Echuca

To the border Town of Echuca he says he'll return one day In September when the fruit trees wear their blooms of pink and gray When the butcherbird is singing and the warm winds of Spring blow Through that flat and ancient country where the Murray waters flow. In that old Town of Echuca his journey through life began He was born there in the early forties and there he grew into a man Till the bug of wander bit him in his nineteenth year of life He would not stay by the Murray settle down and take a wife. In the old Town of Echuca he made love for the first time He was only seventeen then seven years short of his prime She was eighteen one year older they made love in the sun shine In the rank scrub by the Murray back in nineteen fifty nine. He fathered a son in the mid sixties though him he did not get to know In Broome in North Western Australia far from where the Murray flow He doesn't know if he's a grand dad that's all in the past he say When she gave birth she ignored me and from Broome I moved away. He will go home to Echuca in September in the Spring When the magpie on the gum tree in the morning sun shine sing And the sulphur crested cockies in their cloaks as white as snow Feed their babes in old tree cavities where the Murray waters flow.