There's A Mystery About It Poem by Francis Duggan

There's a mystery about it that I for one don't understand
For I feel very much a stranger in this amazing Southern Land
Little about this vast Country that I do profess to know
Or of the history of the first Australians from thousands of decades ago.

When Cook and his sailors arrived from England in the seventeen eighties in time that seems like only yesterday
To berth they did not ask the Aboriginal Elders permission they did things in their own way
Now the white Australian Government jail the poor boat refugees
The dispossessed and the maltreated from war torn Lands beyond the seas.

Some Indigenous people still in Australia though in their own Land a minority
Still they are the true Australians with a long and proud history
Yet not any Australian Aboriginal Prime Minister or State Premier of any Australian State
Though they come from the first Australians and their history surely is great.

This the great Land of the Dreamtime of wombat, possum, emu and roo
Of the lyrebird and lorikeet, kookaburra, magpie and cockatoo
And though in this Land I'll always be a migrant in this Land I wish for to stay
Far from the fields and the hills I once knew more than half of a World away.

Out there in the wide brown outback by the rank scrub hidden away
The bones of the first Australians in unmarked graves forever lay
Compared to them who truly loved this Country and her Nature did understand
I will always be a stranger in this amazing Southern Land.