"Anderson's Coast" by John Warner, here sung by James Fagan and Nancy Kerr

Australian singer John Warner writes evocative and beautifully poetic songs, many drawing on Australian colonial history. Anderson's Coast concerns of a group of convicts who escaped Van Diemen's Land in a stolen ship, only to be wrecked by the notorious Bass Strait waves on the Gippsland coast (in Victoria). The explorer Strzlecki and his small band stumbled out of dense rainforest and encountered the marooned men. Strzlecki would probably have perished had it not been for his Koori guide Charlie Tarra and this group of convicts who led him to Anderson, a pioneer settler who ran cattle on the South Gippsland coast. Apparently the convicts were pardoned for their contribution to the explorer's survival.

Old Bass Strait roars like some great mill race
And where are you, my Annie?
But the same moon shines on this lonely place
As shone one day on my Annie's face.
But Annie dear, don't wait for me,
I fear I shall not return to thee
There's naught to do but endure my fate
And watch the moon, the lonely moon
Light the breakers on wild Bass Strait.
We stole a vessel and all her gear
And from Van Diemen's we north did steer
'Till Bass Strait's wild waves wrecked us here.
And somewhere west Port Melbourne lies
Through swamps infested with snakes and flies
The fool who walks there surely dies.
We hail no ship though the time it drags
Our chain gang walk and our government rags
All mark us out as Van Diemen's lags,
We fled the lash and the chafing chain
We fled hard labour and brutal pain
And here we are and here remain.