Verse 1)Red dirt cracking under my shorts......... .. Dry wind tearing at the old gum porch.........Me and the old man staring at the sky..........Not a single cloud just a crow flying high,..........Dams turned to dust holes, sheep thin as wire.....The whole damn country felt like a bushfire,,,,,...Mother was weeping by the kitchen stove......Saying there’s nothing left of the life we loved,So I packed my kit bag, didn’t look back,Turned my heels on the old dirt track.(Verse 2)Boarded the diesel, watched the plains turn grey......Headed for the masses where the fortunes play....They told me the city had the silver and goldA cure for the hunger and the biting cold,But I stepped off the carriage into Central Square,And a thick wave of madness hit the heavy airSmog in the sky where the stars used to beAnd a thousand blind eyes looking straight through me.(Chorus)And it's high noon, low tide, nowhere to runEscaped from the furnace of the outback sun,....But the brick and the mortar don't make you a man....When you're trading the dust for a different clanYeah, I left the dry earth to find something clearBut there’s wankers to the left and there’s wankers,, right here.(Verse 3)Met a man in a suit selling castles of airWith grease in his pocket and slick in his hairHe talked about markets and leveraging schemesWhile he fed on the corpses of poor peoples' dreamsThen a girl in the cafe with a painted-on smileSaid my accent was charming but a bit out of styleShe was quoting some poet she’d never quite readWith a hollowed-out heart and an ego well-fed.(Verse 4)They got rules for the walking, rules for the talkThey got vanity strutting all over the blockThey scream about freedom from a penthouse floorWhile the beggars are freezing right outside the doorPoliticians on telly spitting venom and prideWith a pocketbook conscience and nothing insideThey point to the ledger, they point to the chartsBut they never did measure the drought in their hearts.(Chorus)And it's high noon, low tide, nowhere to runEscaped from the furnace of the outback sunBut the brick and the mortar don't make you a manWhen you're trading the dust for a different clanYeah, I left the dry earth to find something clearBut there’s wankers to the left and there’s wankers right here.(Outro)So the rain never came to the paddock back homeAnd the concrete grows taller wherever I roamNow I'm stuck in the middle, just a ghost in the crowdWhere the phonies are many and the sirens are loudYeah, the country was dry...But the city is hollow...Just a different kind of desert to swallow.(The harmonica cuts back in, wild, screeching, and unresolved, before fading out into a single, ringing guitar chord.)
