Mike Kennedy adapted two Aussie poems for singing:

"In The Droving Days" by Banjo Paterson

“Only a pound” said the auctioneer,
“Only a pound as I’m standing here
Selling this animal gain or loss–
Only a pound for the drover’s horse!
One of the sort that was ne’re afraid
One of the boys of the Old Brigade,
Thoroughly honest and game, I swear,
Only the little worse for wear.

Plenty as bad to be seen in town,
Give me a bid and I’ll knock him down;
Sold as he stands, and without recourse
Give me a bid for the drover’s horse.”

Loitering there in an aimless way
Somehow I noticed the poor old gray,
Weary and battered and screwed, of course,
That’s when I noticed the old gray horse,

The rough bush saddle, and single rein,
Of the bridle laid on his tangled mane,
Straight way the crowd and the auctioneer
Seemed in the moment to disappear,

Melt away in a kind of haze–
For my heart went back to the droving days.

Back to the road, and I crossed again
Over the miles of the saltbush plain
The shining plain that is said to be
The dried up bed of an inland sea.

Where the air’s so dry and clean and bright
Refracts the sun with a wondrous light,
And out of that dim horizon makes
The deep blue glean of the phantom lakes.

At the dawn of the day we could feel the breeze
That stirred the boughs of the sleeping trees,
And brought a breath of a fragrance rare
That comes and goes in that scented air,

For the trees and the grass and shrubs contain
The dry sweet scent of the saltbush plain.
For those that love it and understand
The saltbush plain is a wonderland
A wondrous country where nature’s ways
Were revealed to me in the droving days.

Where we kept our watch in the cold and damp,
If the cattle broke from the sleeping camp.
Over the flats and across the plain,
With my head bent down over his waving mane

Through the boughs above and the stumps below,
On the darkest night I could let him go
At a racing speed: he would choose his course
And my life was safe with the old gray horse.

“Only a pound!” and was this the end
Only a pound for the drover’s friend
The drover’s friend that had seen his day,
And now was worthless and cast away.

With a broken knee and a broken heart
To be flogged and starved in a hawker’s cart;
Well, I made a bid for a sense of shame
And the memories of the good old game.

“Thank you, a guinea and cheap at that.
Against you there in the curly hat.
Only a guinea, and one more chance,
Down he goes if there’s no advance,

Third, and last time, one, two, three!”
And the old gray horse was knocked to me
And now he wanders, fat and sleek,
On the lucerna flats by the Homestead Creek,
I dare not ride him for fear he’ll fall,
But he does a journey to beat them all,
For though he scarcely a trot can raise,
He takes me back to the droving days.


And "The Cattle Dog's Death" by Henry Lawson

The Plains lay bare on the homeward route,
And the march was heavy on man and brute;
For the Spirit of Drought was on all the land,
And the white heat danced on the glowing sand.
The best of our cattle-dogs lagged at last,
His strength gave out as the plains were passed;
And our hearts grew sad as he crept and laid,
His languid limbs in the nearest shade.

He’d saved our lives in the years gone by,
-When no one dreamed of the danger nigh;
And the treacherous blacks in the darkness crept,
On the silent camp where the drovers slept.
“The dog is dying,” the stockman said,
As he knelt and lifted the shaggy head;
“Tis a long day’s march ere the run is near,
‘And he’s dying fast; shall we leave him here.

But the Super cried, "There’s an answer there!”
And he raised a tuft of the dog’s grey hair;
And, strangely vivid, each man decried
The old spear-mark on the shaggy hide.
We laid a “bluey”- and coat across,
The camping pack of the lightest horse;
And though we parched in the heat that fags,
We gave him the last of our water-bags.

The Super’s daughter we knew would chide
If we left the dog on the desert wide;
So we brought him far o’er the burning sand
For a parting stroke of her small white hand.
But long ere the station was seen ahead,
His pain was o’er, the dog was dead
And the folks all knew by our look of gloom
‘Twas a comrade’s corpse we carried home.

Cheerily,
Charlie Ipcar (formerly known as Charley Noble)