I am Australia and Australia is me
The Buru is alive in the sky and the sea and the Daintree
Locked as the one to survive in a blood line flowing free
From time immemorial in the Kuku Yalanji shifting sand
In every grain blowing through this Kulki forgiving land
Part of each heart timed to thrive by nature’s lawgiver
Our muse history mirror shimmers in the Murray River
The wilderness shelter was a sterling guarantee of liberty
Basking in the drum beat of the sun and wind and rain
Roaming free with no sense of the hidden pending pain
Within every season there was our nature-spirit’s reason
Unbound by any human cage or fence or scarred iron bars
The kangaroo was born to be Australia’s life-time lodestar
The Buru was not buried as the wild westerly wind carried
Their rare sound was heard by every free winged blue-bird
With eyes and ears to hear a truth then show the Buru ruth
An evergreen Kamilaroi symbol of elegance and sentience
A country’s straight compass for a North Star conscience
Now it glints on a forged future for the frightened Buru
As the invisible gavel falls on all the disappearing Buru
The danger time fixes a future for our day of their destiny
On a false fulcrum framed by a human judge just for us
Caught hanging on the careless crooked scales of justice
Suspended by a blind faith we know is not balanced nor true
Suspended by blind justice between Camus and the Kangaroo 

I am Australia and Australia is me
The base where the first Buru was born and still belongs
The space where the last Buru burn out as a national icon
While their hearts are broken by a collective native wrong
Their eternal sacred totem still stands so solid and strong
Their truth is seen as the ever-watchful Brolga signifies
Their totemic sign revealed by the Brolga’s all-wise eyes
Reflecting as a timeless wirra mirror in our silver River
The Brolga has no need to feed Australians lies or alibis
Nature’s vision fixed high by our wide-eyed spy so they see
A saddened sight of the perennial plight of the Buru misery
So the Buru waits for fate to unlock its gate by you and me
We choose to abuse kangaroos whose lives will then be lost
Weighing their pain for our impure gain in a rigged Pentecost
Yet the payment remains due from me and you to our kindred
Staring in our moral mirror when we all have to stand naked
Counting the cost of the Buru lives we have purposely wasted
The debt is due for mass-killing those who were and are sacred
Yet it is the time we will win or lose on our own judgement day
Choosing whose lives will be just a ruse for us to flay and slay
As a Saturnalia Australia hides behind the iron mask of a thief
Failing to count whose lives will be lost without a debt in grief
The time to hide the crime is passed as such death has no relief
Suspended by a blind faith we know is not balanced nor true
Suspended by blind justice between Camus and the Kangaroo 

I am Australia and Australia is me
You cannot close your eyes to feign you cannot even see me
For even the whistling wild wind carries the Buru hoarse plea
There comes a time when the question that lights up your soul
Demands more than tendering a half-truth for lives you stole
When Darwin visited Australia his black blood began to freeze:
The land having been aboriginally covered with forest trees
He witnessed how the animals were just obstacles to be seized
Darwin saw the human manacles lock on the Buru fated clock
He saw the legal larrikins who deserved to be shackled in a dock
Stealing their land and lives in a guise of marauding nature’s thief:
It seems scarcely possible that each tentacle could have
aboriginally existed as a prolongation of the leaf
Far worse than a crime it seeped through our society’s sinews
As Australia’s birthmark mortal sin whose bill is still overdue
As it is sold on selling a goal of a Saturnalia pinchbeck gold
A debt that remains unpaid as the Buru is their skewed stew
Then turning away from the tears falling each year in The Bush
Still the death-knell chime is Australia’s toll on time and you
The cold dying moon in the dead saloon hushed in a rush-crush
Time hangs heavy for the justice-seat has now been sutured
Time has passed to call out and finally condemn your future
There is no time to hide the crime after each life has ended
Suspended by a blind faith we know is not balanced nor true
Suspended by blind justice between Camus and the Kangaroo 

I am Australia and Australia is me
As it was in the beginning is how it was always meant to be
Changed for us when you forged the glass wisdom of Camus
By guilt in selling their future you betrayed the innocent Buru
Your lust for destruction stems from a stunted stem you grew
Your politician’s pauper principles shot through blue-on-blue
There is a vital single question that waits for your answer
For we see you killing us as your secret sly society sensor:
Why do you see our birth as a lone life you are right to steal?
Your bent intent remains the same as you fail to see your sin
A high Noon chime is a tell-tale time for your moral famine
Hooked on a comedy while you wait for the tragedy to begin
Can you burn the bias blindness from your eyes and start to see
Search your soul to try to justify your ad hominem lies as a key
The historic debt is due by you forever so will never fade away
An Australian Bacchanalian life-lesson that you can never stay
No one can ever escape Judgement Day by changing tomorrow
Neither you nor Camus can escape from the Kangaroo’s sorrow
Camus exposed the false balance of your bullet injustice ricochet:
Don’t wait for the last judgement. It happens every day.
No blind spot can hide the guilt every open eye-on-eye can see
The tombstone truth of an epitaph for us all now so plain to see
Chiselled between Darwin and Camus and the last Kangaroo:
The Brolga ‘call of life’ for a Crane Kamilaroi exists in eternity
To be forever free:  I am Buru I am Australia and Australia is me

©NoëlSweeney2025

The poem was commissioned by the animal rights charity, Kangaroos Alive, in Australia for their annual Kangaroo Day. Find out more here. On receiving it the Director wrote:

Wow! I am so moved by this poem. I needed a bit of time to sit in silence and absorb this after reading it: Ric A.