The first arrived on the Tranmere
As a VDLC man
In 1827
Come to work the virgin land.

He lived up near Cape Grim
On a green and knotted spur.
He worked a flock of strong Merino sheep
Under Agent Edward Curr.

The Peerapper boys were spitting wild
When the shepherds took some native girls.
They killed a hundred English sheep,
And the shepherds swore to act in turn.

The first went up the cliffs.
Four others went as well.
They made sure the locals knew the score
When the ruined bodies fell.

*

When the second first drew breath
He didn't fuss or cry.
His mother bled like a bursting dam;
He was quiet as she died.

He was a brutal thing, wicked cruel,
With eyes like oil, black and dull.
It was said he was a dead man moved
By some devil in his skull.

He ran a sugar farm way up north,
And waged spite, thick and sour,
On the coolies and the blackbirds
Who cut his cane for a shake of flour.

Those working men,
All numb and tough,
Took the devil's own work
'Til they'd took enough
And called strike.

People swore they saw him, silhouetted, as the labour quarters caught alight.

*

The third never stood a chance.
He was shaken from the start.
His father, drunk and raging,
Had put a tremor in his heart.

He went year on year, for twenty two,
Every day more fearful and worn.
He hanged himself in the weaning light
On the day his son was born.

The fourth grew up in New South Wales
And did work for the BPA.
He threw his whole self in, a devotee,
Washing savagery away.

He had a servant girl, a wilding Black.
He couldn't get his teeth around her name,
So the family called her Mabel
And made her call herself the same.

She knew the game, she kept her peace,
Suffered every task without a sound,
And the advances of the teenaged fifth
Who sniffed about like a dwelling hound.

And she had a son, and she didn't cry
When they sent him off, they didn't tell her where.
'Cause if she fussed they'd ship her to the mission nearby
And she'd heard the tales of the horrors there.

And she tried to make herself still as wood,
But the fifth kept coming, kept coming all the time.
It was a frigid day in April when she hit him back,
And he coiled like a snake 'til her legs went slack.
And it didn't take much to make the sin go away,
Just a letter from the fourth and an unmarked grave.
And he left to the ground what the ground still holds,
Never said another word about the body in the autumn cold.

He had a son of his own, who had a son of his own.

He lives in the city now.

*

What's it like living high in the city?
Like a pig in shit, things are looking up.
Bought a house using Mabel's money.
Sixty thousand years beneath that slab.
And we'll sell Juukan iron
And cut down the trees
'Til we're burning in place
And numb to our fucking bones.
Whatcha carry that name for, Adam?
How's the family spirit?
Oh I know,
It comes and it comes and it goes.
And we eat and we shit and we grow.
And we dig and we burn and we grow.
What's the fucking point?