This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
There's a corrugated highway
Leading north from Port Augusta
Lined with ratted cars that didn't rate a tow
The Salt plains out of Pimba
And your eyes begin to stream
On to Kingoonya, huddled dusty by the road
Romantic notions shattered
Like the tyres that didn't hack it
This has got to be the country's last frontier
Where a sports car's next to useless
Running cattle grids and river beds
We drove a van from 1963
Someone mentioned walkabout
And kiss your job goodbye
Just to see the country shimmer through the windscreen
Drinking beer, telling stories
While laughter filled the night
And flexi-time's behind you like a bad dream
You got a flat on Anzac Highway
And Lawson on your shelf
Its a Southern Comfort, air-conditioned rage
Where a homestead's more than just a cheap print
Dangling from a wall
And mateship's more than lines upon a page
We went looking for Australia
In between the TV lines
'Cause the ABC just couldn't make it real
A colour documentary
From a beanbag on the floor
Never shows as much as it conceals
A stark and blistered Alice Springs
And a river runs with shame
And you wipe the sheets of bulldust from your eyes
Another country's uniform
And the mirage it falls apart
To the open gap between the truth and lies
"Go and see your country, mate"
The travel agents scream
Politicians sell its heart just for a pasttime
Signs and high-wire fences
Hold the land where I belong
It's as if I'm in the outback for the last time
Leading north from Port Augusta
Lined with ratted cars that didn't rate a tow
The Salt plains out of Pimba
And your eyes begin to stream
On to Kingoonya, huddled dusty by the road
Romantic notions shattered
Like the tyres that didn't hack it
This has got to be the country's last frontier
Where a sports car's next to useless
Running cattle grids and river beds
We drove a van from 1963
Someone mentioned walkabout
And kiss your job goodbye
Just to see the country shimmer through the windscreen
Drinking beer, telling stories
While laughter filled the night
And flexi-time's behind you like a bad dream
You got a flat on Anzac Highway
And Lawson on your shelf
Its a Southern Comfort, air-conditioned rage
Where a homestead's more than just a cheap print
Dangling from a wall
And mateship's more than lines upon a page
We went looking for Australia
In between the TV lines
'Cause the ABC just couldn't make it real
A colour documentary
From a beanbag on the floor
Never shows as much as it conceals
A stark and blistered Alice Springs
And a river runs with shame
And you wipe the sheets of bulldust from your eyes
Another country's uniform
And the mirage it falls apart
To the open gap between the truth and lies
"Go and see your country, mate"
The travel agents scream
Politicians sell its heart just for a pasttime
Signs and high-wire fences
Hold the land where I belong
It's as if I'm in the outback for the last time
Lyrics submitted by blood is thin
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