Geraldton Wax Lyrics

About 50 km north of Geraldton

The Northwest Coastal Highway becomes Hampton Road

And on the corner of Hampton and Fifth Avenue

There's an old Caltex station where the road trains reload

Rusted sheet metal walls rise from cracked concrete

Your depth perception dances in the shimmering heat

Old rickety gates marked by wood surname signs

Line the sparsely housed wide set dead end streets

If you drive down to where the gravel gives way

To the orange dirt road laced with paddy melon seed

Rusted swing sets are grown over and under

With Patterson's Curse and crawling cape weed

The backyards give way to the patchwork plains

Littered with wild burrows and dried out sheep bones

Half submerged limestone like outback icebergs

No sound but the languid cattle low

You might see my mother

Kneeling in the garden

Raising a gloved hand to shield her eyes

Beneath the wide horizon above ramshackle fences

That delineate the rough property lines

Or my brother barefoot

Peering at tadpoles

In a bucket beside the rainwater tank

By the outdoor laundry where the weeds grew high

If you were travelling that way in 95

Now that I'm grown

I barely recall

The lines on your face

The sound of your call

At the setting sun

Ride your bikes homes

Hot summer months

The cicadas drone

Singing in the paddock

Swinging in the park

Climbing high through the jade

Building up the ramparts

Pelting pomegranates

Stealing the figs

Fashioning weapons to fight the neighbour's kids

I drive back up there every year or two

It's different now someone painted the house blue

Took out the jade bushes from before

I don't know what I go there looking for

I think it might have been my fault

I think it might have been

I think it might have been my fault

I do

About five hours north of Perth West Australia

There's a seaside city where I was born

There are overalled workers down at the cray factory

Past the general practice and the dollar store

Warm Easterly winds bend the trees backward

The burning dunes will blister your feet

You can see the wheat silo's and the Catholic cathedral

From the wishing well up on Mount Misery

The Chapman River rises east of Northampton

And it flows down southward to the coastal plain

Indian Ocean storm swells through rip tides and reef

For the wind surfers out on the waves at Hell's Gate

You can hear yellow tennis balls hitting red brick walls

Low hum of the fan while you sleep with a sheet

From the big boss cigars at the deli on Birch

To the bottlebrush outside the Baptist Church

And there's a cult passed through

And you took me down

To an old duplex in the poor part of town

And he lay his hands on me to pray

And he made me afraid of my body to this day

Corner block house

White window frames

Little woodshed beside where we'd hide when it rained

Dance around the tree stump

Cadets march through the town

Scent of sea breeze and sunscreen

Gum leaves on the ground

Cricket cage matches in 40 degrees

Before bar stools smelling of beer and nicotine

Clay pipes and cannons from the June mutiny

Of the maiden Batavia wrecked on the Morning Reef

Acoustic guitar in its velvet lined case

Wash my brain down at the evolution exposé

From Memorial Park with its Waiting Lady

To the frangipani outside the AOG

They were burning books down on Main Street

On their hellish float they were smashing TV's

Altar call gets the congregation

Up to the front and down on its knees

And-uh the Lord-uh

Daughters and sons

Demonstrate your receipt of the gift of tongues

From you down by their feet colouring on the floors

To the prickly palms out the Potter's House doors

Forty thousand ochre dots

And a Wajarri tongue that is all but forgot

Bends in the riverbeds

Shades of the stones

A decommissioned swing 50 fallen pinecones

With the Mckenzie kids and the souls of lost sailors

The Geraldine miners and the old Greenough jailers

We'd climb out on the rocks where the waves break hard

When the beach was an abandoned railway marshalling yard

And when the land development signs went up

We hurled rocks along with all the swear words we knew

And in the summer months we'd drag our mattresses

Outside and sleep under the Midwest moon

Now that I'm grown I barely recollect

The outdoor bathtub where they submerged my flesh

In the mineral sands where we ran aground

My bones showed through the wet nightgown

Sunk like a ship

Fallen in folds

Taken as gospel truth the roughshod that you rode

I'd have done damn near anything to see you pleased

Baptise me beneath the river bridge where Dad lost his teeth

I drive back up there every year or two

It's better now I guess there's more to do

The Dome of Souls still gets me like it did

When they built it way back then when I was a kid

Now that I'm older I sit on the stoop

And I smoke cigarettes just like you used to do

I think it might have been different

I think it might have been

I think it might have been different

I do