The Cable And The Wheel
Words and music: Pat Drummond.
Dateline - Wiseman's Ferry, New South Wales.
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Since 1991, I have spent a great part of
my life travelling; a Voss-like journey, some might argue, through
the homes and hearts of Australians in search of the values that
define my homeland. With the birth of our much loved new daughter
Josie (some 13 years after we thought our family was complete)
I have come to realise, with some sadness, that these rather
romantic periods of rambling, and the wonderful songs they have
brought to me, are coming to an end. Driving home, one evening
along the northern side of the mighty Hawkesbury River, I came
at dusk to the historic settlement of Wiseman's Ferry and to
an unexpected conversation with a young ferry driver. This song,
about the nature of reality and perception, is for those of us
who will work in one place all our lives. It is a reminder of
the human heart's capacity to transcend the limitations of our
circumstance.
Tim crosses the river a hundred times a day.
It is a life spent travelling nowhere for a
ferrymaster's pay.
I said, "Every now and then, as you watch
the river bend,
don't you wish that you were sailing away?"
And he gazed up at the mountain, as
if searching for a sign,
and said " I'll answer you your question
if you'll answer one of mine."
Chorus: I am sailing a river that is rolling
to the sea.
I am watching the light upon the mountain change.
When the river turns to fire at the dusk of
every day,
I am sailing away, I am sailing away, across
the river, cross the river to the range.
Then he pointed to the water off the ferry's
starboard side.
"Is it the cable or the wheel that is
in motion through the tide?"
Though vision chose the cable and reason cried
'the wheel'
My spirit said 'The river on the steel!'
Then he looked up at the mountain with a gesture
of his hand.
As the sunlight moved across it I began to
understand.
We are sailing on a river that is flowing to
an ocean;
that is moving round a planet; that is constantly
in motion.
It rolls across the universe and spins around
the sun
and, at the end of every day, we
are a million miles away
from the place we were when the day was first
begun.
It is the fire on the water and the light upon
the range
which speaks to me of all the distance we have
done.
As we pulled into St. Albans and the gates
swung open wide,
I parked my car and rode the ferry to the other
side;
while every worker in an office; every prisoner
in a cell;
rode beside me as a voyager as well.
While a stream of day commuters cross that
river in their cars,
the captain of the wheelhouse sails his ferry
through the stars.
Chorus: I am sailing a river that is rolling
to the sea.
I am watching the light upon the mountain change.
When the river turns to fire at the dusk of
every day,
I am sailing away, I am sailing away, across
the river, 'cross the river to the range.
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