Borderland - Up The Country - Henry Lawson

I am back from up the country
Very sorry that I went
Seeking for the southern poets' land
Whereon to pitch my tent;
I have lost a lot of idols
Which were broken on the track
Burnt a lot of fancy verses
And I'm glad that I am back
Further out may be the pleasant
Scenes of which our poets boast
But I think the country's rather
More inviting round the coast
Anyway, I'll stay at present
At a boarding-house in town
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes
Taking baths and cooling down

Sunny plains! Great scot!
Those burning wastes of barren soil and sand
With their everlasting fences
Stretching out across the land!
Desolation where the crow is! Desert!
Where the eagle flies
Paddocks where the luny bullock starts
And stares with reddened eyes;
Where, in clouds of dust enveloped
Roasted bullock-drivers creep
Slowly past the sun-dried shepherd
Dragged behind his crawling sheep
Stunted "peak" of granite gleaming
Glaring! Like a molten mass
Turned, from some infernal furnace
On a plain devoid of grass

Miles and miles of thirsty gutters
Strings of muddy waterholes
In the place of "shining rivers"
(Walled by cliffs and forest boles)
"range!" of ridgs, gullies, ridges, barren!
Where the madden'd flies
Fiercer than the plagues of egypt
Swarm about your blighted eyes!
Bush! Where there is no horizon!
Where the buried bushman sees
Nothing. Nothing! But
The maddening sameness of the stunted trees!
Lonely hut where drought's eternal
Suffocating atmosphere
Where the god forgottcn hatter
Dreams of city-life and beer

Treacherous tracks that trap the stranger
Endless roads that gleam and glare
Dark and evil-looking gullies
Hiding secrets here and there!
Dull, dumb flats and stony "rises"
Where the bullocks sweat and bake
And the sinister "gohanna"
And the lizard, and the snake
Land of day and night
No morning freshness, and no afternoon
For the great, white sun in rising brings
With him the heat of noon
Dismal country for the exile
When the shades begin to fall
From the sad, heart-breaking sunset
To the new-chum, worst of all

Dreary land in rainy weather
With the endless clouds that drift
O'ER the bushman like a blanket
That the lord will never lift
Dismal land when it is raining
Growl of floods and oh! The "woosh"
Of the rain and wind together
On the dark bed of the bush
Ghastly fires in lonely humpies
Where the granite rocks are pil'd
On the rain-swept wildernesses
That are wildest of the wild

Land where gaunt and haggard
Women live alone and work like men
Till their husbands, gone a-droving
Will return to them again
Homes of men! If homes had ever
Such a god-forgotten place
Where the wild selector's children
Fly before a stranger's face
Home of tragedy applauded
By the dingoes' dismal yell
Heaven of the shanty-keeper
Fitting fiend for such a hell
And the wallaroos and wombats
And, of course, the "curlew's call"
And the lone sundowner
Tramping ever onward thro' it all!

I am back from up the country
Up the country where I went
Seeking for the southern poets'
Land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have left a lot of broken
Idols out along the track
Burnt a lot of fancy verses
And I'm glad that I am back
I believe the southern poet's
Dream will not be realised
Till the plains are irrigated
And the land is humanised
I intend to stay at present
As I said before -- in town
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes
Taking baths and cooling down