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No More Collie Valley

from On Blue Days - the demo tapes by Darcy Hay

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about

A song about old people from the country having to leave the places they've lived their whole lives, to go to a nursing home in Perth. It's also about the piss weak funding that aged care operators allocate to giving those old people quality of life in their final years.

lyrics

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

credits

from On Blue Days - the demo tapes, released July 9, 2021
Darcy Hay - guitar, lyrics, vocals

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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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