An Old Man Talks Of The Hopkins Poem by Francis Duggan

In my youth it flowed clean it was a beautiful waterway
That's what the old Warrnambool local did say
And for human progress he added there is some price to pay
The Hopkins is badly polluted today.

In Warrnambool he said I was born and raised
But at the environmental damage I am quite amazed
As a young person in the Hopkins I used to swim
But a dip in the now polluted river is no longer for him.

In Warrnambool he has spent all of his life
And swimming in the Hopkins he first met his wife
The passing of time has left them looking gray
And their children's children are parents today.

The years had left him and his wife walking slow
As they walked by the dark Hopkins at a crawling pace flow
Between the brown high paddocks a mile from the sea
To him not the waterway that used to be.