A Wannon Rose Poem by Francis Duggan

She hails from the old Countryside where the Wannon waters flow
The brown one with the brown eyes and hair dark as the native crow
That can be heard cawing in the paddocks where the Wannon slowly crawl
To the concrete ramp where it then spills down the natural rock wall.

A beautiful young woman in her early twenties at the gateway to her life's prime
Descended from the first Australians the people of the Dreamtime
Though living in busy Melbourne fond memories she retain
Of the tiny frogs on Winter nights singing in the flooded drain.

Indigenous to this Land she comes from a proud race
And the culture of her people she is happy to embrace
She knows the Dreamtime stories and of her people's history
The old ways have been handed down to be stored in the memory.

Of the modern Indigenous people the people such as she
The one from the Wannon Countryside young and lovely and carefree
A young rose of an old race and beauty from her glows
And she hails from that old Countryside where the old dark Wannon flows.