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- The multi-nationals came to
the bush
- They had their own ideas to
push
- For the forest industry was
in a bind
- One of the most perplexing
kind
- They'd felled the best trees
years before
- And were short of logs for
the hungry saw
- But the multi-nationals came
up with a solution
- Then set about its execution
- They'd put in roads both far
and wide
- Loggers and woodchippers
working side by side
- The loggers of course would
get the best
- And the woodchippers why
they'd use the rest!
- But of course things haven't
worked out that way
- And the loggers have learned
to their dismay
- That woodchippers own all
the concessions
- And that sawlogs too are now
their possessions
- As the lack of logs is
closing sawmills down
- And the dole queues grow in
the country town
- A log truck goes roaring
past
- He's got to make his
delivery fast
- He's a contractor who hauls
the freight
- But they pay him at the
lowest rate
- He's locked into the final
phase
- working 18 hour days
- Desperately keeping his head
above water
- just to feed his wife and
daughter
- They say that woodchipping
is the answer
- Abetted by the beaurocratic
cancer
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- If woodchipping and heavy
industry is the way
- Then why are we in such a
mess today,
- We have 100,000 hectares of
devastation
- And the highest unemployment
in the nation
- The rate of destruction is
getting faster
- A certain recipe for
complete disaster
- IF concern is what they want
to show
- Stop cutting trees faster
than they can grow
- The concessionaires grow
rich and fat
- From dozing Tasmania's
forest flat
- When we ask about jobs they
look quite blank
- Then drag their profits off
to the bank
- And the tourists they all
stay away
- They've no interest in the
clear felling display
- They want to see our last
native stands
- Undesecrated by the
corporate hands
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- But alas that is not to be
- So wave goodbye to the
native tree
- And wave goodbye to our
native fauna
- And all endemics of the
Tasmanian corner
- For without trees they're
doomed to die
- To keep those corporate
profits high
- As the saw-miller goes to
collect his dole
- They're pulling a log truck
out of a hole
- The no-doze couldn't keep
our driver awake
- Even though his life was at
stake
- And as the possum's corpse
decompose
- And the Banks for-close on
the blokes with dozers
- The Tasmanian economy
shudders and dies
- And regeneration burns
blacken the skies
- The conservationists just
stand and weep
- For all those people who
were lead like sheep
- White the Corporate
Executive sleeps in his bed
- Unperturbed by our Tasmanian
dead.
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- Alec Marr
- from
"Forest Echoes & Other
Verses for the Tasmanian Bush", 1980.
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