-
- Even 'the our bodies walk the same familiar
street
- I cannot help the feeling that our minds will
never meet
- For I'm on another pathway that your eyes will
never see
- And the wilderness you cannot share with me
-
- If you climb the highest hills that rise within
the West
- You'll see all the land we own and you will
feel the test
- For those mountains are for all the world,
belonging to the free
- But you've often said "What worthless
property!"
-
- While you continue ever searching, for a
management plan
- I dream of an awakening and hope you really can
- There'll be no use in saying sorry; it will be
too late
- ‘Tho the world will be waiting with their
dollars at the gate
-
- Every time we meet within the halls of Hobart
Town
- We swear we'll listen to your point, but not
without a frown
- For how can we cross your roads and dams and
find the peace we need ?
- Our wilderness is vanishing in face of human
greed
-
- When you abandon the wilderness the race
becomes estranged
- Don’t be surprised if you discover things are
rearranged
- For when you've watched a fire flickering a
heaters not the same
- And in the grate no embers will remain
-
- When I take a silent walk along a lonely beach
- Far across the buttongrass lies a mountain
within reach
- Someday I'I1 take you to its height and let you
really see
- Guess I'I1 take the soonest opportunity
-
- Now I'm the one who’s traveling on but I'11
not go unprepared
- I'll bandage up my faith in man and no one will
see I'm scarred
- For you're on a concrete pathway where once the
forest grew
- And the wilderness cannot survive your view.
-
- Helen Gee
- From "The West Wind and
Other Verses for
the Tasmanian Bush"
- Published by The Tasmanian Wilderness
Foundation.
-
- Now come all ye free and thinking folk
- Come and join the fight that we are waging
- Fight the vandal's hand, that destroys our land
- And is all our country re-arranging
-
- Oh they plan a dam 'cross the Franklin's course
- To crush and tame that last wild river
- Build a concrete wall, drown the valleys all
- And our wondrous gorge is gone for ever
-
- They will build their roads and their pylons
tall
- Leaving ugly scars with their creation
- Kill a million trees, drown ten million bushes
- Saying "Progress is their
vindication"
-
- Now you fought them once on Lake Pedder's shore
- And we won too late to save her beaches
- Bur the fight was just, and again we must
- Fight to save the Franklin's wildest reaches
-
- Oh the bureaucrats say we must have power
- Bur it’s just themselves they’re justifying
- Build another lake, then increase the take
- And they'll never mind the Franklin dying
-
- Bur fight we will, come and join our band
- That Franklin's surge shall run forever
- If you really care, then come do your share
- And we'll save the mighty Franklin River.
-
- Peter and Shirley Storey
- From "The West Wind and
Other Verses for
the Tasmanian Bush"
- Tasmanian Wilderness
Society, 1980.
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- My Land is just being born
- On natures’ spreading robe;
- The victim of many a bureaucratic probe
- The forest surgeon's knife cuts deep
- On her mountain slopes so steep.
-
- While I pace the gorges’ forest floor
- With slowly mounting fears,
- Down her rugged slopes
- Run streams, like angered tears.
-
- When my back is bent and I am old,
- Will my descendants sit around
- And ask for stories to be told?
- Will I talk of treasures they have never seen?
- Will drift into the dreamland of what might
have been?
-
- Perhaps, by chance, the power of pen
- Will beat the lust for gold
- And save Tasmania's treasures
- That her birthright holds.
-
- John Reed
- From "The West Wind and
Other Verses for
the Tasmanian Bush"
- Tasmanian Wilderness
Society, 1980.
- The town lies tight in the
- Strict order of ugliness,
- Neat boxes of the mill fail to
- smile in the sullen light,
- On the edge of the harbour, away
- from the town, is an alien
- contrivance of man.
- The mincer of the spirit of the land
- In dock is a black ship with some
- odd Japanese name
- on its black stern, memory
- of its home,
- The boat is stealing the land's
- soul to the scream of yellow
- monsters.. .
- Yet the townsfolk feel nothing
- The land is raped and few
- care -- why should they!
- For they don't belong in this
- awkward land of marsupial and Eucalypt.
- Those who 'care' are coprophagans
- Eating the callous carnage,
- They wipe their crocodile tears away
- with another paper hanky.
- The black boat's belly eats the
- ectoplasm and is never full
- Always another confused vessel
- to replace the last.
- The bastard inhabitant rapes the
- blue shimmering hills
- The spirit is quelled -
- To be thrown on the garbage
- heaps of the world as a
- tribute to man's greatness
-
- The mound of mutilated trees
- is yellow and dune-like to
- those who don't care
- Not a heap of slaughter and
- despair.
- The motors roar and another
- tree dies
- The soul screams...
- The land writhes...
- Yet no one hears ...
- The land is forgotten and forlorn.
-
- David Bowman
- From "The West Wind and
Other Verses for
the Tasmanian Bush"
-
Tasmanian Wilderness
Society, 1980.
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