Six Months in a Leaky Boat

This song is about the roughly six-month sea voyage explorers like Captain Cook made from Britain to colonize Australia and New Zealand. It was written by Split Enz leader Tim Finn, a native New Zealander who spent time in Australia. He was inspired by a book called The Tyranny Of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History, written by Geoffrey Blainey and published in 1966. He lifted part of the book title for the line: The tyranny of distance Didn't stop the cavalier So why should it stop me I'll conquer and stay free

In the last verse, Tim Finn hints that there is more to the song than the story of a voyage: Shipwrecked love can be cruel Don't be fooled by her kind He hasn't discussed the lyric in detail, but his brother/bandmate Neil Finn said it became "a personal song about the breakup of a relationship."

This caused controversy when some assumed the song was an attack on the British invasion of the Falkland Islands. But that would be impossible because it was recorded in January 1982, months before the Falklands invasion. Still, the BBC didn't want a song about leaky boats on their airwaves at this time and banned the song during the conflict.