The Last Frontier

There's a corrugated highway
Leading north from Port Augusta lined
With ratted cars that didn't rate a tow

The Salt plains out of [Pimba]
And your eyes begin to stream
On to [Cingunya] huddled dusty by the road

Romantic notions shattered
Like the tyres that didn't hack it
This has got to be the country's last frontier

Where a sports car's next to useless
Running cattle grids and river beds
We drove a van from 1963

Someone mentioned walkabout
And kiss your job goodbye
Just to see your country shimmer through the windscreen

Drinking beer, telling stories
While the laughter filled the night
And [flicks your] times behind you like a bad dream

You got a flat on Anzac Highway
And Lawson on your shelf
Its a southern [??] air-conditioned rage

And a homestead's more than just a cheap print
Dangling from a wall
And mateship's more than lines upon a page

We went looking for Australia
In between the TV lines
The ABC just couldn't make it real

Colour documentary
From a beanbag on the floor:
Never shows as much as it conceals

A stark and blistered Alice Springs
And a river runs with shame
And you wipe the sheets of bulldust from your eyes

Another country's uniform
And the mirage it falls apart
To the open gap between the truth and lies

Go and see your country, mate
The travel agents scream
Politicians sell it's hard to score a pasttime

Signs and high-wire fences
Hold the land where I belong
It's as if I'm in the outback for the last time

For the last time
For the last time
For the last time Uh huh
For the last time
For the last time Uh huh