The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #168402   Message #4081837
Posted By: Stewie
03-Dec-20 - 07:34 PM
Thread Name: Mudcat Australia-New Zealand Songbook
Subject: RE: Rise Up Mudcat Songbook - Australia
This one was sent to 'The Queenslander', a Brisbane newspaper, in October 1894. Offence alert: n- word appears twice.

THE BUSHMAN’S FAREWELL TO QUEENSLAND
(Anon)

Queensland, thou art a land of pests
For flies and fleas one never rests
Even now mosquitoes round me revel
In fact they are the very devil

Sandflies and hornets just as bad
They nearly drive a fellow mad
The scorpion and centipede
With stinging ants of every breed

Fever and ague with the shakes
Tarantulas and poisonous snakes
Iguanas, lizards, cockatoos
Bushrangers, lags, and jackaroos

Bandicoots and swarms of rats
Bulldog ants and native cats
Stunted timber, thirsty plains
Parched-up deserts, scanty rains

There's rivers here you can't sail ships on
There's nigger women without shifts on
There's humpies, huts, and wooden houses
And nigger men who won't wear trousers

There's Barcoo rot and sandy blight
There's dingoes howling all the night
There's curlews' wail and croaking frogs
There's savage blacks and native dogs

There's scentless flowers and stinging tree
There's poisonous grass and Darling peas
Which drive the cattle raving mad,
Makes sheep and horses just as bad

And then it never rains in reason.
There's drought one year, and flood next season
Which sweep the squatters' sheep away
And then there is the devil to pay

To stay in thee, O land of mutton
I would not give a single button
But bid thee now a long farewell
Thou scorching, sunburnt land of hell!

I first came upon this in John Fahey's 'Great Australian Folk Songs' - a tune is given at p91.

This is the only musical rendition I can find on the Net:

Youtube clip

Original poem

All the versions of the poem available on the Net omit these 2 lines from the original:

There's Bathurst burr and speargrass too
Ticks and Belyando spew

Belyando is in central Queensland.

--Stewie.