Works

The sun strikes down with a blinding glare;
The skies are blue and the plains are wide,
The saltbush plains that are burnt and bare
By Walgett out on the Barwon side,
The Barwon River that wanders down...

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,...

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,...

Let us cease our idle chatter,
Let the tears bedew our cheek,
For a man from Tallangatta
Has been missing for a week.

Where the roaring flooded Murray
Covered all the lower land,...

(As sung by the camp fire.)


No doubt the saying's all abroad,
And rattling through the land.
We hear it at the mangle, too,
With 'What are you going to stand?'...

Oh, the new-chum went to the backblock run,
But he should have gone there last week.
He tramped ten miles with a loaded gun,
But of turkey of duck saw never a one,
For he should have been there last week,...

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...

The track that led to Carmody's is choked and overgrown,
The suckers of the stringybark have made the place their own;
The mountain rains have cut the track that once we used to know...

Now the stock have started dying, for the Lord has sent a drought;
But we're sick of prayers and Providence, we're going to do without;
With the derricks up above us and the solid earth below,...

We have sung the song of the droving days,
Of the march of the travelling sheep,
How by silent stages and lonely ways
Thin, white battalions creep.
But the man who now by the land would thrive...

We often hear men boast about the land which gave them birth,
And each one thinks his native land the fairest spot on earth;
In beauty, riches, power, no land can his surpass;...

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,...

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...

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...

Parliament's a stage,
And all the Politicians merely players!
They have their exits and entrances,
And Wise doth in his time play many parts,
His acts being seven changes.

First the Runner,...

(Air: 'The Bonnie Irish Boy.')


Come now, ye sighing washers all,
Join in my doleful lay,
Mourn for the times none can recall,
With hearts to grief a prey....

You often have been told of regiments brave and bold,
But we are the bravest in the land;
We're called the Tag-rag Band, and we rally in Queensland,
We are members of the Wallaby Brigade.

Chorus
...

Wargeilah town is very small,
There's no cathedral nor a club,
In fact the township, all in all,
Is just one unpretentious pub;
And there, from all the stations round,
The local sportsmen can be found....

Ow can it rain.' the old man said, 'with things the way they are?
You've got to learn off ant and bee, and jackaroo and galah;
And no man never saw it rain, for fifty years at least,...

'Tis of a wild Colonial boy, Jack Doolan was his name,
Of poor but honest parents he was born in Castlemaine.
He was his father's only hope, his mother's only joy,...