`AUSTRALIAN SONGS: 3: Great Southern Land

Great Southern Land ( Artist: Icehouse)

Standing at the limit of an endless ocean
Stranded like a runaway, lost at sea
City on a rainy day, down in the harbor
Watching as the gray clouds shadow the bay

Looking everywhere 'cause I had to find you
This is not the way that I remember it here
Anyone will tell you, it's a prisoner island
Hidden in the summer for a million years

Great southern land
Burned you black

So you look into the land and it will tell you a story
Story 'bout a journey ended long ago
If you listen to the motion of the wind in the mountains
Maybe you can hear them talking like I do
"They're gonna betray you, they're gonna forget you
Are you gonna let them take you over that way"

Great southern land, great southern land
You walk alone like a primitive man
And they make it work with sticks and bones
See their hungry eyes, it's a hungry home

I hear the sound of the stranger's voices
I see their hungry eyes, their hungry eyes
Great southern land, great southern land
They burned you black, black against the ground

Standing at the limit of an endless ocean
Stranded like a runaway, lost at sea
City on a rainy day, down in the harbor
Watching as the gray clouds shadow the bay

Looking everywhere 'cause I had to find you
This is not the way that I remember it here
Anyone will tell you, it's a prisoner island
Hidden in the summer for a million years

Great southern land, in the sleeping sun
You walk alone with the ghost of time
They then burned you black, black against the ground
And they make it work with rocks and sand

I hear the sound of the stranger's voices
I see their hungry eyes, their hungry eyes
Great southern land, great southern land
You walk alone, like a primitive man

You walk alone with the ghost of time
And they burned you black
Yeah, they burned you black
Great southern land
Great southern land
Great southern land
Great southern land

When "Great Southern Land" was released as the first single from the Primitive Man album in 1982, a video for it was filmed in a disused sandstone quarry in the Kuringai National Park near Sydney. Then, in 1989, when the song met its first release as a single in North America and Europe, a new clip had to be made to accompany the overseas single. This time, the background Australian landscapes were provided by the Myall Lakes National Park on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. As befits the song, both clips were, of course, typically Australian in content, but the earlier one did feature a few Australian native animals, including a large goanna crawling across barren sandy earth. This latter typical Australian had obviously won many fans, since, when the new clip appeared there were quite a few appeals for "the one with the goanna." The result was that both "Great Southern Land" clips had to be included in the commercial video released in 1989. (www.spellbound-icehouse.org)

Great Southern Land was released as a single in 1982 by the Australian band Icehouse. The song appeared later on their album Primitive Man. It was also featured in the 1988 film Young Einstein.

Icehouse is an Australian band that began in 1977 as Flowers. Icehouse was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 16 August 2006.

Select two unfamiliar words/phrases from this list.  Find a definition of each word/phrase.

runaway                  betray                  hungry eyes               ghost of time

primitive                  sticks                     prisoner                     burned

Link to the Australian National Dictionary

Reflect on your impression/understanding of the poem/song.  Use the worksheet attached here to guide your thinking.

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Uploaded on YouTube Oct 24, 2006

Published on YouTube Aug 29, 2012