The Island of Australia

All the ships that sail the waves they look right pretty when they’re steaming
And the jet-planes in the sky look like larks when you are dreaming
But our friends they take away to where a new dawn it is breaking
For a life and for a trade on the Island of Australia

Oh! Good fortune I have known in this my own dear Nation
Now there is no work at home for some no consolation
And now they ‘re forced to go from their friends and sad relations
For to find themselves new homes on the Island of Australia

Well there’s no one living now between the schoolhouse and the mountain
On the hill John Murphy ploughed so many trees you could not count them
For the future to repay all those banks and speculators
While their bones lie in the clay on the Island of Australia

There’s a flag that’s flying high its three colours winds are blowing
On the patriots that died what great honour we’re bestowing
With their aims not realised all of our youth are relegated
For to find themselves new lives on the Island of Australia

Oh! What good is it to gaze on the ships that sail the ocean
And what good are big jet-planes when they bring such sad emotion
And what good are larks that sing or our flag that flies so graceful
When our land has sent its flowers to the Island of Australia.

While Australia is now known as a Continent, it vied with Greenland as the world's biggest island during my early schooldays. My late father on asking a returned emigrant if he had met another man of his aquaintance while living there, replied,"No, Australia is a very big Island". For many of us involved in farming, the planting of forests on farms was the last straw. Emigration was a constant part of rural life and many of our friends went to Australia in the 1980's. The motivation for this song came from a regular observation "there will be nothing but trees around here soon". This song won the Newly Composed Ballad Competition at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 1988.