Latest / The Law / Bush Debate - Edward Dyson Francis Kenna Henry Lawson Banjo Paterson
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Palm one of the Bush debate. This is a LibriVox recording.
- 0:05Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information,
- 0:09Speaker 1: ought to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
- 0:15Speaker 1: Timothy Ferguson Borderland by Henry Lawson. I am back from
- 0:21Speaker 1: up the country, very sorry that I went seeking for
- 0:24Speaker 1: the Southern poet's land, whereon to bitch my tent. I
- 0:28Speaker 1: have lost a lot of idols which were broken on
- 0:30Speaker 1: the track, burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I
- 0:32Speaker 1: am glad that I'm back. Further out may be the
- 0:36Speaker 1: pleasant scenes of which our poets boast, but I think
- 0:39Speaker 1: the country's rather more inviting round the coast anyway. I'll
- 0:42Speaker 1: stay at present at a boarding house in town, drinking
- 0:45Speaker 1: beer and lemon squashes, taking baths, and cooling down sunny
- 0:51Speaker 1: plains Great scot those burning wastes of barren soil and sand,
- 0:56Speaker 1: with their everlasting fences stretching out across the land and
- 1:00Speaker 1: desolation where the crow is, desert where the eagle flies paddics,
- 1:05Speaker 1: where the luney bullock starts and stares with reddened eyes,
- 1:10Speaker 1: Where in clouds of dust, enveloped roasted bullock drivers creep
- 1:14Speaker 1: slowly past the sun dried shepherd, dragged behind his crawling sheep,
- 1:20Speaker 1: stunted peak of granite, gleaming, glaring like a molten mass
- 1:25Speaker 1: turned from some infernal furnace on a plain devoid of grass,
- 1:31Speaker 1: Miles and miles of thirsty gutters, strings of muddy water
- 1:36Speaker 1: holes in place of shining rivers, walled by cliffs and
- 1:40Speaker 1: forest bowls, range of ridges, gullies, ridges, barren where the
- 1:47Speaker 1: madden flies, fiercer than the plagues of Egypt, swarm about
- 1:50Speaker 1: your blighted eyes. Bush where there is no horizon, where
- 1:56Speaker 1: the buried bushman sees nothing, nothing but the sameness of
- 2:01Speaker 1: the ragged, stunted trees, lonely huts, where droughts eternal, suffocating atmosphere,
- 2:09Speaker 1: where the god forgotten hat are dreams of city life
- 2:13Speaker 1: and beer. Treacherous tracks that trap the stranger, endless roads
- 2:18Speaker 1: that gleam and glare, dark and evil looking gullies hiding
- 2:22Speaker 1: secrets here and there, dull dumb flats and stony rises,
- 2:27Speaker 1: where the toiling bullocks bake and the sinister goanna, the
- 2:32Speaker 1: lizard and the snake. Land of day and night, no
- 2:37Speaker 1: morning freshness, and no afternoon for the great white sun
- 2:40Speaker 1: in rising bringeth summer heat in June. Dismal country for
- 2:45Speaker 1: the exile, when the shades begin to fall from the sad,
- 2:49Speaker 1: heart breaking sunset to the new chum worst of all.
- 2:55Speaker 1: Dreary land in rainy weather, with the endless clouds that drift,
- 3:00Speaker 1: Oh the bushmen like a blanket that the Lord will
- 3:04Speaker 1: never lift. Dismal land when it is raining, growl the floods,
- 3:08Speaker 1: and oh the wosh of the rain and the wind
- 3:11Speaker 1: together on the dark bed of the bush. Ghastly fires,
- 3:14Speaker 1: in lonely humpies, where the granite rocks are piled in
- 3:18Speaker 1: the rain swept wildernesses that are the wildest of the
- 3:21Speaker 1: wild land, where gaunt and haggard women live alone and
- 3:27Speaker 1: work like men till their husbands gone are droving will
- 3:31Speaker 1: return to them again. Homes of men, if home had
- 3:35Speaker 1: ever such a god forgotten place, where the wild selectors
- 3:39Speaker 1: children fly before a stranger's face. Home of tragedy, applauded
- 3:45Speaker 1: by the dingoes, dismal yell, heaven of the shanty keeper,
- 3:49Speaker 1: fitting fing for such a hell, And the wallaroos and wombats,
- 3:53Speaker 1: and of course the curlews call, and the lone sundowner,
- 3:57Speaker 1: tramping ever onward through it all. I am back from
- 4:03Speaker 1: up the country, up the country where I went, seeking
- 4:07Speaker 1: for the Southern poet's land, whereon to bitch my tent.
- 4:10Speaker 1: I have left a lot of broken idols out along
- 4:14Speaker 1: the track, bent a lot of fancy verses, And I
- 4:17Speaker 1: am glad that I am back. I believe the Southern
- 4:20Speaker 1: Poet's dream will not be realized till the plains are
- 4:23Speaker 1: irrigated and the land is humanized. I intend to stay
- 4:27Speaker 1: at present, as I said before, in town, drinking beer
- 4:32Speaker 1: and lemon squashes, taking baths, and cooling down. End of
- 4:39Speaker 1: Borderland poem.
- 4:47Speaker 2: Too of the Bush Debate. This is a libyvox recording.
- 4:51Speaker 2: All liberyvox recordings are in a public domain. For more
- 4:55Speaker 2: information or to volunteer, please visit libyvox dot org. Recording
- 5:02Speaker 2: by Algie pug In Defense of the Bush by Banjo
- 5:07Speaker 2: Patterson on reading Henry Lawson's Borderland. So you're back from
- 5:14Speaker 2: up the country, mister Lawson, where you went, and you're
- 5:17Speaker 2: cursing all the business in a bitter discontent. Well, we
- 5:21Speaker 2: grieve to disappoint you, and it makes its sad to
- 5:23Speaker 2: hear that it wasn't curl and shady, and there wasn't
- 5:27Speaker 2: plenty beer, and the looney bullocks snorted when you first
- 5:31Speaker 2: came into view. Well, you know, it's not so often
- 5:34Speaker 2: that he sees a swell like you. And the roads
- 5:38Speaker 2: were hot and dusty, and the plains were burnt and brown,
- 5:42Speaker 2: and no doubt your bitter suited drinking lemon squash in town. Yet, perchance,
- 5:48Speaker 2: if you should journey down the very track you went
- 5:51Speaker 2: in a month or two at furthest you would wonder
- 5:54Speaker 2: what it meant where the sun baked earth was gasping
- 5:58Speaker 2: like a creature in its pain. You would find the
- 6:01Speaker 2: grasses waving like a field of summer grain, and the
- 6:05Speaker 2: miles of thirsty gutters blocked with sand and choked with mud.
- 6:10Speaker 2: You would find them mighty rivers with a turbid, sweeping flood.
- 6:15Speaker 2: For the rain and drought and sunshine make no changes
- 6:18Speaker 2: in the street, in the sullen line of buildings and
- 6:22Speaker 2: the ceaseless tramp of feet. But the bush hath moods
- 6:26Speaker 2: and changes as the seasons rise and fall. And the
- 6:30Speaker 2: men who know the bush land, they are loyal through
- 6:33Speaker 2: it all. But you found the bush was dismal and
- 6:38Speaker 2: a land of no delight? Did you chance to hear
- 6:41Speaker 2: a chorus in the shearer's huts at night? Did they
- 6:45Speaker 2: rise up William Riley by the campfire's cheery blaze? Did
- 6:50Speaker 2: they rise him as we rose him in the good
- 6:53Speaker 2: old droving days? And the women of the homesteads and
- 6:57Speaker 2: the men you chanced to meet, were their faces sour
- 7:00Speaker 2: and saddened, like the faces in the street and the
- 7:04Speaker 2: shy select the children. Were they better now or worse
- 7:09Speaker 2: than the city urchins mentioned who would greet you with
- 7:12Speaker 2: a curse? Is not such a life much better than
- 7:15Speaker 2: the squalid street and square where the fallen women flaunted
- 7:20Speaker 2: in the fierce electric glare, where the seamstress plight are
- 7:24Speaker 2: sewing till her eyes are sore, and read in a filthy,
- 7:28Speaker 2: dirty attic, toiling on for daily bread. Did you hear
- 7:32Speaker 2: no sweeter voices in the music of the bush than
- 7:35Speaker 2: the roar of trams and busses and the war whoop
- 7:39Speaker 2: of the push. Did the magpies rouse your slumbers with
- 7:43Speaker 2: their carols? Sweet and strange? Did you hear the silver
- 7:47Speaker 2: charming of the bell birds on the range? But perchance
- 7:52Speaker 2: the wild bird's music by your senses, was despised for
- 7:56Speaker 2: you say you'll stay in townships till the bushes. Would
- 8:01Speaker 2: you make it a tea garden and on Sundays have
- 8:04Speaker 2: a band where the blokes might take their donners. With
- 8:08Speaker 2: the public close at hand, you had better stick to
- 8:12Speaker 2: Sydney and make merry with the push, for the bush
- 8:15Speaker 2: will never suit you, and you'll never suit the bush.
- 8:21Speaker 2: The banjo end of In Defense of the Bush, on
- 8:26Speaker 2: reading Henry Lawson's Borderland.
- 8:34Speaker 3: Poem number three of the Bush Debate. This is a
- 8:38Speaker 3: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
- 8:42Speaker 3: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
- 8:47Speaker 3: Recording by Jesse Mills. The Fact of the Matter by
- 8:51Speaker 3: Edward Dyson The Fact of the Matter. I'm wondering why
- 8:56Speaker 3: those fellers who go building chipper ditties about the rosy
- 9:01Speaker 3: times are droving and the dust and death of cities
- 9:05Speaker 3: don't sling the blooming office. Strike some drover for a
- 9:08Speaker 3: billet and soak up all the glory that comes handy
- 9:12Speaker 3: while they fill it. Perhaps it's fun to travel cattle
- 9:16Speaker 3: or to picnic with merinos, but the drover don't catch on, sir,
- 9:20Speaker 3: not much high class rapture. He knows as to sleeping
- 9:24Speaker 3: on the plains there in the shatter of the spear grass.
- 9:27Speaker 3: That's liked best by the juggins with a spring bed
- 9:30Speaker 3: and a pier glass, and the camp fire and the freedom,
- 9:34Speaker 3: and the blanky constellations, the possum rug and billy, and
- 9:39Speaker 3: the togs and stale old rations. It's strange they're only
- 9:43Speaker 3: raved about by coves. The dress are pretty and sport
- 9:46Speaker 3: a wife and live on slap up tucker in the city.
- 9:50Speaker 3: I've tickled beef in my time, clear from Clark to Riverina,
- 9:54Speaker 3: and shifted sheep all round the shop. But blow me
- 9:57Speaker 3: if I've seen a single blanky hand who didn't buck
- 10:00Speaker 3: at pleasures of this kidney, and wouldn't trade his blizzes
- 10:03Speaker 3: for a flutter down in Sydney night watchers are delightful
- 10:07Speaker 3: when the stars are really splendid to the chap who's
- 10:11Speaker 3: fresh upon the job. But you bet his raptures ended
- 10:14Speaker 3: when the rain comes down in sluice heads, or the
- 10:17Speaker 3: cutting hailstones pelter and the sheep drift off before the
- 10:21Speaker 3: wind and the horses strike for shelter. Don't take me
- 10:25Speaker 3: for a howler. But I find it come annoying to
- 10:27Speaker 3: hear these fellers rave about the pleasures we're enjoying when
- 10:32Speaker 3: perhaps weave nothing better than some fluky water handy. And
- 10:35Speaker 3: they're right on all the liquors rum and plenty beer
- 10:39Speaker 3: and brandy. The town is dusty, maybe, but it isn't
- 10:43Speaker 3: worth the curses side the dusty fella swallows and the blinded,
- 10:46Speaker 3: thirsty nurses. When he's on the hard macadam where the
- 10:50Speaker 3: jumbucks cannot browse, and the wind is in his whiskers,
- 10:53Speaker 3: and he follows twenty thousand This drove in on the
- 10:57Speaker 3: plain too. It's all okay when the weather isn't hot
- 11:00Speaker 3: enough to curl the souls right off your upper leather,
- 11:03Speaker 3: or so cold that when the morning wind comes hissing
- 11:05Speaker 3: through the grasses you can feel it cut your eyelid
- 11:08Speaker 3: like a whiplash as it passes. Then there's bullants in
- 11:11Speaker 3: the blankets, and a lame horse and mosquiters, and a
- 11:15Speaker 3: dt boss like Halligan, or one like Humpy Peters, who
- 11:19Speaker 3: is mean about the tucker and can curse from start
- 11:21Speaker 3: to sundown, and can fight like fifty devils, and whose
- 11:25Speaker 3: growlers never run down. Yes, I wonder why the fellas
- 11:29Speaker 3: what go building chipper ditties about the rosy times outdroving
- 11:34Speaker 3: and the dust and death of cities. Don't sling the
- 11:38Speaker 3: bluming office, Strike all peters for a billet, and soak
- 11:42Speaker 3: up all the glory that comes handy while they fill it.
- 11:49Speaker 3: And of the fact of the matter.
- 11:57Speaker 1: Poem four of the Bush Debate. This is a LibriVox recording.
- 12:02Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
- 12:05Speaker 1: information not to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
- 12:10Speaker 1: by Timothy Ferguson in answer to Banjo and otherwise by
- 12:15Speaker 1: Henry Lawson. It was pleasant up the country, mister Banjo,
- 12:19Speaker 1: where you went, for you sought the green apaches, and
- 12:23Speaker 1: you traveled like a gent and you cursed the trams
- 12:26Speaker 1: and busses and the turmoil of the push, though you
- 12:29Speaker 1: know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush.
- 12:33Speaker 1: But we lately heard you singing of the plains where
- 12:35Speaker 1: shade is not, and you mentioned it was dusty, all
- 12:39Speaker 1: is dry, and all is hot. True the bush hath
- 12:43Speaker 1: moods and changes, and the bushman hatham too, for he
- 12:47Speaker 1: is not a poet's dummy. He's a man the same
- 12:50Speaker 1: as you, and his back is growing round as slaving
- 12:53Speaker 1: for the absent tea, and his toiling wife is thinner
- 12:56Speaker 1: than a country wife should be. For we noticed that
- 12:59Speaker 1: the face are the folks we chanced to meet should
- 13:02Speaker 1: have made a greater contrast to the faces in the street.
- 13:06Speaker 1: And in short, we think the bushmen's being driven to
- 13:09Speaker 1: the wall, and it's doubtful if his spirit will be
- 13:12Speaker 1: loyal through it.
- 13:13Speaker 4: All.
- 13:16Speaker 1: Though the bush has been romantic and it's nice to
- 13:18Speaker 1: sing about, there's a lot of patriotism that the land
- 13:22Speaker 1: could do without. Sort of British workmen nonsense that you'll
- 13:27Speaker 1: perish in the scorn of the drover who is driven,
- 13:29Speaker 1: and the shearer who is shorn of the struggling Western
- 13:33Speaker 1: farmers who have little time for rest and are ruined
- 13:36Speaker 1: on selections in the squatter ridden West. Droving songs are
- 13:40Speaker 1: very pretty, but they merit little thanks from the people
- 13:44Speaker 1: of a country which is ridden by the banks and
- 13:48Speaker 1: the rise and full of seasons suits the rise and
- 13:51Speaker 1: full of rime. But we know the Western seasons do
- 13:55Speaker 1: not run on schedule. Time for the drought will go
- 13:59Speaker 1: on drying. There's anything to dry. Then it rains until
- 14:02Speaker 1: you fancy it would bleach the sunny sky. Then it
- 14:05Speaker 1: pelt us out of reason, for the downpour day and
- 14:08Speaker 1: night nearly sweeps the population to the great Australian bite.
- 14:13Speaker 1: It is up in northern Queensland that the seasons do
- 14:15Speaker 1: their best, But it's doubtful if you ever saw a season.
- 14:19Speaker 1: In the west. There are years without an autumn or
- 14:23Speaker 1: a winter or a spring. There are broiling dunes and
- 14:27Speaker 1: summers where it rains like anything in the bush. My
- 14:31Speaker 1: ears were open to the singing of the bird, but
- 14:34Speaker 1: the carol of the magpie was a thing I never heard.
- 14:38Speaker 1: Once the beggar roused my slumbers in a shanty, it
- 14:41Speaker 1: is true, but I only had him asking who the
- 14:43Speaker 1: blanky blank are you? And the bell bird in the ranges.
- 14:47Speaker 1: But his silver chime is harsh when it's heard beside
- 14:51Speaker 1: the solo of the curlew in the marsh. Yes, I
- 14:56Speaker 1: heard the surest singing William Riley out of tune, fighting
- 15:00Speaker 1: round a shanty on a Sunday afternoon. But the bushman
- 15:03Speaker 1: isn't always trapping brumbies in the night, nor is he
- 15:07Speaker 1: forever riding when the morn is fresh. And bright, and
- 15:11Speaker 1: he isn't always singing in the humpies on the run,
- 15:14Speaker 1: and the campfire's cheery blazes are a trifle overdone. We
- 15:19Speaker 1: have grumbled with the bushmen round the fire on rainy days,
- 15:23Speaker 1: when the smoke would blind a bullock, and there wasn't
- 15:26Speaker 1: any blaze save the blazes of our language. For we
- 15:29Speaker 1: cursed the fire in turn till the atmosphere was heated,
- 15:32Speaker 1: and the wood began to burn, And we had to
- 15:35Speaker 1: ring our bluies which were rotting in the swags, and
- 15:38Speaker 1: we saw the sugar leaking through the bottom of the bags,
- 15:41Speaker 1: and we couldn't raise a chorus for the toothache and
- 15:44Speaker 1: the cramp, or we spent the hours of darkness draining
- 15:48Speaker 1: puddles round the camp. Would you like to change with Clancy,
- 15:53Speaker 1: go a droving tell us true, For we rather think
- 15:56Speaker 1: that Clancy would be glad to change with you and
- 15:59Speaker 1: be something in the city. But twould give your muse
- 16:03Speaker 1: a shock to be losing time and money through the
- 16:06Speaker 1: foot rot in the flock. And you wouldn't mind the
- 16:09Speaker 1: beauties underneath the starry dome if you had a wife
- 16:12Speaker 1: and children and a lot of bills at home. Did
- 16:16Speaker 1: you ever guard the cattle when the night was inky
- 16:18Speaker 1: black and it rained, and icy water gently trickled down
- 16:23Speaker 1: your back till your saddle weary backbone fell a aching
- 16:27Speaker 1: to the roots, and you almost felt the croaking of
- 16:30Speaker 1: the bull frog in your boots, Sit and shiver in
- 16:34Speaker 1: the saddle, cursed the restless stock, and coughed till a
- 16:38Speaker 1: squatter's irate dummy cantered up to warn you off. Did
- 16:42Speaker 1: you fight the drought and pleuro when the seasons were asleep,
- 16:46Speaker 1: felling sheoaks all the morning for a flock of starving sheep,
- 16:50Speaker 1: drinking mud instead of water, Climbing trees and lobbing boughs
- 16:54Speaker 1: for the broken, hutted bullocks and the dry and dusty cows.
- 17:00Speaker 1: Do you think the bush was better in the good
- 17:02Speaker 1: old droving days when the squatter ruled supremely as the
- 17:05Speaker 1: king of western ways, when you got a slip of
- 17:09Speaker 1: paper for the little you could earn, but were forced
- 17:12Speaker 1: to take provisions from the station in return, When you
- 17:15Speaker 1: couldn't keep a chicken at your humpy on the run
- 17:17Speaker 1: for the squatter wouldn't let you, and your work was
- 17:20Speaker 1: never done when you had to leave the misses in
- 17:23Speaker 1: a lonely hut for lawn, while you rose up, Willie Riley,
- 17:27Speaker 1: in the days er you were born. Ah, we read
- 17:31Speaker 1: about the drovers and the shearers and the like, till
- 17:33Speaker 1: we wonder why such a happy and romantic fellows strike.
- 17:40Speaker 1: Don't you fancy that the poets ought to give the
- 17:42Speaker 1: bush a rest, and they raise a just rebellion in
- 17:45Speaker 1: the overwritten West, where the simple minded bushman gets a
- 17:49Speaker 1: meal and bed and rum just by riding round reporting
- 17:52Speaker 1: phantom flocks that never come, Where the scalper never troubled
- 17:57Speaker 1: by the war whoop of the push as a whet
- 18:00Speaker 1: little billet breading rabbits in the bush, where the idle
- 18:03Speaker 1: shanty keeper never fails to make a drawer, and the
- 18:06Speaker 1: dummy getsis tucker through provisions in the law. Where the
- 18:10Speaker 1: labor agitator, when the shearers rise in might, makes his money,
- 18:15Speaker 1: sacrificing all his substance for the right, where the squad
- 18:19Speaker 1: makes its fortune, and the seasons rise and fall, and
- 18:22Speaker 1: the poor and honest bushmen as to suffer for it all,
- 18:27Speaker 1: Where the drovers and the shearers, and the bushmen and
- 18:29Speaker 1: the rest never reached the el dorado of the poets
- 18:33Speaker 1: of the west, and you think the bush is purer
- 18:37Speaker 1: and that life is better there, but it doesn't seem
- 18:40Speaker 1: to pay you, like the squalid street and square pray
- 18:44Speaker 1: informs mister Banjo, where you read in prose or verse
- 18:48Speaker 1: of the awful city urchin who would greet you with
- 18:51Speaker 1: a curse. There are golden hearts in gutters, though their
- 18:55Speaker 1: owners lack the fat. And we're back at Teamster's offspring
- 18:59Speaker 1: to out where a city brat? Do you think we're
- 19:03Speaker 1: never jolly? Where the trams and busses rage? Did you
- 19:07Speaker 1: hear the gods in chorus when Retool held the stage?
- 19:12Speaker 1: Did you catch a ring of sorrow in the city
- 19:13Speaker 1: Urchin's voice when he yelled for Billy Elton, when he
- 19:17Speaker 1: thumped the floor for Royce? Do the bushmen down on
- 19:20Speaker 1: pleasure miss the everlasting stars when they drink and flirt
- 19:24Speaker 1: and so on in the glow of private bars? What
- 19:28Speaker 1: care you if fallen women? God help em, let em flaunt?
- 19:32Speaker 1: And the seamstress seems to haunt you? To what purpose?
- 19:35Speaker 1: Does she haunt? You've a down on trams and busses
- 19:40Speaker 1: on the roar of em, you said, And the filthy,
- 19:43Speaker 1: dirty attic where you never toiled for bread and about
- 19:47Speaker 1: that self same attic. Tell us banjo, where you've been
- 19:52Speaker 1: for the struggling needlewoman mostly keeps her attic clean, but
- 19:55Speaker 1: you'll find it very jolly with the cuff and collar push,
- 19:59Speaker 1: and the city se seems to suit you while you
- 20:02Speaker 1: rave about the bush. Henry Lawson p s. You'll admit
- 20:08Speaker 1: that up the country more, especially in drought, isn't quite
- 20:11Speaker 1: the Eldorado that the poets rave about. Yet at times
- 20:15Speaker 1: we long to gallop where the reckless bushman rides in
- 20:19Speaker 1: the wake of startled brumbies that are flying for their hides.
- 20:22Speaker 1: Long to feel the saddle tremble once again between our knees,
- 20:26Speaker 1: and hear the stockwhips rattle just like rifles in the trees.
- 20:30Speaker 1: Long to feel the bridle leather tugging strongly in the hand,
- 20:33Speaker 1: and to feel once more a little like a native
- 20:36Speaker 1: of the land. And the ring of bitter feeling in
- 20:39Speaker 1: the jingling of our rhymes isn't susure to the country
- 20:43Speaker 1: nor the spirit of the times. Let us go together,
- 20:47Speaker 1: droving and returning, if we live, try to understand each
- 20:51Speaker 1: other while we reckon up the div hey chl en
- 20:57Speaker 1: of in answer to Banjo and other wise Palm five
- 21:07Speaker 1: of the Bush Debate. This is a LibriVox recording. All
- 21:11Speaker 1: LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
- 21:14Speaker 1: not to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
- 21:18Speaker 1: Timothy ferguson the Overflow of Clancy written by H. H. C. C.
- 21:25Speaker 1: Probably Henry Lawson. Subtitle on reading Banjo's Clancy of the Overflow.
- 21:34Speaker 1: I've read the Banjo's letter, and I'm glad he found
- 21:36Speaker 1: a better billet than he had upon the station where
- 21:39Speaker 1: I met him years ago. He was slushy then for Scottie,
- 21:44Speaker 1: but the bushland sent him dotty, so he rose up
- 21:46Speaker 1: William Riley and departed down below. He rolled up very gladly,
- 21:51Speaker 1: for he had bush fever badly when he left the
- 21:55Speaker 1: smoke to wander where the wattle blossoms wave. But a
- 21:59Speaker 1: course of Stagg and Brownie seems to make the bush
- 22:02Speaker 1: struck tawny kinder weaken on the wattle, and the bushman's
- 22:06Speaker 1: lonely grave safe in town. He spins romances of the
- 22:09Speaker 1: bush until one fancies that it's all top boots and chorus,
- 22:14Speaker 1: kegs of rum and whips of grass. And the sheep
- 22:17Speaker 1: off camp goes stringing when the boss in charge is
- 22:20Speaker 1: singing whilst we blow the cool tobacco smoke and watch
- 22:24Speaker 1: the white wreaths pass. Yet I guess the bee feels
- 22:28Speaker 1: fitter in a build shirt and a hard hitter than
- 22:31Speaker 1: he would weigh down the cooper in a flannel smock
- 22:34Speaker 1: and moles for the city cove has leisure to indulge
- 22:38Speaker 1: in stocks of pleasure, but the drover's only pastime is
- 22:41Speaker 1: cooking what's this on the coals? And the pub hath
- 22:46Speaker 1: friends to meet him, and between the acts they treat
- 22:50Speaker 1: him while he's swapping fairy twisters with girls behind their bars,
- 22:55Speaker 1: and he sees a vista splendid when the ballet is extended,
- 23:00Speaker 1: and at night he's in his glory with the comic
- 23:03Speaker 1: opera stars. I am sitting very weary on a log
- 23:07Speaker 1: before a dreary little fire that's feebly hissing neath a
- 23:11Speaker 1: heavy fall of rain, and the wind is cold and nipping,
- 23:15Speaker 1: and I curse the ceaseless dripping as I slaughter around
- 23:18Speaker 1: for wood to start the embers up again. And in
- 23:21Speaker 1: place of Beauty's greeting, I can hear the dismal bleating
- 23:24Speaker 1: of a ewe that's sneaking out among the marshes for
- 23:26Speaker 1: her lamb and for the poet's skiting that a new
- 23:30Speaker 1: chum takes delight in the drove's share of pleasure isn't
- 23:34Speaker 1: worth a tinker's dam. Does he sneer at bricks and
- 23:39Speaker 1: mortar when he's squatting in the water after riding fourteen
- 23:43Speaker 1: hours beneath the sullen, weeping sky, Does he look aloft
- 23:47Speaker 1: and thank it as he spreads his solemn blanket? For
- 23:51Speaker 1: the drover has no time to spare, He has no
- 23:54Speaker 1: time to dry if the banjo's game to fill, But
- 24:00Speaker 1: he's welcome to my billet. He can take a turn
- 24:02Speaker 1: at droving wages three and six a day, and his
- 24:06Speaker 1: throat will get more gritty than mine will in the
- 24:08Speaker 1: city where with mister Lawson's squashes, I can wash the
- 24:12Speaker 1: dust away, Hey chh cc end of the Overflow of Clancy.
- 24:27Speaker 4: Poem six of the Bush Debate. This is a LibriVox recording.
- 24:33Speaker 4: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
- 24:36Speaker 4: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Banjo
- 24:45Speaker 4: of the Overflow by Francis Kenna I had written him
- 24:51Speaker 4: a letter, which I have for want of better knowledge,
- 24:54Speaker 4: given to a partner by the name of green Hide Jack.
- 24:58Speaker 4: He was cheering when I met him, and I thought
- 25:00Speaker 4: perhaps i'd let him know that I was stiff, and
- 25:03Speaker 4: maybe he would send a trifle back. My request was
- 25:07Speaker 4: not requited, for an answer came indicted on a sheet
- 25:10Speaker 4: of scented paper in an ink of fancy blue, and
- 25:14Speaker 4: the envelope I fancy had an esquire to the clancy,
- 25:18Speaker 4: and its simply read, I'm busy, but I'll see what
- 25:21Speaker 4: I can do to the vision land. I can go,
- 25:24Speaker 4: And I often think of Banjo, of the boy I
- 25:27Speaker 4: used to shepherd in the not so long ago. He
- 25:31Speaker 4: was not the bushman's kidney, and among the crowds of
- 25:33Speaker 4: Sydney he'll be more at home than mooning on the
- 25:36Speaker 4: dreary overflow. He has clients now to fee him, and
- 25:41Speaker 4: his friends to come and see him. He can ride
- 25:43Speaker 4: from morn to evening in the padded, handsome cars, and
- 25:47Speaker 4: he sees the beauty's blending, where the throngs are never ending,
- 25:51Speaker 4: and at night the wondrous women in the everlasting bars.
- 25:56Speaker 4: I am tired of reading prattle of the sweetly lowing,
- 26:00Speaker 4: stringing out across the open, with the bushmen riding free.
- 26:04Speaker 4: I'm thick at heart of roving up and down the country, droving,
- 26:09Speaker 4: and of alternating damper with the salt junk and the tea,
- 26:13Speaker 4: and from sleeping in the water on the droving trips.
- 26:16Speaker 4: I've caught a lively dose of rheumatism in my back
- 26:19Speaker 4: and in my knee. And in spite of verse, it's
- 26:22Speaker 4: certain that the sky's a leaky curtain. It may suit
- 26:25Speaker 4: the banjo nicely, but it never suited me. And the
- 26:30Speaker 4: bush is very pretty when you view it from the city,
- 26:34Speaker 4: but it loses all its beauty when you face it
- 26:36Speaker 4: on the pad, And the wildernesses haunt you, and the
- 26:40Speaker 4: plains extended, don't you till at times you come to
- 26:43Speaker 4: fancy that the life will drive you mad? But I
- 26:48Speaker 4: somehow often fancy that I'd rather not be clancy, That
- 26:52Speaker 4: I'd like to be the banjo where the people come
- 26:55Speaker 4: and go, when instead of framing curses, I'd be writing charming.
- 27:01Speaker 4: Though I scarcely think he'd swamp me. Banjo the Overflow
- 27:07Speaker 4: k and of Banjo of the Overflow.
- 27:19Speaker 2: Poem seven of the bush Debate This is a liberyvox recording.
- 27:24Speaker 2: All libyvox recordings are in the public domain. For more
- 27:28Speaker 2: information or to volunteer, please visit libyvox dot org. Recording
- 27:35Speaker 2: by al G. Pug In Answer to Various Bards by
- 27:40Speaker 2: Banjo Patterson An Answer to Various Bards, Well, I've waited
- 27:48Speaker 2: mighty patient till they all came rolling in, mister Lawson,
- 27:52Speaker 2: mister Dyson, and others of their kin with their dreadful,
- 27:56Speaker 2: dismal stories of the overlanders. Camp fire is always smoky,
- 28:01Speaker 2: and his boots are always damp, and they painted so
- 28:04Speaker 2: terrific it would fill one's soul with gloom. But you
- 28:08Speaker 2: know they're fond of writing about corpses and the tomb.
- 28:13Speaker 2: So before they cursed the bushland, they should let their
- 28:16Speaker 2: fancy range and take something for their livers and be
- 28:20Speaker 2: cheerful for a change. Now, for instance, mister Lawson, Well,
- 28:26Speaker 2: of course we almost cried at the sorrowful description how
- 28:31Speaker 2: his little Arvey died, and we lachrymosed in silence when
- 28:35Speaker 2: his father's mate was slain. Then he went and killed
- 28:39Speaker 2: the father and we had to weep again. Ben Duggan
- 28:43Speaker 2: and Jack Denver too. He caused them to expire, and
- 28:47Speaker 2: he went and cooked the gander of Jack Dunn of Nevertire.
- 28:52Speaker 2: So no doubt the bush is wretched if you judge
- 28:55Speaker 2: it by the groan of the sad and soulful poet
- 28:58Speaker 2: with a graveyard of his. And he spoke in terms
- 29:03Speaker 2: prophetic of a revolution's beat when the world should hear
- 29:06Speaker 2: the clamor of those people in the street. But the
- 29:09Speaker 2: shearer chaps who started, why, he rounds on them in blame,
- 29:14Speaker 2: and he calls them agitators who are living on the game.
- 29:19Speaker 2: But I overwrite the bushman well, I own without a
- 29:23Speaker 2: doubt that I always see a hero in the man
- 29:26Speaker 2: from furthest out. I could never contemplate him through an
- 29:30Speaker 2: atmosphere of gloom. And a bushman never struck me as
- 29:33Speaker 2: a subject for the tomb. If it ain't all golden
- 29:37Speaker 2: sunshine where the wattle branches wave, well, it ain't all
- 29:42Speaker 2: damp and dismal, and it ain't all lonely grave. And
- 29:47Speaker 2: of course there's no denying that the bushman's life is rough.
- 29:51Speaker 2: But a man's an easy standard if he's built of
- 29:53Speaker 2: sterling stuff. Though it's seldom that the drover gets a
- 29:57Speaker 2: bed of eided down. If the man who's on a bushman,
- 30:01Speaker 2: he gets mighty sick of town, for he's jotting down
- 30:04Speaker 2: the figures and he's adding up the bills while his
- 30:07Speaker 2: heart is simply aching for a sight of southern hills.
- 30:12Speaker 2: Then he hears a wool team passing with a rumble
- 30:15Speaker 2: in the lurch, and although the work is pressing, yet
- 30:18Speaker 2: it brings him off his perch, for it stirs him
- 30:22Speaker 2: like a message from his station friends afar, and he
- 30:25Speaker 2: seems to sniff the rangers in the scent of wool
- 30:28Speaker 2: under tar, and it takes him back in fancy, half
- 30:32Speaker 2: in laughter, half in tears, to a sound of other
- 30:35Speaker 2: voices and a thought of other years when the woolshed
- 30:39Speaker 2: rang with bustle from the dawning of the day, and
- 30:42Speaker 2: the sheer blades were clicking to the cry of wall Away.
- 30:47Speaker 2: Then his face was somewhat browner, and his frame was
- 30:50Speaker 2: firmer set, and he feels his flabby muscles with a
- 30:53Speaker 2: feeling of regret. But the wool team slowly passes, and
- 30:58Speaker 2: his eyes go sadly back to the dusty little table
- 31:02Speaker 2: and the papers in the rack, and his thoughts go
- 31:05Speaker 2: to the terrace where he's sickly children squall, and he
- 31:09Speaker 2: thinks that something healthy in the bush life after all.
- 31:13Speaker 2: But we'll go no more a droving in the wind
- 31:16Speaker 2: or in the sun, for our father's hearts have failed us,
- 31:19Speaker 2: and the droving days are done. There's a nasty dash
- 31:23Speaker 2: of danger where the long horned bullock wheels. And we
- 31:26Speaker 2: like to live in comfort and to get our regular meals,
- 31:30Speaker 2: and to hang around the townships suits us better, you'll agree,
- 31:34Speaker 2: And a job at washing bottles is the job for
- 31:36Speaker 2: such as We let us herd into the cities, let
- 31:40Speaker 2: us crush and crowd and push till we lose the
- 31:43Speaker 2: love of roving, and we learn to hate the bush.
- 31:47Speaker 2: For we'll turn our aspirations to a city life and beer,
- 31:51Speaker 2: and we'll slip across to England. It's a nicer place
- 31:54Speaker 2: than here, for there's not much risk of hardship where
- 31:58Speaker 2: all comforts are in store, and the theaters are plenty,
- 32:02Speaker 2: and the pubs are more and more. But that ends it,
- 32:06Speaker 2: mister Lawson, and his time to say good bye. We
- 32:09Speaker 2: must agree to differ in all friendship, you and I
- 32:13Speaker 2: and our personal opinions, well, they're scarcely worth a rush
- 32:18Speaker 2: for the sum that like the city, and the sum
- 32:21Speaker 2: that like the bush. And there's no one quite contented,
- 32:25Speaker 2: as I've always heard it said, except one favored person,
- 32:29Speaker 2: and he turned out to be dead. So we'll work
- 32:34Speaker 2: out our own salvation with the stoutest hearts we may,
- 32:38Speaker 2: And if fortune only favors, we will take the road
- 32:41Speaker 2: some day and go droving down the river neath the
- 32:44Speaker 2: sunshine and the stars, and then return to Sydney and
- 32:49Speaker 2: vermilionize the bars the banjo, end of in answer to various.
- 32:56Speaker 1: Bards Poemmate of the Bush Debate. This is a LibriVox recording.
- 33:06Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
- 33:09Speaker 1: informational to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
- 33:14Speaker 1: Timothy Ferguson The Poets of the Tomb by Henry Lawson,
- 33:20Speaker 1: subtitle for the Bulletin the world has had enough of
- 33:25Speaker 1: bards who wish that they were dead. Tis time that
- 33:27Speaker 1: people passed a law to knock them on the head,
- 33:30Speaker 1: For twould be lovely if their friends could grant the
- 33:33Speaker 1: rest they crave, those bards of tears and vanished hopes,
- 33:37Speaker 1: Those poets of the grave. They said that life's an
- 33:41Speaker 1: awful thing, and full of care and gloom. They talketh
- 33:45Speaker 1: peace and restfulness connected with the tomb. They say that
- 33:51Speaker 1: man is made of dirt and die, of course he must,
- 33:54Speaker 1: But all the same a man is made of pretty
- 33:57Speaker 1: solid dust. There is a thing that they forget, So
- 34:02Speaker 1: let it he be writ that some are made of
- 34:04Speaker 1: common mud, and some are made of grit. Some try
- 34:08Speaker 1: to help the world along, while others fret and fume
- 34:12Speaker 1: and wish that they were slumbering in the silence of
- 34:15Speaker 1: the tomb, TwixT mother's arms and coffin gear. A man
- 34:19Speaker 1: has work to do, and if he does his very best,
- 34:22Speaker 1: he mostly worries through. And while there is a wrong
- 34:25Speaker 1: to right, and while the world goes round, an honest
- 34:28Speaker 1: man alive is worth a million underground. And yet as
- 34:34Speaker 1: long as sheoaks, sigh, and wattle blossoms bloom, the world
- 34:38Speaker 1: shall hear the drivel of the poets of the tomb.
- 34:42Speaker 1: And though the graveyard poets long to vanish from the scene,
- 34:45Speaker 1: I notice that they mostly wish their resting place kept green. Now,
- 34:51Speaker 1: were I rotting underground, I do not think I'd care
- 34:54Speaker 1: if warm bats rooted on the mound, or if the
- 34:57Speaker 1: cows camp there, and should I have some fe feelings
- 35:00Speaker 1: left when I have gone before? I think a ton
- 35:03Speaker 1: of solid stone would hurt my feelings more. Such wormy
- 35:08Speaker 1: songs of moldy joys can give me no delight. I'll
- 35:13Speaker 1: take my chances with the world. I'd rather live and fight,
- 35:17Speaker 1: though fortune laughs along my track or wears her blackest frown.
- 35:22Speaker 1: I'll try to do the world some good before I
- 35:25Speaker 1: tumble down. Let's fight for things that ought to be
- 35:30Speaker 1: and try to make them boom. We cannot help mankind
- 35:34Speaker 1: when we are ashes in the Tomb, Sydney, September ninety two,
- 35:40Speaker 1: Henry Lawson and of the Poets of the Tomb.
- 35:50Speaker 2: Poem nine of the Bush Debate. This is a liberyvox recording.
- 35:55Speaker 2: All liberyvox recordings are in the public domain. For more information,
- 36:00Speaker 2: ought to volunteer, please visit libbybox dot org. Recording by
- 36:05Speaker 2: Algae pug Up the Country by Henry Lawson. I am
- 36:12Speaker 2: back from up the country, very sorry that I went
- 36:15Speaker 2: seeking for the Southern poets land whereon to pitch my tent.
- 36:20Speaker 2: I've lost a lot of idols which were broken on
- 36:23Speaker 2: the track, burned a lot of fancy verses and I'm
- 36:27Speaker 2: glad that I am back. Further out may be the
- 36:30Speaker 2: pleasant scenes of which our poets burst, but I think
- 36:33Speaker 2: the countries were rather more inviting round the coast. Anyway.
- 36:38Speaker 2: I'll stay at present at a boarding house in town,
- 36:42Speaker 2: drinking beer and lemon squashes, taking baths, and cooling down
- 36:47Speaker 2: sunny plains. Great Scott, those burning wastes of barren, soil
- 36:53Speaker 2: and sand, with their everlasting fences stretching out across the
- 36:57Speaker 2: land desolation, and where the crow is desert, where the
- 37:02Speaker 2: eagle flies paddics, where the loony bullock starts and stares
- 37:07Speaker 2: with reddened eyes, Where in clouds of dust, enveloped roasted
- 37:12Speaker 2: bullock drivers creep slowly past the sun dried shepherd, dragged
- 37:17Speaker 2: behind his crawling sheep, stunted peak of granite, gleaming, glaring
- 37:23Speaker 2: like a molten mass, turned from some infernal furnace on
- 37:27Speaker 2: a plain devoid of grass, miles and miles of thirsty gutters,
- 37:34Speaker 2: strings of muddy water holes in the place of shining rivers,
- 37:40Speaker 2: walled by cliffs and forest bows, barren ridges, gullies, ridges,
- 37:46Speaker 2: where the ever maddening flies, fiercer than the plagues of Egypt,
- 37:51Speaker 2: swarm about your blighted eyes. Bush where there is no horizon,
- 37:56Speaker 2: where the buried bushmen sees nothing, nothing but the sameness
- 38:02Speaker 2: of the ragged, stunted trees, lonely hut where droughts eternals,
- 38:07Speaker 2: suffocating atmosphere, where the god forgotten hatter dreams of city
- 38:12Speaker 2: life and beer. Treacherous tracks that trap the stranger, endless
- 38:19Speaker 2: roads that gleam and glare, dark and evil looking gullies
- 38:24Speaker 2: hiding secrets here and there, dull dump flats and stoney rises,
- 38:30Speaker 2: where the toiling bullocks bake, and the sinister Gohanna and
- 38:35Speaker 2: the lizard and the snake. Land of day and night,
- 38:39Speaker 2: no morning freshness and no afternoon when the great white
- 38:44Speaker 2: sun in rising bringeth summer heat in June, Dismal country
- 38:49Speaker 2: for the exile, when the shades begin to fall from
- 38:53Speaker 2: the sad, heart breaking sunset to the new chum. Worst
- 38:57Speaker 2: of all three. Land in rainy weather, with the endless
- 39:02Speaker 2: clouds that drift o'er the bushmen like a blanket that
- 39:06Speaker 2: the Lord will never lift. Dismal land when it is raining,
- 39:11Speaker 2: corrawl of floods, and oh the wush of the rain
- 39:15Speaker 2: and wind, together on the dark bed of the bush
- 39:19Speaker 2: ghastly fires, in lonely humpies, where the granite rocks are piled,
- 39:23Speaker 2: in the windswept wildernesses that are wildest of the wild land,
- 39:30Speaker 2: where gaunt and haggard women live alone and work like
- 39:33Speaker 2: men till the husband's gone. A droving will return to
- 39:37Speaker 2: them again. Homes of men, if home had ever such
- 39:42Speaker 2: a god forgotten place, where the wild selector's children fly
- 39:46Speaker 2: before a stranger's face, Home of tragedy, applauded by the dingoes,
- 39:52Speaker 2: dismal liell, heaven of the shanty keeper, fitting fiend for
- 39:57Speaker 2: such a hell, and the walloroo us and wombats, and
- 40:01Speaker 2: of course the curlew's call, and the lone sundowner tramping
- 40:06Speaker 2: ever onward through it all. I am back from up
- 40:10Speaker 2: the country, up the country where I went, seeking for
- 40:13Speaker 2: the Southern Poet's land, whereon to pitch my tent. I
- 40:17Speaker 2: have shattered many idols out along the dusty track, burned
- 40:22Speaker 2: a lot of fancy vases, and I'm glad that I
- 40:25Speaker 2: am back. I believe the Southern Poet's dream will not
- 40:29Speaker 2: be realized till the plains are irrigated and the land
- 40:33Speaker 2: is humanized. I intend to stay at present, as I
- 40:37Speaker 2: said before, in town, drinking beer and lemon squashes, taking
- 40:42Speaker 2: baths and cooling down. Henry Lawson, end of Up the Country.
- 40:57Speaker 1: Palm ten of the Bush de Bait. This is librovox recording.
- 41:01Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
- 41:04Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
- 41:08Speaker 1: by Timothy Ferguson. In Defense of the Bush by ab
- 41:14Speaker 1: Banjo Patterson. So you're back from up the country, mister Lawson,
- 41:19Speaker 1: where you went, and you're cursing all the business in
- 41:22Speaker 1: a bitter discontent. Well we grieve to disappoint you, and
- 41:26Speaker 1: it makes us sad to hear that it wasn't cool
- 41:28Speaker 1: and shady, and there wasn't plenty beer, and the looney
- 41:32Speaker 1: bullocks snorted when you first came into view. Well, you know,
- 41:35Speaker 1: it's not so often that he sees a swell like you.
- 41:38Speaker 1: And the roads were hot and dusty, and the planes
- 41:42Speaker 1: were burnt and brown. And no doubt you're better suit
- 41:45Speaker 1: at drinking lemon squash in town. Yet, perchance, if you
- 41:49Speaker 1: should journey down the very track you went in a
- 41:52Speaker 1: month or two at Furthest, you would wonder what it
- 41:55Speaker 1: meant where the sun baked earth was gasping like creature
- 42:00Speaker 1: in its pain. You would find the grasses waving like
- 42:04Speaker 1: a field of summer grain, and the miles of thirsty
- 42:08Speaker 1: gutters blocked with sand and choked with mud. You would
- 42:11Speaker 1: find the mighty rivers with a turbid, sweeping flood. For
- 42:15Speaker 1: the rain and drought and sunshine make no changes in
- 42:18Speaker 1: the street, in the sullen line of buildings, and the
- 42:21Speaker 1: ceaseless tramp of feet. But the bush hath moods and
- 42:25Speaker 1: changes as the seasons rise and fall. And the men
- 42:30Speaker 1: who know the bush land they are loyal through it all.
- 42:35Speaker 1: But you found the bush was dismal and a land
- 42:38Speaker 1: of no delight. Did you chance to hear a chorus
- 42:41Speaker 1: in the shearer's huts at night? Did they rise up
- 42:44Speaker 1: William Riley by the camp fire's cheery blaze? Did they
- 42:48Speaker 1: rise him as we rose him in the good old
- 42:49Speaker 1: droving days? And the women of the homesteads and the
- 42:53Speaker 1: men you chanced to meet, were their faces sour and saddened,
- 42:57Speaker 1: like the faces in the street and the shop I
- 43:00Speaker 1: select to children? Were they better now or worse than
- 43:03Speaker 1: the little city urchins who would greet you with a curse.
- 43:08Speaker 1: Is not such a life much better than the squalid
- 43:10Speaker 1: street and square where the fallen women flaunt it in
- 43:14Speaker 1: their fierce electric glare, where the sempstress plies her sewing
- 43:21Speaker 1: till her eyes are sore and red, in a filthy,
- 43:24Speaker 1: dirty attic, toiling on for daily bread. Did you hear
- 43:29Speaker 1: no sweeter voices in the music of the bush than
- 43:32Speaker 1: the roar of trams and busses and the war whoop
- 43:35Speaker 1: of the push. Did the magpies rouse your slumber with
- 43:38Speaker 1: their carols sweet and strange? Did you hear the silver
- 43:43Speaker 1: chiming of the bell birds on the range? But perchance
- 43:47Speaker 1: the wild bird's music, by your senses, was despised for
- 43:52Speaker 1: you say you'll stay in townships till the bush is civilized?
- 43:55Speaker 1: Would you make it a tea garden, and on Sundays
- 43:58Speaker 1: have a band with the blokes might take their donas
- 44:02Speaker 1: with a public close at hand, you had better stick
- 44:05Speaker 1: to Sydney and make merry with the push, for the
- 44:08Speaker 1: bush will never suit you, and you'll never suit the bush.
- 44:14Speaker 1: The bulletin twenty third of July eighteen ninety two, end
- 44:20Speaker 1: of In Defense of the Bush by A b Banjo Patterson.
- 44:31Speaker 4: Poem eleven of the Bush Debate. This is a LibriVox recording.
- 44:36Speaker 4: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
- 44:40Speaker 4: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. The
- 44:48Speaker 4: Fact of the Matter by Edward George Dyson. I'm wondering
- 44:54Speaker 4: why those fellers who go build in chipper ditties about
- 44:58Speaker 4: the rosy times out droven and dust and death and
- 45:01Speaker 4: cities don't sling the bloom in office, strike some drover
- 45:05Speaker 4: for a billet and soak up all the glory that
- 45:08Speaker 4: comes handy while they fill it. Perhaps it's fun to
- 45:11Speaker 4: travel cattle or to picnic with merinos. But the drover
- 45:15Speaker 4: don't catch on, sir, not much high class rapture. He knows,
- 45:19Speaker 4: as we're sleeping on the planes there in the shatter
- 45:21Speaker 4: of the speargrass. That's like best by the juggins with
- 45:25Speaker 4: a spring bed and a pier glass, and the campfire
- 45:29Speaker 4: and the freedom and the blanky constellations, the possum rug
- 45:33Speaker 4: and Billy and the togs and stale old rations. It's
- 45:36Speaker 4: strange they're only raved about by coves that dress up
- 45:40Speaker 4: pretty and spoort a wife and live on slap up
- 45:43Speaker 4: tucker in the city. I've tickled beef in my time,
- 45:46Speaker 4: clear from Clark to Riverina, and shifted sheep all round
- 45:50Speaker 4: the shop. But blow me if I've seen a single
- 45:53Speaker 4: blanky hand who didn't bucket pleasures of this kidney and
- 45:56Speaker 4: wouldn't trade his blisses for a flutter down in Sydney.
- 46:01Speaker 4: Night watches are delightful when the stars are really splendid
- 46:05Speaker 4: to the chap is fresh upon the job, But you
- 46:07Speaker 4: bet it's raptures ended when the rain comes down in
- 46:10Speaker 4: sluice heads, or the cut in hailstones pelter and the
- 46:13Speaker 4: sheep drift off before the wind and the horses strike
- 46:16Speaker 4: for shelter. Don't take me for a howler, but I
- 46:20Speaker 4: find it come annoying to hear these fellers rave about
- 46:24Speaker 4: the pleasures we're enjoyant when perhaps we've nothing better than
- 46:28Speaker 4: some fluky water handy. And they're right on all the
- 46:31Speaker 4: liquors rum and plenty beer and brandy. The town is dusty, maybe,
- 46:36Speaker 4: but it isn't worth the curses beside the dust of
- 46:39Speaker 4: feller swallows and the blind thirsty nurses. When he's on
- 46:43Speaker 4: the hard McAdam where the jumbucks cannot browse him. The
- 46:47Speaker 4: wind is in his whiskers, and he follows twenty thousand.
- 46:52Speaker 4: It's droven on the plane too. It's all okay when
- 46:55Speaker 4: the weather isn't hot enough to curl the soles right
- 46:58Speaker 4: off your upper leather, or so cold that when the
- 47:01Speaker 4: morning wind comes hissing through the grasses, you can feel
- 47:05Speaker 4: it cuts your eyelids like a whiplash as it passes.
- 47:09Speaker 4: Then there's bull ants in the blankets, and a lamehorse,
- 47:12Speaker 4: and Moskeeters and a dt boss like hal again, or
- 47:15Speaker 4: one like Humpy Peters who's mean about the tucker and
- 47:19Speaker 4: can curse from start to sundown, and can fight like
- 47:22Speaker 4: fifty devils, and whose growlers never run down. Yes, I
- 47:28Speaker 4: wonder why the fellers what go building chipper ditties about
- 47:32Speaker 4: the rosy times out droven and the dust and death
- 47:35Speaker 4: of cities. Don't sling the bloomin office, strike ol Peters
- 47:39Speaker 4: for a billet, and soak up all the glory that
- 47:42Speaker 4: comes handy while they fill it. End of the Fact
- 47:49Speaker 4: of the Matter.
- 47:56Speaker 2: PLM twelve of the Bush Debate. This is a vox recording.
- 48:01Speaker 2: All libberyvox recordings are in the public domain. For more
- 48:05Speaker 2: information or to volunteer. Please visit libyvox dot org. Recording
- 48:11Speaker 2: by Algie Pug The City Bushman by Henry Lawson. It
- 48:18Speaker 2: was pleasant up the country city, Bushman, where you went,
- 48:23Speaker 2: for you sought the greener patches, and you traveled alike
- 48:26Speaker 2: a gent and you cast the trams and busses and
- 48:29Speaker 2: the turmoil and the push. Though you know the squalid
- 48:33Speaker 2: city needn't keep you from the bush. For we late
- 48:36Speaker 2: you heard your singing of the plains where shade is not,
- 48:39Speaker 2: and you mentioned it was dusty, all was dry, and
- 48:43Speaker 2: all was hot. True, the bush hath moods and changes,
- 48:49Speaker 2: and the bushmen hath them too. For he's not a
- 48:52Speaker 2: poet's dummy. He's a man the same as you. But
- 48:56Speaker 2: his back is growing round us, slaving for the absent,
- 49:00Speaker 2: and his toiling wife is thinner than a country wife
- 49:03Speaker 2: should be. For we notice that the faces of the
- 49:06Speaker 2: folks we chanced to meet should have made a greater
- 49:09Speaker 2: contrast to the faces in the street. And in short,
- 49:13Speaker 2: we think the bushmen's being driven to the wall, and
- 49:17Speaker 2: it's doubtful if his spirit will be loyal through it all.
- 49:21Speaker 2: Though the bush has been romantic and is nice to
- 49:24Speaker 2: sing about that, a lot of patriotism that the land
- 49:28Speaker 2: could do without. Sort of British workmen. Nonsense that shall
- 49:32Speaker 2: perish in the scorn of the drover who is driven
- 49:36Speaker 2: and the shearer who is shorn, of the struggling Western
- 49:40Speaker 2: farmers who have little time for rest and are ruined
- 49:43Speaker 2: on selections in the sheep infested West. The roving songs
- 49:48Speaker 2: are very pretty, but they merit little thanks from the
- 49:51Speaker 2: people of a country in possession of the banks. And
- 49:56Speaker 2: the rise and fall of seasons suits the rise and
- 50:00Speaker 2: fall of rime. But we know that Western seasons do
- 50:03Speaker 2: not run on scheduled time. For the drought will go
- 50:07Speaker 2: on drying while as anything to dry. Then it rains
- 50:11Speaker 2: until you'd fancy it would bleach the sunny sky. Then
- 50:15Speaker 2: it pelts out of reason, for the downpour day and
- 50:18Speaker 2: a night nearly sweeps the population to the great Australian bite.
- 50:23Speaker 2: It is up in northern Queensland that the seasons do
- 50:26Speaker 2: their best, but it's doubtful if you ever saw a
- 50:29Speaker 2: season in the West. There are years without an autumn
- 50:33Speaker 2: or a winter or a spring. There are broiling June's
- 50:37Speaker 2: and summers when it rains like anything in the bush
- 50:41Speaker 2: my ears were open to the singing of a bird,
- 50:45Speaker 2: for the carol of the magpie was a thing I
- 50:47Speaker 2: never heard. Once the beggar roused my slumbers in a shanty,
- 50:52Speaker 2: it is true, but I only heard him asking here
- 50:55Speaker 2: the blanky blank, are you? And the bell bird in
- 50:59Speaker 2: the ranges. But his silver chime is harsh when it's
- 51:02Speaker 2: heard beside the solo of the curlew in the marsh. Yes,
- 51:07Speaker 2: I heard the shearers singing William Riley out of tune,
- 51:12Speaker 2: saw him fighting round a shanty on a Sunday afternoon.
- 51:16Speaker 2: But the bushman isn't always trapping brumbies in the night,
- 51:20Speaker 2: nor is he for ever riding when the morn is
- 51:22Speaker 2: fresh and bright, And he isn't always singing in the
- 51:26Speaker 2: humpies on the run. And the camphire's cheery blazes are
- 51:30Speaker 2: a trifle overdone. We have grumbled with the bushmen round
- 51:35Speaker 2: the fire on rainy days when the smoke would blind
- 51:39Speaker 2: a bulleck, and there wasn't any blaze save the blazes
- 51:42Speaker 2: of our language. For we curst the fire in turn
- 51:46Speaker 2: till the atmosphere was heated and the wood began to burn.
- 51:50Speaker 2: Then we had to ring our blueys, which were rotting
- 51:53Speaker 2: in the swags, and we saw the sugar leaking through
- 51:56Speaker 2: the bottoms of the bags, and we couldn't raise a
- 51:59Speaker 2: chord for the toothache and the cramp while we spent
- 52:03Speaker 2: the hours of darkness draining puddles round the camp. Would
- 52:08Speaker 2: you like to change with a clancy go a droving
- 52:12Speaker 2: tell us true, for we rather think that clancy would
- 52:15Speaker 2: be glad to change with you and be something in
- 52:18Speaker 2: the city. But would give your muse a shock to
- 52:22Speaker 2: be losing time and money through the foot rot in
- 52:25Speaker 2: the flock. And you wouldn't mind the beauties underneath the
- 52:28Speaker 2: starry dome if you had a wife and children and
- 52:32Speaker 2: a lot of bills at home. Did you ever guard
- 52:36Speaker 2: the cattle when the night was inky black, and it rained,
- 52:40Speaker 2: and icy water trickled gently down your back till your
- 52:44Speaker 2: saddle weary backbone feller aching to the roots, and you
- 52:48Speaker 2: almost felt the croaking of the bullfrog in your boots,
- 52:52Speaker 2: Sit and shiver in the saddle, curse the restless stock,
- 52:55Speaker 2: and cough till a squatter's irate dummy cantered up to
- 52:59Speaker 2: warn you off. Did you fight the drought and plural
- 53:03Speaker 2: when the seasons were asleep? Falling sheoaks all the morning
- 53:07Speaker 2: for a flock of starving sheep, drinking mud instead of water,
- 53:12Speaker 2: climbing trees and lopping boughs for the broken hearted bullocks
- 53:16Speaker 2: and the dry and dusty cows. Do you think the
- 53:21Speaker 2: bush was better in the good old droving days, when
- 53:25Speaker 2: the squatter rude supremely as the king of Western ways,
- 53:29Speaker 2: When you got a slip of paper for the little
- 53:31Speaker 2: you could earn, but were forced to take provisions from
- 53:35Speaker 2: the station in return, When you couldn't keep a chicken
- 53:38Speaker 2: at your humpy on a run for the squatter wouldn't
- 53:41Speaker 2: let you, and your work was never done, when you
- 53:44Speaker 2: had to leave the missus in a lonely hut forlorn
- 53:47Speaker 2: while you rose up Willie Riley in the days ere
- 53:51Speaker 2: you were born. Ah, we read about the drovers and
- 53:55Speaker 2: the shearers and the like. Do we wonder why such
- 53:58Speaker 2: happy and romantic fellow strike. Don't you fancy that the
- 54:02Speaker 2: poets ought to give the bush arrest? Here they raise
- 54:05Speaker 2: a just rebellion in the over written West, where the
- 54:09Speaker 2: simple minded bushmen gets a meal and bed and a
- 54:12Speaker 2: rum just by riding round reporting phantom flocks that never come.
- 54:18Speaker 2: Where the scalper, never troubled by the war whoop of
- 54:21Speaker 2: the push has a quiet little billet breeding rabbits in
- 54:26Speaker 2: the bush, where the idle shanty keeper never fails to
- 54:30Speaker 2: make a draw, and the dummy gets his tucker through
- 54:33Speaker 2: provisions in the law. Where the labor agitator, when the
- 54:38Speaker 2: shearers rise in might, makes his money, sacrificing all his
- 54:42Speaker 2: substance for the right, where the squatter makes his fortune,
- 54:46Speaker 2: and the seasons rise and fall, and the poor and
- 54:50Speaker 2: honest bushmen has to suffer for it all, Where the
- 54:54Speaker 2: draws and the shearers and the bushmen and the rest
- 54:57Speaker 2: never reach the eldorado of the poets of the West.
- 55:02Speaker 2: And you think the bush is purer and that life
- 55:04Speaker 2: is better there, but it doesn't seem to pay you,
- 55:07Speaker 2: like the squalid street and square pray inform us city bushmen,
- 55:13Speaker 2: where you read in prose or verse of the awful
- 55:17Speaker 2: city urchin who would greet you with a curse. There
- 55:21Speaker 2: are golden hearts and gutters, though the owners lack the
- 55:24Speaker 2: fat and move back at teamster's offspring to outswear a
- 55:28Speaker 2: city brat. Do you think whenever jolly, where the trams
- 55:32Speaker 2: and busses rage did you hear the gods in chorus
- 55:36Speaker 2: when riter Al held the stage? Did you catch a
- 55:39Speaker 2: ring of sorrow in the city Urchin's voice when he
- 55:43Speaker 2: yelled for Billy Elton, when he thumped the floor for Royce?
- 55:47Speaker 2: To the bushmen down on pleasure, missed the everlasting stars
- 55:52Speaker 2: when they drink and flirt and so on in the
- 55:55Speaker 2: glow of private bars. You were down on trams and busses,
- 56:00Speaker 2: or the roar of em you said, And the filthy,
- 56:04Speaker 2: dirty attic? Were you never toiled for bread? And about
- 56:08Speaker 2: that self same attic? Lord, wherever have you been for
- 56:12Speaker 2: the struggling needlewoman mostly keeps her attic clean, But you'll
- 56:17Speaker 2: find it very jolly with the cuff and collar push,
- 56:20Speaker 2: and the city seems to suit you. While you rave
- 56:23Speaker 2: about the bush, you'll admit that up the country, more,
- 56:27Speaker 2: especially in drought, isn't quite the el Dorado that the
- 56:31Speaker 2: poets rave about. Yet at times we long to gallop
- 56:35Speaker 2: where the reckless bushmen rides in the wake of startled
- 56:39Speaker 2: brumbies that are flying for their hides. Long to feel
- 56:43Speaker 2: the saddle tremble once again between our knees, and to
- 56:47Speaker 2: hear the stock whips rattle just like rifles in the trees,
- 56:51Speaker 2: long to feel the bridle leather tugging strongly in the hand,
- 56:56Speaker 2: and to feel once more a little like a native
- 56:58Speaker 2: of the land. And the ring of bitter feeling in
- 57:01Speaker 2: the jingling of our rhymes isn't suited to the country,
- 57:05Speaker 2: nor the spirit of the times. Let us go together,
- 57:09Speaker 2: droving and returning if we live, try to understand each
- 57:14Speaker 2: other while we reckon up the div Henry Lawson, end
- 57:21Speaker 2: of the City Bushmen, Palm thirteen of the bush Debate.
- 57:31Speaker 2: This is a libyvox recording. All libyvox recordings are in
- 57:35Speaker 2: the public domain. For more information, ought to volunteer, please
- 57:40Speaker 2: visit libyvox dot org. Recording by alg pug The Overflow
- 57:47Speaker 2: of Clancy by H. H. C. C. Probably Henry Lawson,
- 57:53Speaker 2: on reading the Banjos Clancy of the Overflow. I've read
- 57:58Speaker 2: the Banjo's letter, and I'm glad he's found a better
- 58:01Speaker 2: billet than he had upon the station where I met
- 58:04Speaker 2: him years ago. He was slushy then for Scottie for
- 58:09Speaker 2: the Bushland sent him dotty. So he rose up William
- 58:13Speaker 2: Riley and departed down below. He rode up very gladly,
- 58:19Speaker 2: for he had bush fever badly when he left the
- 58:22Speaker 2: smoke to wander where the wattle blossoms wave for a
- 58:26Speaker 2: course of stagg and Brownie seems to make the bush
- 58:29Speaker 2: struck towny kind of weaken on the wattle and the
- 58:33Speaker 2: bushman's lonely grave safe in town. He's bins romancers of
- 58:38Speaker 2: the bush until one fancies that it's old top boots
- 58:41Speaker 2: and corrus kegs of rum and whips of grass, and
- 58:45Speaker 2: a sheep of camp goes stringing when the boss in
- 58:48Speaker 2: charge is singing whilst we blow the cool tobacco smoke
- 58:52Speaker 2: and watched the white wreaths pass. Yet I guess the
- 58:57Speaker 2: bee feels fitter in a bilge sh sh and heart
- 59:01Speaker 2: hitter than he would way down the cooper in a
- 59:04Speaker 2: flannel smock and mold. For the city cove has leisure
- 59:08Speaker 2: to indulge in stocks of pleasure, but the drove is
- 59:11Speaker 2: only pastimes cooking what's this on the coals? And the
- 59:17Speaker 2: pub hath friends to meet him, and between the acts
- 59:20Speaker 2: they treat him. While he's swapping fairy twisters with the
- 59:24Speaker 2: girls behind their bars, and he sees a vista splendid
- 59:28Speaker 2: when the belly is extended and at night is in
- 59:31Speaker 2: his glory with the comic opera stars. I am sitting
- 59:36Speaker 2: very weary on a log before a dreary little fire
- 59:40Speaker 2: that's feebly hissing neath the heavy fall of rain, and
- 59:44Speaker 2: the wind is cold and nipping, and I curse the
- 59:47Speaker 2: ceaseless dripping as I slush around for wood to start
- 59:51Speaker 2: the embers up again, and in place the beauty's greeting,
- 59:56Speaker 2: I can hear the dismal bleating of a ewe that's
- 59:59Speaker 2: sneaking out among the marshes for her lamb, and for
- 1:00:03Speaker 2: all the poet's skitan that a new chum takes to
- 1:00:07Speaker 2: light in. The drover's share of pleasure isn't worth a
- 1:00:11Speaker 2: tinker's dam? Does he sneer of bricks and mortar when
- 1:00:15Speaker 2: he's squatting in the water after riding fourteen hours beneath
- 1:00:20Speaker 2: a sullen, weeping sky. Does he look aloft and thank
- 1:00:24Speaker 2: it as he spreads his sodden blanket. For the drover
- 1:00:28Speaker 2: has no time to spare, he has no time to dry.
- 1:00:33Speaker 2: If the banjo's game to fill it, he is welcome
- 1:00:36Speaker 2: to my billet. He can take a turn at droving
- 1:00:40Speaker 2: wages three and six a day. And his throat will
- 1:00:43Speaker 2: get more gritty than mine will in the city where
- 1:00:46Speaker 2: with mister Lawson's squashes, I can wash the dust away.
- 1:00:53Speaker 2: End of the Herberflow of Clancy.
- 1:01:01Speaker 3: Poem fourteen of the Bush Debate. This is a LibriVox recording.
- 1:01:06Speaker 3: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
- 1:01:09Speaker 3: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
- 1:01:14Speaker 3: by Jess Mills. Banjo of the Overflow by Francis Kenna.
- 1:01:20Speaker 3: I had written him a letter which I had, for
- 1:01:22Speaker 3: want of better knowledge, given to a partner by the
- 1:01:25Speaker 3: name of green Hide Jack. He was shearing when I
- 1:01:29Speaker 3: met him, and I thought perhaps i'd let him know
- 1:01:31Speaker 3: that I was stiff, and maybe he would send a
- 1:01:34Speaker 3: trifle back. My request was not requited, for an answer
- 1:01:39Speaker 3: came and dited on a sheet of scented paper in
- 1:01:41Speaker 3: an ink of fancy blue, and the envelope I fancy
- 1:01:45Speaker 3: had an esquire to the clancy, and it simply read,
- 1:01:49Speaker 3: I'm busy, but I'll see what I can do to
- 1:01:53Speaker 3: the vision land I can go. And I often think
- 1:01:56Speaker 3: of Banjo of the boy I used a shepherd in
- 1:01:59Speaker 3: the not so long ago. He was not the bushman's kidney,
- 1:02:03Speaker 3: and among the crowds of Sydney, he'll be more at
- 1:02:05Speaker 3: home than mooning on the dreary overflow. He has clients
- 1:02:09Speaker 3: now to fee him, and as friends to come and
- 1:02:12Speaker 3: see him. He can ride from morn to evening in
- 1:02:14Speaker 3: the padded, handsome cars, and he sees the beauties blending
- 1:02:18Speaker 3: where the throngs are never ending, and at night the
- 1:02:21Speaker 3: wondrous women in the everlasting bars. I am tired of
- 1:02:26Speaker 3: reading prattle, of the sweetly lowing cattle stringing out across
- 1:02:31Speaker 3: the open, with the bush men riding free. I am
- 1:02:35Speaker 3: sick at heart of roving up and down the country, droving,
- 1:02:38Speaker 3: and of alternating damper with the salt junk and the tea,
- 1:02:43Speaker 3: and from sleeping in the water on the droving trips.
- 1:02:45Speaker 3: I've caught a lively dose of rheumatism in my back
- 1:02:49Speaker 3: and in my knee. And in spite of verse, it's
- 1:02:52Speaker 3: certain that the sky's a leaky curtain. It may suit
- 1:02:55Speaker 3: the banjo nicely, but it never suited me. Bush is
- 1:03:00Speaker 3: very pretty when you view it from the city, but
- 1:03:03Speaker 3: it loses all its beauty when you face it on
- 1:03:06Speaker 3: the pad, and all the wildernesses haunt you, and the
- 1:03:10Speaker 3: planes extended daunt you till at times you come to
- 1:03:13Speaker 3: fancy that the life will drive you mad. But I
- 1:03:16Speaker 3: somehow often fancied that I'd rather not be clancy, that
- 1:03:20Speaker 3: I'd like to be the banjo whether people come and go,
- 1:03:23Speaker 3: when instead of framing curses, I'd be writing charming verses,
- 1:03:28Speaker 3: though I scarcely think he'd swap me Banjo the Overflow
- 1:03:35Speaker 3: and of Banjo of the Overflow.
- 1:03:43Speaker 1: Palm fifteen of the Bush Debate. This is LibriVox recording.
- 1:03:48Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
- 1:03:51Speaker 1: information not to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
- 1:03:55Speaker 1: by Timothy Ferguson and answer to Various Barns by Banjo Patterson. Well,
- 1:04:03Speaker 1: I've waited mighty patient while they all came rolling in,
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: mister Lawson, mister Dyson, and others of their kin with
- 1:04:11Speaker 1: their dreadful, dismal stories of the Overlander's camp, how his
- 1:04:15Speaker 1: fire is always smoky, and his boots are always damp,
- 1:04:20Speaker 1: and they painted so terrific it would fill one's soul
- 1:04:23Speaker 1: with gloom. But you know they're fond of writing about
- 1:04:26Speaker 1: corpses and the tomb so before they curse the bushland,
- 1:04:31Speaker 1: they should let their fancy range and take something for
- 1:04:33Speaker 1: their livers, and be cheerful for a change. Now, for instance,
- 1:04:38Speaker 1: mister Lawson, Well, of course we almost cried at the
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: sorrowful description how his little Rvey died, and we lachrymosed
- 1:04:46Speaker 1: in silence when his father's mate was slain. Then he
- 1:04:50Speaker 1: went and killed the father, and we had to weep again.
- 1:04:53Speaker 1: Ben Dugger and Jack Denver too, He caused them to expire,
- 1:04:57Speaker 1: and he went and cooked the gander of Jack Dunn
- 1:04:59Speaker 1: of Nevertire. So no doubt the bush is wretched if
- 1:05:02Speaker 1: you judge it by the groan of the sad and
- 1:05:05Speaker 1: soulful poet with a graveyard of his own. And he
- 1:05:09Speaker 1: spoke in terms prophetic of a revolution's heat, when the
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: world shall hear the clamor of those people in the street.
- 1:05:17Speaker 1: But the sheer chaps who start it where he rounds
- 1:05:20Speaker 1: on them in blame, and he calls them agitators who
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: are living on the game. But I overright, the bushman, well,
- 1:05:28Speaker 1: I own without a doubt that I always see a
- 1:05:30Speaker 1: hero in the man from furthest out. I could never
- 1:05:33Speaker 1: contemplate him to an atmosphere of gloom, and a bushman
- 1:05:37Speaker 1: never struck me as a subject for the tomb. If
- 1:05:41Speaker 1: it ain't all golden sunshine where the wattle branches wave, well,
- 1:05:46Speaker 1: it ain't all damp and dismal, and it ain't all
- 1:05:49Speaker 1: lonely grave. And of course there's no denying that the
- 1:05:52Speaker 1: bushman's life is rough. But a man can easy stand
- 1:05:56Speaker 1: it if he's built of sterling staff. Though it's seldom
- 1:05:59Speaker 1: the drover gets a bed of eyder down. Yet the
- 1:06:02Speaker 1: man who's borne a bushman, he gets mighty sick of town,
- 1:06:07Speaker 1: for he's drotting down the figures, and he's adding up
- 1:06:09Speaker 1: the bills while his heart is simply aching for the
- 1:06:12Speaker 1: sight of southern hills. Then he hears a wood team
- 1:06:17Speaker 1: passing with a rumble and a lurch, And although the
- 1:06:20Speaker 1: work is pressing, yet it brings him off his perch,
- 1:06:24Speaker 1: for it stirs him like a message from his stationed
- 1:06:27Speaker 1: friends afar, And he seems to sniff the rangers in
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: the scent of wood and tar, and it takes him
- 1:06:33Speaker 1: back in fancy, half in laughter, half in tears, to
- 1:06:37Speaker 1: sound of other voices and a thought of other years.
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: When the wool sheed rang with bustle from the dawning
- 1:06:44Speaker 1: of the day, and the sheer blades were clicking to
- 1:06:48Speaker 1: the cry of wool away. Then his face was somewhat browner,
- 1:06:54Speaker 1: and his frame was firmer set, and he feels his
- 1:06:56Speaker 1: flobody muscles with a feeling of regret. But the woolter
- 1:07:00Speaker 1: him slowly passes, and his eyes go sadly back to
- 1:07:03Speaker 1: the dusty little table and the papers in the rack,
- 1:07:07Speaker 1: and his thoughts go to the terrace where his sickly
- 1:07:09Speaker 1: children squall, and he thinks there's something healthy in the
- 1:07:13Speaker 1: bush life after all. But we'll go no more a
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: droving in the wind or in the sun, for our
- 1:07:19Speaker 1: father's hearts have failed us, and the droving days are done.
- 1:07:25Speaker 1: There's a nasty dash of danger where the long horned
- 1:07:29Speaker 1: bullock wheels. And we like to live in comfort and
- 1:07:32Speaker 1: to get our regular meals. For to hang around the
- 1:07:35Speaker 1: township suits us better, you'll agree. And a job of
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: washing bottles is the job for such as We let
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: us herd into the cities, let us crush and crowd
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: and push till we lose the love of roving, and
- 1:07:49Speaker 1: we learn to hate the bush, and we'll turn our
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: aspirations to a city life and beer, and we'll slip
- 1:07:56Speaker 1: across to England. It's a nicer place than here, for
- 1:08:01Speaker 1: there's not much risk of hardship. We're all comforts are
- 1:08:04Speaker 1: in store, and the theaters are plenty, and the pubs
- 1:08:07Speaker 1: are more and more. But that ends at mister Lawson,
- 1:08:12Speaker 1: and it's time to say good bye, for we must
- 1:08:15Speaker 1: agree to differ in all friendship, you and I. So
- 1:08:18Speaker 1: we'll work our own salvation with the stoutest hearts we may,
- 1:08:23Speaker 1: and if fortune only favors, we will take the road
- 1:08:27Speaker 1: some day and go droving down the river beneath the
- 1:08:30Speaker 1: sunshine and the stars, and then return to Sydney and
- 1:08:35Speaker 1: Vermilionize the Bars end of and Answer to Various Bards
- 1:08:41Speaker 1: by Banjo Patterson.
- 1:08:48Speaker 2: Poem sixteen of the Bush Debate. This is a libby
- 1:08:53Speaker 2: bux recording. All liby bux recordings are in the public domain.
- 1:08:57Speaker 2: For more information or to volunteer, please visit libbybox dot org.
- 1:09:03Speaker 2: Recording by Algie Pug The Poets of the Tomb by
- 1:09:08Speaker 2: Henry Lawson. The world has had enough of bads who
- 1:09:12Speaker 2: wished that they were dead. Tis time that people passed
- 1:09:16Speaker 2: a lot and knock him on the head, for twould
- 1:09:19Speaker 2: be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave,
- 1:09:23Speaker 2: those bads of tears and vanish'd hopes. Those poets of
- 1:09:27Speaker 2: the grave, they say that life's an awful thing, and
- 1:09:31Speaker 2: full of care and gloom. They talk of peace and
- 1:09:35Speaker 2: restfulness connected with the tomb. They say that man is
- 1:09:40Speaker 2: made of dirt, and die, of course he must. But
- 1:09:43Speaker 2: all the same, a man is made of pretty solid
- 1:09:46Speaker 2: and dust. There is a thing that they forget. So
- 1:09:50Speaker 2: let it here be writ that some are made of
- 1:09:52Speaker 2: common mud, and some are made of grit. Some try
- 1:09:56Speaker 2: to help the world along, while others fret and fume
- 1:10:00Speaker 2: and wish that they were slumbering in the silence of
- 1:10:03Speaker 2: the tomb, TwixT mother's arms and coffin gear. A man
- 1:10:07Speaker 2: has work to do, and if he does his very best,
- 1:10:11Speaker 2: he mostly worries through. And while there is a wrong
- 1:10:14Speaker 2: ter right, and while the world goes round, an honest
- 1:10:18Speaker 2: man alive is worth a million underground. And yet as
- 1:10:22Speaker 2: long as she oaks, sigh, and wattle blossoms bloom, the
- 1:10:27Speaker 2: world shall hear the dribble of the poets of the tomb.
- 1:10:31Speaker 2: And though the graveyard poets long to vanish from the scene.
- 1:10:35Speaker 2: I noticed that they mostly wish their resting place kept green.
- 1:10:40Speaker 2: Now were I rotty underground, I do not think i'd
- 1:10:43Speaker 2: care if Wombat's rooted under ground, or if the cows
- 1:10:47Speaker 2: camped there. And should I have some feelings left when
- 1:10:51Speaker 2: I have gone before. I think a ton of solid
- 1:10:54Speaker 2: stone would hurt my feelings more. Such wormy songs of
- 1:11:00Speaker 2: holy joys can give me no delight. I'll take my
- 1:11:03Speaker 2: chances with the world. I'd rather live and fight, though
- 1:11:07Speaker 2: Fortune laughs along my track or wears her blackest frown.
- 1:11:12Speaker 2: I'll try to do the world some good before I
- 1:11:15Speaker 2: tumble down. Let's fight for things that ought to be
- 1:11:19Speaker 2: and try to make him boom. We cannot help mankind
- 1:11:23Speaker 2: when we are ashes in the tomb. End of the
- 1:11:28Speaker 2: parts of the tomb