Note: Mrs Daisy Bindi of Western Australia's far inland made a name for herself as an Aboriginal leader of her people. On Roy Hill Station where she worked, the native stockmen and domestics received no wages till at last she organised them and fought for the rights of her race. It was a long struggle and marked by disgraceful incidents against the Aboriginals concerned, but the final result was victory and the establishment of the admirable Pindan Co-operative Aboriginal community at Port Hedland.

The Past

Let no one say the past is dead.

The past is all about us and within.

Haunted by tribal memories, I know

This little now, this accidental present

Is not the all of me, whose long making

Is so much of the past.

Tonight here in suburbia as I sit

In easy chair before electric heater,

Warmed by the red glow, I fall into dream:

I am away

At the camp fire in the bush, among

My own people, sitting on the ground,

No walls about me,

The stars over me,

The tall surrounding trees that stir in the wind

Making their own music,

Soft cries of the night coming to us, there

Where we are one with all old Nature's lives

Known and unknown,

In scenes where we belong but have now forsaken.

Deep chair and electric radiator

Are but since yesterday,

But a thousand thousand camp fires in the forest

Are in my blood.

Let none tell me the past is wholly gone.

Now is so small a part of time, so small a part

Of all the race years that have moulded me.

Time Is Running Out

The miner rapes

The heart of earth

With his violent spade.

Stealing, bottling her black blood

For the sake of greedy trade.

On his metal throne of destruction,

He labours away with a will,

Piling the mountainous minerals high

With giant tool and iron drill.

In his greedy lust for power,

He destroys old nature's will.

For the sake of the filthy dollar,

He dirties the nest he builds.

Well he knows that violence

Of his destructive kind

Will be violently written

Upon the sands of time.

But time is running out

And time is close at hand,

For the Dreamtime folk are massing

To defend their timeless land.

Come gentle black man

Show your strength;

Time to take a stand.

Make the violent miner feel

Your violent

Love of land.

Balance

Spin a coin:

Life or death.

Next of kin

To death

Is life,

And life

To death.

Light comes

Before dark.

In life we wait

The birth of death.

China … Woman

High peaked mountains

Stand out against the skyline.

The great Wall

Twines itself

Around and over them,

Like my Rainbow Serpent,

Groaning her way

Through ancient rocks.

I hear the heavy tramp

Of the liberating army,

Shaking the mountains loose,

Of rolling stones.

Falling, crushing,

The weeping wild flowers

In their path.

China, the woman,

Stands tall,

Breasts heavy