In regards to the meaning of this song:
Before a live performance on the EP Five Stories Falling, Geoff states “It’s about the last time I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, and I saw that she was dying and it was the last time I was going to see her. It is about realizing how young you are, but how quickly you can go.”
That’s the thing about Geoff and his sublime poetry, you think it’s about one thing, but really it’s about something entirely different. But the lyrics are still universal and omnipresent, ubiquitous, even. So relatable. That’s one thing I love about this band. I also love their live performances, raw energy and Geoff’s beautiful, imperfectly perfect vocals. His voice soothes my aching soul.
A dragon with the head of a bulldog,
A mountain with a crop of white snow,
A blue sky over Glenorchy,
And I've got nowhere to go.
I didn't ask for your name little sister,
I didn't ask for you to come through the door.
I dreamed of a face, a curtain of lace,
An apple that had no core.
A tail with the girth of a fat man's thigh
Slid up around the corner and was burnt upon my eye,
A winter light confused my sight in Glenorchy tonight
When I thought that I had nothing to see.
So I asked the lady at 13,
Invalid at 32,
With a bottle of red, only fresh from bed,
By the letterbox.
She thinks she doesn't see
The things I think I see,
Blind by 11 and wearing her dead mother's socks.
Alright
I was hiding in the Swan Terrace garden,
I saw the to and fro-ing, come and going of the street,
There's not a lot of doing in Glenorchy of a Tuesday,
Shivering I accepted my defeat.
But as I rose up ginger I was arrested by a sight
That flickered in my periphery,
A reflection in a Hillman Hunter window,
I saw that the creature was me.
Now the heart of a monster is the heart of a child
Who never had to grow into a man -
If nobody could recognise the Bunyip of Glenorchy,
Then wherever there's a monster no-one can,
Then wherever there's a monster no-one can,
Then wherever there's a monster no-one can.
A mountain with a crop of white snow,
A blue sky over Glenorchy,
And I've got nowhere to go.
I didn't ask for your name little sister,
I didn't ask for you to come through the door.
I dreamed of a face, a curtain of lace,
An apple that had no core.
A tail with the girth of a fat man's thigh
Slid up around the corner and was burnt upon my eye,
A winter light confused my sight in Glenorchy tonight
When I thought that I had nothing to see.
So I asked the lady at 13,
Invalid at 32,
With a bottle of red, only fresh from bed,
By the letterbox.
She thinks she doesn't see
The things I think I see,
Blind by 11 and wearing her dead mother's socks.
Alright
I was hiding in the Swan Terrace garden,
I saw the to and fro-ing, come and going of the street,
There's not a lot of doing in Glenorchy of a Tuesday,
Shivering I accepted my defeat.
But as I rose up ginger I was arrested by a sight
That flickered in my periphery,
A reflection in a Hillman Hunter window,
I saw that the creature was me.
Now the heart of a monster is the heart of a child
Who never had to grow into a man -
If nobody could recognise the Bunyip of Glenorchy,
Then wherever there's a monster no-one can,
Then wherever there's a monster no-one can,
Then wherever there's a monster no-one can.
Lyrics submitted by Loial
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I saw Augie March a couple of weekends ago at Dark Mofo in Hobart. The theme of the gig, linked with the theme of the Dark Mofo festival, was dark lyrics. At the end of the song Glenn declared that this song is about a paedophile.
Glenorchy is a suburb of Hobart in Tasmania when GR now lives. The open lyrics refer to kunanyi/Mt Wellington which dominates the skyline from Hobart. The profile of the mountain as seen from Glenorchy is like a dragon with a bulldog head. In winter it is often snow covered and llok brilliant on those clear winter blue sky days.
The remainder of the song seems to about people suspecting the behaviour of the monster but always looking the other way, and if everyone looks the other way, then surely they too are all as guilty.
PS: The bunyip is a large mythical creature from Australian Aboriginal mythology, said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes. The origin of the word bunyip has been traced to the Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia language of Aboriginal people of Victoria, in South-Eastern Australia