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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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1820 - Terror Australis(Point out that people suffered, irrespective of what they had done. the point of our past is not that they were convicts but that they had suffered a great, great deal.)On Norfolk Island there's a boss His face is like a mask of death, And everywhere this monster goes He leaves behind a mangled mess. He orders irons to be worn Manacles lined with sharpened nails And men wish they had not been born Beneath the fury of his flails. It's a hundred lashes for a song Another hundred for a smile, The tough get shut in cells oblong Locked in darkness and immobile. Why do they love to lash us so? The long tormented convicts cry; Why, Morisset's everywhere, you know, And to that there is no reply. At Fullerton Cove there is a camp Its naked convicts work in chains, They struggle on the jagged damp And undergo horrendous pains. They toil bare-foot on the shore And burn up oyster-shells for lime, And hump the sacks in choking fear A hundred metres through the brine. With shaven heads and banded necks They're flogged each morning for the drill And irrespective of their sex Are ordered back into the swill. The salty water burns their scars, The sacks of lime now drag them down, 'It spares the hangman,' say their guards, As they deliberately drown. At old King's Town there is a mine, Its tortured captives live like brutes The camp is fostered like a shrine To laud the might of British boots. In shafts no taller than three feet The convicts mine for years on end Supplying coal for Sydney's need In irons shackled hard and penned. The pit is called by all 'Hell's Gate' Below Newcastle's early slums, With miner's flogged at a steady rate And to the ready beat of drums. For twenty tons a day of coal Must be clawed out by every shift And those who do not meet the goal Are tied to triangles and whipped. Where Morisset controls the show In full regalia like a czar A thousand convicts stand in a row Compelled to cheer and to hurrah. The soldier who is deemed to shirk The force of blows when giving lash Himself is placed beneath the birch While whipping still the convict trash. And thus long rows of bloodied backs Are seen as normal in that churn With Morisset astride his nags The whipped one whipping in his turn. In darkness, pains, and heavy odds, With taste of death in soul and mouth, Unfolded thus the fate of Aus, In this the Auschwitz of the South.
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Robert Treborlang Australia |
Roddy The Rooster & Friends |
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