Heartland Dreamtime

Today ... I wish I could see the heartland ... as it was,
in the dreamtime, before it was dispossed;
before it was changed to make way for the rest;
before we got there and trampled it with a pest –
animals that didn't belong – that were designed all wrong,
for a land so fragile to be trodden on.

Yes ... I wish I could have seen the heartland then;
not like it is today, with nature gone astray,
exposed and crying in pain, competing in vain
with commerce and money for gain;
raping the earth with knowledge of a foreign strain.
Our indigenous people weeping at the cost
of what they had preserved and now lost.

Truth ... those that came before, new the score,
respect what you have or loose it for evermore.
Since the dawn of time it has remained pristine,
a delicate ecosystem basking in the sun,
but what my eye's have seen,
confirms to me, the destruction we have done.

Sadly ... our history written with the power of the pen,
of how it was then.
We were fed the legacy of a myth –
our pioneering fathers – and how they tamed a rugged land,
strugggling with what they new,
our fragile identity chiselled on the faces of a few.
The collective consciouness of a nation
passed down to me and you.

Now ... I to hear the voices of the ancient dreamtime harking,
in the features of the landscape marking.
The rainbow serpent sculpturing the land,
untouched by human hand.
Myths and legends older and wiser than ours,
respecting the earth, mother nature and all it's worth.
A lesson we could heed, to take only what we need
and not use it for our own selfish greed.

But ... angry words have never corrected a wrong.
To blame it on the ignorance of the past,
is to neglect the future and make it last.
We cannot undo the wrong that has been done,
but we can re-write the history book, for what we took
and accept the price we have paid,
for the mistakes we have made,
so the generations to come can still take pride,
in the things we cherish about the legends of the bush
and have nothing to hide.