Carrington Cabaret

Are you proud white Australians wherever you are?
Beer in your hand and your elbow on the bar
All you people from Darwin to the south
With your blue faded jeans and a joint in your mouth

Young sophisticates making the scene
At the Lion Hotel in your rolled up jeans
Something going on, we're all employed
Last night another pickininny died

In the dirt filled gutters on the cold concrete
At the nightclub end of Hindley Street
Sit dusky young ladies learning the rules
From drunks and traps and the hard knocks school

Milky brown eyes from drinking all day
Till it's time at the Carrington Cabaret
Down at the port a sick black mum
Rings for a taxi but the taxi won't come

It's probably too painful for us to understand
But two hundred years ago we overran their land
Dreamtime's just a nightmare now, an alcoholic sleep
Australia land of things to do have you got time to weep

Oh our great free land of fire and rain
White man's wealth and black man's pain
You've got to be white if you want to get in
It's the black man's country but the white man's in

Too utter distasteful for civilized man
Hide them away in Arnhem Land
Shake your head and say "That's that"
As you kick away the bottles on Pinky flat

It's probably too painful for us to understand
But two hundred years ago we overran their land
Dreamtime's just a nightmare now, an alcohol sleep
Australia land of things to do have you got time to weep