Old Merri Flows Onwards Poem by Francis Duggan

Through flat and green paddocks in waters of brown
Old Merri flows onwards towards Warrnambool town
In and out of Lake Pertobe it slowly winds it's way
And on to the Pacific at Lady Bay
The river that has inspired story and rhyme
Was old very old even in the Dreamtime
Through the age of the dinosaurs and centuries before
It babbled it's way to the Pacific shore
In the reeds by the river in the early Spring
When the golden billed blackbird on the wattle tree sing
The dark dusky moorhen she sits on her nest
With her eight buff blotched eggs warm beneath her breast
Where old Merri river slowly winds it's way
On to Lake Pertobe en route to Lady Bay.