A fire softly burning
A billy on the boil
A heeler sleeping quietly
Kangaroo lace tied in a coil
A drover, hands gnarled and wrinkled now
From years in the scrub with the mob
He plaits the lace from left to right
Around the whip handles knob
A gentle cool breeze on a warm day
As we trekked the bush track away
The smell of the eucalyptus trees
The laughing kookaburra away it flees
Kangaroos bound about and will not stay
Emus peer from the bushes in curious display
As the sun begins to wane as the gully shadows
The pink galahs rest in the coolabah tree as it shows
A walk through the Australian Bush in the Summertime
In a show of Antipodean Magic in nature so fine.
You look at the distant horizon,
for darkened clouds, hazy and blurred.
They look like the billowing dust storm
behind the black stallion’s wild herd.
The pattering rain starts so softly –
hooves drumming on white mountain peaks.
The brumbies are frisking and playing –
they splash in the clear alpine creeks.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!
Oh there once was a swagman camped in the billabongs, Under the shade of a Coolibah tree;
And he sang as he looked at the old billy boiling
"Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me."
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda, my darling.
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.
Waltzing Matilda and leading a water-bag.
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.
The silence and the sunshine creep
With soft caress
O'er billowy plain and mountain steep
And wilderness -
A velvet touch, a subtle breath,
As sweet as love, as calm as death,
on earth, on air, so soft, so fine,
Till all the soul a spell divine
O'ershadoweth.
I've done my share of shearing sheep,
Of droving and all that;
And bogged a bullock team as well,
On a Murrumbidgee flat.
I've seen the bullock stretch and strain
And blink his bleary eye,
And the dog sit on the tuckerbox
Nine miles from Gundagai.
I am the basis of all wealth, the heritage of the wise, the thrifty and the prudent.
I am the poor mans joy and comfort, the rich man’s prize, the right hand of capital, the silent partner of many thousands of successful men.
I am the solace of the widow, the comfort of old age, the cornerstone of security against misfortune and want.
I am handed down to children through generations, as a thing of great worth.
I am the fruit of toil, credit respects me yet I am humble.
There's a land that is happy and fair,
Set gem-like in halcyon seas;
The white winters visit not there,
To sadden its blossoming leas,
More bland than the Hesperides,
Or any warm isle of the West,
Where the wattle-bloom perfumes the breeze,
Ant the bell-bird builds her nest.
The pride of Australia surges my veins
when I see the Outback awash after rains;
when droughts have been broken, the future is bright;
suspended life flourishes, seeking the light.
When I see the desert alive and in bloom –
bright tapestries woven on Nature’s rich loom –
I’m proud to be part of this picturesque land
with high mountain ranges and white coastal sand.
The camp-fire gleams resistance
To every twinkling star:
The horse-bells, in the distance
Are jangling faint and far:
Through gum-boughs lorn and lonely
The passing breezes sigh:
In all the world are only
My star-crowned Love and I.