In Defence of the Bush    

So you’re back from up the country, Mister Lawson, where you went,

And you’re cursing all the business in a bitter discontent;

Well, we grieve to disappoint you, and it makes us sad to hear

That it wasn’t cool and shady — and there wasn’t plenty beer,

And the loony bullock snorted when you first came into view;

Well, you know it’s not so often that he sees a swell like you;

And the roads were hot and dusty, and the plains were burnt and brown,

And no doubt you’re better suited drinking lemon-squash in town.

Yet, perchance, if you should journey down the very track you went

In a month or two at furthest you would wonder what it meant,

Where the sunbaked earth was gasping like a creature in its pain

You would find the grasses waving like a field of summer grain,

And the miles of thirsty gutters blocked with sand and choked with mud,

You would find them mighty rivers with a turbid, sweeping flood;

For the rain and drought and sunshine make no changes in the street,

In the sullen line of buildings and the ceaseless tramp of feet;

But the bush hath moods and changes, as the seasons rise and fall,

And the men who know the bushland — they are loyal through it all.

****

But you found the bush was dismal and a land of no delight,

Did you chance to hear a chorus in the shearers’ huts at night?

Did they “rise up, William Riley” by the camp-fire’s cheery blaze?

Did they rise him as we rose him in the good old droving days?

And the women of the homesteads and the men you chanced to meet —

Were their faces sour and saddened like the “faces in the street”,

And the “shy selector children” — were they better now or worse

Than the little city urchins who would greet you with a curse?

Is not such a life much better than the squalid street and square

Where the fallen women flaunt it in the fierce electric glare,

Where the sempstress plies her sewing till her eyes are sore and red

In a filthy, dirty attic toiling on for daily bread?

Did you hear no sweeter voices in the music of the bush

Than the roar of trams and buses, and the warwhoop of “the push”?

Did the magpies rouse your slumbers with their carol sweet and strange?

Did you hear the silver chiming of the bellbirds on the range?

But, perchance, the wild birds’ music by your senses was despised,

For you say you’ll stay in townships till the bush is civilised.

Would you make it a tea-garden and on Sundays have a band

Where the “blokes” might take their “donahs”, with a “public” close at hand?

You had better stick to Sydney and make merry with the “push”,

For the bush will never suit you, and you’ll never suit the bush.

The Bulletin, 1892

The Pioneers

They came of bold and roving stock that would not fixed abide; 

They were the sons of field and flock since e'er they learnt to ride, 

We may not hope to see such men in these degenerate years 

As those explorers of the bush – the brave old pioneers. 

'Twas they who rode the trackless bush in heat and storm and drought; 'Twas they that heard the master-word that called them farther out; 'Twas they who followed up the trail the mountain cattle made, 

And pressed across the mighty range where now their bones are laid. 

But now the times are dull and slow, the brave old days are dead 

When hardy bushmen started out, and forced their way ahead 

By tangled scrub and forests grim towards the unknown west, 

And spied the far-off promised land from off the range's crest. 

Oh! Ye, that sleep in lonely graves by far-off ridge and plain, 

We drink to you in silence now as Christmas comes again, 

The men who fought the wilderness through rough unsettled years – 

The founders of our nation's life, the brave old pioneers. 

The Town and Country Journal, 19 December 1896.