Works

I

This is the sunburnt bushman who
Came down from Goondiwindi, Q.

II

This is the Push from Waterloo
That spotted the sunburnt bushman who
Came down from Goondiwindi, Q.
...

It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down.
He loitered here, he loitered there, till he was like to drop,...

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from Old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses, he was worth a thousand pound,...

The widow sought the lawyer's room with children three in tow,
She told the lawyer man her tale in tones of deepest woe.
She said, "My husband took to drink for pains in his inside,...

In distant New Zealand, whose tresses of gold
The billows are ceaselessly combing,
Away in a village all tranquil and old
I came on a market where porkers were sold,
A market for pigs in the gloaming.
...

The Maoris are a mighty race, the finest ever known;
Before the missionaries came they worshipped wood and stone;
They went to war and fought like fiends, and when the war was done...

(Air: 'Little Sally Waters.')


The night is dark and stormy, and the sky is clouded o'er;
Our horses we will mount and ride away,
To watch the squatters' cattle through the darkness of the night,...

I wooed her with a steeplechase, I won her with a fall,
I made her heartstrings quiver on the flat
When the pony missed his take-off, and we crashed into the wall;
Well, she simply had to have me after that!...

Here in my mountain home,
On rugged hills and steep,
I sit and watch you come,
O Riverinia Sheep!

You come from the fertile plains
Where saltbush (sometimes) grows,...

Come, all you jolly natives, and I'll relate to you
Some of my observations'adventures, too, a few.
I've travelled about the country for miles, full many a score,...

By the winding Wollondilly where the weeping willows weep,
And the shepherd, with his billy, half awake and half asleed,
Folds his fleecy flocks that linger homewards in the setting sun...

The London lights are far abeam
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;
And down the Channel, groping blind,
We drive her through the haze...

Oh, my name is Bob the Swagman, before you all I stand,
And I've had many ups and downs while travelling through the land.
I once was well-to-do, my boys, but now I am stumped up,...

Oh! the shearing is all over,
And the wool is coming down,
And I mean to get a wife, boys,
When I go up to town.
Everything that has two legs
Represents itself in view,
From the little paddy-melon...

My name is old Jack Palmer,
I'm a man of olden days,
And so I wish to sing a song
To you of olden praise.
To tell of merry friends of old
When we were gay and young;
How we sat and sang together...

Our money's all spent, to the deuce went it!
The landlord, he looks glum,
On the tap-room wall, in a very bad scrawl,
He has chalked to us a sum.
But a glass we'll take, ere the grey dawn break,...

The sheep were shorn and the wool went down
At the time of our local racing;
And I'd earned a spell, I was burnt and brown,
So I rolled my swag for a trip to town
And a look at the steeplechasing.
...

In the good old days when the Army's ways were simple and unrefined,
With a stock to keep their chins in front, and a pigtail down behind,
When the only light in the barracks at night was a candle of grease or fat,...

I had ridden over hurdles up the country once or twice,
By the side of Snowy River with a horse they called "The Ace".
And we brought him down to Sydney, and our rider, Jimmy Rice,...

There's a trade you all know well'
It's bringing cattle over'
I'll tell you all about the time
When I became a drover.
I made up my mind to try the spec,
To the Clarence I did wander,...