"blue sky mine"

A song based on real history events

"blue sky mine"

There are a lot of songs that are bases on real history events, but there is this cool song wrote by midnight oils in 1990 named "blue sky mine". This song talks about the wittenoom asbestos mine in western Australia where blue asbestos was minded between 1947 and 1966. The once-triving town is now a ghost town witch no one visits. Shops are boarded up, the only tow schools are closed, and the local cinema is abandoned. it is estimated that 5000 persons from the 20000 men who mined asbestos there will die from related diseases. The word “blue" refers to the blue asbestos, and the phrase "sugar refining company" refers to colonial sugar refining company (CSR), the owner of the mines. CSR never did something to improve the working conditions of the mines. Miners had to crawl around on their knees scratching for blue asbestos. 20 years later the CRS built vents so that miners could breath fresh air. This was described as the "greatest industrial disaster in Australia" by the asbestos diseases society of Australia. The main theme throughout blue sky mine is also workers right, no one should have to work in the conditions that the CSR gave to the miners, unfortunately for most of the people, it was there only choice, they had nowhere else to go. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Midnight oil is an Australian rock band recognized because of their particular hard-rock sound, live intense presentation and the open political activism.

Fans know this band like "the oils". They started like a progressive rock band called "farm" in the 70's. Later they transformed into the known hard-rock group of midnight oil. They were associated withe the surfer communities near Sydney. One of the firsts bases of their fans were on the north beaches

Lyrics
There'll be food on the table tonight
There'll be pay in your pocket tonight

My gut is wrenched out it is crunched up and broken
My life that is lived is no more than a token
Who'll strike the flint upon the stone and tell me why?

If I yell out at night there's a reply of blue silence
The screen is no comfort I can't speak my sentence
They blew the lights at heaven's gate and I don't know why

But if I work all day on the blue sky mine
(There'll be food on the table tonight)
Still I walk up and down on the blue sky mine
(There'll be pay in your pocket tonight)

The candy store paupers lie to the shareholders
They're crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers
The balance sheet is breaking up the sky

So I'm caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night

And if you blue sky mining company won't come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won't save me

Who's gonna save me?

But if I work all day on the blue sky mine
(There'll be food on the table tonight)
And if I walk up and down on the blue sky mine
(There'll be pay in your pocket tonight)
And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing's as precious
As a hole in the ground

Who's gonna save me?
I pray that sense and reason brings us in
Who's gonna save me?
We've got nothing to fear

In the end the rain comes down
Washes clean the streets of a blue sky mine