Out There Under The Brown Scrub

Out there under the brown scrub by the mountain the bones of the first Australians lay But no stones or any memorial to tell of their existence today The government honor a flag created by colonizers and fallen war heroes instead Without even bothering to mention the existence of an indigenous dead Out there to the scrubby old mountains the Seasons do come and do go But no monument there as a token of recognition for people who lived there for sixty thousand years or so That they are Australia's long forgotten does seem such a sad thing to say Australia's heroines and heroes descended from recent colonizers who in recent times arrived from countries far away The long deceased people who lay under the brown scrub by the mountain never competed in the Olympics for gold And they never fought in wars in foreign Countries so their life stories will never be told But they hunted the kangaroos and wallabies and on warm Summer evenings had their corroborees Where to the didgeridoo players they sang as they danced in the shade of the trees At midnight in the scrub by the mountains their ghosts hunt the wallabies and kangaroos And they sing as they dance in the moonlight to the music of their didgeridoos But never a monument to them to tell of how they lived and they died Their descendants are outsiders in their own Country and a fair go of them is denied.