Works

In Dublin town I was brought up, in that city of great fame'
My decent friends and parents, they will tell to you the same.
It was for the sake of five hundred pounds I was sent across the main,...

We've travelled per Joe Gardiner, a humping of our swag
In the country of the Gidgee and Belar.
We've swum the Di'mantina with our raiment in a bag,
And we've travelled per superior motor car,...

I ain't the kind of bloke as takes to any steady job;
I drives me bottle cart around the town;
A bloke what keeps 'is eyes about can always make a bob,
I couldn't bear to graft for every brown....

Lonely and sadly one night in November
I laid down my weary head in search of repose
On my wallet of straw, which I long shall remember,
Tired and weary I fell into a doze.
Tired from working hard...

Shadows of the twilight falling
On the mountain's brow,
To each other birds are calling,
In the leafy bough.
Where the daisies are a-springing,
And the cattle bells are ringing,...

It lies beyond the Western Pines
Beneath the sinking sun,
And not a survey mark defines,
The bounds of "Brumby's Run".

On odds and ends of mountain land,
On tracks of range and rock...

Out where the grey streams glide,
Sullen and deep and slow,
And the alligators slide
From the mud to the depths below
Or drift on the stream like a floating death,...

Far to the Northward there lies a land,
A wonderful land that the winds blow over,
And none may fathom or understand
The charm it holds for the restless rover;
A great grey chaos, a land half made,...

Beside the bare and beaten track of travelling flocks and herds
The woodpecker went tapping on, the postman of the birds,
"I've got a letter here," he said, "that no one's understood,...

Here lies a bloke who's just gone West,
A Number One Australian;
He took his gun and did his best
To mitigate the alien.
So long as he could get to work
He needed no sagacity;...

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,...

[By A New Chum]

(Air: 'So Early in the Morning.')


When first I came to Sydney Cove
And up and down the streets did rove,
I thought such sights I ne'er did see...

As I pondered very weary o'er a volume long and dreary,
For the plot was void of interest; 'twas the Postal Guide, in fact,
There I learnt the true location, distance, size and population...

Our hero was a Tommy with a conscience free from care,
And such an open countenance that when he breathed the air
He mopped up all the atmosphere, so little went to spare...

This was the way of it, don't you know,
Ryan was "wanted" for stealing sheep,
And never a trooper, high or low,
Could find him, catch a weasel asleep!
Till Trooper Scott, from the Stockman's Ford,...

The daylight is dying
Away in the west,
The wild birds are flying
in silence to rest;
In leafage and frondage
Where shadows are deep,
They pass to its bondage,
The kingdom of sleep...

Do they know? At the turn to the straight
Where the favourites fail,
And every last atom of weight
Is telling its tale;
As some grim old stayer hard-pressed
Runs true to his breed,...

'Twas Driver Smith of Battery A was anxious to see a fight;
He thought of the Transvaal all the day, he thought of it all the night,
"Well, if the battery's left behind, I'll go to the war," says he,...

Dwell, not with me,
For you'll never see
More than a 'possum or a kangaroo,
And now and then a cockatoo.

Oh, would you wish,
Without a dish,
Your scanty meal from a piece of bark,...

And wherefore have they come, this warlike band,
That o'er the ocean many a weary day
Have tossed; and now beside Suakim's Bay,
With faces stern and resolute, do stand,...