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Treborlang
Australia
Roddy The Rooster & Friends
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Robert Treborlang Australia |
Roddy The Rooster & Friends |
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1788 - Australia NightThis event is no fancy myth,We have it first from surgeon Smyth. He saw the women, saw the men, And brought us back a specimen. We also know it from Ralph Clark Who told them all to disembark. He watched it from the shrubbery And jotted in his diary. Twelve days after hoisting the Jack Phillip ordered all to unpack. Dinghies crossed the harbour rip And took the women off the ship. When their clothes began to flutter The feel was like a pound of butter. When their hair flashed in the sun The sight was like a pint of rum. When they alighted at Sydney Cove The air grew like a heated stove. When they stepped upon the dry The ranks of men sighed the deepest sigh. * There huddled puzzled in a band,The women gazed upon the land. A tract by now had been axed clean In the vista eerie green. The men had worked around the clock And created a rough campsite block. Now they stood, their mouths agape Having forgotten the female shape. The ground was cleared, the tents were pitched, The guards guarded, the criminals itched. Forty weeks cooped up in a galley And you do not dilly-dally. On the stormy shoreline, hot and sweating, Stood the convict women fretting. On the hushed worksite the men stood tall, Hanging round for night to fall. * A night of storm winds, panics, rations,The night First Fleeters loosed their passions. Unknowing heroes one and all Now jettisoned class rigmarole. There was no time for class distinction, On this, the sharp edge of extinction. Plunging into a common vortex Re-wiring the English cortex. Locked up in a common blood cell New Australia in a nutshell. See the crumbling of old order Warrant seaman ward off warder. For each one from eight to eighty Future's grim but pretty matey. See cavorting drunken capers, Petties drunk with pretty drapers. See the waves that lash the harbour, Phillip's tent beneath the arbour. Thunder at deafening decibel, They must have thought themselves in hell. The ultimate of metaphors: Welcome kids to the great outdoors. Thus what today is Macquarie Place, Saw the birth of a brand new race. The night of sixth of February, The night that gave them sanctuary. A night of chaos and delight, The very first Australia Night.
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Robert Treborlang Australia |
Roddy The Rooster & Friends |
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