Lyr Req: Basic Wage Dream

Subject: Lyr Req: Basic Wage Dream
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 06 Apr 99 - 07:35 PM

There is another thread relating to minimum wages, but thought that this song might get lost in there. This is an Australian song which is not in the DT. I have the lyrics and tune (somewhere) but cannot locate. Does anyone have this please, or able to point me in the right direction?

Regards
John

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Basic Wage Dream
From: GUEST,Sorch
Date: 01 Sep 01 - 05:36 PM

John, did you ever find this one?

Subject: Lyr Add: BASIC WAGE DREAM
From: Tony in Darwin
Date: 22 Jan 02 - 12:34 AM

John, it's taken a while but here it is!

------------------------------------------------------

The Basic Wage Dream

I dreamed a doctor told a judge
from the arbitration court,
that he would only live to preside
on one more case being fought.
The judge, whose concience was ill at ease,
thought, "If this case will be my last,
to hand down a fair decision
might make up for my unjust past."

The very next case that was to come before
this very worried sage,
was a request to raise by fifty two bob,
the weekly basic wage.
The old chap granted the raise in full
and to assure his place in heaven,
made the payment retrospective
to nineteen hundred and seven.

On the first pay day after the trial
I couldn't believe my luck.
The paymaster brought my wages out
on a fork lift truck.
I dreamed we got paid on a Friday
and on that lovely night,
Mayne Nickless sent out an armoured car
to get me home all right.

On the way we stopped at the R.S.L.
and as I walked inside,
a poker machine took a look at my pay
and committed suicide.
I turned around as I heard a man behind me softly speak.
It was Dr. Coombs trying to borrow a quid
to see him through the week.

Then the alarm went off and I recall,
as I was waking up,
how people dream they saw the horse
that won the Melbourne Cup,
but they can't remember what number it was.
Well, my dream was just the same,
for I can't for the very life of me
remember that judge's name.

Written 1963. From "A Quiet Century: 100 songs and poems" by Don Henderson, published 1994 by Sally Henderson and the Queensland Folk Federation, PO Box 840, Nambour, Queensland, Australia.

Cheers, Tony.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Basic Wage Dream
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 22 Jan 02 - 07:19 PM

G'day John, Sorch & Tony,

I must have missed this, first time round. I have sung the song for the at least 35 years, so I must have heard it not too long after Don wrote it! I certainly would have it in my old (1965 ...?) copy of Don's small gem of a book I Can Sing!.

(Actually, I have always had in the back of my mind that the song is based on a bit of larrikin behaviour in the lunch adjournment of the 1957 Basic Wage Hearing, in the Arbitration Court ... and that Don wrote the song shortly after the event ... but I can't tell you where I have that from!)

The tune is pretty well the same as the one used by A.L. Lloyd for his setting of Henry Lawson's The Shearer's Dream.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Basic Wage Dream
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 23 Jan 02 - 08:48 AM

G'day again Tony,

My gods ... I Can Sing was only 1970 ... It seems longer! I think I learnt the song of Gary Shearston ... definitely before I went south to Tasmania in late 1965. I clearly remember singing it for a doco film producer. in Tasmania, early 1966.

Regards,

Bob Bolton