Joe Wilson and His Mates [110]
`unreliable contemporary', but found nothing there
except a letter from `Parent', another from `Ratepayer',
a leader on the Government, and `A Trip to Limeburn', which latter I suppose
was made in opposition to the trip to Drybone.
There was nothing new in the town. Even the almost inevitable
gang of city spoilers hadn't arrived with the railway.
They would have been a relief. There was the monotonous aldermanic row,
and the worse than hopeless little herd of aldermen,
the weird agricultural portion of whom came in on council days
in white starched and ironed coats, as we had always remembered them.
They were aggressively barren of ideas; but on this occasion they had risen
above themselves, for one of them had remembered something his grandfather
(old time English alderman) had told him, and they were stirring up
all the old local quarrels and family spite of the district over a motion,
or an amendment on a motion, that a letter -- from another enlightened body
and bearing on an equally important matter (which letter had been
sent through the post sufficiently stamped, delivered to the secretary,
handed to the chairman, read aloud in council, and passed round several times
for private perusal) -- over a motion that such letter be received.
There was a maintenance case coming on -- to the usual well-ventilated disgust
of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case differed
in no essential point from other cases which were always coming on
and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth
was not even brilliant in adultery.
After I had been a week in that town the Governor decided to visit it,
and preparations were made to welcome him and present him with an address.
Then I thought that it was time to go, and slipped away unnoticed
in the general lunacy.
The Never-Never Country.
By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
By railroad, coach, and track --
By lonely graves of our brave dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where 'neath glorious clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand --
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In the Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand --
A phantom land, a mystic land!
The Never-Never Land.
Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
Mounts Dreadful and Despair --
'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
In hopeless deserts there;
It spreads nor'-west by No-Man's Land --
Where clouds are seldom seen --
To where the cattle-stations lie
Three hundred miles between.
The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
The strange Gulf country know --
Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
The big lean bullocks go;
And camped by night where plains lie wide,
Like some old ocean's bed,
The watchmen in the starlight ride
Round fifteen hundred head.
And west of named and numbered days
The shearers walk and ride --
Jack Cornstalk and the Ne'er-do-well,
And the grey-beard side by side;
They veil their eyes from moon and stars,
And slumber on the sand --
Sad memories sleep as years go round
In Never-Never Land.
By lonely huts north-west of Bourke,
Through years of flood and drought,
The best of English black-sheep work
Their own salvation out:
Wild fresh-faced boys grown gaunt and brown --
Stiff-lipped and haggard-eyed --
They live the Dead Past grimly down!
Where boundary-riders ride.
The College Wreck who sunk beneath,
Then rose above his shame,
Tramps West in mateship with the man
Who cannot write his name.
'Tis there where on the barren track
No last half-crust's begrudged --
Where saint and sinner, side by side,
Judge not, and are not judged.
Oh rebels
except a letter from `Parent', another from `Ratepayer',
a leader on the Government, and `A Trip to Limeburn', which latter I suppose
was made in opposition to the trip to Drybone.
There was nothing new in the town. Even the almost inevitable
gang of city spoilers hadn't arrived with the railway.
They would have been a relief. There was the monotonous aldermanic row,
and the worse than hopeless little herd of aldermen,
the weird agricultural portion of whom came in on council days
in white starched and ironed coats, as we had always remembered them.
They were aggressively barren of ideas; but on this occasion they had risen
above themselves, for one of them had remembered something his grandfather
(old time English alderman) had told him, and they were stirring up
all the old local quarrels and family spite of the district over a motion,
or an amendment on a motion, that a letter -- from another enlightened body
and bearing on an equally important matter (which letter had been
sent through the post sufficiently stamped, delivered to the secretary,
handed to the chairman, read aloud in council, and passed round several times
for private perusal) -- over a motion that such letter be received.
There was a maintenance case coming on -- to the usual well-ventilated disgust
of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case differed
in no essential point from other cases which were always coming on
and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth
was not even brilliant in adultery.
After I had been a week in that town the Governor decided to visit it,
and preparations were made to welcome him and present him with an address.
Then I thought that it was time to go, and slipped away unnoticed
in the general lunacy.
The Never-Never Country.
By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
By railroad, coach, and track --
By lonely graves of our brave dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where 'neath glorious clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand --
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In the Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand --
A phantom land, a mystic land!
The Never-Never Land.
Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
Mounts Dreadful and Despair --
'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
In hopeless deserts there;
It spreads nor'-west by No-Man's Land --
Where clouds are seldom seen --
To where the cattle-stations lie
Three hundred miles between.
The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
The strange Gulf country know --
Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
The big lean bullocks go;
And camped by night where plains lie wide,
Like some old ocean's bed,
The watchmen in the starlight ride
Round fifteen hundred head.
And west of named and numbered days
The shearers walk and ride --
Jack Cornstalk and the Ne'er-do-well,
And the grey-beard side by side;
They veil their eyes from moon and stars,
And slumber on the sand --
Sad memories sleep as years go round
In Never-Never Land.
By lonely huts north-west of Bourke,
Through years of flood and drought,
The best of English black-sheep work
Their own salvation out:
Wild fresh-faced boys grown gaunt and brown --
Stiff-lipped and haggard-eyed --
They live the Dead Past grimly down!
Where boundary-riders ride.
The College Wreck who sunk beneath,
Then rose above his shame,
Tramps West in mateship with the man
Who cannot write his name.
'Tis there where on the barren track
No last half-crust's begrudged --
Where saint and sinner, side by side,
Judge not, and are not judged.
Oh rebels