Salt Pan Country Poem by Francis Duggan

I've been through that coastal country where only saltbush grow
The land of the huge salt pans like giant rings of snow
In that vast part of South Australia revered as the Coorong
To the people of the Dreamtime it always will belong.

They say that sheep that live off of saltbush kill out as quite good meat
And though tough the chops are tasty and rather nice to eat
But in the vast expanses of the Coorong few ruminants one ever see
Just miles of salt pan country by the great southern sea.

In the Coorong of South Australia from here long miles away
The black tribes lived and hunted their spirits still there today
They lived in harmony with Nature before the new races came
And this old Land of the Dreamtime Europeans have failed to tame.

Down in the salt pan country a vast and empty place
one still can sense the spirits of the Indigenous race
Who hunted for their food there up to a few centuries ago
Yet so little of their history us outsiders seem to know.