The wind out here's like a cross-cut saw, the land is red and green
The summer sun's hanging in a pale blue sky, the air is sharp and clean
There's a frozen moment in waving grain, food for a hungry world
But we can't clothe ourselves with the check, we can barely feed ourselves
At night I lie awake and worry and the debts go round and round
Furrows in my night time forehead,
And furrows on borrowed ground
There's and old galv shed with a laughing lean, it's kept the tractor dry
I remember the day when we knocked it up with stringy bark and fencing wire
The earthen floor's been beaten hard, where the rain hasn't cut a path
I'm frightened to look because I'm beaten too and the mice run through the chaff
And I lie on my bed, staring into the red
And the overdraft won't come down
And it's hard work keeping your family together,
Living on borrowed ground
And I don't blame your brother, son, for moving into town
It's no place here for a bright young man,
Living on borrowed ground.
And I watch all the programs on the ABC,
After the sun's gone down
Lucy Broad's talking on "Countrywide",
Talking about borrowed ground.
We don't own this place anymore and I don't know how or why.
There's some money-men coming from Sydney who tell me it's only a matter or time.
Well, I hope they can read the seasons and they're not here just to muck around
'Cause they've still got to feed a nation,
They've got to feed them from borrowed ground.