Eighteen Wheels
Words and Music Pat Drummond
For Paul Hayman and 'The Clipper' and 'The Hamilton Family', Whitton, Victoria
Dateline: Mildura - Balranald Oct 6th, 2000

A song for all the commercial drivers who traverse Australia's vast inland distances overnight and with whom we have shared so many campsites and conversations.

A Brigantine on a coal black river

racing westward through an arc of light

My faring stretching to the heavens

like a sail of white

I carry cargo from the Port of Melbourne

I set my course upon the Castlereagh

under a starlburst sky tonight

I will sail away

Chorus: Eighteen wheels

I'm like the tide that will never stop turning

twenty four gears

beneath the stars spinning cold and bright

and a heart

I am an engine on fire

roaring through the night

I woke this morning to a wheaten ocean

my vessel anchored in a roadside bay

Out of the north a wind that bore

the scent of new mown hay

And to the west, a summer storm went dancing

lakes of mallee lashed by golden rain

Was that an eagle or an albatross

that I saw sail away? Chorus.

 

I am a Captain on the currents of commerce

swept out on the seas of trade

I am the skipper of a 'double B'

A sailor on an inland sea

from Albany to Arno Bay

from Albury to Adelaide

I will sail my ship away

Seven hours through the sun bleached sand dunes

Seven hours through the seas of grain

Seven more and I'll be home at last in the harbour again.

Chorus x 3