> Danny Spooner > Songs > Newell Highway

Newell Highway

[words John Warner, music G.H.H. Parry (1872)]

Margaret Walters sang John Warner’s song Newell Highway on their 1997 album Who Was Here?. They noted:

This song celebrates the Warrumbungle Ranges in inland New South Wales. John first heard the tune, C.H.H. Parry’s melody for the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, in his earliest childhood as a theme to a BBC radio programme, and it is adapted here from that memory.

Danny Spooner sang John Warner’s song Newell Highway on his 2007 CD of fairly contemporary Australian songs, Emerging Tradition. The printed lyrics in his album’s booklet are nearly identical to Warner’s but his actual singing differs in a few phrases. He noted:

John Warner penned this piece in 1985, after a visit to the Warrumbungle Mountains in inland New South Wales. A committed conservationist, John borrowed the tune of the well-loved Anglican hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind (G.H.H. Parry) to remind us how ‘progress’ has encroached upon and damaged some of our most precious assets and continues to do sol.

Lyrics

Margaret Walters sings Newell Highway

Awake before the dawn, within the spires of range
Where magpies ornate melodies
Engrave the chilly morning breeze
Beneath the towering stone,
Beneath the towering stone.

On nights of silver moon, too rich to waste on sleep,
In silence make your way to seek
The choirs of frog in swamp and creek
That sing beneath the stars,
That sing beneath the stars.

Out on the Western Plain beside the roaring road,
Where trucks snarl by without a care,
Are billabongs with ibis there
And wedge-tail eagles soar,
And wedge-tail eagles soar.

All you who love the earth and make her ways your choice,
Cry out against the noise of trade
Demand that silence should be made
So that all might hear her voice,
Her ancient, matchless voice.

Danny Spooner sings Newell Highway

Awake before the dawn, within the spire of range
Where magpies ornate melody
Engrave the chilly morning breeze
Beneath the towering stone,
Beneath the towering stone.

On nights of silver moon, too rich to waste on sleep,
In silence make your way to seek
The choir of frog in swamp and creek
That sing beneath the stars,
That sing beneath the stars.

Out on the Western Plain beside the rolling road,
Where trucks snarl by without a care,
Are billabongs with ibis there
And wedge-tail eagles soar,
And wedge-tail eagles soar.

All you who love the earth and make her ways your choice,
Cry out against the noise of trade
Demand that silence be maintained
So all may hear her voice,
Her ancient, matchless voice.

Acknowledgements

Thank you very much to Gerry Myerson for information on John Warner’s own version of this song.