WHEN THE RAINS COME

For five years now the winter rains
Have barely come at all
The dams are dry, the crops are dust
Our backs are to the wall

The sheep have all been trucked away
There’s no grass left to eat
The price we got was well below
The value of the meat

The shearing shed’s a ghostly place
The only fleece is rust
The boards and combs do nothing now
But sit and gather dust

The dog’s fed up with looking for
The missing flocks of sheep
And we’re fed up with marking time
And losing too much sleep

The bank is making noises now
Our credit’s running thin
Be buggered if we’ll walk away
Just give up and give in!

That’s not the way they breed us here
We’ve battled through before
And if the rains would only come
We’d battle on some more

Our blood, our lives, our very souls
We’ve given to this land
It’s more to us than just another
Dusty patch of sand

My father lived and died here
And if I have my way
My son will call this land his own
When I am called away

If farmers got the prices
That their produce gets in town
Then times of drought just wouldn’t have
The chance to knock us down

The middle men make up the rules
And set the highest price
While farmers wait for rains to come
It’s just like throwing dice

But when the wind starts blowing
And the clouds build in the west
We gamble on the time to seed
That’s going to suit us best

Then late one night we’ll hear a sound
Out on the old tin roof
The rains have come to break the drought
There’ll be no better proof

But ‘til that time we live in hope
And we’re in need of some
We’ll live again with simple words
‘At last the rains have come’

(c) August 2004 Written in Baldivis, Western Australia

Gillingarra, Western Australia

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