We Are Going

They came in to the little town A semi-naked band subdued and silent All that remained of their tribe. They came here to the place of their old bora ground Where now the many white men hurry about like ants. Notice of the estate agent reads: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here'. Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring. 'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers. We belong here, we are of the old ways. We are the corroboree and the bora ground, We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders. We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends told. We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires. We are the lightening bolt over Gaphembah Hill Quick and terrible, And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow. We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon. We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low. We are nature and the past, all the old ways Gone now and scattered. The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter. The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place. The bora ring is gone. The corroboree is gone. And we are going.'

loss belonging elegy somber

We Are Going - meaning Summary

Dispossession and Cultural Loss

The poem voices an Aboriginal perspective on dispossession, describing a diminished people returning to a sacred site now desecrated by white settlement. The speaker claims ancestral belonging and recounts vanished cultural practices, animals, and landscape features to register loss. The repeated identification with ceremonies, Dreaming stories, and natural life frames colonization as erasure. The final resignation—departure from place—encapsulates grief, displacement, and the end of traditional life in that locality.

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