FIREFIGHTERS' CAROL
(Leigh Newton, 1999)


It was late on Christmas Eve and it was hot as hell they said,
The country fire fighters were on stand-by at the shed.
When the fire phone went off they quickly drank some water down,
There was a fire in a paddock on the outskirts of town.

They went roaring out of town to where the grass was long and dry.
There were farmers, there were sheep and there was something in the sky.
There were people in the middle of a fire as white as snow;
They thought it must be chemicals but how were they to know?

Chorus: 
It takes a tiny flame to spark the blazing,
It happens in the dark of night as well as heat of day, 
And when the wind is up there's not a thing can stop the burning.
A bushfire in the country isn't ever far away.

They unrolled a length of hose and started squirting in the air,
But nothing slowed the burning of the people who were there.
The pump was getting hot while pumping water all about,
Then someone laughed and called out, "Hey! You can't put an angel out!"

The siren roared, the pagers beeped: another fire in town!
They grabbed the hoses, climbed on board and turned the truck around;
There was fire at the hotel burning bright above the shed, 
"Must be petrol, could be whisky, maybe rum," the captain said.

Chorus

They squirted from the truck and from the hoses on the ground,
They grabbed the foam extinguisher for liquids that were found.
When someone said "The light is cool and not a fire at all,
"It's a comet burning up in space, like none we've seen before."

They went inside and found the most amazing story there,
A mum and dad and baby, there was static in the air,
They couldn't work it out, no, this was not your normal sight,
It was like they heard a thousand voices crying in the night

Chorus