But paradise is threatened by the city's urban spread
Instead of trees and sandhills, there'll be rooftops there instead

For the far side of the river, where our children used to play
and families have their picnics on a windy summers day
Where the water birds go wading and the eagles soar above
This special place of nature, The place that many love
The place that makes a poet out of any common bloke
Is set to be all houses. A most unfunny joke

For the plan has now been published, its down in black and white
Houses almost to the river, A different kind of sight
And room to put a shopping mall, a library and a school
Will the company put them in there? If you think that, you're a fool
For the dollar signs are gleaming in the visions of the few
Who would turn this piece of nature into an urban zoo
With cars, manure and garden sprays, each do their little part
To kill the fragile river, to cut it to the heart
And poison all the fishes, and the birds along the edge
and the creatures that inhabit each little rocky ledge

So years from now, I see it clear, a narrow dirty creek
meanders through the suburbs, and I hear the people speak
"Wouldn't it be lovely had our forebears got it right"
"If they'd left a piece of nature. If they'd only had the sight
To slow the city's growing spread, to curb its northern push
And left us with a river and a bit of natural bush."

But I'm too much of a cynic, I know our planners well
Persuaded by the dollar, on a one way trip to hell
For hell to me is where I'll be when my spirit doesn't soar
when there is no longer beauty when I look out of my door
Where the colour of the river is an algae kind of green
And the parrots and the silver eyes and wrens are rarely seen
And the heath land where the flowers grew becomes a shopping mall
Surrounded by a car park with room for one and all

But for one thing I am hopeful, it wont happen overnight
And maybe; - just a maybe; there's still time to get it right