Gumpi Ferry Terminal Groove

Lyrics

I walked into Goompi Hall
Easels standing in a row
Sunlight slid across the floor
Polite smiles in a gentle glow
Boards of pastel futures beamed
Each one neatly pre-approved
Everyone was friendly
Everyone meant well
But looking at those pictures
You could immediately tell
The story started somewhere else
Long before we walked inside

I raised a quiet hand
Got a Li-DAR scan?
I’ll feed it through my Gen-A.I.
See what designs might fly
The staffer blinked and said
Above my pay-grade friend
No one’s asked me that before
I’ll float it up the chain for sure

No villains in the sunlight
Just a shallow kind of care
Placards filled with pastel breeze
But the earth is missing there
Show the depth beneath the paint
Show the tides that pull the sand
Then let coders, Elders and kids
Shape the future by their hand

Where's the ground beneath the picture?
Where's the shape beneath the paint?
Where's the survey, where's the data?
Show us what the artists can't
If this gateway belongs to all of us
Why can't we see it all?
The future shouldn't start and end
Inside a town hall

Sea-link ferries shine like spaceships
Cleaner than the ones before
But every other year the tickets climb
Squeezing locals more and more
And no one believes somehow
The numbers will come down
Money flows across the water
To the big end shareholder town

Give us the point-cloud, love,
give us the baseline keys;
Maybe most ideas are rubbish
Maybe ninety-nine won't stick
But one might solve our parking
Or make the wildlife safer
Or start a new business
Or teach skills that never leave
And one might change the island
To keep the value locally

Where's the ground beneath the picture?
Where's the shape beneath the paint?
Where's the point cloud, where's the baseline?
Show us what the artists can't
The public pays for every scan
Every survey line
Why should the knowledge disappear
The moment it's designed?
I don't want a perfect future
I don't think one exists
Every choice creates another problem
Nobody can fully fix
But give the school the site model
Give local Elders the same view
Give local builders and programmers
A chance to think it through

So show us the ground beneath the picture
Show us what is really there
Not because we hate the project
Not because we do not care
But because the strongest future
Isn't bought and shipped ashore
It's built by people standing here
Who'll still be here when others go

We don’t want a perfect plan,
just one that we can see;
share the load and share the file,
set the data free.
Maybe most ideas will fail,
that’s the cost of trying true;
We don’t want a perfect plan,
just one that we can see;
share the load and share the file,
set the data free.