The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #94627   Message #1832991
Posted By: GUEST,Rowan
12-Sep-06 - 06:09 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Nine Miles from Gundagai (trad Australia)
Subject: RE: the dog shat inthe tucker box
The version in the Digitrad omits the (usually recited) introduction, which is as follows;

As I came down Talbingo hill, I heard a maiden cry
"There goes Old Bill the Bullocky. He's bound for Gundagai."
A better bullock driver never earned an honest crust
and a tougher bullock driver never drug his whip through dust.

His team got bogged at Five Mile Creek. Bill lashed and cursed and cried
"If Nobby don't get me out of this, I'll tattoo his bloody hide!"
Well Nobby strained, and broke the yoke, and Bill sat down and cried.
And the dog shat in the tuckerbox, five miles from Gundagai.

The rest of the song, as in the DT, follows but sung. There are some added verses from what Jack Moses wrote, concerning the replacement of bullock carts by semitrailers [themselves now replaced by B-Doubles] and the Hume highway no longer goes through the main street of Gundagai but uses a bypass. This also allows retention of one of the longest timber bridges (across the Murrumbidgee flood plain) in Australia.

There is a Five Mile Creek near Gundagai (but no Nine Mile Creek that I've yet found) and the statue of the dog on the tuckerbox is neither five nor nine miles from Gundagai. But I'm sure Bob Bolton will come to our (and Dick's) rescue with the documented background to the song, known under both titles. I'd have put both titles in for you Dick, but the library was closing and wanted to shut its computers down; I couldn't type fast enough.

Cheers, Rowan