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> Danny Spooner > Songs > Put a Light in Every Country Window

Put a Light in Every Country Window

[Dan Henderson]

Peter Dickie sang Dan Henderson’s song Put a Light in Every Country Window in 1967 on Martyn Wyndham-Read’s, Phyl Vinnicombe’s and his album Bullockies, Bushwackers & Booze. He noted:

Written by Don Henderson, probably our best known singer-songwriter of topical songs, after a trip through the great Snowy Mountain Hydro-Electric Scheme. Although particularly known for his more political songs, Put a Light is certainly one of his most popular compositions.

And Martyn Wyndham-Read and Danny Spooner sang Put a Light in Every Country Window in 1989 on their album All Around Down Under. They noted:

From the pen of one of Australia’s most prolific songwriters, it celebrates the coming of the electricity grid, and the heroic engineering feats that were entailed—and reminds us that such progress causes the passing of some great Australian institutions like the Coolgardie safe.

Lyrics

Martyn Wyndham-Read and Danny Spooner sing Put a Light in Every Country Window

Miners tunnel to feed the fires at Wangi
Others scrape the brown coal at Yallourn
Turbine blades are yielding to the tumbling tons of Eildon
And the Snowy will be finished before long

Chorus (after each verse):
Put a light in every country window
High-speed pumps where now the windmills stand
Get in and lay the cable so that one day we’ll be able
To have electricity all over this wide land

The little farms and giant outback stations
They all are mechanised today
For milking cows and shearing sheep to do it fast and do it cheap
Electrically is the modern way

The old Coolgardie and the red-hot woodstove
They all have seen their day at last
For now the ice and fire that is coming on the wire
Has made them all relics of the past

Acknowledgements

Transcribed by Garry Gillard