Colours of Australia

Enda Kenny



It’s a Cape Tribulation pastel sunrise
Whitsundays turquoise bay
Mustard yellow wattle or the bottlebrushes red
it’s the rain that falls from skies of brolga grey.
The creamy coloured steam of Isa's chimneys
The eucalypt of dusty green and grey
No brush could ever paint these colours in a lifetime
The colours of Australia today

It’s the haunted blackened embers of a bushfire
The orange of a field of burning cane
The green that turns to gold out on the wheat field
The pink and grey galah out on the plain.
It’s a thousand different shades of Mallee sunset
it’s colours that are never seen by day
The fish out on the reef, living coral beneath
The colours of Australia today.

It’s the dusty powdered ochre of the Dreamtime
Snow white Franklin River running wild
The lorikeet with colours of the rainbow
that looks like it’s been painted by a child.
It’s a jaundiced yellow river full of topsoil
When its trees have all been taken away
We’re paying for the past, all the colours fading fast
The colours of Australia today.


From Dublin-born songwriter, Enda Kenny. A beautiful evocation of Australia.