Mary My Love
Over the Blue
two songs for Burra
Written for Burra’s 180th anniversary in 2025, Mary, My Love grew from discovering my husband family history in the town. Emlyn’s great great great great grandparents Mary and Joseph Roberts and seven of their children, travelled from Cornwall to live and work in Burra.
The song brought together my work as writer, composer and performer with the place where we now live.
Mary, My Love was first performed during Burra’s 180th anniversary celebrations in 2025 and featured on ABC National News. In May 2026, the Regional Council of Goyder invited Emlyn and me to perform it again, with Over the Blue, at Back to Burra: Australia ICOMOS 50th Celebration, a national gathering of heritage professionals at Redruth Gaol.
It marked an important shift in my practice: from making professional work while living in Burra to making work that could only have come from living here, to becoming a truly embedded regional composer, where place is at the centre of my artistic world.
Listen
From My Notebook
Mary my love, I’m not a rich man
I am a man who works with his hands
putting my back to the hard rock of Cornwall
Deep underground I’ve been digging this land.
For my heart’s in this land, heart’s in the land.
Mary my love, I’m not a wise man
I keep my head above where my feet stand
I thought I’d live out my days here in Cornwall
Til my last day when I’d die on this land.
For my heart’s in this land, heart’s in the land.
But Mary they say there’s a ship in the harbor
at Plymouth, that’s going to sea.
I could take you out beyond the horizon
Bound for the new colony
they say they need miners like me, Mary.
they say they need miners like me.
Mary my love, I’m not a young man
Not many years left til I’m heaven bound
But this is a chance, a chance to start over
A chance for a man who digs underground.
For Mary they say there’s a ship in the harbor
at Plymouth, that’s going to sea.
I could take you out beyond the horizon
Bound for the new colony
They say they need miners like me, Mary
Mary won’t you come with me.
They say they need miners like me, Mary
Mary won’t you come with me.