Joy Durst - dots here

055 BRISBANE LADIES/QUEENSLAND DROVERS/AUGATHELLA STATION (trad)

video - Gary Shearston

Farewell and adieu to you, sweet Brisbane ladies,
Farewell and adieu to you girls of Toowong,
For we've sold all our cattle, and have to be moving,
But we hope we shall see you again before long.

Chorus: We'll rant and we'll roar like true Queensland drovers,
We'll rant and we'll roar as onward we push,
Until we get back to the Augathella station,
For it's flaming dry going through the old Queensland bush.

2. The first camp we make, we shall call it the Quart Pot,
Caboolture, then Kilcoy and Collington's Hut;
We'll pull up at the Stone House, Bob Williamson's paddock,
And early next morning we cross the Blackbutt.

3. Then on to Taromeo and Yarraman Creek, lads,
It's there we shall make our next camp for the day,
Where the water and grass are both plenty and sweet, lads,
And maybe we'll butcher a fat little stray.

4. Then on to Nanango, that hard-bitten township,
Where the out-of-work station-hands sit in the dust,
And the shearers get shorn by old Tim the contractor ...
I wouldn't go there but I flaming well must!

5. The girls of Toomancey they look so entrancing,
Those young bawling heifers are out for their fun!
With the waltz and the polka and all kinds of dancing,
To the racketty old banjo of Bob Anderson.

6. Then fill up your glasses and drink to the lasses;
We'll drink this town dry, then farewell to them all;
And when we've got back to the Augathella station,
We hope you'll come by there and pay us a call.

Written by Saul Mendelsohn, printed as a broadside, repr. Queensland Boomerang, 1891. In most Australian collections; cf. "Spanish Ladies"

also in DT
folkstream - dots & history
Wikipedia - Brisbane Ladies