Mt Rouse Poem by Francis Duggan

Mt Rouse in the Southern Grampians it rise above old Penshurst Town
Surrounded by wide open country of dry paddocks stony and brown
Way back when Australia was younger centuries before the first people came
To live in the Southern Country Rouse coughed up his rivers of flame.

Mt Rouse in the Southern Grampians so little about him is known
He was even old in the Dreamtime he seems lonely all on his own
He has inspired many an artist he has inspired the poets to rhyme
The black tribes who once hunted on him they too have gone to father time.

Mt Rouse in the Southern Grampians brown grass on his stony face grow
He surely has been in existence since the first creek downhill did flow
On it's journey to the big river the big water-way to the sea
The things even quite old in Nature that long predate Human history.

The people are much like the Seasons the people they come and they go
And of Nature's ways we're always learning but of Nature so little we know
And Mt Rouse in the Southern Grampians was there centuries before the first crow
And centuries before the dinosaurs and that was a long time ago.