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.

The above is a transcription by Bob Bolton.

Youtube clip

--Stewie.