Softly chanted her simple song

Of all she hated.

‘I hate death and the going away,

All sad endings.

I hate things that have no joy,’

Said the young girl Wanda.

‘I hate sunset bringing the dark

That is full of secrets,

I hate silence of desolate places,

Swamp-oaks sighing by lonely waters,

And tree graves,’

Said the young girl Wanda.

‘I hate old men's rules and laws,

Old wrinkled faces,

The elders who no longer know

What the young know,’

Said the young girl Wanda.

‘All time too much hate, you.’

Said the old gin Onah.

‘Tell us what you love.’

‘I love joy of life,

I love arms around me,

I love life and love,’

Said the young girl Wanda.

‘I love all young things,

The young dawn, not the grey day dying,

The white of daybreak on awakening waters.

I love happy things,’

Said the girl Wanda.

‘High eagles, the light in eyes we love,

The camp crying for joy when one returns.

I love colour, berries yellow and red,

The grass when it is green,

The blue that is on the kingfisher,

And a bright flower for my black hair,’

Said the young girl Wanda,

‘But most of all my strong lover I love,

And his arms around me.’

Whynot Street

Officiously they hawked about

‘Petition’ to keep abos out,

And slavishly, without a peep,

The feeble yes-men signed like sheep.

And are we still the ousted, then,

And dare you speak for decent men?

This site was ours, you may recall,

Ages before you came at all.

‘No abos here!’ Why not, Whynot?

And if black-balling and boycott,

First black-ball pride and arrogance,

Boycott this vile intolerance.

White Australia

Since God's good world began,

Not God but godless man

Made barrier and ban,

1. And reared each frontier wall.

Brothers, when shall we see

Selfless democracy?

Life is for liberty,

1. And earth was made for all.

Let little kiplings rant,

Narrow and arrogant,

Their chauvinistic cant

1. That white is nobler birth.

The best of every race

Should here find welcome place;

The colour of his face

1. Is no man's test of worth.

Acacia Ridge

White men, turn quickly the earth of Acacia Ridge,

Hide the evidence lying there

Of the black race evicted as of old their fathers were;

Cover up the crime committed this day,

Call it progress, the white man's way.

Take no heed of the pregnant black woman in despair

As with her children she has to go;

Ignore her bitter tears that unheeded flow;

While her children cling to her terrified

Bulldozers huddle the crime aside.

White men, turn quickly the earth of Acacia Ridge,

Plough the guilt in, cover and hide the shame;

These are black and so without right to blame

As bulldozers brutally drive, ruthless and sure

Through and over the poor homes of the evicted poor.

Homeless now they stand and watch as the rain pours down;

This is the injustice brought to the black man there,