Carrington Cabaret lyricsOn If You Don't Fight You Lose (1978) and The Essential Redgum (2011)
Carrington Cabaret (John Schumann) All you proud white Australians wherever you are With a beer in your hand and your elbow on the bar All you people from Darwin to the south In your blue faded jeans with a joint in your mouth You young sophistocats making the scene At the Lion hotel in your rolled up jeans There’s something going on and we’re all implied Last night another picaninny died In the dirt-filled gutters on the cold concrete At the nightclub end of Hindley Street Sit dusky young ladies learning the rules From drunks and traps and the hard-knock school Down at the port there’s sick black mum She rings for a taxi but the taxi won’t come It’s probably too painful for us to understand But two hundred years ago we over-ran their land Dreamtime’s just a nightmare now, an alcoholic sleep Australia, land of things to do, have you got time to weep Our great free land of fire and rain Of white man’s wealth and black man’s pain You’ve got to be white if you want to get it It’s the black man’s country but the white man’s sin It’s rather distastful for civilized man Hide them away in Arnhem Land Shake your head and say that’s that As you kick away the bottles on Pinky Flat |
1978 "If You Don't Fight You Lose" Album Version
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