Lyr Add: Hills of Coromandel (Dave Jordan)

Subject: Lyr Add: Hills of Coromandel (Dave Jordan)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Aug 20 - 05:22 PM

Interesting song sung at the Singaround by Jack Penman of New Zealand:

HILLS OF COROMANDEL
(Dave Jordan)

The trees grow ancient green and tall
as they have always done there
And press together over all
to shield the earth from sun there.
Seedlings spread young trees grow old
old ones fall and turn to mould
Till bush returns to hills once clear
and man it seems, was never there
And the apple trees still bloom each year
on the hills . . . of Coromandel
It was the gold that brought the men
when thousands here did rally
Their secret shattered shafts remain
abandoned in the valley
Roads they fashioned in the clay
overgrown or washed away
And fences built by settlers' hands are
gone restoring broken lands
And a rusted gateway lonely stands
on the hills . . . of Coromandel
Those days of gold are past and gone
with the men who took their chances
The bush is slowly marching on
in a silence no-one answers
Birds call out to empty air
No one comes there's nothing there
But a gate that's open to nowhere and
names on sandstone faint but clear
And the apple trees that bloom each year
in the hills . . . of Coromandel

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hills of Coromandel (Dave Jordan)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Aug 20 - 06:28 PM

http://folksong.org.nz/hillsofc/

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hills of Coromandel (Dave Jordan)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Aug 20 - 06:53 PM

Nice. I wonder if there's a Google map reference for the exact place? I've only been to the southern bit of Coromandel, which is nondescript hilly sheep country, no old mine workings.

NZ literature does that sort of nostalgia very well. The classic is Denis Glover's "Arawata Bill" poem cycle, which you might summarize as being about the discovery of nature through chasing the delusion of gold.