Over ironstone outcrops we cover the ground
Where wattle sets fire to the day;
Through deepening scrub the ridge breaks down
Where ledge after ledge falls away;
Below us the sunlight like silver is lying
On pools in a bouldery stream,
And the wind through the gorge with a music is
sighing
The notes of a song in a dream,
The strange notes of a song in a dream:
It’s the song of the wind, the song of the
wild
That travels the river and range;
The song you first heard when you were a
child,
Haunting, beautiful and strange;
The song in your heart that as you grow old
Within you will never change.
We strive to the base of the cold wet cliffs
And facing the gorge we look down;
Above us monoliths glower in the mists
Their stark, inscrutable frown;
Torrents of water around us are crashing,
The wind whistles round the grim wall;
The mountain resounds like an orchestra
thrashing
A symphony of thunder and squall –
A compelling and powerful call.
The canoe skims the surface, its motion is
sure
As across the broad water it speeds;
With a southerly blowing we make for the shore
To the shelter of rushes and reeds,
And smoothly we glide, as the paddles dig in,
Down the side of the silent lagoon,
With the quavering rhythms and rhymes of the
wind
Keeping time to a rustling tune,
A sighing and whispering tune.
We break from the brush through a thicket of
mallee
As lorikeets screech their alarms,
And view from our vantage a rainforest valley
And crowns of cabbage tree palms;
Then over the mountain the song of a breeze
Of a cool and mysterious kind
Puts flight to the birds as it sings in the
trees
A music that plays on the mind,
An enigma that stays on the mind:
So sing with the wind the song of the wild
That travels the river and range;
The song you first heard when you were child,
Haunting, beautiful and strange;
The song in your heart that as you grow old
Within you will never change.
