Green Ban Fusiliers
em = By Denis Kevans
Chorus:
Up Broadway to the MBA come the green ban fusiliers,
They stole the street, with their striding feet, placards high above their ears,
Move over squire, in the black maria, are there any season tickets in here?
And up Broadway to the MBA, come the green ban fusiliers.
Half-smart thieves, with their gucci sleeves, and carparks on the brain,
Told the usual lies, the trees have got to die, figtrees in Sydney's Domain.
Some said: "Joe, we've gotta let 'em go, its only rotten timber to be cleared",
Ah, but listen to the trees, as they whisper to the breeze, and the green ban fusiliers.
Bulldozer blades made a lightning raid, they come in with a rhino rush,
Moving in for the kill, at Hunter's Hill, at beautiful Kelly's Bush,
But Kelly's Battlers lay, in the bulldozers' way, 'n the buckin' and the shudderin' of the gears,
"Hip-hoo-bloody-ray!", cause they won the day, with those green ban fusiliers.
They stood and they fought the developers' rorts, at the Rocks and Woolloomooloo,
On chimney tops, see them waltz with the cops, to save a bit of Sydney for you,
And the finance-sleaze, who made refugees, of families who flourished there for years,
Finished on their arse, and they did their brass, with the green ban fusiliers.
Through the years, those old fusiliers, their ghosts are marching again,
From the dizzy heights, and the concrete sites, in sunshine and in rain,
That patch of green's getting a lovely sheen, no matter how many flow the years,
And it's up Broadway, to the MBA, come the green ban fusiliers.
[From Denis Kevans' book, The Bastard Who Stole the Grapes in Me Bag, available from Left Book Club.]