The Water Runners

Lyrics

Murrumbidgee
Murrumbidgee, lots of water. Save your sons and your daughters. Murrumbidgee, lots of water. Save your sons and your daughters.
Yarri watched as the white men came and settled on that river plain.
They built houses, built a town. Called it Gundagai.
Yarri told them, he tried to explain, he said ‘Don’t go building on that river plain’ ‘This is our country. We know this land. The river it will rise.
Then came winter 1852. Three weeks of rain in the month of June.
The river broke its banks in the dead of night and swept away the town.
Yarri heard the screaming, he knew just what to do. Set off with his comrades in their bark canoes. Three days they pulled the people from the rooftops and the trees, who surely would have drowned.
Murrumbidgee, lots of water. Save your sons and your daughters. Murrumbidgee, lots of water. Save your sons and your daughters.
Yarri, Jacky Jacky, Long Jimmy, Tommy Davis. Heroes they would call them, Gundagai’s true saviours. Speeches made to praise them when the water had gone down, but they could not live in town. What use are words and speeches when you don’t have your land? When you don’t have your home?
Murrumbidgee, lots of water. Save your sons and your daughters. Murrumbidgee, lots of water. Save your sons and your daughters.