Where The Brown Wannon Flow Poem by Francis Duggan

Across the sparsely treed countryside cool Autumn winds blow
Where the babbling brown waters of old Wannon flow
Through an old land that does not have a known time span
That has existed long before the birth of the first woman and man

A land that was old in the dinosaur time
That has inspired the makers of story and ballad and rhyme
To pen stories and poems and songs of this ancient countryside
Whose dark and brown soil many secrets do hide

The graves of the first Australians have never been found
They had their gatherings and corroborees on their tribal ground
On the banks of the Wannon in the shade of the trees
They often did dance in the warm Summer breeze

Their laughter died with the sound of their didgeridoo
In the land where they hunted the gray kangaroo
By foreign invaders they were dispossessed
And in the land home to them they became the oppressed

Across the old country where few trees do grow
The freshening winds of the late evening blow
And on a stunted gum a dark pale eyed crow
Is cawing in the gloam where the brown Wannon flow.