Old Hills Around Archies Creek Poem by Francis Duggan

Old hills around Archies Creek you once had many trees
Before Cook and his sailors sailed down the southern seas
And placed the flag of England on this far southern shore
And something of great beauty to be changed forever more.

This Shire now known as South West Gippsland to the first Australians belong
A tribe of Aboriginal people known as the Bunurong
The first pioneering people came and cut the tall gums down
And left the hills bare those old green hills that in Summer now look brown.

The original owners of this Land of it took such good care
They would feel disappointed now to see those hills so bare
But the changes keep on happening and nothing stays the same
And for environmental vandalism humans always are to blame.

The old hills around Archies Creek are looking very bare
And where trees once were in abundance they now are rather rare
Where the black tribes up to two hundred years ago had their corroborees and song
The people of the Dreamtime known as the Bunurong.