Versions

Version	Length	Source	Availability
Studio	3:17	Mark Seymour Slow Dawn album.	Moderately common. Available new in digital form.

 Recommended Version.

Commentary

My youth in a Victorian country town, playing in a dry river beds, the ashes of old middens remembered years later as though I walked on the bones of souls who’d been banished to the outskirts of every town across the country, secrets covered over by denial, guilt and fear. My father’s warning words: There were forbidden places and other kids I wasn’t not supposed to talk to or seen with.

Lyrics

Broken country where the cattle sniff the ground
A north wind was blowin’ the day the bones were found
Hidden in the ashes for any fool to see
Slow dawn and it’s rolling over me

People started talking ‘bout some kind of killing ground
They tried to keep it quiet but things got written down
Murder and mayhem some secret memory
Oh lord but there’s a shadow over me

Slow dawn’s rising where the red dirt meets the sky
I walk the empty river bed where the little white bones lie
Out along the frontier, any fool could see
Slow dawn’s rising and it’s rollin’ over me

There are many secret places.
“Don’t go down there,” Daddy said
Playing in the ashes on that empty river bed
I remember shadows dancin’ so wild and free
Oh lord but there’s a shadow over me

Voices singing in the mist they whisper in my heart
There’s a hungry mob on the edge of town
They were trouble from the start

Leaky shacks of Southern Cross
Middens by the sea

Slow dawn’s risin’ and it’s rolling over me