Four Hundred Miles From Darwin

400 Miles From Darwin - The Whitlams

Michael Coggins

coggins@dynamite.com.au

http://www2.dynamite.com.au/coggins/whitlams/

Words & Music: Tim Freedman

 

We pay to shed a sombre tear

Together in the darkness here

One among the hundreds

Crying for the millions

When the houselights break the trance

Only then unclasp our hands

Compose ourselves and fix our hair

"We would have all been Schindler there."

Drive in silence quietly home

Now horror's more than skin and bone.

 

Can you see in 20 years

We'll pay to shed the same cheap tears

In a film about an island

Watch our hero take a stand

Pay our money gladly to wash our hands

Watching the movie we'll ask how the people might have -

Known, and let it happen there without a fight

Kept driving on quietly home

Left the Timorese alone

400 miles from Darwin.

 

The 2-minute hate is now the 3-hour love

With action left for God above

The Germans then could turn their heads

Now Indonesians and us, we sleep in bed

400 miles from Darwin

East Timor is dying.