G'day Alison,

Here's the actual words ... as I first published tham for John in his book My Shout!, Bush Music Club, Sydney, Easter 1982:

BARE LEGGED KATE
Words: John Dengate:
"Written for my mother, Born Kathleen Mary Kelly, Gundagai, NSW, 1914."         

Tune: Bare legged Joe

First Verse and Chorus:

Bare legged Kate with your natural grace,
The big big sad eyes in the Irish face.
A poor bush girl when the summer is high
In the stony hills of Gundagai.

Bare legged Kate why do you weep
When the men ride by with the travelling sheep?
Does the sight of the drover make you sad?
Do you think of the father you never had?

CHORUS:

Bare legged Kate why do you run,
Down to the creek in the setting sun?
Down where the eyes of the world cannot see -
Run Kate, run, from poverty.

CHORUS:

Bare legged Kate, there is gold in the hills
But you know that the cyanide process kills.
Poisons the miners and cuts them down
In the mean little homes below the town.

Bare legged Kate, when the floods come down,
It's the poor on the creeks are the ones who drown:
When the great Murrumbidgee is thundering by
Through the haunted hills of Gundagai.

CHORUS:

It's a great song (always arises, unbidden, as I drive down into Gundagai!) and it's worth getting John's words right.

Regards,

Bob Bolton