FIRES OF '98
John Warner 19/11/92

I stand here and gaze over Strzelecki's Range,
And turn in my heart half a century of change.
Of country made fertile by sweat and the plough,
Endless good grazing for the horse and the cow.
Still I remember the small split slab hut,
The clearing we made in the towering Blackbutt.
The Bluegum and Dogwood, the stands of Tree Fern,
That fell to the axe, that we'd gather and burn.
   
Chorus (after each verse):
   So pardon my tears when I try to relate
   The ashes and dust of the year '98.

At forty years distance, I dread to recall
How massive and close was that Eucalypt wall.
Of how days burned sultry, and rivers ran dry,
And how fear would come with the haze in the sky.
Sunset came early, the colour of rust,
Our throats raw with worry, the smoke and the dust,
And yet, with that nightfall, the dark never came,
Just the dull, lurid menace, the colour of flame.

The tongue has no words for the sound and the sight
Of the savage crownfire that tore up the night.
It melted our glassware, bent iron, split rock,
And it shattered our souls and we wandered in shock.
I remember a church hall, cool water and bread,
The bitter, hard sobs as folk wept for their dead,
The pitiful cries of burned cattle and sheep,
Those memories that still haunt the hills of my sleep.

The forests have gone with their fires and fears,
My Ranges enriched by the changes of years,
Grandchildren ask me of days long ago,
But I hide the bushfires, they don't need to know.
High on the ridges, like monument stones,
Stand single, grey treestumps, a dead forest's bones.
A shudder goes through as I lean on the gate,
And I turn from the pain of the year '98.

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From the album, Pithead in the Fern, Feathers and Wedge FWCD042.
From the liner notes: "An elderly woman remembers the terrible Poowong bushfires of 1898 which resulted in areas of awesome native forest being totally burned out. Europeans often found such forest threatening, and its destruction and subsequent change into fertile farming land (due to the phosphate-rich ashes) was seen as a blessing. However, the fires destroyed the magnificent native woodlands and the range of the Kurnai and other aboriginal peoples. The clash between survival necessity and environmental splendor is again apparent."

Poowong is in the state of Victoria, in southeastern Australia.

I don't know of any recording online. Lyrics copied from Marg Walters' website.