Halls Gap In Gariwerd Poem by Francis Duggan

Halls Gap in Gariwerd is an Earthly Utopia a grand old Town with stony hills all around
With such strong links to Australia's Indigenous people 'tis said it was their tribal hunting ground
Long before Halls Gap was given it's English name and long before the white people came there to build a Town
The Indigenous hunter gatherers lived by the ancient hills people who were not subjects of the British Crown
By those old hills they lived at peace with Nature and by those old hills they had their corroborees
And by those old hills they told their Dreamtime stories
and related their old happy memories,
In Halls Gap today they have the Brambuk Cultural Centre named for the Indigenous people who lived there
When in Halls Gap you feel you sense their presence their spirits seem around you everywhere
On the high gums in the Town white cockies squawking and the wattlebirds call on the acacia trees
And every time I visit that old Township I go away with pleasant mewmories
Of a peaceful place of wild and rugged beauty with strong links to an Indigenous history
Those rocky hills would not have changed any if you returned to there in a century,
I feel that it is an Earthly Utopia that the spirits of the past are living there
With Halls Gap in the heart of the Gariwerd Ranges not many places could hope to compare.