The Ballad of Barrambin

There’s a whisper through the gum trees where the breezes rise and fall,
And the magpies greet the morning with a clarion forest call.
There’s a stillness in the shadows where the old ones used to roam,
For this land was never empty - it was Country, it was home.

Here the ancestors walked softly, here their stories whisper low
By the waterholes and ridges where the eucalypts still grow.
Every stone and twisted hollow holds a thousand years and more,
And the past is not forgotten - it’s alive in bark and lore.

See the ironbarks stand steadfast, see the fig trees’ ancient span,
They were seedlings long before the boots of white man touched this land.
They have cradled nesting kookaburras, shaded weary feet,
And they cool the breath of Brisbane in the harsh midsummer heat.

But now the men with plans and papers come to carve the lungs away,
With their stadiums full of concrete where the children love to play.
They would fell the forest giants, seal the soil in glass and steel,
And they’ll stand and call it “progress,” blind to all the scars that never heal.

What is lost when green is taken? What is stolen when it’s sold?
It’s the songs the children won’t hear, it’s the stories never told.
It’s the hollows for the cockatoos and the shade for days of play,
It’s the breath of life for Brisbane that we trade and throw away.

Yet the fight is far from over, and the people still remain,
Like the roots that hold the riverbank through flood and wind and rain.
For we know this park’s a promise to the ones who’ll follow through -
That the land can still be sacred, and the skies can still be blue.

So we’ll stand beside Barrambin with our voices loud and clear,
For the trees that watched our history still deserve to linger here.
And we’ll guard this living legacy with courage, heart and soul -
For once our park has vanished, you can never make it whole.