THE MARYBOROUGH MINER

Come all you sons of liberty and listen to my song
I'll tell you my observations and it won't take very long
I've fossicked around this continent, five hundred miles or more
And many's the time I might have starved but for the cheek I bore

I've been on all the diggings, boys, from famous Ballarat
I've long-tommed on the Lachlan, and I've fossicked Lambing Flat
So you can understand, my boys, just from my little rhyme
I'm a Maryborough miner and I'm one of the good old time

I came to the Fitzroy River, all with my Bendigo rig
I had a shovel, a pick and a pan, and for a licence I begged
But the assay man called me a loafer, said for work I'd no desire
And so to do him justice, boys, I set his office on fire

Oh yes, my jolly jokers, I've done it on the cross
Although I carry my bluey now, I've sweated many a horse
I've helped to rob the escort of many an ounce of gold
And the traps have trailed upon my tail more times than I've ever told

Oh yes, the traps have trailed me and been frightened out of their stripes
They never could have caught me for, they feared my cure for gripes
And well they knew I carried it, for they had often seen it
Glistening in my flipper, chaps, my patent pill machine

I'm one of the men who cradled on the reef at Tarrangower
Anxiety and misery my grim companions there
I puddled the clay at Bendigo and I chanced my arm at Kew
And I wound up my avocation with ten years on Cockatoo.

A.L. Lloyd collected this mining version of 'The Murrumbidgee Shearer' from Bob Bell in Condobolin in 1934.

Youtube clip

--Stewie.