The Centre Cannot Hold

There’s a lot of songs about the coming of the Europeans to these shores, and most of them take the point of view that it has been an unmitigated disaster for the prior inhabitants. So what makes this one special?

It was one of the first songs to take that stance; it took it at least as strongly as any other song ever has and more than most (I’ve no easy way of checking, but I’d be surprised to learn that any Australian song used the word ‘genocide’ before it); it was a good-sized hit among the white population; and, last but by no means least, it completely rocks. “Solid Rock” is also the first and pretty much only hit from Goanna, a very talented band – they deserved much better from the public than they got.

It’s a cry of rage, of anger against injustice. Just listening to it conveys a sense of all that has been lost, a traditional way of life that had lasted for thousands of years, gone forever in a little over a century – and all the reasons why it happened (which basically amounts to: white people didn’t see black people as real people). As a true reflection of our nation’s history – as opposed to the increasingly bullshit words of our actual national anthem – it’s hard to beat.