Diane Hine - Captain Brice in Tasmania lyrics

My ship ‘Foursquare' awaits repair in Hobart Port's deepwater haven. Sister steamship ‘Vanity Fair' will bring the engine part's replacement. So, with many days to spare I seek the untamed western spaces; the Point where oceans come unfurled which some have called the edge of the world. Blackwood, Blue Gum, Huon Pine, fine-grained Leatherwood, smooth and limber, burlwood, fiddleback, swirled or lined; the 'Foursquare's' hull is packed with timber. Now I walk where the live trees shine and lacework folds of lichen shimmer, watched by keen White Goshawk spies with sharp resentful dark red eyes. The rattle of Hardwater ferns, the silent tread of green moss carpets, out to where the salt wind burns the coastal heath and bu*tongra**es. Here the clean blue ocean spurns the river's tannin brown advances. Here on rocks dead trees are cast and unchecked Roaring Forties blast. If I could see ten thousand miles there'd be the coast of Argentina. Nothing in between defiles the curving ocean's aquamarine and this is why the Point beguiles for nowhere else is air washed cleaner. Why then has a sudden gloom weighed me with impending doom? From Argentina to Brazil my line of sight is northward drifting. Thoughts of home and wife instil a dread where once they were uplifting. Dry stick Petty always spills disaster and our lives are rifting. Deep forebodings are the tithe of wedding a girl who's young and lithe. Fresh algae clings as salt waves drub, defying rollers' rhythmic scrolling. Tenacious orange lichen crusts embed their roots in bare rock shoulders. Trees were cut, I've smelt their blood, but seen them dressed in bark and foliage. Now I watch their white bones hurled from this, the tilting edge of the world.