Australian Poetry Since 1788

POETS

INTRODUCTION

A PLEASURE-SEEKING AUDIENCE is the only audience for poetry worth having, Philip Larkin has said. This was the guiding principle in making our anthology. We wanted a book that could be lived with over a lifetime, a physical object to be picked up with pleasure and still able to surprise many years after it was purchased.

We sat down to work on the anthology with a cleared desk and a determination to experience everything published in Australian poetry; or to read it again, since most of it was already known to us: we have each been involved with this subject for at least 50 years.

The character of Australian poetry is the result of unique influences. There is, above all, the landscape: so immense, so relatively empty, so various, so strange to Europeans, with only the apparently light touch upon it of the Aboriginal people. The newcomers wanted to write their presence on this continent, and hence Australian poetry has been much concerned with nature. The uniqueness of the country has meant that poets here have concentrated in their work not so much on formal innovation, until recently, but on the peculiar content of the land itself, which has provided originality enough. Consequently, for a long time Australian poetry took the quatrain form of the ballad as almost synonymous with poetry: the form has been as ubiquitous in Australian poetry as the heroic couplet in eighteenth-century English verse. Contributing to such a preference was the prevalence of the Scots and Irish among the early European arrivals, with their love of their folk traditions and of recitation. There followed the immense popularity in the 19th century of the native-born balladeers, such as Gordon, Paterson, and Lawson, whose work everyone knew something of by heart.

Wanting to be objective in our choices – since all is lost if one doesn’t endeavour to inhabit at least the edges of objectivity – we have found that we mainly judged poetry by a readily comparative measure, by its use of the techniques of poetry. Poetry is, to a large extent, defined by poetry and judged by poetry. Of course, content is what is most moving in a poem; but the language first has to be effective. A good poem is appreciated at least as much as poetry as it is as message. Content is often subjectively weighted for the reader. We make mistakes most readily, in choosing poems, when we allow ourselves to choose on the basis of subject, so we have been wary of humanist homily, of uplift, and of the politically right-minded.

What we looked for, instead, were the marks of poetry: imagery, rhythm, musical texture, aphoristic phrasing, mastery of form, and an original tone of voice (something that the poet can seldom hear accurately for him or her self, and can do least about). Conversely, we were not dissuaded by work whose content we disagreed with (except for the sentimental and its obverse, the sadistic). Liberal humanists ourselves, we have been affected by the work of communist and Catholic. We were attracted to all the manifestations of poetry, from concrete poems to prose poems, from the cerebral to the naïve, from the humorous to the confessional, and from formal to free verse – anything that persuaded us it was well done.

The extended critical biographies that introduce the more established poets’ selections seemed necessary, because, by providing the context in which the work was made, they deepen appreciation. Biographical and historical criticism seems to us inevitable, so long as it is sensibly restrained. Keats’s poem To Autumn gains in emotional effectiveness if one knows that he was dying of TB at the time it was written. To take extreme examples in this book, it is necessary to know that Francis Webb was confined in hospitals for long periods and was schizophrenic when his doctor trusted him to hold his five-day old baby. Or that Philip Hodgins, at the time he wrote his poems, was terminally ill with leukemia.

There is, of course, the danger of biographical and sociological commentary leading to poetry being used merely to illustrate theories or fashionable causes. This philistinism has been fully realised, particularly in the way poetry is taught in schools. The poem is an aesthetic and expressive object, and extra-literary information is simply a means to its appreciation.

Many of the poems here will only survive in anthologies (or else by drifting unselected in cyber space), since their authors have not written enough outstanding work to warrant republication of their books. Yet, it should be said that the single poem, or handful of poems, by these writers we have often found to be among our best inclusions. Countering a common complaint about anthologies, we have included a number of longer pieces. The space they required does not necessarily mean we consider them more significant than shorter poems.

The editors of this book were not involved in the selection of their own poetry. Each editor chose the poems of the other.

Many have helped us with this anthology. In particular we thank for their support and patience Kathy Bail, Heather Cam, Heather Champion, Phillipa McGuinness and Di Quick of UNSW Press.

TWO ABORIGINAL SONGS (Anonymous)

Over the last thirty years, anthologies of Australian poetry typically begin with Aboriginal poems, to acknowledge what Les Murray has called the senior culture. We were surprised to discover this practice began with A. B. Paterson’s Old Bush Songs (1905).

We preface our anthology with the two Aboriginal songs with which he opened his collection. He provided this comment: These songs were supplied by Mr S. M. Mowle, a very old colonist, with much experience of the blacks fifty years ago. He writes – ‘I could never find out what the words meant, and I don’t think the blacks themselves knew.’ Other authorities, however, say that the blacks’ songs were very elaborate, and that they composed corroborees which reached a high dramatic level.

The Aboriginal presence is much stronger in Australian poetry than the Amerindian presence in North American poetry in English. One reason may be that Europeans settling in Australia were forced to see Australia to some extent through Aboriginal eyes, because of the radically different nature of the Australian landscape, its fauna and flora. Australia appeared a strange place to European eyes and the early settlers were happy to borrow Aboriginal words to name places and animals.

It is interesting that in the two Aboriginal songs below, the same word may appear several times, sometimes with the ending of the word varied. The repetitions suggest that perhaps there is some form of parallelism, as in the Hebrew psalms. This is the case with other Aboriginal songs that appear in translation later in this volume. No words are common to both songs. Are they in different languages? These poems, in their mysterious presence, signify the immemorial Aboriginal voice of the country.

Two Aboriginal Songs

I

Korindabriã, korindabriã, bogaronã, bogaronã. Iwariniang iwaringdo,

iwariniang, iwaringdo, iwariniang, iwaringdo, iwariniang, iwaringdo,

iwaringime. Iwaringiang. iwaringdõõ, ilanenienow, coombagongniengowe,

ilanenienow. coombagongiengowé, ilanenienowe combagoniengowé,

ilanenienimme.

II

Buddha-buddharo nianga, boomelanã, bulleranga, crobinea, narnmalã,

yibbilwaadjo nianga, boomelanã, a, boomelana, buddha-buddharo, nianga,

boomelana, buddharo nianga, boomelana, bullerangã, crobineã, narnmala,

yibbilwaadjo, nianga, croilanume, a, croilangã, yibbilwaadjo, nianga,

croilanga, yibbilwaadjo, nianga croilangã. coondheranea. tabiabina,

boorganmala, yibbilwaadjo, nianga, croilanoome.

VAN DIEMEN’S LAND (Anonymous)

Van Diemen’s Land is justly the most famous convict ballad. It exists in many different versions. Rather than choose a particular one, we decided to combine the best of four variations. Two of the versions we considered had England as the home country of the three poachers, and used English names and references, and the other two had the poachers coming from Ireland. In general, our composite is based on the version in Russel Ward’s The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads (1964) as being the liveliest and most idiomatic. In the ballad, all three men were sentenced under a law specifying transportation to Van Diemen’s Land for fourteen years, if such a group was found together in a wood, and one had a gun or bludgeon (Old Bush Songs, edited Warren Fahey and Graham Seal (2005) at page 55). There was much public sympathy for poachers; this was widely regarded as a crime from the gentry’s viewpoint only. In fact, few convicts were transported for poaching.

Van Diemen’s Land

Come, all you gallant poachers, that ramble free from care,

That walk out of a moonlight night, with your dog, your gun, and snare;

Where the lusty hare and pheasant you have at your command,

Not thinking that your last career is on Van Diemen’s Land.

Poor Thomas Brown from Nenagh Town, Jack Murphy, and poor Joe,

We was three daring poachers, as the gentry well does know;

One night we was trepanned, my boys, by keepers hid in sand,

And for fourteen years transported was unto Van Diemen’s Land.

The first day that we landed upon that fatal shore,

The planters they came flocking round, full twenty score or more;

They ranked us up like horses, and sold us out of hand,

And they yok’d us up to to ploughs, brave boys, to plough Van Diemen’s Land.

There was a girl from Dublin Town, Rosanna was her name,

For fourteen years transported was, for playing of the game.

Our planter bought her freedom, and he married her out of hand;

She gave to us good usage upon Van Diemen’s Land.

The huts that we must live in are built of sods and clay,

With rotten straw for bedding and we dare not to say nay.

Our cots we fence with fire, we slumber when we can,

To drive away the dogs and tigers upon Van Diemen’s Land.

Oh! oft when I am slumbering, I have a pleasant dream:

A-lying in old Ireland beside some purling stream,

With my true love upon my side, and a jug of ale in hand,

But I wake a brokenhearted man all in Van Diemen’s Land.

God bless our wives and families, likewise that happy shore,

That isle of sweet contentment which we shall see no more.

As for our wretched females, see them we seldom can,

There’s twenty to one woman upon Van Diemen’s Land.

So all you jolly poacher lads, this warning take from me:

I’d have you quit night-walking and to shun bad company,

Throw by your dogs and snares, to you I do speak plain,

For if you knew our hardships you would never poach again.

BOTANY BAY (Anonymous)

Botany Bay was a stage song in the 1880s, long after transportation of convicts had ceased, but is likely to have an earlier origin. The version we use is from Russel Ward’s The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads, which seems preferable to that in Stewart and Keesing’s edition of Old Bush Songs. Ward notes that rum-culls means old mates in crime. The Old Bailey is the Central Criminal Court in London.

Botany Bay

Farewell to old England for ever,

Farewell to our rum-culls as well;

Farewell to the well-loved Old Bailey

Where I used for to cut such a swell.

Chorus

Singing too-ra-lie, too-ra-lie, addity,

Singing too-ra-lie, too-ra-lie, aye,

Singing too-ra-lie, too-ra-lie, addity,

We’re sailing for Botany Bay.

’Taint leaving Old England we cares about,

’Taint ’cause we mis-spells what we knows;

But because all we light-fingered gentry

Hops around with a log on our toes.

There’s the captain as is our commandier,

There’s the bosun and all the ship’s crew,

There’s the first and the second class passengers

Knows what we poor convicts goes through.

For fourteen long years I’m transported,

For fourteen long years and a day,

Just for meeting a cove in the alley,

And stealing his ticker away.

Oh, had I the wings of a turtle-dove!

I’d soar on my pinions so high;

Slap bang to the arms of my Polly-love,

And in her sweet bosom I’d die.

Now, all you young dukies and duchesses,

Take warning from what I do say,

Mind, all is your own as you touchesses,

Or you’ll meet us in Botany Bay.

THE WILD COLONIAL BOY (Anonymous)

‘The Wild Colonial Boy’ is about a mythical bushranger, but shares a chorus with Bold Jack Donahoo, a possibly earlier ballad based on a bushranger who was shot dead by mounted troopers in 1830. The Wild Colonial Boy became an informal national anthem until it was replaced by A. B. Paterson’s Waltzing Matilda in popular affection.

Paterson made these illuminating, comments in his collection Old Bush Songs: All old Scotchmen, to whom Sir Walter Scott read some of his collected ballads, expressed the opinion that the ballads were spoilt by printing. And these bush songs, to be heard at their best, should be heard to an accompaniment of clashing shears when the voice of a shearer rises through the din caused by the rush and bustle of a shearing shed, the scrambling of the sheep in their pens, and the hurry of the pickers-up; or when, on the roads, the cattle are restless on their camp at night and the man on watch, riding round them, strikes up ‘Bold Jack Donahoo’ to steady their nerves a little. Drovers know that they must not sneak quietly about restless cattle – it is better to sing to them and let them know that someone is stirring and watching; and many a mob of wild, pike-horned Queensland cattle, half inclined to stampede, has listened contentedly to the ‘Wild Colonial Boy’ droned out in true bush fashion till the daylight began to break and the mob was safe for another day. Heard under such circumstances as these the songs have quite a character of their own. A great deal depends, too, on the way in which they are sung. The true bushman never hurries his songs. They are designed expressly to pass the time on long journeys or slow, wearisome rides after sheep or tired cattle; so the songs are sung conscientiously through – chorus and all – and the last three words of the song are always spoken, never sung.

The Wild Colonial Boy

’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.

And dearly did his parents love the wild Colonial boy.

Chorus

Come, all my hearties, we’ll roam the mountains high,

Together we will plunder, together we will die.

We’ll wander over valleys, and gallop over plains,

And we’ll scorn to live in slavery, bound down with iron chains.

He was scarcely sixteen years of age when he left his father’s home,

And through Australia’s sunny clime a bushranger did roam.

He robbed those wealthy squatters, their stock he did destroy,

And a terror to Australia was the wild Colonial boy.

In sixty-one this daring youth commenced his wild career,

With a heart that knew no danger, no foeman did he fear.

He stuck up the Beechworth mail coach, and robbed Judge McEvoy,

Who trembled, and gave up his gold to the wild Colonial boy.

He bade the Judge Good morning, and told him to beware,

That he’d never rob a hearty chap that acted on the square,

And never to rob a mother of her son and only joy,

Or else you may turn outlaw, like the wild Colonial boy.

One day as he was riding the mountain side along,

A-listening to the little birds, their pleasant laughing song,

Three mounted troopers rode along – Kelly, Davis, and FitzRoy.

They thought that they would capture him – the wild Colonial boy.

"Surrender now, Jack Doolan, you see there’s three to one.

Surrender now, Jack Doolan, you daring highwayman."

He drew a pistol from his belt, and shook the little toy.

I’ll fight, but not surrender, said the wild Colonial boy.

He fired at Trooper Kelly, and brought him to the ground,

And in return from Davis received a mortal wound.

All shattered through the jaw he lay still firing at FitzRoy,

And that’s the way they captured him – the wild Colonial boy.

BARNETT LEVY (?)

This sparkling theatrical song was published in Australia’s first newspaper, the Sydney Gazette, on 14 July 1832 as it ought to be sung in the Theatre Royal, Sydney, by Mr Bert Levy, in the character of the Ticket-of-leave Holder. His actual name as reported in Stewart and Keesing’s edition of Old Bush Songs was Barnett Levy. Stage personalities often performed material they wrote themselves. If he is the author, Levy is the first of a line of stage versifiers in Australia, extending through Charles Thatcher to Barry Humphries.

There was a shortage of sterling currency in the early days of the colony, and various alternatives were used as currency, such as rum. Those born in Australia came to be known as currency lads and lasses, and the British-born were sometimes sterling people. Female convicts who offended were punished at the Female Factory.

Botany Bay Courtship

The Currency Lads may fill their glasses,

And drink to the health of the Currency Lasses;

But the lass I adore, the lass for me,

Is a lass in the Female Factory.

O! Molly’s her name, and her name is Molly,

Although she was tried by the name of Polly;

She was tried and was cast for death at Newry,

But the judge was bribed and so were the jury.

She got death recorded in Newry town,

For stealing her mistress’s watch and gown;

Her little boy Paddy can tell you the tale,

His father was turnkey of Newry jail.

The first time I saw the comely lass

Was at Parramatta, going to Mass;

Says I, l’ll marry you now in an hour,

Says she, Well, go and fetch Father Power.

But I got into trouble that very same night!

Being drunk in the street I got into a fight,

A constable seized me – I gave him a box –

And was put in the watch-house and then in the stocks.

O! it’s very unaisy as I may remember,

To sit in the stocks in the month of December;

With the north wind so hot, and the hot sun right over,

O! sure, and it’s no place at all for a lover!

It’s worse than the treadmill, says I, "Mr Dunn,

To sit here all day in the hate of the sun!"

Either that or a dollar, says he, for your folly,

But if I’d a dollar I’d drink it with Molly.

But now I am out again, early and late

I sigh and I cry at the Factory gate,

"O! Mrs R---, late Mrs F---n,

O! won’t you let Molly out very soon?"

Is it Molly McGuigan? says she to me,

Is it not? says I, for she knowed it was she.

"Is it her you mean that was put in the stocks

For beating her mistress, Mrs Cox?"

"O! yes and it is, madam, pray let me in,

I have brought her a half-pint of Cooper’s best gin,

She likes it as well as she likes her own mother,

O! now let me in, madam, I am her brother."

So the Currency Lads may fill their glasses,

And drink to the health of the Currency Lasses;

But the lass I adore, the lass for me,

Is a lass in the Female Factory.

FRANCIS McNAMARA (Frank the Poet) c. 1810–1861+

Francis McNamara is entered in convict records as both Catholic and Protestant, and accounts differ as to where he came from in Ireland. But when tried at Kilkenny in January 1832 and sentenced to seven years transportation for smashing a shop window and stealing a bolt of cloth, he was reported to be a real Corkonian in his speech. He entertained the court with an extempore epigram to celebrate his sentence to Botany Bay.

He reached Sydney in September 1832 and over the next eight years received fourteen floggings (650 lashes), was put in an ironed gang for three months, served three and a half years in road gangs, spent three months on the treadmill and thirteen days in solitary confinement. He was assigned in 1838 to the Australian Agricultural Co. in Calala and then was moved to Stroud where he worked as a shepherd. When the company decided he was to work in its underground mines in Newcastle, he refused to be treated as slave labour, and was transferred to an ironed gang working in Woolloomooloo. He wrote a long poem of protest at the proposal to send him down the mine, ending:

When the quick and the dead shall stand in array

Cited at the trumpet’s sound,

Even then, damn me if I’d work a day

For the Company underground.

Nor over ground.

In 1842, after joining a gang of bushrangers, he was sentenced to seven months transportation to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). He received his ticket of leave in 1847 and a full pardon in 1849. The only subsequent record of him is an appearance on the Mudgee goldfields in 1861.

The poem A Convict’s Lament on the Death of Captain Logan is generally regarded by experts as having been written by Frank the Poet, but it exists in various forms under various titles. Because there appears to be no clearly authentic original version, we have used the liveliest one, which appears in Russel Ward’s The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads, but with one significant change. The first four lines of the version below are lines 13 to 16 in the version he reproduces. However, the more popular, simplified version (which is less interesting and is known as Moreton Bay) has these lines at the start of the poem. This is clearly where they belong, creating a single coherent narrative, rather than two stories of transportation, one of which has no ending and the other no start. By following the narrative sequence of the popular version, the line Twelve years transportation to Moreton Bay! moves from line twelve in Ward’s version to line 16 at the end of the second verse, where it marks the first appearance of what becomes an ominous refrain.

McNamara did not write for the printed page and probably lacked the opportunity to revise and improve his poetry. A Convict’s Lament on the Death of Captain Logan is probably one of many ballads he originated and is more polished than the poetry that survives in his own handwriting, so that it was most likely improved by anonymous singers and reciters.

A Convict’s Lament on the Death of Captain Logan

Early one morning as I carelessly wandered,

By the Brisbane waters I chanced to stray,

I heard a prisoner sadly bewailing,

Whilst on the sunny river-banks he lay:

"I am a native of Erin’s island,

But banished now from my native shore,

They tore me from my aged parents,

And from the maiden I adore.

In transient storms as I set sailing,

Like mariner bold my course did steer,

Sydney Harbour was my destination –

That cursed place at length drew near.

I then joined banquet in congratulation

On my safe arrival from the briny sea;

But alas! alas! I was mistaken –

Twelve years transportation to Moreton Bay!

I have been a prisoner at Port MacQuarie,

At Norfolk Island and Emu Plains,

At Castle Hill and cursed Toongabbie –

And at all those places I’ve worked in chains.

But of all the places of condemnation,

In each penal station of New South Wales,

To Moreton Bay I found no equal,

For excessive tyranny each day prevails.

Early in the morning as the day is dawning,

To trace from heaven the morning dew,

Up we are started at a moment’s warning,

Our daily labour for to renew.

Our overseers and superintendents –

These tyrants’ orders we must obey,

Or else at the triangles our flesh is mangled –

Such is our wages at Moreton Bay!

For three long years I’ve been beastly treated;

Heavy irons each day I wore,

My poor back from flogging has been lacerated,

And oftimes painted with crimson gore.

Like the Egyptians and ancient Hebrews,

We were oppressed under Logan’s yoke,

Till kind providence came to our assistance

And gave this tyrant his mortal stroke.

Yes, he was hurried from that place of bondage

Where he thought he would gain renown;

But a native black, who lay in ambush,

Gave this monster his fatal wound.

My fellow prisoners be exhilarated –

That all such monsters such a death may find:

For it’s when from bondage we are extricated

Our former sufferings will fade from mind."

CHARLES HARPUR 1813–1868

Harpur, the first important Australian-born poet, grew up at Windsor on the Hawkesbury River, the third child of emancipated convicts, his Irish father having been transported for complicity in an armed robbery. His parents were not formally married until the year after he was born. Harpur’s first seventeen years were happy and he became widely read in English literature. His father had been made schoolmaster of the Windsor Government School and parish clerk, and Harpur is likely to have had access to the Reverend Samuel Marsden’s extensive library, which was made available to convicts.

In about 1828 his father lost his land, the family left Windsor and the children dispersed. During much of the 1830s Harpur lived in Sydney, working in a number of occupations, including four years as a clerk in the Post Office. During these years he struggled for recognition as a poet and to be part of the colony’s intellectual elite. Elizabeth Perkins in her introduction to The Poetical Works of Charles Harpur commented: Harpur was not a 19th-century democrat, and he believed in an aristocracy of the intellect to which he felt he belonged. He was discriminated against because he was the son of emancipists, rather than free-born settlers. Nor did he seek commercial success, to compensate for his origins, like some emancipists and their children.

The Sydney Monitor of 18 December 1833 has a comical report of a failed legal action against Levey, the proprietor of the Theatre Royal, by a plaintiff Harpur, apparently the 21-year-old poet. Harpur, a soft-bearded native youth, had sued Levey for £3 for breaching a contract to employ him as an actor. Levey alleged that Harpur understood as much of theatricals as the candle-snuffer’s apprentice and Harpur responded that he could "tear a passion to rags with any gentleman of the corps. When Levey proposed that he would pay up if Harpur stood on the table and recited a portion of any play to the applause of the court, Harpur threw himself into ‘attitude’, amidst roars of laughter, and shouted, ‘Do you take me for an ass?’ Mr Levey politely told him that the opera of Midas was in rehearsal, which would afford him an opportunity of shewing off." At this stage the Commissioner had some difficulty in restoring order in the court.

During the 1830s Harpur was able to publish a number of poems and extracts from a blank-verse tragedy in local journals. However he attracted the enmity of James Martin, later Premier and Chief Justice: Martin, then eighteen years old, published in 1838 an Australian Sketch-Book with a chapter on The Pseudo-Poets of the colony, which described Harpur as a tall, bleary-eyed, pert-looking, cockscombish person … The vanity of this man was beyond all conception. Martin poured scorn on Harpur’s blank-verse tragedy The Thieves of Attica, or the Depredation of a Robber as coarse and ridiculous.

In the early 1840s Harpur moved to the Hunter River region. He did farmwork, undertook local government duties and was a school teacher. He fell in love with Mary Doyle in 1842, but it was not until 1850 that Harpur was able to satisfy her father, a respectable settler, that he had the means to marry her. Their long and difficult courtship was the subject of many poems. In the 1850s Harpur tried to set himself up as a farmer and grazier, and was rebuffed when he sought a loan from Henry Parkes, (later the Father of Federation), with whom he had been friendly in his Sydney years. In 1859 Harpur was appointed a Gold Commissioner, which involved visiting mining sites in an area south of Sydney. Henry Kendall began corresponding with him, encouraging and critiquing the older Harpur and helping him publish in newspapers. In 1866 Harpur’s position as Gold Commissioner was abolished, prompting letters of protest to his former friend Parkes, who was Colonial Secretary under James Martin.

Harpur received some monetary compensation for his loss of employment. He suffered flood losses in 1867, and in the same year the death of his thirteen-year-old second son from a shooting accident. The reception of his poetry was another cause for bitterness. While preparing a manuscript of his major poems, for what he hoped would be an English edition, he died of consumption in the winter of 1868.

For the century or so after his death Harpur’s reputation was overshadowed by Kendall and Gordon, who are his inferiors. Until the publication in 1984 of Elizabeth Perkins’ The Poetical Works of Charles Harpur of more than 1000 pages, Harpur’s status could not be fully appreciated. His posthumous Poems, published in 1883 after much devoted effort by his widow, gave a distorted picture of his work as its editor omitted many of the best poems, and amended and cut others, sometimes transposing lines. A Coast View was truncated to the opening verse paragraph. Dawn and Sunrise in the Snowy Mountains was presented in a wordier, differently titled version, including deadening lines about that greater soul/Which makes all nature. Harpur’s technical tour de force A Flight of Wild Ducks was missing, as were A Basket of Summer Fruit, Lost in the Bush and many other significant poems.

What is rewarding for the contemporary reader are Harpur’s long, intricate, acutely observed and detailed descriptions of the eastern coast of Australia with its vast, primaeval forests, then barely disturbed by white settlement. They allow us a glimpse into a majestic, if primitive and frightening, lost Eden. According to Harpur, we should read Wordsworth for his simple power, something he also achieved.

Dawn and Sunrise in the Snowy Mountains

A few thin strips of fleecy clouds lie long

And motionless above the eastern steeps,

Like shreds of silver lace: till suddenly,

Out from the flushing centre to the ends

On either hand, their lustrous layers become

Dipt all in crimson streaked with pink and gold;

And then, at last, are edged as with a band

Of crystal fire. And now, even long before

The sun himself is seen, off tow’rds the west

A range of mighty summits, more and more,

Blaze, each like a huge cresset, in the keen

Clear atmosphere. As if the Spirit of Light,

Advancing swiftly thence, and eastward still,

Kept kindling them in quick succession; – till

The universal company of cones

And pyramidal peaks, stand burning all

With rosy fires, like a wide ranging circ

Of God-great altars, – and even so announce

The Sun that now, with a vast flash, is seen

Pushing his rim above yon central height.

A Mid-Summer Noon in the Australian Forest

Not a bird disturbs the air,

There is quiet everywhere;

Over plains and over woods

What a mighty stillness broods.

Even the grasshoppers keep

Where the coolest shadows sleep;

Even the busy ants are found

Resting in their pebbled mound;

Even the locust clingeth now

In silence to the barky bough:

And over hills and over plains

Quiet, vast and slumbrous, reigns.

Only there’s a drowsy humming

From yon warm lagoon slow coming:

’Tis the dragon-hornet – see!

All bedaubed resplendently

With yellow on a tawny ground –

Each rich spot nor square nor round,

But rudely heart-shaped, as it were

The blurred and hasty impress there,

Of a vermeil-crusted seal

Dusted o’er with golden meal:

Only there’s a droning where

Yon bright beetle gleams the air –

Gleams it in its droning flight

With a slanting track of light,

Till rising in the sunshine higher,

Its shards flame out like gems on fire.

Every other thing is still,

Save the ever wakeful rill,

Whose cool murmur only throws

A cooler comfort round Repose;

Or some ripple in the sea

Of leafy boughs, where, lazily,

Tired Summer, in her forest bower

Turning with the noontide hour,

Heaves a slumbrous breath, ere she

Once more slumbers peacefully.

O ’tis easeful here to lie

Hidden from Noon’s scorching eye,

In this grassy cool recess

Musing thus of Quietness.

Lost in the Bush

Lost in the Bush! the night approaching fast,

And around loudening a cold-breathing blast!

Fancy the thing! Then mark how settler Will,

There, in the pathless Forest, stands stock-still,

With keen heed questioning yon peculiar hill,

Only to learn from it this answer – "Yea,

I tell thee, stranger, thou hast gone astray!"

Thus answered, back he turns, intent to find

Some prospect more familiar to his mind;

But vainly! for the farther back he goes,

The backward scene itself yet stranger grows!

So that he mutters, while he scans the ground,

"By Jove! the very world seems twisted round!

And yon red gleam on the horizon yet

Is where, methinks, the sun should rise – not set!"

Then with a sudden spin, the anxious Swain

Turns, just to question yon blunt hill again,

Which was the first to tell him that for once

His shrewd bush-instinct had turned out a dunce.

But which is which? A dozen summits lie

As like as eggs against the twilight sky

And it amongst them! With a blank surprise

His mouth drops open and wide stare his eyes!

Then squats he on his hams, intent to gain

Yet clearer views: but clearer views are vain!

The pleasant fact abides through every test:

And drawing a long breath, he mutters Well, I’m blest!

In short, he’s lost. And seeing that the night

Will be a wild one, he (as well he might)

Scratches his head and much that member loads

With execrations: "What! forgo the roads

For shorter cuts so near the day’s decline,

’Mongst hills and bushes! – Drat this head o’ mine!

The dark is settling round as thick as mire!

The Bush too’s roaring like a world on fire!

I am not one much given to foolish tirrits,

And far too knowing to believe in Spirits;

But such a night in such a curséd place

Might almost put one in a raving case:

And somewhere here for certain it is said

There’s a Blacks’ grave ground! O this silly head!

Besides Peg may forget to bed the sow,

Big Bess, that is so near her pigging now;

Nor can she by herself, with all her care,

Secure the stack from that downdacious mare!

Or pen those rascal calves up from the kine –

I must regain the road! O this thick head o’ mine!"

Thus grimly summarising his distresses,

On, dogged and desperate, he at random presses.

Ah, Will! dame Fortune owes thee some shrewd spite

Thy blazing hearth shall know thee not to-night!

In vain thy Peg now watches for her Will

To heave in sight upon the ’customed hill,

Saying the while, with a most wifely frown,

He’s boozing somewhere – but I’ll comb him down!

And just as vainly dost thou onward plod,

Dismally cooeying almost every rod,

And wishing, ’tween whiles, thou hadst there with thee

Thy neighbor Wilson – just for company!

But honest Wilson would himself no doubt

Be rather in on such a night than out,

Though with his crony Will, – and through a drinking bout.

Now thickest glooms blank every forest path,

And like a large Cyclopic eye in wrath,

One only star glares redly down, as seen

Up through a rent in heaven’s dun cloudy screen:

Which gap, slow crossing, like a dim-drawn streak,

The owl pours forward his funereal shriek

Sounds of strange waters through the turmoil vast

Of the wide dark woods, dash over in the blast;

Or the lank dingo’s long and weary cry

Comes wildly wailing from some covert nigh.

Rocked high in some old gum, the opossum sways,

A nest-like lump amid the hanging sprays,

Or craning outward through the gusty dark,

Croons to his mate there in the ironbark.

Or the spare curlews that from all points meet

In nightly gatherings fugitive and fleet –

That half ubiquitous appear to be,

Now near, now distant, interthrongingly –

Send suddenly upward in the hollow gale

Cries dismal, – drear as those of Spectres pale

That round some scene of wholesale murder wail!

Startlingly near, and phantom-like to see,

The sharp-voiced, bidawong streams from tree to tree!

Or the wild cat, with breath-suspending rush,

Whisks, imp-like, from some goblin-featured bush!

Or startled kangaroos, dark bounding high,

String like a troop of shadowy devils by!

Ah, Will! such hour may well thy spirit grieve –

Most woe-begone, most luckless son of Eve!

Worn out at last, he settles down, – and Sleep

There finds him, coiled beside that bleaching heap

Of leaves and sprays, whose sere accessions fast

Patter about him, dropping from the blast,

While laden with its over-rushing might,

Wide sway the huge dark trees above the unconscious wight.

But now, when negress Night her denser shades

Had westward drawn, and grey had grown the glades,

Stung into partial consciousness ’twould seem

By the increasing cold, he dreams a dream.

A banished man, ’neath Polar skies he fares,

On all hands menaced by dread herds of bears!

Enormous fellows! shaggy, icy, – grim

With hunger, and all bent on tasting him!

Begins the onslaught! horrible his affright!

Great his despair! Yet he maintains the fight!

But just as in the strife an arm is lost,

(That luckless arm least sheltered from the frost,

From whence no doubt the dream-suggestion came

That worked about him this strange Queen-Mab game)

Sweating and wild, he wakes! – relieved, ’tis true,

Yet in a strait that ferrets him anew.

So sitting up, he first his face long drawn

Rubs hard, then looks, and hails the wished-for dawn:

Next scans the unknown scene with rueful eyes,

And folds his arms, and shakes his head, and sighs.

When hark! distinctly, although far away,

He hears some watch-dog’s thrice-repeated bay –

Starts from his huddled posture at a bound,

And briskly pushes for the grateful sound.

Nor long his search: for now some morning star

Wheels from the eastern steeps her shining car,

In whose so pallid but effectual sheen

A rude Lodge, dim and picture-like, is seen,

There where a clearing from yon hill spreads out,

With stumps all dotted, not yet fenced about;

Thither he hastens, and is welcomed there,

Consoled and fed with hospitable care,

And when the sun shall crown the wintry day,

His host can set him on his homeward way.

A Coast View

High ’mid the shelves of a grey Cliff, that yet

Hangeth in bluffs enormously above,

In a benched cleft, as in the mouldered chair

Of grey-beard Time himself, I sit alone,

And gaze with a keen wondering happiness

Out o’er the Sea. Immensely rolling forth,

See how it stretches to the circling bend

That verges Heaven, a vast luminous plain

Of waters, changeful as a lover’s dream –

Into great spaces mapped by light and shade

In constant interchange – or under clouds

The billows darken, or they shimmer bright

In sunny scopes of measureless expanse!

’Tis Ocean dreamless of a stormy hour,

Calm, or but gently heaving; – yet, O God!

What a blind fate-like mightiness lies coiled

In slumber, under that wide-shining face!

While o’er the watery gleam – there where its edge

Banks the dim vacancy, the topmost sails

Of some tall Ship, whose hull is yet unseen,

Hang as if clinging to a cloud that still

Comes rising with them from the void beyond,

And bellying over – like to a heavenly net,

Drawn slowly upward by ethereal hands.

And if I look aloft, how deep the sky,

That arches Ocean! – deeper far, it seems,

Than elsewhere. See how delicately rare

Are those sky colors that keep flickering up

From the remote horizon! Beautiful

Those lucid traceries of woven cloud

That float about the sun; and lustrous too

Are the white masses overhead, that move

And gather inland tow’rds the verdant hills.

Withdrawing now the eye from heaven, behold

The Coast how wonderful. Proportions strange,

And unimaginable forms, more quaint,

More wild and wayward than were ever dreamt

By a mad architect, keep crowding out,

As runs the eye along it. Semblances

Of pyramidic structures vague and rent,

Hunch ledging stairwise from the general range,

Of dark time-wasted columns, leaning out

Under the bluffs, and in their seeming such

As old Assyrian trowels might have reared,

Support fantastic arches. Rugged domes,

And minarets in ruin, freak the sides

Of chasms spann’d by crude and haggard bridges;

Or overhanging Cliffs like this whose shelf

Sustains me, rest on buttresses of more

Than Babylonian vastness; – while below

Against their bases everlastingly

Beats the white wrath of the relentless surge.

Yet even ’mid these rugged forms the warm

And gentle ministry of Spring hath wrought

Its work of love. Most sparingly indeed,

But thence most gratefully, a nameless shrub

With flame-bright blossom, tufts each guttered ledge

That holds a scanty soil; and rarer still,

Green runners from some sheltering crevice throw

Their tendrils o’er the shelves, and trailing thence

Touch the stern faces of the rocks with beauty.

Nor wants the scene its meet inhabitants.

Below the porpoise breaches, and the crab

Waits for his prey amid the wave-washed stones

That glisten to the sun, – gleaming himself

Whene’er he moves, as if his wetted shell

Were breaking into flames; or more remote,

Out in the watery spaces may be seen

Some solitary diver’s shining back.

Sea gulls go clanging by, and overhead

Sits the white-breasted hawk, with many a sleek

And silver pinioned wanderer in the winds

That furrow the great visage of the Deep,

And who, in conjugal convention met,

Hoard here their mottled eggs and rear their young

Amid the jags and fissures of the crags.

How nourishing is Nature to the soul

That loves her well! Not only as she acts

In instant contact with its quickened powers,

But as she tempers all its after-moods

Through distant memories and remotest tokens.

And hence, when thus beloved, not only here

By the great Sea, or amid forests wild,

Or pastures luminous with lakes, is she

A genial Ministress: – but everywhere!

Whatever testifies of her is good,

However common; fresh, however known.

Dead city walls may pen us in, but still

Her influence seeks, to find us, – even there,

Through many a simple means. A vagrant mass

Of sunshine, falling into some void place,

Shall warm us to the heart, and trade awhile,

Though through some sorrowful reminiscence,

With instincts which, regenerated thus,

Make us child-happy. A stray gust of wind,

Pent in and wasting up the narrow lanes,

Shall breathe insinuations to our age

Of youth’s fresh promise. Even a bird, though caged,

Shall represent past freedom, and its notes

Be spirited with memories that call

Around us the fresh fumes of bubbling brooks

And far wild woods. Nay, even a scanty vine,

Trailing along some backyard wall, shall speak

Love’s first green language; and (so cheap is truth)

A bucket of clear water from the well

Be in its homely brightness beautiful.

A Basket of Summer Fruit

First see those ample melons – brinded o’er

With mingled green and brown is all the rind;

For they are ripe, and mealy at the core,

And saturate with the nectar of their kind.

And here their fellows of the marsh are set,

Covering their sweetness with a crumpled skin;

Pomegranates next, flame-red without, and yet

With vegetable crystals stored within.

Then mark these brilliant oranges, of which

A bygone Poet fancifully said,

Their unplucked globes the Orchard did enrich

Like golden lamps in a green night of shade.

With these are lemons that are even more

Golden than they, and which adorn our Rhyme,

As did rough pendants of barbaric ore

Some pillared Temple of the olden time.

And here are peaches with their ruddy cheeks

And ripe transparency. Here nectarines bloom,

All mottled as with discontinuous streaks.

And spread a fruity fragrance through the room.

With these are cherries mellow to the stone;

Into such ripeness hath the Summer nursed them,

The velvet pressure of the tongue alone

Against the palate were enough to burst them.

Here too are plums, like edible rubies glowing –

The language of lush summer’s Eden theme:

Even through the skin how temptingly keeps showing

Their juicy comfort – a rich-clouded gleam!

Here too are figs, pears, apples (plucked in haste

Our Summer treat judiciously to vary)

With apricots, so exquisite in taste,

And yellow as the breast of a canary.

And luscious strawberries all facetëd

With glittering lobes, and all the lovelier seen

In contrast with the loquat’s duller red,

And vulgar gooseberry’s unlustrous green.

And lastly, bunches of rich-blooded grapes

Whose vineyard bloom even yet about them clings.

Though ever in the handling it escapes

Like the fine down upon a moth’s bright wings.

Each kind is piled in order in the Basket,

Which we might well imagine now to be

Transmuted into a great golden casket

Entreasuring Pomona’s jewelry.

A Flight of Wild Ducks

Far up the River – hark! ’tis the loud shock

Deadened by distance, of some Fowler’s gun:

And as into the stillness of the scene

It wastes now with a dull vibratory boom,

Look where, fast widening up at either end

Out of the sinuous valley of the waters,

And o’er the intervenient forest, – up

Against the open heaven, a long dark line

Comes hitherward stretching – a vast Flight of Ducks!

Following the windings of the vale, and still

Enlarging lengthwise, and in places too

Oft breaking into solitary dots,

How swiftly onwards comes it – till at length,

The River, reaching through a group of hills,

Off leads it, – out of sight. But not for long:

For, wheeling ever with the water’s course,

Here into sudden view it comes again

Sweeping and swarming round the nearest point!

And first now, a swift airy rush is heard

Approaching momently; – then all at once

There passes a keen-cutting, gusty tumult

Of strenuous pinions, with a streaming mass

Of instantaneous skiey streaks; each streak

Evolving with a lateral flirt, and thence

Entangling as it were, – so rapidly

A thousand wings outpointingly dispread

In passing tiers, seem, looked at from beneath,

With rushing intermixtures to involve

Each other as they beat. Thus seen o’erhead

Even while we speak – ere we have spoken, – lo!

The living cloud is onward many a rood.

Tracking as ’twere in the smooth stream below

The multifarious shadow of itself

Far coming – present – and far gone at once!

The senses vainly struggle to retain

The impression of an Image (as the same)

So swift and manifold: For now again

A long dark line upon the utmost verge

Of the horizon, steeping still, it sinks

At length into the landscape; where yet seen

Though dimly, with a wide and scattering sweep

It fetches eastward, and in column so

Dapples along the steep face of the ridge

There banking the turned River. Now it drops

Below the fringing oaks – but to arise

Once more, with a quick circling gleam, as touched

By the slant sunshine, and then disappear

As instantaneously, – there settling down

Upon the reedy bosom of the water.

THE OLD BULLOCK DRAY (Anonymous)

We have used the version in Russel Ward’s The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads, which is generally similar to the version in A. B. Paterson’s Old Bush Songs, except that Paterson does not have the third verse. Ward commented that this is the most popular of all the ballads from the first half of the 19th century and that: An Aboriginal woman was the only kind of ‘wife’ most bush-workers of the period could realistically hope for. Paterson provided these explanations: A paddy-melon is a small and speedy marsupial, a sort of poor relation of the great kangaroo family. ‘Calling at the depot to get an offsider.’ – Female immigrants were housed at the depot on arrival, and many found husbands within a few hours of their landing. The minstrel, therefore, proposes to call at the depot to get himself a wife from among the immigrants. An offsider is a bullock-driver’s assistant – one who walks on the off-side of the team and flogs the bullocks on that side when occasion arises. The word afterwards came to mean an assistant of any kind. ‘Jack Robertson.’ – Sir John Robertson, as he afterwards became, was a well-known politician, who believed in Australians doing their best to populate their own country. ‘Budgery you’ – good fellow you.

The Old Bullock Dray

Oh! the shearing is all over, and the wool is coming down,

And I mean to get a wife, boys, when I go down to town.

Everything that’s got two legs presents itself to view,

From the little paddy-melon to the bucking kangaroo.

Chorus

So it’s roll up your blankets, and let’s make a push,

I’ll take you up the country and show you the bush.

I’ll be bound you won’t get such a chance another day,

So come and take possession of my old Bullock-dray.

Now, I’ve saved up a good cheque and I mean to buy a team,

And when I get a wife, boys, I’ll be all-serene;

For, calling at the depot, they say there’s no delay

To get an off-sider for the old Bullock-dray.

I’ll teach you the whip, and the bullocks how to flog,

You’ll be my off-sider when we’re stuck in a bog:

Lashing out both left and right and every other way,

Making skin, hair and blood fly round the old Bullock-dray.

Oh! we’ll live like fighting-cocks, for good living I’m your man.

We’ll have leather-jacks, johnny-cakes, and fritters in the pan;

Or if you want some fish, why, I’ll catch you some soon;

For we’ll bob for barramundies round the banks of a lagoon.

Oh! yes, of beef and damper I make sure we have enough,

And we’ll boil in the bucket such a whopper of a duff;

And our friends will dance to the honour of the day,

To the music of the bells, around the old Bullock-dray.

Oh! we’ll have plenty girls, we must mind that.

There’ll be Buck-jumping Maggie and Leather-belly Pat.

There’ll be Stringbark Peggy and Green-Hide Mike,

Yes, my Colonials, just as many as you like!

Now we’ll stop all immigration, we don’t need it any more;

We’ll be having young natives, twins by the score.

And I wonder what the devil Jack Robertson would say

If he saw us promenading round the old Bullock-dray.

Oh! it’s time I had an answer, if there’s one to be had,

I wouldn’t treat that steer in the body half as bad;

But he takes as much notice of me, upon my soul,

As that old blue stag off-sider in the pole.

Oh! to tell a lot of lies, you know, it is a sin,

But I’ll go up the country and marry a black gin.

Baal gammon white feller; that is what she’ll say,

Budgery you and your old Bullock-dray!

CHARLES THATCHER 1831–1878

Charles Thatcher was born in Bristol, England, and went on to play in London theatrical orchestras. Hearing about the gold discoveries, he arrived in Melbourne in 1852 aged 21. With some companions he set out for Bendigo on foot. After a run of bad luck at the diggings, they had a lucky strike. Thatcher’s share was £1000. He gave up digging, to sing and entertain on stage. He was large and broad-shouldered, weighing 14 stone (89 kilos), and was handsome, with a drooping moustache. What he lacked in voice he made up for with his sense of humour and love of the absurd. Collections of his songs included the Victorian Songster (1855), Thatcher’s Colonial Songster (1857) and Thatcher’s Colonial Minstrel (1859). He remained in Victoria until 1861, when he set out for the New Zealand goldfields with his bride, Annie Vitelli, a singer. He published some New Zealand songs. He came back to Australia on a couple of occasions, touring with a painted diorama Life on the Gold Fields. In 1870 with his wife and two daughters he returned to England and became a London curio dealer. He died of cholera in 1878, in Shanghai.

Thatcher wanted his songs to be regarded as a popular history of the time. There is more life and sharply observed detail in Thatcher than in many serious poets. The Queer Ways of Australia refers to a cabbage-tree: this is a broad-brimmed hat plaited out of cabbage-tree palm leaves. An early record of the term coo-ey is in a 1789 report of Captain Hunter on the exploration of the Hawkesbury River: In the woods we frequently saw fires, and sometimes heard the natives … We called to them in their own manner by repeating the word co-wee, which signifies ‘come here’.

Gold-fields Girls

What a rum lot the girls are out here:

They jolly soon get colonized, sirs,

I twig their rum capers sometimes,

And feel not a little surprised, sirs.

As regards love and marriage out here,

I’m fairly licked clean off my perch, sirs;

One day they pick up a chap,

The next day he’s walked off to church, sirs.

If at home you should flirt with a girl,

In a twinkling the old bloke, her father,

Asks what your intentions may be,

And isn’t he down on you rather!

The mother leads you in a string,

And sticks to you like bricks and mortar,

For she’s always talking to you

About her accomplished daughter.

The courtship lasts some little time,

And then of course you pop the question,

She immediately bursts into tears,

And calls it a cruel suggestion;

She falters out Ask my papa,

When you beg her to be your dear wife, sirs,

And in two or three weeks from that time,

You find that you’re tied up for life, sirs.

But things are far different here:

The girls don’t consult their relations.

What’s father or mother to them?

They follow their own inclinations.

If you name the day here to a gal,

Don’t think off her perch it will lick her,

For nine out of ten will reply

Lor, Sammy, can’t it be done quicker?

The best of this colony is,

The brides have no fine affectation:

In saying I will they’re all there,

And they don’t faint upon the occasion.

A bottle lots of ’em will use,

And it seems to come in very handy,

You might think that it’s Preston salts,

No fear! the smell tells you it’s brandy.

The bride’s mother, too, will be there,

She’s not overcome by emotion,

Her spirits you find she keeps up

By Old Tom or some other lotion;

And sometimes her voice will grow thick.

In her speech there’s a wond’rous obstruction,

But her friends are to blame for it all;

For they ought to allowance her suction.

But some brides upon their wedding night,

In colonial parlance get tight, sirs,

And then in that state they evince

A strong inclination to fight, sirs.

They’ve been known to take tumblers up

And shy them in every direction,

But bless their dear hearts, we all know

It’s proof of colonial affection!

The Queer Ways of Australia

Dick Briggs, a wealthy farmer’s son,

To England lately took a run,

To see his friends, and have some fun,

For he’d been ten years in Australia.

Arrived in England, off he went

To his native village down in Kent

’Twas there his father drew his rent,

And many happy days he’d spent.

No splendid, fine clothes on had he,

But jumper’n boots up to the knee,

With dirty Sydney cabbage-tree

The costume of Australia.

Chorus

Now when a fellow takes a run

To England for a bit of fun,

He’s sure to ’stonish everyone

With the queer ways of Australia.

Now Dick went home in this array;

His sister came out and did say,

No, we don’t want anything today,

To her brother from Australia.

Cried he, Oh, don’t you know poor Dick?

They recognized him precious quick;

The old man hugged him like a brick.

And there was feasting there that night,

For Richard was a welcome sight,

For each one hailed with great delight

The wanderer from Australia.

The blessed cattle on the farm

Regarded Dick with great alarm;

His swearing acted like a charm

When he gave them a touch of Australia.

He could talk bullock and no flies,

And when he blessed poor Strawberry’s eyes,

She looked at him with great surprise

As out of her he took a rise.

Fie, fie, his mother said one day,

What naughty, wicked words you say.

"Bless you, mother, that’s the way

We wake ’em up in Australia."

Dick went to London for a spree,

And got drunk there most gloriously;

He gave them a touch of Coo-oo-ee

The bush cry of Australia.

He took two ladies to the play,

Both so serene, in dresses gay,

He had champagne brought on a tray

And said, Now girls, come fire away.

They drank till they could drink no more,

And then they both fell on the floor.

Cried Dick, as he surveyed them o’er,

You wouldn’t do for Australia!

THE OLD KEG OF RUM (Anonymous)

We have used Russel Ward’s version from The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads, with additions. His version was missing the third last verse, which is the logical climax of the song. We have taken this verse and the preceding one from A. B. Paterson’s version, in Old Bush Songs (1905). The author of this haunting and memorable song in the voice of an elderly and nostalgic alcoholic, might have been the veterinary surgeon, William Perrie, as the structure of the song is strikingly similar to The Old Bark Hut, which has been attributed to him.

The Old Keg of Rum

My name is old Jack Palmer and I once dug for gold,

And the song I’m going to sing you recalls the days of old,

When I’d plenty mates around me and the talk would fairly hum

As we all sat together round the old keg of rum.

Chorus

The old keg of rum! the old keg of rum!

As we all sat together round the old keg of rum!

There was Bluey Watt, the breaker, and old Tom Hines,

And Jimmy Doyle, the ringer, who now in Glory shines,

And many more hard doers, all gone to Kingdom Come,

We were all associated round the old keg of rum.

Chorus

The old keg of rum! the old keg of ruml!

We were all associated round the old keg of rum!

When shearing time was over at the sheds on the Bree,

We’d raise a keg from somewhere and we’d all have a spree.

We’d sit and sing together till we got that blind and dumb,

We couldn’t find the bunghole of the old keg of rum.

Chorus

The old keg of rum! the old keg of rum!

We couldn’t find the bunghole of the old keg of rum!

It’s jovially together boys – we’d laugh, we’d chat, we’d sing;

Sometimes we’d have a little row some argument would bring,

Till often in the scrimmage, I’ve corked it with my thumb

To keep the life from leaking from the old keg of rum!

Chorus

The old keg of rum! the old keg of rum!

To keep the life from leaking from the old keg of rum!

But when our spree was ended, boys, and waking from a snooze,

For to give another drain