"Weevils in the Flour" is a song derived from a poem written in 1960 by Dorothy Hewett, "Where I Grew to be a Man" (often titled "Island in a River").
The islands at the mouth of the Hunter River at Newcastle, NSW, were once in the 1840s a naturalist’s paradise, where artists, scientists and collectors visited.
Also in 1913, the State sought to redevelop “useless swamp lands along the south arm of the Hunter River” and convert them to industrial heartlands.
The NSW Minister for Works resumed much of Muscheto Island for "homes for Dockyard workers" but nothing was built and the site stood empty.
In 1955 a flood devastated the settlement, In the 1960s, families living there were issued with resumption orders and the entire area was devoted to heavy industry and a coal port.
After the Tribune publication in November 1960, the family self-copied a combined book of poems by Hewett and Lilley called What about the People!
During a taxi ride in Newcastle, Hewett was told by the driver that her poem was "written there on Kooragang Island by some unknown industrial worker in the 1930s".