Frontier... What Frontier? Songtext
von Midnight Oil

The catch was in the last phrase
Settlers would, themselves, define if Aborigines occupied land

What is to be the interpretation of the word occupied, is the question
It is not occupied according to any law regulating possession
Which is recognised by civilised people

I had collected all my worn-out children′s clothes
And dressed them like children in them
We gave them some fireworks, and an immense bonfire
With which they were highly delighted
And finished by the blacks amusing us with their corroborees
Which are the oddest exhibition you can conceive


The interpreter told us
They were describing the first ship that arrived in Holdfast Bay
And the landing of good white men
And the good biscuits they got in Adelaide

Sir, I have this evening perused an account
Of the progress of an Aboriginal mission
And I certainly conceive it to be one of the most glaring
And oppressive outrages on the public funds

The hatred, with which the white man regards the black
That feeling results from fear
From the strong physical contrast which intercept the sympathy
Which subsists between men of the same race
From the proud sense of superiority
From the consciousness of having done them great wrongs
And from the desire to escape this pain of self reproach
By laying the blame on the injured party