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768
Lyrics:
[Verse 1]
In South Australia I was born
Heave away, haul away
South Australia is my home
We're bound for South Australia
[Verse 2]
Now as I walked out one morning fair
Heave away, haul away
'Twas there I met miss Nancy Blair
We're bound for South Australia
[Chorus]
Haul away, you rolling kings
To me heave away, haul away
Haul away, you'll hear me sing
We're bound for South Australia
[Verse 3]
I shook her up, I shook her down
Heave away, haul away
I shook her round and round the town
We're bound for South Australia
[Verse 4]
There's just one thing that grieves my mind
Heave away, haul away
That's leaving Nancy Blair behind
We're bound for South Australia
[Verse 5]
And when we're walloping off Cape Horn
Heave away, haul away
You'd wish to God you'd never been born
We're bound for South Australia
[Verse 6]
I wish I was on Australia's strand
Heave away, haul away
With a bottle of whiskey in me hand
We're bound for South Australia
768
"I am reckoned a horrid brute because I had not been cowardly enough to lie down for them under such trying circumstances, and insults to my people" - Ned Kelly
768
You ask me to be gay and glad
While lurid clouds of danger loom,
And vain and bad and gambling mad,
Australia races to her doom.
You bid me sing the light and fair,
The dance, the glance on pleasure’s wings –
While you have wives who will not bear,
And beer to drown the fear of things.
A war with reason you would wage
To be amused for your short span,
Until your children’s heritage
Is claimed for China by Japan.
The football match, the cricket score,
The scraps, the tote, the mad’ning Cup –
You drunken fools that evermore
To-morrow morning sober up!
I see again with haggard eyes,
The thirsty land, the wasted flood;
Unpeopled plains beyond the skies,
And precious streams that run to mud;
The ruined health, the wasted wealth,
In our mad cities by the seas,
The black race suicide by stealth,
The starved and murdered industries!
You bid me make a farce of day,
And make a mockery of death;
While not five thousand miles away
The yellow millions pant for breath!
But heed me now, nor ask me this –
Lest you too late should wake to find
That hopeless patriotism is
The strongest passion in mankind!
You’d think the seer sees, perhaps,
While staring on from days like these,
Politeness in the conquering Japs,
Or mercy in the banned Chinese!
I mind the days when parents stood,
And spake no word, while children ran
From Christian lanes and deemed it good
To stone a helpless Chinaman.
I see the stricken city fall,
The fathers murdered at their doors,
The sack, the massacre of all
Save healthy slaves and paramours –
The wounded hero at the stake,
The pure girl to the leper’s kiss –
God, give us faith, for Christ’s own sake
To kill our womankind ere this.
I see the Bushman from Out Back,
From mountain range and rolling downs,
And carts race on each rough bush track
With food and rifles from the towns;
I see my Bushmen fight and die
Amongst the torn blood-spattered trees,
And hear all night the wounded cry
For men! More men and batteries!
I see the brown and yellow rule
The southern lands and southern waves,
White children in the heathen school,
And black and white together slaves;
I see the colour-line so drawn
(I see it plain and speak I must),
That our brown masters of the dawn
Might, aye, have fair girls for their lusts!
With land and life and race at stake –
No matter which race wronged, or how –
Let all and one Australia make
A superhuman effort now.
Clear out the blasting parasites,
The paid-for-one-thing manifold,
And curb the goggled social-lights
That scorch to nowhere with our gold.
Store guns and ammunition first,
Build forts and warlike factories,
Sink bores and tanks where drought is worst,
Give over time to industries.
The outpost of the white man’s race,
Where next his flag shall be unfurled,
Make clean the place! Make strong the place!
Call white men in from all the world!
Henry Lawson
To Be Amused
768
Repost from Austhetics
I dreamed of a sunny country last night, a golden dream
Of wattles down the gully, and of gum trees by the stream;
Of dancing haze and sides of blue, no other land can show
Save this, our sunny country, where the golden wattles grow.
—Sunny Country
W. H. Ogilvie (1869–1963)
pictured: Acacia Boormanii (Snowy River Wattle) blooming along the swampy plains by the Geehi River
768
There’s a little house a-peeping o’er the swaying and the sweeping
Of the wheat that nods and ripples as the breezes skim its top;
And the days of pioneering in the ringing and the clearing
See the first-born of their labours in the house behind the crop.
There the fallow land is showing where the box and pine were growing,
And a sweet hope gilds the future with the colour of the grain;
Gentle visions softly tripping in the ploughing and the stripping,
While the kookaburras chorus once again.
John O’Brien. Around the Boree Log and Other Verses, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1921
768
To the mothers who’ve raised with care so true,
Guiding their sons with a love that’s new,
In the heart of the bush and the city’s hum,
Their wisdom shines like the morning sun.
To the wives who stand by through storm and shine,
Their laughter and grace, a love so fine,
In the land of the kangaroo and star-filled night,
They’re the anchor in every fight.
To the daughters who dream with a future bright,
With courage and hope in their eyes alight,
They’re the pride of the outback, the city’s cheer,
A future shaped by love held dear.
In the rugged hills and the ocean’s roar,
Australian men cherish and adore,
Their mothers, wives, and daughters so dear,
In a bond that’s true, in a land we revere.
768
+1
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This map of Victoria was prepared immediately before the gold rush, when the colony was a sleepy collection of pastoral runs. As you will see in the enlargement, no Ballarat, no Bendigo.
768
Repost from Austhetics
Corryong Cemetery, Victoria
In 1911, a young Father Hartigan (one of the first curates in the state with a motor car) struggled for miles through Snowy River mountains to administer the last sacraments to a dying stockrider named Riley.
To entertain the sick man’s friends — mainly riders — the young priest recited, appropriately enough, “The Man from Snowy River.”
It was received in a strange silence. To the reciter’s query, one stockman jerked his thumb towards the sickroom door. “The bloke inside is the man from Snowy River.”
The padre claims it was later proved that he was.
[source]
Mgr Hartigan was himself a deeply nativist poet; peer with the likes of the great CJ Dennis.
His works can be seen in recent Austhetics posts here: here, here, and here.
768
"We are here upon a Continent set apart by the Creator exclusively for a southern empire – for a southern nation – and it is our duty to preserve this island-continent for all eternity to the white race, irrespective of where they may come from.”
King O'Malley, MP
September 6 1901
