The boys had come back from the racesAll silent and down on their luck;They’d backed ’em, straight out and for places,But never a winner they struck.They lost their good money on Slogan,And fell, most uncommonly flat,When Partner, the pride of the Bogan,Was beaten by Aristocrat. And one said, ‘I move that instanterWe sell out our […]

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 —A bushman, too, as I’ve heard them tell —Chanced to find him drunk as a lordRound at the Shadow of Death […]

The roving breezes come and goOn Kiley’s Run,The sleepy river murmurs low,And far away one dimly seesBeyond the stretch of forest trees —Beyond the foothills dusk and dun —The ranges sleeping in the sunOn Kiley’s Run. ‘Tis many years since first I cameTo Kiley’s Run,More years than I would care to nameSince I, a stripling, […]

HIM going to ride for us! HIM —with the pants and the eyeglass and all.Amateur! don’t he just look it — it’s twenty to one on a fall.Boss must be gone off his head to be sending our steeplechase crackOut over fences like these with an object like that on his back. Ride! Don’t tell […]

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,Got a fall and broke his shoulder, so they nabbed me in a trice —Me, that never wore the colours, for the […]

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,Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber’s shop.”Ere! shave my beard and whiskers off, I’ll be a man of mark,I’ll go […]

The widow sought the lawyer’s room with children three in tow,She told the lawyer man her tale in tones of deepest woe.Said she, ‘My husband took to drink for pains in his inside,And never drew a sober breath from then until he died. ‘He never drew a sober breath, he died without a will,And I […]

There came a stranger to Walgett town,To Walgett town when the sun was low,And he carried a thirst that was worth a crown,Yet how to quench it he did not know;But he thought he might take those yokels down,The guileless yokels of Walgett town. They made him a bet in a private bar,In a private […]

Let us cease our idle chatter,Let the tears bedew our cheek,For a man from TallangattaHas been missing for a week. Where the roaring flooded MurrayCovered all the lower land,There he started in a hurry,With a bottle in his hand. And his fate is hid for ever,But the public seem to thinkThat he slumbered by the […]

‘Richard Bennison, a jockey, aged 14, while riding William Tell in his training, was thrown and killed. The horse is luckily uninjured.’— Melbourne Wire. Out in the grey cheerless chill of the morning light,Out on the track where the night shades still lurk;Ere the first gleam of the sungod’s returning light,Round come the race-horses early […]

Little bush maiden, wondering-eyed,Playing alone in the creek-bed dry,In the small green flat on every sideWalled in by the Moonbi ranges high;Tell us the tale of your lonely life,‘Mid the great grey forests that know no change.‘I never have left my home,’ she said,‘I have never been over the Moonbi Range. ‘Father and mother are […]

‘He ought to be home,’ said the old man, ‘without there’s something amiss.He only went to the Two-mile — he ought to be back by this.He WOULD ride the Reckless filly, he WOULD have his wilful way;And, here, he’s not back at sundown — and what will his mother say? ‘He was always his mother’s […]

‘Only a pound,’ said the auctioneer,‘Only a pound; and I’m standing hereSelling this animal, gain or loss.Only a pound for the drover’s horse;One of the sort that was never afraid,One of the boys of the Old Brigade;Thoroughly honest and game, I’ll swear,Only a little the worse for wear;Plenty as bad to be seen in town,Give […]

It was shearing-time at the Myall Lake,And there rose the sound thro’ the livelong dayOf the constant clash that the shear-blades makeWhen the fastest shearers are making play,But there wasn’t a man in the shearers’ linesThat could shear a sheep with the two Devines. They had rung the sheds of the east and west,Had beaten […]

Scene: On Monaro.DRAMATIS PERSONAE:Shock-headed blackfellow,Boy (on a pony).Snowflakes are fallingSo gentle and slow,Youngster says, ‘Frying Pan,What makes it snow?’Frying Pan confidentMakes the reply —‘Shake ’em big flour bagUp in the sky!’‘What! when there’s miles of it!Sur’ly that’s brag.Who is there strong enoughShake such a bag?’‘What parson tellin’ you,Ole Mister Dodd,Tell you in Sunday-school?Big feller God!He […]

There’s never a stone at the sleeper’s head,There’s never a fence beside,And the wandering stock on the grave may treadUnnoticed and undenied,But the smallest child on the WatershedCan tell you how Gilbert died. For he rode at dusk, with his comrade DunnTo the hut at the Stockman’s Ford,In the waning light of the sinking sunThey […]

I’m travellin’ down the Castlereagh, and I’m a station hand,I’m handy with the ropin’ pole, I’m handy with the brand,And I can ride a rowdy colt, or swing the axe all day,But there’s no demand for a station-hand along the Castlereagh. So it’s shift, boys, shift, for there isn’t the slightest doubtThat we’ve got to […]

Did you ever hear tell of Chili? I was readin’ the other dayOf President Balmaceda and of how he was sent away.It seems that he didn’t suit ’em — they thought that they’d like a change,So they started an insurrection and chased him across the range.They seemed to be restless people — and, judging by […]

He came from ‘further out’,That land of heat and droughtAnd dust and gravel.He got a touch of sun,And rested at the runUntil his cure was done,And he could travel. When spring had decked the plain,He flitted off againAs flit the swallows.And from that western land,When many months were spanned,A letter came to hand,Which read as […]

As I lie at rest on a patch of cloverIn the Western Park when the day is done,I watch as the wild black swans fly overWith their phalanx turned to the sinking sun;And I hear the clang of their leader cryingTo a lagging mate in the rearward flying,And they fade away in the darkness dying,Where […]