unknown

Older than kosciusko
Darwin down to alice springs
Dealers in the clearinghouse
The settlements explode
High up in the homelands
Miners drive across the land
Encounter no resistance
When the people block the road

Older than kosciusko
Dry white seasons years ago
Darkness over charleville
The fires begin to grow

No end to the hostility
Now they want to be somewhere else
No stranger to brutality
Now they'd like to be someone else

Older than kosciusko
Driven back to alice springs
Endless storm and struggle
Marks the spirit of the age
High up in the homelands
Celebration 'cross the land
Builds up like a cyclone
Now the fires begin to rage

Call off the ultimatum
No don't turn away
Call off the ultimatum until yesterday
Call off the ultimatum
No don't turn away
Bind up the brokenhearted
No don't turn away
Call off the ultimatum until yesterday

(hirst/moginie)

I'll give you something to write home about
And i'll take you somewhere, show you around
We burnt all the cars that laid down and died
We burnt all the trees to keep us alive
Sat 'round the fire, sang like a choir
With the ashes of civilisation in our eyes
I come alive, i read the signs on the gunbarrel highway

Far off a dull radio beats for the young uninvolved
The meaning's a football
A stick and a can and a kakadu man
Will the speaker speak up or the talker talk down
The world is no oyster and here in this town
Shit falls like rain on a world that is brown

I come alive, i read the signs on the gunbarrel highway
I come alive, and the children will sing as the
Satellite swings down that highway

Nothing could be longer than that corrugated road
No ever follows where the road trains go
And no where in the country do the dust storms blow so hard
So hard

I come alive, i read the signs on the gunbarrel highway
I hear the sound, it's the wheels as they drive
And the cultures collide on that highway
Ah, it's a hard day, the children will sing as the
Satellite swings down that highway