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Midnight Oil - Blue Sky Mine

Midnight Oil - Blue Sky Mine Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Blue Sky Mining
Released: 1990

Blue Sky Mine Lyrics

Hey, hey-hey hey
There'll be food on the table tonight
Hey, hey, hey hey
There'll be pay in your pocket tonight

My gut is wrenched out it is crunched up and broken
A life that is led is no more than a token
Who'll strike the flint upon the stone and tell me why
If I yell out at night there's a reply of bruised silence
The screen is no comfort I can't speak my sentence
They blew the lights at heaven's gate and I don't know why

But if I work all day at the Blue Sky Mine
(There'll be food on the table tonight)
Still I walk up and down on the blue sky mine
(There'll be pay in your pocket tonight)

The candy store paupers lie to the share holders
They're crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers
The balance sheet is breaking up the sky
So I'm caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night
And if the blue sky mining company won't come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won't save me
Who's gonna save me?

But if I work all day...

And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing's as precious, as a hole in the ground

Who's gonna save me?
I pray that sense and reason brings us in
Who's gonna save me?
We've got nothing to fear

In the end the rain comes down
Washes clean, the streets of a blue sky town

Writer/s: ROTSEY, MARTIN / HIRST, ROBERT / MOGINIE, JAMES / GARRETT, PETER / STEVENS, WAYNE
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Blue Sky Mine

The song refers to the Wittenoom asbestos mine in Western Australia where blue asbestos was mined between 1947 and 1966. The once-thriving town is now a virtual ghost town. Shops are boarded up, the 2 schools are closed, the local cinema is derelict. In their ignorance, the original settlers used asbestos in gardens, school yards and roads. Wittenoom is without doubt Australia's greatest industrial disaster and it is estimated that 25% of the 20,000 men who mined asbestos there will die from related diseases. (thanks, Darryl - Kitchener, Canada)

Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning

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Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Diesel And Dust
Released: 1988

Beds Are Burning Lyrics

Beds Are Burning

This is a political song about giving native Australian lands back to the the Pintupi, who were among the very last people to come in from the desert. These 'last contact' people began moving from the Gibson Desert to settlements and missions in the 1930s. More were forcibly moved during the 1950's and 1960's to the Papunya settlement. In 1981 they left to return to their own country and established the Kintore community which is nestled in the picturesque Kintore Ranges, surrounded by Mulga and Spinifex country. It is now a thriving little community with a population of about 400.

Regarding the line, "From Kintore East to Yuendemu," Yuendemu is an aboriginal community in Central Australia, 250 Kilometers northwest of Alice Springs. (thanks, Dave Malkoff - San Francisco, CA, for above 2)

Midnight Oil performed this in front of a world audience of billions, (including Prime Minister John Howard who has claimed this is his favorite Midnight Oil song) at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The whole band were dressed in black, with the words "sorry" printed conspicuously on their clothes. This was a reference to the Prime Minister's refusal to apologize, on behalf of Australia, to the Aboriginal Australians for the way they have been treated over the last 200 years. (thanks, Edward Pearce - Ashford, Kent, England)

Diesel and Dust is ranked the #1 Australian album of all time in Toby Creswell, Craig Mathieson and John O'Donnell's book, The 100 Best Australian Albums, which was published in 2010. The runner-up is AC/DC's 1980 classic record Back in Black.