I heard the late Peter Bellamy sing this song at a festival in England in ’82 or ’87 and remember vividly most of the songs he sang in that concert. Lighting the young leaves to a shade of green Handel’s Largo telling the story of who embraced a tree before he went into battle was a musical and lyric inspiration for this song. With its brevity and tenderness, Largo is not a typical John Warner song, but powerful nevertheless in the image of a remembered voice lighting the world and uplifting the heart. United we’ll thwart the mine owner’s designs,Ī new generation will spring from these mines,Īs tough as the ryegrass along the fencelines The gale of our loving will comfort and heal,Īnd we’ll stand in their picket line, hearts hard as steel, Windsong are we in the high pitshaft wheel,
Their souls thirst for light and the sky is a dream Where sullen coal glints in the carbide lamp’s gleam, The children run wild with a blaze in their eye,ĭown in the darkness our men hew the seam Helpless the magpies and crows hurtle by, We rush for the washing that flaps on the line, It sings in the towering gear of the mines,Īs ragged cloud fingers blot out the sunshine, Oh we are the wind, We are the wild wind, To the blustery shout of the Mutton Bird gale The ridges and the valleys re-echo and wail, The collaboration gave John the opportunity to write a song specially for “Dear Diary” which expressed the strength of the womenfolk who supported their miner husbands during a lengthy strike.įrom Loch to Nyora where men lay the rail Diane Wilder – a friend of John’s and a choreographer in the Margaret Barr school of modern dance – created a dance sequence called “Dear Diary” using several of John’s songs from Pithead In The Fern, his collection of songs about the establishment of the coal industry in South Gippsland in Victoria.
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