survive without them.
I’ve tried to be a saint
when my cup was flowing full of sin,
but all things end.
Like a page boy
struck by lightning
before this note could send -
“All things end.”
|
||||
19. |
Dolphins At Dawn
02:47
|
|||
This worn out feeling,
A raven drenched in bleach.
A streetlight, snatching sleep.
A scarecrow, shepherding wheat.
Lightning in the ocean's deep.
The clock stops wheeling,
like a boy with his toys on the roof.
A dead lamb with a wobbling tooth.
A spasm in a soundproof both.
A beggar, with a shirt left to lose.
The night swoops in, stealing
honeyeater songs from the sky.
The blue hues that drawn from my eyes,
as the spider hollows the fly,
and the dew on the garlic runs dry.
Healing. Sweet healing,
come dancing across the morn.
A wet-eared, prancing fawn,
frogs delicately sculpting their spawn.
Dolphins, meeting the dawn.
|
||||
20. |
The Tears That Hills Cry
02:55
|
|||
For friends who are gone
and for friends, who remain -
and precious ones, who are
one, and the same.
Who carried me through
my sorrows, and strain.
and gave me the sweetest
warmth of my days.
Who showed me that kindness
is the purest of prides -
that love is a river,
that tears are her tides.
Thankyou for warming
my coldest of nights.
Thankyou for walking
your life by my side.
Where once was fear of dying,
I now have none.
For nothing is new
beneath this old sun -
and from dust are we sprung,
and to dust, we become -
and love is the bedrock
that anchors the grass.
Oh, I come from a long line
of soldiers and currs -
slaughter-house men, nurses
workers, trailing their
bloodied hands through the Earth;
and love is the bone
that firms their frail grasp.
Who showed me no mountain
of money can buy
one single star more,
to string in the sky.
Thankyou for warming
my coldest of nights.
Thankyou for walking
your life by my side.
The crickets are louder than
black thunder claps.
Their songs are swirling,
to spite dizzy bats -
and the sky whirls,
burned like an old treasure map,
and this desert is quiet,
and cold as blue steel.
Your presence comes back
like de ja vu's spark
in Joker's Tunnel, little
feet in the dark -
and I am without you,
but we are not apart,
and I cannot explain
the sadness I feel.
Who showed me that good
little boys never die.
You who showed me
the tears that hills cry.
The ranges are wet
where we'd romp and we'd stride.
My child, I love you.
My little one - goodbye.
|
Darcy Hay Geraldton, Australia
Folk, country and blues singer-songwriter from the Midwest of Western Australia with a penchant for political and poetic lyricism, energetic guitar playing, authentic vocals and deft harmonica work
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