When I returned from London in 1976 it took me a little time to get back into my suburban Australian skin. Living in Brixton and travelling around Europe was a wonderful experience for a callow suburban youth but I felt keenly a sense of displacement on my return.  Others had moved on with their lives. Even those who had been away themselves had settled back in Perth and gone about the business of a standardised life of job, partner, Sunday Session as if the intervening time had been a dream. This song sought to explore that notion. While it was recorded on the original clear Victoria/Shenton Park tapes in 1977 only on WHEN has it been fully evolved with some fine lap-steel from Tony Durant and neat production from Martin Cilia and David Briggs who once played ironically with The Little River Band “so good you don’t even know they’re Australian” as  my Lonely Bar Room Crawler once remarked.

Yvonne Cilia has done this beautiful abstract to match the mood.

I come home what do I find   My house is empty and my friends have all gone

All alone but I’m able to see  The path they took when they left without me

Married to the enemy married to the enemy

They say you need stock grain to sow The nomad has no place to go

Come and join us they say Why do you behave in this way

I can only look at them and tell them and beseech them and say darling

Lord I do not what I feel  I only feel what I know

Lord I do not know what I feel  I only feel what I know

Oh no, I remember now, bridges that we built

They burned them when they left

Cause the enemy said it was necessary

Now we wave sometimes from opposite sides

And they cast their words to the wind

But their language has changed with the times

And I can only stand there and grin

I can only look at them and beseech them and say darling

Lord I do not what I feel  I only feel what I know

Lord I do not know what I feel  I only feel what I know