Ah Sandra, I'm sure you've met a million famous people since then - in the Folk World at least!!


It seems we'd missed this "warhorse" :

THE LIME JUICE TUB

trad

When shearing comes lay down your drums
Step on the board you brand new chums
With a ra-dum ra-dum rub-a-dub-dub
Send him home in a lime juice tub

Chorus (optional)
Here we are in New South Wales
Shearing the sheep as big as whales
With leather necks and daggy tails
And hides as tough as rusty nails

Now you have crossed the briny deep
You fancy you can shear a sheep
With a ra-dum ra-dum rub-a-dub-dub
We'll send you home in lime juice tub

There's brand new chums and cockies sons
They fancy that they are great guns
They fancy they can shear the wool
But the buggers can only tear and pull

They tar the sheep till they're nearly black
Roll up roll up and get the sack
Once more we're away on the Wallaby Track
Once more to look for the shearing oh

The very next job they undertake
Is to press the wool but they make a mistake
They press the wool without any bales
Shearing's hell in New South Wales

And when they meet upon the road
From off their backs throw down their load
And at the sun they'll take a look
Saying I reckon it's time to breast the cook

We camp in huts without any doors
Sleep upon the muddy floors
With a pannikin of flour and a sheet of bark
To wallop up a damper in the dark

Its home its home I'd like to be
Not humping my drum in this country
Its sixteen thousand mile I've come
To march along with the blanket drum


“From the singing of A.L.Lloyd. An early and very complete version appeared in the Bulletin 1898 where it was called 'The Whaler's Rhyme'. John Meredith collected a version from Cyril Ticehurst who had been a butcher in Grenfell, and who chanted rather than sang it. Lime Juice Tub is slang for a British ship. A.L.Lloyd heard it while working on the Lachlan River in the early 1930's. He writes: "This song was much sung in the woolsheds while the men were actually shearing".

Lyrics and Notes taken from Mark Gregory’s excellent Union Songs website : http://folk.unionsong.com/055.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-V_WYIZ1TY Gary Shearston
(with Richard Brooks on harmonica and Les Miller on banjo)

“The food on English sailing ships was mostly pretty poor. To prevent the scurvy which was a likely result of a regular diet of pickled meat and ship's biscuit, a ration of lime juice was doled out. So American sailors, who were mostly better fed, contemptuously called English sailors 'Limies'. And so in this song the shearers contemptuously suggest that the unskillful English new chums should be sent home in a lime-juice ship. This version of the song comes from A. L. Lloyd, who says that it was very popular with shearers along the Lachlan thirty or so years ago. He also says that it was one of the few songs that the shearers sang while they were at work.

drums - swags, of the same kind as the bluey mentioned in The Murrumbidgee Shearer.
board - the floor of be shearing shed.
brand new chums - migrants just newly arrived in Australia.
cockies' sons - sons of small farmers (who were looked down upon by bush workers in the pastoral industries ).
great guns - really good shearers.
they tar the sheep till they're nearly black - they cut the sheep so much in shearing them that the sheep end up almost covered with the tar applied as an antiseptic.
on the wallaby track - travelling on foot from one station to another, looking for work.
press the wool - wool is packed for transport from the shearing sheds in a machine which compresses the wool into sacks.
reckon it's time to breast the cook - think it is time to approach the station cook for food. At sundown, the cook would distribute a ration of uncooked food to unemployed ,'travellers' who happened to reach the station homestead at about that hour of the day.
huts - stations also provided huts in which such unemployed 'travellers', could sleep overnight.
damper - the usual bushman's bread, made with baking soda for leavening.
with daggy tails - with lumps of excrement adhering to the wool of the tail.”

Notes by Edgar Waters on Gary Shearston’s 1965 LP “The Springtime It Brings on The Shearing”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFaWjnr9C7o   Here’s another version, performed by a group called “Reel Matilda”, ( http://www.prideaux-e.com/australiana/reel_matilda.htm )
but the clip has a swag of Oz pictures for you – of “Sydney AND The Bush”!!


R-J