The Ocean Last Night (1st Tolstoi Excerpt)

Postwar Panorama by Gregory Day

This song has been written for the children of the Aireys Inlet Primary School in Victoria, Australia, to sing. It has a mixture of English and Wadawurrung words. The Wadawurrung language has been spoken and sung in Aireys Inlet, or Mangowak, for millenia.

The Mangowak Song

The Mangowak Song is the official school song of the Aireys Inlet Primary School in Wadawurrung country, Victoria Australia. Mangowak is the original name of the colonial pastoral settlement currently called Aireys Inlet. The song includes both Wadawurrung and English words and accompanies the WWW (Wadawurrung Word of the Week) program at the school.

Lyrics for The Mangowak Song here...

I go to school in Mangowak
Where the murnong grows
Where the garra blooms
By the wintry roads

I’ve got a smart tonton
Like the old ngoorrang
Where the boonea swims
That’s where I am

I’ve got a friend called Boo
Who is very very shy
And a mate called ko-im
Who jumps really high

But we all fly
Like Bunjil and Parrwang
We all cry
Until we feel we’re safe and warm

Like the little word merri
Which means ‘the sun’
And when you add a little jig
It says ‘well done’


And at night we dream 
where the bunyips roam
With the the light of the yern
To guide us home

We all fly
Like Bunjil and Parwang
We all cry
Until we find our place in the world

So we give our hearts
To the spirits in the land
And we say nyurra wurriyn
To the Wadawurrung clans

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Mangowak – Aireys Inlet
Murnong – yam daisy 
Garra - wattle 

Tonton - brain
Ngoorrang - bullant
Boonea - eel 

Boo - bandicoot
go-im - kangaroo

Bunjil – wedge tailed eagle 
Parrwang (barrawarn) - magpie

Merri (meerree) - sun
merridjig – well done

bunyip – mythological creature 
yern - moon

Bunjil – wedge tailed eagle 
Parrwang - magpie

Nyurra wurriyn - hello
Wadawurrung – the people of Wadawurrung country

Mangowak Song

The Gannet - Gregory Day

The Flash Road

First Ever Car (from 'The Flash Road' by Gregory Day)

Gregory Day is a novelist, poet and musician based in Victoria, Australia. He is best known for his Mangowak novels, which document generational, demographic and environmental change on the 21st century coast of southwest Victoria, Australia, and also for his 2015 novel Archipelago Of Souls. He has been acclaimed for his musical compositions and recordings, notably his settings and singing of the poetry of WB Yeats on the album The Black Tower", and his project The Flash Road", which narrates in a sung and highly literary musical style the building of the Great Ocean Road in southwest Victoria in the years following The Great War.

gregory day