And the frenzied rush that followed marked an epoch new, methinks,
For that little corner shanty, where Belinda brought the drinks.
For she seemed indeed an angel to our starved imaginations,
Though the unromantic Alec. used to claim her for a niece.
Not a man but would have bartered for her smile the Wealth of Nations,
From the youngest new chum digger to the sergeant of police;
And the magic of her presence shed a subtle hanky-panky
On that dingy shrine of Bacchus, and the crowd assembled there,
Till the hardest heart was softened, and the synonym for ‘blanky’
Seldom rose above a whisper on the whisky-scented air.
Though the rival barmaids there, in the fashion of the fair,
Tossed their heads in scornful comment on Belinda’s golden hair
Though they pulled her charms to pieces and declared she was a minx,
No one swerved from his allegiance — where Belinda brought the drinks.
Real chained lightning was the whisky, and the rum sent strangers raging,
But Belinda’s thirsty lovers soon made havoc in the stock;
And the landlord’s smile grew daily more expansive and engaging,
For the rows of empty bottles would have paved an acre block.
Never knights of old so loyally mustered to their sovereign’s banner
As the boys from shaft and windlass to the queen of Alec.’s bar:
Popping corks and jingling glasses nearly drowned the cracked ‘pianner’,
When the local Paderewski played ‘’E dunno where ’e are’.
Nights of revel, days of graft, when our luck was in we laughed,
And when Fortune frowned, forgot her in the fiery cups we quaffed —
Memory’s chain still binds them to me, and the strongest of the links
Takes me back to Alec.’s parlour — where Belinda brought the drinks.
But one bitter day she left us, and a storm of lamentations
Echoed through the tents and humpies in the days our darling went;
E’en the wild seductive ‘two-up’ lost its ancient fascinations.
And the usual Sunday dog-fight seemed a spiritless event.
Nevermore shall I behold her, but my recollection lingers
On that tiny winsome figure, conjured up from years gone by;
Still I feast my eyes in visions on those ring’d and tapering fingers,
Flitting from the fierce Jamaica to the flasks of ‘Real Mackay’.
Nevermore! aye, there’s the rub! O that township in the scrub,
And the hurried nightly bee-line from the camp-fire to the pub!
Every other scene of revel into dull oblivion sinks
By the side of Alec.’s shanty — where Belinda brought the drinks.
Along the Road to Cue
The race for gold that charms the bold
Finds toil for man and beast,
And they, who left the East of old,
Are daily streaming East.
The whips that crack along the track
Are strong — the horses, too;
And strong the words the teamsters use
Along the road to Cue,
The words they use
To mark their views,
Along the road to Cue.
O, fierce beats down the sun o’erhead,
High poised in cloudless skies;
Thick lies the dust beneath our tread
And thicker swarm the flies.
But flies and heat and dust and thirst
And nags that pull askew,
They each and all get soundly cursed
Along the road to Cue,
Bad, worse and worst,
They all get cursed
Along the road to Cue.
I’ve seen some travellers look askance,
And others chafe and fret;
I’ve known the passing camel’s glance
Betoken pain’d regret —
He cannot make his protest heard,
Unlike the cockatoo
Which shrieking flies from many a word
Along the road to Cue,
The horse-power words
Which shock the birds
Along the road to Cue.
Thames bargemen hide resourceful lips
Behind their blackened pipes,
So do the mates of sailing ships
That fly the Stars and Stripes.
I’ve heard them both of old, and each
Can objurgate ‘a few’,
But loftier heights than these they reach
Along the road to Cue,
Choice gems of speech
Beyond our reach,
Along the road to Cue.
I’ve heard bluff costers bless their mokes
In soft enraptur’d tones;
I know the way the gangers coax
The men who lift the stones.
And yet I somehow fancy both
Could learn a thing or two —
Some up-to-date appropriate oath,
Along the road to Cue,
Some brand-new oath
Of native growth
Along the road to Cue.
’Tis sad that wit should waste its fire
And rhetoric spend its force
Upon the unresponsive wire,
The unreflecting horse.
The waste, per hour, of motive power,
If half I say be true
Would surely drive ten head of stamps
To crush the quartz at Cue,
To wake the camps
Between Day Dawn and Cue.
In truth I never knew before
(For all the songs I’ve sung)
One half the plenteous verbal store
That marks our Saxon tongue.
So don’t decline this wreath of mine,
’Tis honest merit’s due,
Knights of the lash, who earn your cash
Along the road to Cue,
Who ply the lash
With ‘blank’ and ‘dash’
Along the road to Cue.
‘C’ (n.d.)
The Tothersider and The Perthite
The following lines were picked up on the North
Fremantle Bridge last Monday:
TOTHERSIDER:
I stood at the Weld Club corner
As the clock was striking the hour,
And a storm swept over the city
With a mist and a hailing shower.
I watched the Brokers hurrying
And playing at Bulls and Bears,
With tears in their eyes and noses
And blasphemy in their prayers.
How often — oh! how often
Have I stood on that spot to groan,
For the turn up of weary nothing
And a dinner of sand alone.
How often — oh! how often
Have I uttered a bitter curse,
That ever I left my country
For something ten times worse.
PERTHITE:
I stood at that corner also
And have watched the hungry leer,
Of the men who’ve left their country
To seek their fortunes here.
I’ve watched their listless strolling,
Their want of grit was plain,
It’s always the bloomin’ country
And never themselves they blame.
How often — oh! how often
Have I uttered a brief refrain,
And wished that we could ship them
Back to their homes again.
I think as I stand amongst them,
That if rightly understood,
They left their bloomin’ country
For their bloomin’ country’s good.
Published 16 August 1894.
Edwin Greenslade Murphy (‘Dryblower’) (b.1866 d.1939
)
The Lodes that Under-lie
O, calm and clear the liar lies
Who writes reports on mines;
Behold what knowledge deep and wise
His legend intertwines.
But ah, if he should own the lease
Supposed to hold the lode —
Behold his lying pow’rs increase —
Observe his matchless mode.
He may not have an ounce of quartz,
The reef his lease might miss,
But in his Rougemont-like reports
THE
REEF
RUNS
DOWN
LIKE
THIS.
But if perchance the reef is found
And proven rich and wide,
Within another party’s ground
Who pegged him side by side,
He can’t peg in upon the end,
That’s taken long ago.
And if the lode-line doesn’t bend
He hasn’t Buckley’s show;
But shifting reefs is labor light,
And perfect is his bliss,
So as his lease is on the right —
It
under
lies
like
this.
But should his lease located be
Upon the left-hand side,
The reef in which the gold shows free
Towards the left he’ll guide.
For that which baulks a modest man
A mining scribe can do.
And alterations on a plan
Will swing a reef askew;
So once again with pencil deft
He plumbs the earth’s abyss
And as his lease is on the left
The
reef
runs
down
like
this.
But if he has no part or share
Around the golden ground,
A tinker’s toss he doesn’t care
If any reef is found.
He cares not if it goes an ounce
Or only goes a grain,
But if the owners try to bounce
They’re soon amongst the slain.
He slays them as a mad Malay,
Slays foemen with a kris,
And in the mining news next days —
T
H
E
I
R
R
E
E
F
C
U
T
S
O
U
T
L
I
K
E
T
H
I
S
The Rhymes that Our Hearts Can Read
We are sated of songs that hymn the praise
Of a world beyond our ken;
We are bored by the ballads of beaten ways,
And milk and water men;
We are tired of the tales that lovers told
To the cooing, amorous dove;
We have banished the minstrelsy of old,
And the lyric of languid love.
While we stand where the ways of men have end,
And the untrod tracks commence,
We weary of songs that poets penned
In pastoral indolence.
The sleepy sonnet that lovers make
Where weeping willows arch
Cannot the passionate soul awake
Of men who outward march.
Our harps are hung in the towering trees,
And the mulga low and grey
Our ballads are sung by every breeze
That flogs the sea to spray;
We want no lay of a moonlit strand,
No idyll of daisied mead,
For the rhymes that our hearts can understand
Are the rhymes that our hearts can read.
Thomas H. Wilson (‘Crosscut’) (b.1867 d.1925)
A Man was Killed in the Mine Today
I entered the cage for the ‘Number Nine’;
A trucker paused at the brace to say,
As he left the depths of the gloomy mine,
‘A man was killed in the stopes to-day!’
Then the winder sang as we rushed below,
And the plats flashed upward merrily.
And so to toil. Yet it came to me:
‘’Tis a sorrowful thing for some to know.’
There is clatter and crash in the dusty stopes,
As the rock-drills dash at the good grey ore.
There is labor and sweat, for the company hopes
For a quote in the share-list of one point more.
There is wealth to grasp: there are divs. to pay;
And what is a laborer more or less?
’Mid the din and clamor now who would guess
That a man was killed in the mine to-day!
So the skips roll on — there’s a tally to make,
For the stamps are hungry and iron-shod.
Whose lips could quiver? Whose heart could break
While there’s grist for the mills of the rich man’s God?
There’s a ten-bob wage for the risk he ran —
The paltry risk. If he got passed out,
’Tis nothing to worry our heads about —
He opened a job for a luckier man!
He was only a shoveller — put it aside
Where there’s gold to win such things must be.
He gave his pound to the rich man’s pride;
And what is a life? Yet it came to me:
There may be somebody far away,
Some soft-eyed woman whose tears would flow,
And whose cheek would pale if she did but know
That a man was killed in the mine to-day!
The Boulder Block
Rather rowdy,
Dingy, cloudy,
Dusty, dirty, dim, and dowdy,
Thirsty throats to mock.
Can’t mistake ’er;
Droughty slaker,
Six pubs to the blooming acre —
That’s the Boulder Block.
Weary hummers,
Beery bummers,
Cadging ‘deeners’, ‘zacks’ and ‘thrummers’,
Mooching in a flock,
Frontispieces hard and chilly,
Sparring pots off ‘Dick’ and ‘Billy’
(’Nough to drive a barman silly)
On the Boulder Block.
Sulphur frying,
Kinchins crying
Cyanide from sand dumps flying,
Senses reel and rock.
Whistles squealing,
Black smoke reeling,
Bingie gets a curious feeling
On the Boulder Block.
Drunks all fighting,
Crowd delighting,
Grimy derelicts exciting
Sympathy from mugs;
‘Have-beens’ viewing
Past with rueing
(Watching for a chance of chewing
Ears of tender ‘lugs’).
Miners drinking,
Crib-cans clinking —
Just off shift and no one shrinking
(Never mind the clock!).
Ragged shirt and gleaming collar,
Empty ‘kick’ and mighty dollar;
Health, and wealth, and grief, and squalor —
That’s the Boulder Block.
The Poverty Pot
Did you ever hear of the ‘poverty pot’?
When the stone is sampled and crushed and panned,
If your prospect’s dollying rich or not,
You’ve always the ‘poverty pot’ on hand.
And the blood may leap in each pulsing vein
As a glittering ‘tail’ shows all you wish;
Or lag, as the glint of a single grain
Looks up from the lap of the swirling d
ish.
But whatsoever the luck you’ve got,
It all goes into the ‘poverty pot’.
Through saltbush stretches and ranges grey,
When the dews of the morning gemmed our feet,
Where bell-birds piped at the break of day,
And the smell of the scrub was wild and sweet,
We’ve tramped to the tune of a swinging lilt,
And the hills sent back the tuneful clink
Of the knapping picks, as the Sun god spilt
His glory of gold o’er the morning’s brink.
And the mists of the night, diaphanous
Rolled back — and the day was there for us!
And then when the evening shades grew long,
With a slower step on the backward track,
While hearts and lips weaved a fairy throng
Of glittering dreams round the specimen sack.
The ‘leader’ we struck in the ironstone —
The reef we found in the diorite fall —
(Oh, the sunset gleams on the hills alone)
But the dish and the dolly have proved them all.
The dreams and the hopes — they are half forgot,
But the gold went into the ‘poverty pot’.
There’s a ‘poverty pot’ for us everyone.
It holds no sparkle of gilded ore,
But the gem of a kindly action done
May help to fill it with wealth galore,
The cheery smile or the shilling to lend,
The word that heartened a faltering mate,
The blow that was struck for a feebler friend,
The burden lightened of half its weight.
They are gems of gold, tho’ we know it not —
And they all go into the ‘poverty pot’.
And so when the last lead peters out,
And we cast the hammer and drill aside;
We’ll turn our faces with hope or doubt,
To the dim grey hills of the Great Divide;
We’ll know at the end when the Battery Boss
Has cleaned us up, and our luck is told,
If life’s long battle has won but dross,
Or crowned our days with unfading gold.
And if we crush but a low-grade lot —
Perhaps we’ll be judged by our ‘poverty pot’.
First published in 1907 as ‘Crosscut’.
Frederick Charles Vosper (b.1869 d.1901)
The New Woman
She does not ‘languish in her bower’,
Or squander all the golden day
In fashioning a gaudy flower
Upon a worsted spray.
Nor is she quite content to wait
Behind her rose-wreathed lattice pane,
Until beside her father’s gate
The ‘gallant prince draws rein’.
The brave ‘New Woman’ scorns to sigh,