I've just found a crumpled piece of paper with my transcription of the lyrics as Pete Coe sings them:-

When you wake up in the morning, the dawn's as black as night
And your mother's shouting up the stairs and you know she's winning the fight
So you'd best venture out of your bed, my lad, for you know it's getting late
Then it's down the stairs and up the road and through the factory gate
CH:

So dark and drear the morning as yousqueeze through the gate
And as you clock on the bell will ring, 8 hours is your fate
Off comes your coat all damp and cold and it's "Right lads" is the cry
With one eye on the clock and the other on your lathe, how you wish the hours would fly

Now the gaffer's walking down the shop and so it's work you must
With the grinding, groaning, spinning metal, the hot air and the dust
And it's often I'm dreaming of my girl as we're walking through the park
As I'm gazing on that turning steel and a million flying sparks.

Now old Tom Black last Friday, his final bell did ring
With his hair as white as the face beneath, and his sunken ,oily skin
Well, he made a speech and he got paid off for a lifetime working here
And as I shook his hand I felt I'd laboured 40 years

And when the time it comes for me to leave this place
I'll walk outside past the chargehand's desk and I'll never turn my face
Out of the the gates into the sun, and I'll leave them all behind
With one regrets for the mates I've left to carry on the grind.

'Tom Brown' must have been a temporary blackout on my side sometime in the past.

It occurs to me that almost all of this thread has been about the lyrics Colin Dryden sang down under. However, he wrote the song in the UK and it wouldn't surprise me if, after he emigrated, he changed parts of the lyrics to suit his new life - working conditions, language etc. down under. After all, whilst those of us who grew up in towns like Sheffield in the 1960s know about mornings being 'dark and drear', that's almost certainly an totally alien concept for people in sunny Sydney! Looked at this way, the version Pete Coe sings has possibly the original, pre-emigration lyrics.