2. WATER TO DRINK
Where there's water, there's life!
There’s a beating in my heart, and a song that somebody wants to sing
The DREAMING AUSTRALIA album took shape on the highways and backroads of Australia about ten years ago, when I first genuinely encountered Aboriginal Australia at the Tent Embassy in Canberra. It was a time of great gatherings which birthed the contemporary Sovereignty movement among grass roots Aboriginal leaders.
Water was a topic on everyone's mind. The Murray-Darling River basin was over allocated and environmental flows collapsed as the Menindee Lakes of NSW ran dry. Gas fracking entered the the Australian mainland with apparent indifference towards the massive ground water reserves. With open cut miners and broadscale agribusiness arguing over the remaining water reserves.
Within a few years, to these issues was added bushfires, and unseasonal flooding.
Many of the characters in Dreaming Australia are victims of a failing Australian Dream. They or their ancestors arrived in the new lands. Be they convict settler, corner shop retailer or remote cattle runner, they worked, sacrificed and expected peace and prosperity in exxchange. None of them own or run corporations.
But now the Dream fails, what next?
In Water to Drink, ‘the money comes in as the water goes out’ and the hero bewails, ‘what’s right is surely wrong!’. Water is symbolic of money. We have currency, banks and money flows. If water is life then what is money?
The second verse concerns the man on country, contending with the elements to keep his venture alive. And yet ‘there’s a beating in my heart, and a song somebody wants to sing’. We think our present age is all about giving voice, but in reality, its about the right to speak when everybody else is speaking for someone else.
If the Age of Pisces was incarnated by a Christian pope in fish-head hat, sylising the Christ as a fisher of men; then the present Age of Aquarius gives us man in his own nature, walking upright; man the water bearer, carrying in himself the essence of his survival: water to drink.
The third verse turns from money, drought and wars to rain, animals and life: ‘The kangaroo dance to his life in chance / The world in stars it sings’. Above all else, there remains ‘water to drink’.
About the Video -
The video made was by my Brazillian friend, Julio Sanchez - look out for dingoe, emu and kangaroo in the back of ute...I know you're going to love it!
Melody Maker wrote of Water to Drink,
'A layered lyrical showcase rife with physically engaging language and restrained yet illuminating poetic flourishes'
Garth Thomas of the Hollywood Digest published,
It’s socially conscious material, but unlikely to date. Freddi writes lyrics in such a way that they plant their flag in two entirely different camps. They have specific relevance to the issues he’s addressing but possesses an all-encompassing humanity that stretches far past their initial source of inspiration