G'day all,

I'm not sure were I saw someone remark that the Aboriginal word 'Toowoomba" means "Swamp". It would certainly be in line with the scant regard we have shown for some 40,000 years of accumulated wisdom held by those who have (still) survived everything that the country (and its invaders) have thrown at them!

I was reminded of John Warner's song Big Water Come Down from the song cycle Yarri of the Widadjuri - about the 1852 floods that devastated Gundagai, in NSW -(last verse):

And the floods they come and the floods they go,
Wiradjuri people warn and plead,
But what's two inches of mud in the shop
To the hopes of profit, the drive of need?
Build an attic up in the rafters,
Done in a day or so,
We'll be safe upstairs when the river rises,
What do the primitive natives know?
    White man fool to camp on the low ground, big water come down.
    White fulla* learn the ways of the land or drown.

* Indigenous pronunciation of "fellow"

Regards,

Bob