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We Are Going (1986)

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May contain names, images or voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
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'We Are Going'

Clip description

In this clip, Oodgeroo Noonuccal reads her poem ‘We Are Going’ in full to an appreciative audience at the Harold Park Hotel in Sydney in 1986.

Curator’s notes

by Michael Weir

The recording was made at the Harold Park Hotel in Glebe, Sydney, which had a reputation for the variety of its live acts in the 1980s and ’90s. You can faintly hear ‘pub’ noise of people talking in the bar next to the reading, while it is quiet in the bar where Walker is reciting. This becomes evident by the sudden loud applause from the small crowd at the end.

The understated conviction in Oodgeroo’s voice adds to the poignanacy and beauty of the poem, making it all the more haunting as well as defiant.

You can see Oodgeroo read another poem from her book We Are Going (1964), 'The Dispossessed’, here.

Oodgeroo Noonuccal We Are Going

They came in to the little town
A semi-naked band subdued and silent
All that remained of their tribe.
They came here to the place of their old bora ground
Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.
Notice of estate agents read: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here’.
Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.
They sit and are confused, they cannot say their thoughts:
'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers.
We belong here, we are of the old ways.
We are the corroboree and the bora ground,
We are the old sacred ceremonies, the laws of the elders.
We are the wonder tales of Dreamtime, the tribal legends told.
We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, and wandering camp fires.
We are the lightning bolt over Gaphembah Hill, quick and terrible,
And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow.
We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon.
We are the shadow ghosts creeping back as the campfires burn low.
We are nature and the past, all the old ways gone now and scattered.
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.’

The recitation ends with applause from the audience.