1. BLUE SKY MINE

There'll be food on the table tonight
There'll be pay in your pocket tonight

My gut is wrenched out it is crunched up and broken
My life that is lived is no more than a token
Who'll strike the flint upon the stone and tell me why?

If I yell out at night there's a reply of blue silence
The screen is no comfort I can't speak my sentence
They blew the lights at heaven's gate and I don't know why

But if I work all day on the blue sky mine
(There'll be food on the table tonight)
Still I walk up and down on the blue sky mine
(There'll be pay in your pocket tonight)

The candy store paupers lie to the shareholders
They're crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers
The balance sheet is breaking up the sky

So I'm caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night

And if you blue sky mining company won't come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won't save me

Who's gonna save me?

But if I work all day on the blue sky mine
(There'll be food on the table tonight)
And if I walk up and down on the blue sky mine
(There'll be pay in your pocket tonight)
And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing's as precious
As a hole in the ground

Who's gonna save me?
I pray that sense and reason brings us in
Who's gonna save me?
We've got nothing to fear

In the end the rain comes down
Washes clean the streets of a blue sky min

*****

2. STARS OF WARBURTON

I was
I was shaken down in a toy town
He
He's out there
You know it's Kennedy's shadow
From White Cross to Michigan
ATMs in the air
Oh yeah machines they are spinning out everywhere

The speaker is speaking
Can you hear the sound
The listener is listening as he hits the ground
The medium or the message but there's no-one around

I couldn't believe the stars of Warburton
Were waiting for me

We were dancing
We were dancing on the plain
Were looking through the window
Didn't see any buffalo there
We got our pipe dreams

They went up in smoke dreams
Burn it clean in the climate control
Of your hypermart malls
Don't want to talk about Elvis Presley
Don't want to see his white shoes walkin' around and
Around and around and around over here
The press baron's acting up the mainframes are down
The newspapers crawling around on the ground
The medium or the message
Still there's no-one around

I couldn't believe the stars of Warburton
Were waiting for me

Over the hills and mountains we go
So far so far away
For the ring of the axe on the ironbark
For the smell of the wallaby stew
From the golden reefs to the sandstone cliffs
Came the sheep pens of the mallee plain
The wind blew the soil to the Orient
We'll be shouting to the skies again

I couldn't believe the stars of Warburton
Were waiting for me

I couldn't believe the stars of Warburton
Were living in me, raining down on me

I couldn't believe the stars of Warburton
Were washing down on me

*****

3. BEDLAM BRIDGE

In this city with no footpath
There's a building with no people
There is crime and gun decisions
There's a street of heat and hawkers
There's a house of hope and drifters
There's a gang that shoots then listens

There's a place that knows no poverty
A town without pollution
There's a soul with good intentions

There are canyons full of movie stars
Churches made of metal
There are mountains made of muscle
We have leaders who are anxious
We have captain not courageous
Captains tumbling into madness

But there's a man who makes no enemies
A body never breathless
No ambition ever hopeless

Up on bedlam bridge somebody is waiting
Up on bedlam bridge I'm shot to heaven
Oh
Up on bedlam bridge
Waiting

In these locked and shackled neighborhoods
Bridge and tunnel diplomats
See the golden ghetto's creeper

Crazy flags from history
Songs for the White House gangsters
Guns for hellgate railway sleepers

But there's a man who makes no enemies
A body never breathless
No ambition ever hopeless

So how stands the city on this winter's night?
The city on the hill or so they said
The now is falling down around the armoury
The city's closing in around my head

Up on bedlam bridge somebody is waiting
Up on bedlam bridge I'm shot to heaven
Oh
Up on bedlam bridge
Waiting

Drive
Drive the engines harder
Drive

Drive
Won't you turn the engines over
Drive

*****

4. FORGOTTEN YEARS

Few of the sings of the father
Are visited upon the son
Hearts have been hard
Hands have been clenched into fists too long

Our sons need never be soldiers
Our daughters will never need guns
These are the years between
These are the years that were hard fought and won

Contracts torn at the edges
Old signatures stained with tears
Seasons of war and grace
These should not be forgotten eyras

Still it aches like tetanus
It reeks of politics
How many dreams remain?
This is a feeling too strong to contain

The hardest years, the darkest years
The roarin' years, the fallen years
These should not be forgotten years
The hardest years the wildest years
The desperate and divided years
Our shoreline was never invaded
Our country was never in flames
This is the calm we breathe
This is a feeling too strong to contain

Still it aches like tetanus
It reeks of politics
Signatures stained with tears
Who can remember, we've got to remember

The hardest years, the darkest years...
Forsaking aching breaking years
The time 'n' tested heartbreak years
These should not be forgotten years

The blinded years, the binded years
The desperate and divided years
These should not be forgotten years
Remember

*****

5. MOUNTAINS OF BURMA

The tucker box is empty now
The heart of Kelly's country cleared
The gangers on the southern line
Like the steam trains have disappeared
Pelicans glide
Miracles up in the skies
We vote for a government
With axes in its eyes

Mountains of Burma
The road to Mandalay
In the mountains of Burma
Light years away
Mountains of Burma

Will the sons of Solidarity
Still march on May Day

Will the sisters of the seventies
Still fight for equal pay

There's no-one on the Reeperbahn
No more blankets handed out for land
We feed an economy
It's got blood on its hands

Mountains of Burma
The road to Mandalay
Mountains of Burma
Light years away
In the mountains of Burma
The road to Mandalay
In the mountains of Burma
Hope you're light years away

Pack your bags full of guns and ammunition
Bills fall due for the industrial revolution
Scorch the earth till the earth surrenders

Soldiers of armies
Storm empty fields
In a traveller's trance
On the way to the high frontier
Sleepwalkers stumble
Cable cars run aground
Imaginary enemies
Form high above the clouds

In the Mountains of Burma...

*****

6. KING OF THE MOUNTAIN

Walking through the high dry grass
Pushing my way through slow
Yellow belly black snake
Sleeping on a red rock
Waiting for the stranger to go

Sugar train stops at the crossing
Cane cockies cursing below
Bad storm coming
Better run to the top of the mountain

Mountain in the shadow of light
Rain in the valley below
Mountain in the shadow of light
Rain in the valley
Well you can say you're Peter, say you're Paul
Don't put me up on your bedroom wall
Call me king of the mountain

Blacksmith fires up the bellows
Cane cutters burning the load
Workers of the world
Run to the top of the mountain

Mountain in the shadow of light...

I can't take the hands from my face
There are some things we can't replace

Mountain...

Over liquid tarmac wastelands of cactus and heat
Down cobblestone alleyways of washing day sheets
Up ghost prairie mountains of sunset and space
Across the wilderness
Out further than the bush
I will follow you

*****

7. RIVER RUNS RED

So you cut all the tall trees down
You poisoned the sky and the sea
You've taken what's good from the ground
But you left precious little for me

You remember the flood and the fall
We remember the light on the hill
There should be enough for us all
But the dollar is driving us still

River runs red
Black rain falls
Dust in my hand

River runs red
Black rain falls
On my bleeding land

So we came and conquered and found
Richers of commons and kings
Who strangled and wrestled the ground
But they never put back anything

Now I'm trapped like a dog in a cage
Wherever the truth is pursued
It must be the curse of the age
What's taken is never renewed

River runs red...

*****

8. SHAKERS AND MOVERS

Won't you come down the line
Away from barren ground
The harlot and the autocrat
Are they driving you further down

The season's rhymes, they anchor me
Against the raging tide

Take you to the last wild place
Skin and the stars they embrace
A caveman could a saint become
In a hospital ward on the Somme

We can dive into distant amoebas
Our wings could melt in the sun

I can shake
I can move
But I can't live without your love

I can break
Over you
But I can't live without your love

Our poet Henry Lawson he named them
The lay'em out brigade
Here they come there they go
Oh great god of development
Don't really know you yet
Coastline hosed down washed away
Economics, now there's nothing left
Tomorrow's child takes concrete footsteps
And they'll drink champagne or be damned

And the storm is breaking now
Yeah the storm is breaking now
Yes the storm is crashing down

I can shake...

Our blood vessels go sailing, galaxies away
You know today's bushfire is tomorrow's inferno
As rags to riches becomes the public spear
Watching out down the street as other people start coming down
I can see that they're smiling
And that's something to be proud of
And they say it's late, but you know it's never too late
And they say it's late, but you know it's never too late
Never too late
Never too late...

*****

9. ONE COUNTRY

Who'd like to change the world
Who wants to shoot the curl
Who gets to work for bread
Who wants to get ahead

Who hands out equal rights
who starts and ends that fight
And not rant and rave
Or end up a slave

Who can make hard won gains
Fall like the summer rain
Now every man must be
What his life can be
So don't call me the tune, I will walk away

Who wants to please everyone
Who says it all can be done
Still sit up on that fence
No-one I've heard of yet

Don't call me baby
Don't talk in maybes
Don't talk like has-beens
Sing it like it should be

Who laughs at their nagging doubts
Lying on a neon shroud, running around
Just got to touch someone
I want to be

So don't call me the tune, I will walk away

One country one
Country one country

Who wants to sit around
Turn it up, turn it down
Only a man can be
What his life can be

One vision
One people
One landmass
We are defenceless
We have a lifeline

One ocean
One policy
Seabed lies
One passion
One movement
One instant
One difference
One lifetime
One understanding

One country
One understanding

Transgression
Redemption
One island
One placemat
One firmament
One element
One moment
One fusion
Yes, and one time

*****

10. ANTARCTICA

I'm a snow plough
I must now plough on
I'm a snow plough
I'm a settler's son
I'm a storm cloud
Rain myself all over the place
I'm a storm cloud
Wipe that smile right off your face

There must be one place left in the world
Where the mountains meet the sea
There must be one place left in the world
Where the water's real and clean

I'm a landslide
I'm a downhill run
I'm a landslide
Open season's just begun

There must be one place left in the world
Where the skin says it can breathe
There's gotta be one place left in the world
It's a solitude of distance and relief
There's gotta be one place left in the world

I'm a snow plough
There has to be one place left in the world
I'm a snow plough
One place
One place left in the world

I'm a short fuse
I'm a slow blues
I'm a landslide hummin I'm a downhill runnin
There must be one place left in this world
Where we can be