Lyrics: Bill Scott/ Music: Roger Ilott © 1999
Restless Music APRA/AMCOS
Bill
lives in Warwick, Queensland, Australia, these days. This is from one of his other eight lives. He says "When working aboard the
Commonwealth lighthouse vessel, Cape Leeuwin, in the early fifties, we
often saw some of the pearling fleet anchored among the reefs of the Barrier
where they harvested trochus shell. The
sound of the crews' voices in song drifting across the twilit still waters
haunts me still with its beauty."
Gordon – 12-string guitar
Quasimodal Chorus - vocals
I am living dry and placid
now among encircling mountains,
An old man still remembering the days
that used to be,
But I close my eyes and live again
those days of sweat and laughter,
When we worked the trochus luggers* in
the western Coral Sea.
Sailing in a black hulled lugger with
a lookout at the masthead,
You may drift along the coral cays and
anchor where you please,
In the glassy leeside waters of some
rocky offshore island,
Though the outer reef be trembling
under pounding whitened seas.
Chorus:
Laddie oh… Laddie ay, Laddie oh…
Laddie ay. (2x)
You may anchor calm and safely in the
shallows over coral,
Where the waters glimmer peacock in a
hundred shifting shades,
You can hear the rippling wavelets
tinkle gently on the beaches,
And the stays and braces strumming in
the southeast trades.
Chorus…
To the north of Lizard Island and to
the south of Iron Range,
In my dreams I am returning to the
place where I would be,
To the laughing Torres Straitsmen
singing softly in the twilight,
To the trochus lugger's anchorage in
Princess Charlotte Bay.
Chorus…
*Trochus is a large mollusk, Perhaps the boast were once lug rigged, but
I've seen pictures of ketches, and Bill says he's seen motor boats called
luggers.
Trochus
Boats
is recorded on the album Herrings in the Bay