Thunder Across The Reef

Out off the coast of Semaphore
There’s not a seagull in sight…
Black clouds tower in the wind and the rain and it looks like a dirty night
The Star of Greece, she got her harbour clearance with a load of grain for home
The wind is tugging at the rigging, there’s a low and a broken moan
Sailors arrive at their cross roads too
Lines on a chart, etched in blue
Stern to the wind, run with the sea
There’s thunder across the reef
A run of ragged cliffs from Kingston to the Fleurieu
Working the wind north-west
There was almost an inch of rain that night, green rolling over the deck
17 hands on the Star of Greece in the cold and the dark and the rain
And all but six or seven of them won’t make land again
Twenty miles off course that night, driven too close to the beach
Home is the sailor, home from the sea
There’s thunder across the reef
Evening falls and a soft breeze brushes Port Willunga bay
And the rising moon is a silver disc sliding up through the haze
You can hear those sailors in the mizzen screaming above the wind
Just outside the holding ground, on the dark side of the green