THE TORDONERS

Mark Gillett

Well I come from South Burnett to an old farming family, not many jobs that I can’t turn my hand to
I ploughed the black soil and I’ve mustered rough country, though fat and lean seasons I’ve clung to the land,
I can put down a spear, I can strip down a diesel, I can drop ‘em, tag ‘em, in paddock or pen
But t’was in cattle country to the west of Kilkivan, I found me a job that I won’t do again.

Well the sorghum was sown but the price was uncertain, and the spike for the final demands from the bank
I drove 90 miles to a bush block near Murgon, got me a job with a Tordoning gang.

Chorus :
   A sharp little axe and a bottle of Tordon, goodbye to the ironbark, spotties and greys
   Cut to the sap and then pour in the poison, a worker can clear 20 acres a day.

I got 400 bucks for the week in me hand and by then the first trees were all dropping their leaves
The Tree-Killer’s stink clung to me like a brand and the hills had the look of a creeping disease,
When I drive by today, I try not to remember the bodies of bush creatures dead on the road
Driven to slaughter by fear and by hunger, as the Tordoners poisoned their food and their homes.

   A sharp little axe and a bottle of Tordon, goodbye to the ironbark, spotties and greys
   Cut to the sap and then pour in the poison, a worker can clear 20 acres a day.

Well the suckers came up so we hit ‘em with the Graslan, before the floods came on the very next week
???……….. from the hills to the gullies and killed the Sheoaks along 2 mile of creek,
The company went bust and now Mistflower and Groundsel are covering the skeleton graveyard of trees
The weeds are what’s stopping the rest of the topsoil from washing into somebody’s paddock downstream.
   
   A sharp little axe and a bottle of Tordon, goodbye to the ironbark, spotties and greys
   Cut to the sap and then pour in the poison, a worker can clear 20 acres a day.
   
   Yeah, a sharp little axe and a bottle of Tordon, goodbye to the bellbirds, they’ve all gone away
   Cut to the sap and then pour in the poison, a worker can clear 20 acres a day.



TORDON is a Picloram-containing herbicide manufactured by DOW (AgroSciences). Also used in “Agent White” by the US Military in Vietnam when “Agent Orange” was unavailable.
GRASLAN is another herbicide for regrowth and weeds, also made by DOW.

Kilkivan is a small, historical, inland town, N-W of Gympie, in the Wide Bay-Burnett region of SE Queensland. Murgon is another town in the region.

Ironbark, Spotted Gum, Grey Gum are all varieties of native Eucalypt trees; Sheoaks being native Casuarina trees.   Mistflower and Groundsel are invasive or noxious introduced weeds.

Australia, despite our beautiful and unique environment - and being prone to drought - has permitted the clearing of nearly half our forest cover in the last 200 years.
It’s now a deforestation and land-clearing CRISIS, with with an MCG-sized area of forests and bushlands destroyed every two minutes, while Australia is the worst offending country in the world for mammal extinctions.   
[www.wilderness.org.au] Yep. Sure is “The Lucky Country” …..


Mark sang this accompanied by guitar and played his banjo, but I’ve not yet found it online :(


R-J