How light were their hearts in the dance and the game!

Gooboora, Gooboora, to think that today

A whole happy tribe are all vanished away!

What mystery lurks by the Water of Fear,

And what is the secret still lingering here?

For birds hasten by as in days of old,

No wild thing will drink of your waters cold.

Gooboora, Gooboora, still here you remain,

But where are my people I look for in vain?

They are gone from the hill, they are gone from the shore,

And the place of the Silent Pool knows them no more.

But I think they still gather when daylight is done

And stand round the pool at the setting of sun,

A shadowy band that is now without care,

Fearing no longer the Thing in its lair.

Old Death has passed by you but took the dark throng;

Now lost is the Noonuccal language and song.

Gooboora, Gooboora, it makes the heart sore

That you should be here but my people no more!

We Are Going

For Grannie Coolwell

They came into the little town

A semi-naked band subdued and silent,

All that remained of their tribe.

They came here to the place of their old bora ground

Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.

Notice of estate agents reads: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here.'

Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.

They sit and are confused, they cannot say their thoughts:

'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers.

We belong here, we are of the old ways.

We are the corroboree and the bora ground,

We are the old sacred ceremonies, the laws of the elders.

We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends told.

We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires.

We are the lightning-bolt over Gaphembah Hill

Quick and terrible,

And the Thunder after him, that loud fellow.

We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon.

We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low.

We are nature and the past, all the old ways

Gone now and scattered.

The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.

The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.

The bora ring is gone.

The corroboree is gone.

And we are going.'

Cookalingee

For Elsie Lewis

Cookalingee, now all day

Station cook in white man's way,

Dressed and fed, provided for,

Sees outside her kitchen door

Ragged band of her own race,

Hungry nomads, black of face.

Never begging, they stand by,

Silent, waiting, wild and shy,

For they know that in their need

Cookalingee gives them feed.

Peeping in, their deep dark eyes

Stare at stove with wide surprise,

Pots and pans and kitchen-ware,

All the white-man wonders there.

Cookalingee, lubra still

Spite of white-man station drill,

Knows the tribal laws of old: