In yesterday's singaround I sang a song that I call "The Young Promised Land", which I learnt from my recording of one of series of radio programmes narrated by Bert Lloyd under the title "Folk Songs of Australia". I have never met it anywhere else, but Google has just found me an index where the first line "I once was a station-hand, two quid a week" appears on page 943, with the title The Buckjumper.

I think the tune has been used for several songs. It's perhaps best known as The Green Bushes.

I've just listened to the recording and have a few small corrections that I may or may not make to how I've been singing it.

I once was a station hand; two quid a week
In the years that's gone by on the old Bogan Creek.
I was asked by a squatter, and he says "Try your hand
And break in that filly: she's a young promised land".
He said "She's a wild 'un of four years or so."
But he knew that of outlaws I'd ridden a few.

Three days she was handled. I saddled and rode her.
To grass me she tried but a failure I showed her.
The antics she cut was a caution to me.
I was bobbing about like a cork on the sea.
She pitched and the rooted, she spun (arse?) about
But in ten minutes' time, boys, she rolled her tongue out.

It was pitch, root and buck like a bird on the wing.
It was that sort of bucking that grassed poor Jack King.
She hit the fence twice but gave never a stagger
And she rooted as mad as if stabbed by a dagger.
Then off came the saddle, for the girth strap was weak.
And she left a hoof mark on the old saddle seat.

Well she stood and she snorted: she seemed in her glee.
The saddle was down and the filly was free.
She ran round the stockyard, just three times or four
Seeming to glory in the fray that was o'er.
She came mincing up to me: I put out me hand
And that was the last of the young promised land

I caught the short rein that hung from her jaw
And I jumped on her bare back: there was fireworks galore,
Till her muscles they twitched to her heart's broken sound.
She fell dead in her tracks, boys, and lay on the ground.
Her jaw was all broke where her sharp hooves had struck.
"Thank God." says the foreman, "That's a bit of good luck."