An Old Land Poem by Francis Duggan

Bordered by barbed wire fences and stone ditches paddocks stony and brown
Off of the road out of Colac on towards Camperdown
A Land that was old in the dinosaur time
The source of many song and story and rhyme.

Long before the dark people from further north came
This was an old Country one without a name
They hunted and fished and had their corroborees
In the warm Summer days in the shade of the trees.

Where men never discovered gold, silver or oil
And too hard for the plough the stony brown soil
Brown paddocks much further than the eyes can see
Through Terang on towards Warrnambool by the sea.

Long before the birth of the first kangaroo
Koala, wombat, emu, kookaburra or cockatoo
Or long before the birth of gum or wattle tree
This was an old Land with an old history.