Bushfire lyrics

About nine o’clock

we saw the first smoke

stain the far horizon.

A soft rolling shroud

of shifting white cloud

above the mountains rising.

Uneasy and afraid,

we watched and we prayed

as the clouds grew ever higher.

But an hour before noon

they’d blocked out the sun,

and the mountains were on fire.

Bushfire. Ah, ah, bushfire.

And all through the gloom

of that long afternoon,

the fire fed and grew stronger.

Driven by the wind,

it danced ’long the mountain rims,

roaring out it’s anger.

Fed by the breeze

and the helpless trees,

consuming those who bore it.

It raced pell-mell

from the mouth of hell,

destroying all before it.

Bushfire. Ah, ah, bushfire.

Our farm, our home,

and all that we owned

lay in the path of that fiery river.

We prayed for rain,

and we cursed the wind

as it drove our destruction nearer.

But no words of men

can bring down the rain

or set the wind to turning.

And around midnight

we’d lost the fight,

and our whole farm was burning.

Bushfire. Ah, ah, bushfire.

Through the smoke and the heat

came the crying of the sheep

as the flames set their wool on fire.

They ran terrified,

they roasted and died,

their own fleece their funeral pyre.

So we packed up and ran

while the fire’s red hand

reached hungrily out to find us.

While so long and hard to build

and so quick and easily killed,

our dreams burned down behind us.

Bushfire. Ah, ah, bushfire.

Arrogant man,

he squats upon the land,1

he buys and sells and zones it.

Plants his seeds,

cuts down his weeds,

and imagines that he owns it.

For 20 years

our land we cleared,

we ploughed and we sowed and we tamed it.

But where the bushfire has passed,

there’s only black ash,

and Nature has reclaimed it.

1. In Australia, a squatter was someone who claims a stretch of land for himself by being the first one to settle there.

• Artist:Eric Bogle
• Album:When the Wind Blows