v.1.When I was a kid, the history books told me
The blacks just faded away when the first fleet came.
But history is more than books and papers,
It can turn around and become Truth anyway!
And I was told Trugannini was the last Tasmanian aborigine.
More bloody lies from a convict state.
Even though black families were living all around us
We didn’t want to see them there, so we couldn’t integrate.

Chorus: They were just the voices of the desert.
A few tribal women and men.
From so far away
Keep comin’ back again.
Comin’ back again.

v.2. When I was a kid, sittin’ in my whiteskin classroom,
No-one ever told me ‘bout strychnine in the flour.
No-one ever told me about diseases in the blankets,
And no-one ever told me about Pemulway’s finest hour.
I’ve seen photos of black people chained together,
And whites had shooting parties,
But no-one ever told me any of these facts.
No-one mentioned kidnapped children, or broken families,
Or genocide, or The Native Protection Act. Not once!

Bridge: We were a country full of immigrants.
And we told you if you had equal rights.
But in spite of everything we did,
The people whose land was invaded
Didn’t just disappear overnight.

v.3. When I was a kid, there was a stolen generation,
who had less rights than Chinese refugees.
Even from birth they were taken from their families.
Torn from the earth, severed from ancestry.
Dying on the missions of a crazed Christianity.
Dying in their hearts ‘cause their land was in chains.
Dying in our prisons, or in other of our insanities.
Balanced on the edge of new and old ways.

Chorus: The voices of the desert.
The voices of mountain and plain.
The voices of river and seashore,
Won’t go away. Keep comin’ back again.
Comin’ back again.
Won’t go away!