Echuca Poem by Francis Duggan

To the border Town of Echuca he says he'll return one day
In September when the fruit trees wear their blooms of pink and gray
When the butcherbird is singing and the warm winds of Spring blow
Through that flat and ancient country where the Murray waters flow.

In that old Town of Echuca his journey through life began
He was born there in the early forties and there he grew into a man
Till the bug of wander bit him in his nineteenth year of life
He would not stay by the Murray settle down and take a wife.

In the old Town of Echuca he made love for the first time
He was only seventeen then seven years short of his prime
She was eighteen one year older they made love in the sun shine
In the rank scrub by the Murray back in nineteen fifty nine.

He fathered a son in the mid sixties though him he did not get to know
In Broome in North Western Australia far from where the Murray flow
He doesn't know if he's a grand dad that's all in the past he say
When she gave birth she ignored me and from Broome I moved away.

He will go home to Echuca in September in the Spring
When the magpie on the gum tree in the morning sun shine sing
And the sulphur crested cockies in their cloaks as white as snow
Feed their babes in old tree cavities where the Murray waters flow.