20,000 WATT R.S.L. (1997)

One things for sure that it's still the same
That young folk die from some noble aim
And they live so fast and they die so young
And we just keep wondering what the hell
Went wrong
Cost they live so fast but they die so young
And we just keep wondering…what goes on
What goes on

It's such a shame such a useless shame
That they have to play such a hopeless game
And it makes me shake makes me shake with rage
For a wasted life for nothing gained
Cos they live so fast but they die so young
And we just keep wondering…what goes on

You got everything to live for
We got everything to live for
Ain't nothing I want to die for no nothing at all
But they live so fast and they die so young
And we just keep wondering

(Midnight Oil)

People, wasting away in paradise
Going backward, once in a while
Moving ahead, falling behind
What do you believe, what do you believe
What do you believe is true
Nothing they say makes a difference this way
Nothing they say will do

Take all the trouble that you can afford
At least you won't have time to be bored

Oh the power and the passion, oh the temper of the time
Oh the power and the passion
Sometimes you've got to take the hardest line

Sunburnt faces around, with skin so brown
Smiling zinc cream and crowds, Sundays the beach never a cloud
Breathing eucalypt, pushing panel vans
Stuff and munch junk food
Laughing at the truth, cos Gough was tough til he hit the rough
Uncle Sam and John were quite enough

Too much of sunshine too much of sky
It's enough to make you want to cry

Oh the power...

I see buildings, clothing the sky, in paradise
Sydney, nights are warm
Daytime telly, blue rinse dawn
Dad's so bad he lives in the pub, it's a underarms and football clubs
Flat chat, Pine Gap, in every home a Big Mac
And no one goes outback, that's that
You take what you get and get what you please
It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees

Oh the power...

(Hirst, Moginie, Garrett)

The Breakfast Creek Hotel is up for sale
The last square mile of terra firma gavelled in the mail
So farewell to the Norfolk Island pines
No amount of make believe can help this heart of mine

End - your dreamworld is just about to end
Fall - your dreamworld is just about to fall
Your dreamworld will fall

So shut that buckle and turn that key again
Take me to a place they say the dreaming never ends
Open wide drive that mystery road
Walk through eden's garden and then wonder as you go

Sign says honeymoon to rent
Cloudland into dreamland turns
The sun comes up and we all learn
Those wheels must turn

(Moginie, Garrett, Hirst)

What are you gonna do now,
Now that you started
What are you gonna do now, now that it's done
The words got out there they're floating around
And coming right back down
Are you going to leave us lying here, dealing
With the consequences of a bad sound

What are you gonna do now,
Now that it's spoken
Words have a habit of not fading away
Our memory's clear conscience gets opened
Like a wound
If you can't conceive of better lines and better times then let silence bury you
In the end you will be condemned

You see the boston strangler on the freedom
Road you think the suffragettes got sunk a long
Long time ago, you spewed it out your spite was
Insecure it was like bile from the heights on the
Toilet floor, you were a nazi drunk… you had
The rednecks roaring for blood and then they
Wanted more, your life was so small you couldn't
Get enough you made a start… you didn't
Have to start… white skin black heart white skin
Black heart

(Midnight Oil)

Older than Kosciuszko
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 Kosciuszko
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 Kosciuszko
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)

We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
Know your custom don't speak your tongue
White man came took everyone

We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
White man listen to the songs we sing
White man came took everything

We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen
We follow in the steps of our ancestry
And that cannot be broken

We don't need protection
Don't need your land
Keep your promise on where we stand
We will listen we'll understand

Mining companies, pastoral companies
Uranium companies
Collected companies
Got more right than people
Got more say than people

Forty thousand years can make a difference to the state of things
The dead heart lives here

(Hirst, Moginie, Garrett)

Hey, hey-hey hey
There'll be food on the table tonight
Hey, hey, hey hey
There'll be pay in your pocket tonight

My gut is wrenched out it is crunched up and broken
A life that is led is no more than a token
Who'll strike the flint upon the stone and tell me why
If I yell out at night there's a reply of bruised silence
The screen is no comfort I can't speak my sentence
They blew the lights at heaven's gate and I don't know why

But if I work all day at the blue sky mine
(There'll be food on the table tonight)
Still I walk up and down on the blue sky mine
(There'll be pay in your pocket tonight)

The candy store paupers lie to the share holders
They're crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers
The balance sheet is breaking up the sky
So I'm caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night
And if the blue sky mining company won't come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won't save me
Who's gonna save me?

But if I work all day...

And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing's as precious, as a hole in the ground

Who's gonna save me?
I pray that sense and reason brings us in
Who's gonna save me?
We've got nothing to fear

In the end the rain comes down
Washes clean, the streets of a blue sky town

(Hirst, Rotsey, Moginie, Hillman, Garrett)

US Forces give the nod, it's a setback for your country
Bombs and trenches all in rows, bombs and threats still ask for more
Divided world the CIA, who controls the issue
You leave us with no time to talk, you can write your assessment

Sing me songs of no denying, seems to me too many trying
Waiting for the next big thing

Will you know it when you see it, high risk children dogs of war
Now market movements call the shots, business deals in parking lots
Waiting for the meat of tomorrow

Sing me songs...

Everyone is too stoned to start emission
People too scared to go to prison
We're unable to make decision
Political party line don't cross that floor
Lt. Ron Hubbard can't save your life
Superboy takes a plutonium wife
In the shadow of Ban The Bomb we live

Sing me songs...

(Moginie, Garrett)

Out where the river broke
The bloodwood and the desert oak
Holden wrecks and boiling diesels
Steam in forty five degrees

The time has come
To say fair's fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share
The time has come
A fact's a fact
It belongs to them
Let's give it back

How can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep when our beds are burning

Four wheels scare the cockatoos
From Kintore East to Yuendemu
The western desert lives and breathes
In forty five degrees

(Hirst, Moginie, Garrett)

Who'd like to change the world, who wants to shoot the curl
Who gets to work for bread, who wants to get ahead
Who hands out equal rights, who starts and ends that fight
And not not rant and rave, or end up a slave
Who can make hard won gains, fall like the summer rain
Now every man must be, what his life can be

So don't call, me, the tune, I will walk away

Who want's to please everyone, who says it all can be done
Still sit up on that fence, no-one I've heard of yet
Don't call me baby, don't talk in maybes
Don't talk like has-beens, sing it like it should be
Who laughs at the nagging doubt, lying on a neon shroud
Just gotta touch someone, I want to be

So don't...
(One country one, country one country)

Who wants to sit around, turn it up turn it down
Only a man can be, what his life can be
One vision, one people, one landmass, we are defenceless, we have a lifeline
One ocean, one policy, seabed lies, one passion, one movement, one instant
One difference, one lifetime, one understanding
Transgression, redemption, one island, our placemat, one firmament
One element, one moment, one fusion, yes and one time

(Moginie, Garrett)

You say times are tough
We've got the best of both worlds here
Things are rough
We've got the best of both worlds here
Times are tough
We've got the best of both worlds

The real world is not as calm as it appears to be from here
The old world is not as safe with the new world closing in
The great south land can be as great as the one it could have been
The one it could have been

The real world is not as calm as it appears to be from here
The small world is not as strong and the testing ground is near
The old world is not as strong as the one we could have seen
The great south land can be as great as the one it could have been
The one it could have been

We've got the best of both worlds

(Hirst, Moginie)

There's a road train going nowhere
Roads are cut, lines are down
We'll be staying at the Roma Bar
Till that monsoon passes on

The backbone of this country's broken
The land is cracked and the land is sore
Farmers are hanging on by their fingertips
We cursed and stumbled across that shore

I hear much support for the monarchy
I hear the Union Jack's to remain
I see Namatjira in custody
I see Truganini's in chains

And the world it won't stand still

Blue collar work it don't get you nowhere
You just go round and round in debt
Somebody's got you on that treadmill, mate
And I hope you're not beaten yet

I hear much support for the monarchy
I see the Union Jack in flames, let it burn
I see Namatjira with dignity
I see Truganini's in chains

(Hirst, Moginie)

Walking through the high dry grass, pushing my way through slow
Yellow belly black snake, sleeping on a red rock
Waiting for the stranger to go
Sugar train stops at the crossing, cane cockies cursing below
Bad storm coming, better run to the top of the mountain

Mountain in the shadow of light, rain in the valley below
Well you can say you're Peter, say you're Paul
Don't put me up on your bedroom wall, call me the king of the mountain

Blacksmith fires up the bellows, cane cutters burning the load
Workers of the world, run to the top of the mountain

Mountain in the...

I can't take my hands from my face, there are some things we can't replace

Mountain in the...

Over liquid tarmac wastelands of cactus and heat
Down cobblestone alleyways of washing day sheets
Up ghost prairie mountains of sunset and space
Down the road at a familiar place, across the wilderness
Out further than the bush I will follow you

(Hirst, Moginie)

My life is a valuable thing
I wan't to keep it that way, I won't cry
My life's such a valuable thing
Some things don't fade away, I don't mind
We give the best we can give
We won't forget, we can't forgive
Keep us radioactive free
Strike a bell in Hiroshima park
You know that we can't see in the dark
We try and we try and we try...

Who waits for the planes to come
When everybody's got you on the run
South Pacific carry on

It seems to me that what we're saying
Nobody really wants to talk about it
This is no time to be wondering why
I do the best I can do
The human jungle and the global zoo
I'll find my way it's a very special way

Why wait for the planes to come
When everybody's got us on the run
South Pacific carry on
Here come the hercules
Here come the submarines
Sinking south pacific dreams

(Moginie, Garrett, Hirst)

Wherever the wind blows
When it blows over the sea
The moon’s sitting high
Waves will rise
Water shapes
Waves will take you, take you there

Surf's up tonight

Summers on hold
It will go running away
You’ve gotta move now
Get inside
Take that dive
Get inside today

Surf's up tonight
Now I was lonely
And you were too
I met you down at the waterline

Now there’s something we can do
Now there’s something left to do
Oh yeah

Surf's up tonight

Wherever you are
When you’re coming over land
There’s a place where you can throw it away
There’s a place you can forget
You get wet, it’s free
You get high, you’re alive

Surf’s up tonight
Come on up tonight
Surf’s up tonight

(Midnight Oil)

From the bar to the bedroom I'm swimming in the neon
Lighted pictures of a redhead, plasticoated hot on
And sometimes when that mirror shows
The smile of disbelief
Stained signature of nightmares
They're stolen by the thief

I'm back on the borderline
Yes I'm back on the borderline

By the end make a bet and only place is laminex
Laugh a lot cry a lot salt and pepper supper sex
And sometimes when that magic of the moment
Fails the test
In retrospect that diamond day
Did not make second best
And sometimes when a thousand voices
Tell you that you're wrong
A saint in any form
Becomes a sinner all along

(James, Garrett, Hirst)

I'm an innocent victim, I'm just like you
We end up in home units with a brick wall view
I can't believe the perfect families on my colour TV
If I don't make it to the top it'll never bother me

And I don't wanna be the one
I don't wanna be the one

I'm an innocent bystander caught in the path
waiting out the back while the corporate attack
Assaults the senses with relentless scenes of passion and delight
I cut up all the options and went running for my life

(Hirst, Garrett, Rotsey, Moginie)

Few of the sins of the father, are visited upon the son
Hearts have been hard, our hands have been clenched in a fist too long
Our sons will never be soldiers, our daughters will never need guns
These are the yrs between
These are the yrs that were hard fought and won
Contracts torn at the edges, old signatures stained with tears
Seasons of war and peace, these should not be forgotten years
Still it aches like tetanus, it reeks of politics
How many dreams remain? This is a feeling too strong to contain

The hardest years, the darkest years, the roarin' years, the fallen years
These should not be forgotten years
The hardest years, the wildest years, the desperate and divided years
We will remember, these should not be forgotten years

Our shoreline was never invaded, our country was never in flames
This is the calm we breathe, this is a feeling too strong to contain
Still it aches like tetanus, it reeks of politics
Signatures stained with tears, who can remember
We've got to remember

The hardest...
Forsaking aching breaking years, the time and tested heartbreak years
These should not be forgotten years
The blinded years, the binded years, the desperate and divided years
These should not be forgotten years, remember

(Hirst, Moginie)