HARD TACK

trad

I'm a shearer, yes, I am, and I’ve shorn both sheep and lamb
From the Wimmera to the Darling Downs and back
And I've run a shed or two when the fleece was tough as glue
But I'll tell you where I struck the ’ardest tack.

I was down round Yenda way, killin' time from day to day
Till the big sheds started movin' further out
When I met a bloke by chance that I summed up at a glance
As a cocky from a vineyard round about.

Now it seems he picked me too—well, it wasn't hard to do
'Cause I had me tongs a-hangin' at me hip
“Well, I got a mob,” he said, “just about two hundred head
And I'd give a ten pound note to get the clip.”

I says, “Right, I'll take the stand”, it meant gettin’ in me hand
And by nine o’clock we'd rounded up the mob
In a shed sunk in the ground with wine-casks all around
And that was where I started on me job.

I goes easy for a bit whilst me hand was gettin’ fit
And by dinner time I'd done about a score
With the cockie pickin' up, and handin' me a cup
Of pinkie after every sheep I shore.

Well, he had to go away about the seventh day
After showin’ me the kind of casks to use
Then I'd do the pickin' up, and manipulate the cup
Strollin' round them wine-casks just to pick and choose.

Then I'd stagger to the pen, grab a sheep and start again
With a sound between an 'iccup and a sob
And sometimes I'd fall asleep with me arms around a sheep
Worn and weary from me over-arduous job.

And so six weeks went by, till one day, with a sigh
I shoved the dear old cobbler through the door
I gathered in the cocky's pay, and staggered on me way
From the hardest flamin' shed I'd ever shorn.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaisYXk0tsE&list=PLETVuiXKS2qBiKClqcaTxb5V5juZC7tdf&index=13
sung here by Declan Affley on LP “The Day the Pub Burned Down”

Notes by A.L.Lloyd are taken from LP “The Great Australian Legend” :
“Already in the nineteenth.century, in South Australia and Victoria, vineyards were being planted, mostly by German settlers. And notably in the period between the World wars, with the establishment of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, the orchard and vineyard districts of New South Wales began to spread and encroach on regions that formerly had been devoted to sheep. To their astonishment, shearers found themselves drinking wine instead of their famed staple beverage, beer. The culture collision between vineyard and sheep land, wine and beer, is well expressed in the Hard Tack song.”

tongs: hand shears / pickin’ up: picking up and baling the fleeces as they are shorn / pinkie: wine / cobbler: last sheep to be shorn
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/TSDL203.pdf



Cheers, R-J