Gadigal Land

Song

After a 17 year hiatus Midnight Oil have came out with some new work, the first release being the “song” Gadigal Land, if you can call it a song. It is just Peter Garrett talking into a microphone with some quite disconnected, unsubtle, and monotonous banging noises going on in the background.

What ruins the song, apart from its uninteresting music, is not simply that a “message” (Aborigine worship) is being peddled far too earnestly, – plenty of the Oil’s great and classic songs from the past had Aborigine worship messages,

– but the fact that the lyrics of this song are particularly crude, blunt and brain dead, and just boil down to

• western civilization bad, bad, bad!

Some men go through a particularly dynamic and creative part of their life, often in their late twenties and into their thirties, peaking around 40 (especially if they never had (direct care of) children) – the men of the Oils are long past those days (Garrett is 67, songwriter Rob Hirst is 64) and Gadigal Land is proof that sometimes it does make sense to just rest on your laurels.

Lyrics

Welcome to Gadigal land
Welcome to Gadigal country
Welcome to Gadigal land

Welcome to Gadigal land
Do you know our story?
Welcome to Gadigal land

Don’t you bring your poison
Don’t you bring your grog
Don’t you bring your smallpox
Sure to kill our mob
Don’t you bring your justice
Don’t you bring your gaols
Don’t you bring your armies
Troopers on our trails

So welcome to Gadigal land
Welcome to Gadigal country
Welcome to Gadigal land

Welcome to Gadigal land
Have you heard our history?
Welcome to Gadigal land

We don’t need your convicts
We don’t need your thieves
We don’t need your squatters
Or your emancipees
Don’t you dam our rivers
Don’t you fell our trees
Don’t you carve our wilderness
Don’t you net our seas

In the land where time stands still
In the land that’s in a spell
Every day since the day you came is a day of rage
It’s a day of rage

Welcome to Gadigal land
Wenyo wenyo wenyo!
Welcome to Gadigal land
Wenyo wenyo wenyo!

Mudjaru ngaya wunyang
Ngandu bayabawai….ngara
Ngarawa darayawai, darimi
Garamawaimi baya mudjin, wa?
Birrongaingun ngarawan
Always will be Gadigal land

It’s unfolding you’re unloading
Your high and mighty prison ships
It’s unfolding you’re unloading
Your high and mighty prison ships
It’s unfolding you’re unloading
Your high and mighty prison ships

We can live without your muskets
We can live without your guns
We can live without your strychnine
We can live without your rum
We can live without your gallows
We can do without your chains
We can do without the massacres
The sorrow and the pain

So welcome to Gadigal land
Wenyo wenyo wenyo!
Welcome to Wiradjuri land
Welcome to Yorta Yorta land
Welcome to Arrernte land
Welcome to Mirning land
Welcome to Gurindji land
All of the lands
Welcome!