The Old Brown Bass Waters Poem by Francis Duggan

Through flat and brown paddocks it crawls ever slow
On towards the great ocean the Bass waters flow
As old as time itself it babbles it's way
Through Bass in west Gippsland by night and by day.

Some call it a river some call it a creek
Through warm weather and dry spells it's babble is weak
Through a Land where in the Dreamtime in the shade of the trees
The Indigenous Bunurong danced their Corroborees.

The old brown Bass waters has inspired bards to rhyme
It has flowed for thousands of centuries before the Dreamtime
Before white men changed the face of the landscape from centuries long gone
But still the old river is babbling on.

A creek or a river call it what you may
The Bass from the high Country babbles it's way
Through the flat brown paddocks close to the sea shore
It's waters will journey on forever more.