Mt Rouse On The High Ground Poem by Francis Duggan

Mt Rouse on the high ground it ever looks down
On the streets and the houses of old Penshurst Town
And the wide and brown Countryside for miles around
Of volcanic stones fences where rocks and stones abound.

Ancient Mt Rouse was known by some other name
Thousands of centuries before the first white people came
For to live in the Countryside known as the Southern Grampians today
For some to take over some have to give way.

On ancient Mt Rouse going back a few centuries
The Indigenous people had their corroborees
Their lot was dispossession that seems sad to say
Though dispossession does still exist in the World of today.

From ancient Mt Rouse thousands of years ago
The fiery rivers of hot lava did flow
And though lava may never flow from Mt Rouse again
It's rocks and it's stones on the landscape remain.

Of Nature's ways there is so much to learn and to know
And people are like the Seasons we come and we go
But ancient Mt Rouse in it's stony face of brown
Will forever be towering above Penshurst Town.