The Boundary Rider's Wife (1898)
I'm the wife of a boundary rider,And we live on the Barcoo Creek.
Our wage is the station ration,
And twenty bob a week.
We are fairly well contented.
But I hope not all my life
Will be spent on a dreary station,
As a boundary rider's wife. They say I should never be lonely
With six healthy girls and boys,
They say that my life's complete with
So many domestic joys.
Do they reckon the cost, I wonder,
For the keep of six lusty weans;
For you cannot indulge in fancies
On an out-back station's means. There's never a school for the children,
And we never a sermon hear.
But we toil front the week's beginning
right up to its ending drear,
With seldom a break in the routine
Of this desolate daily life-
The life on a out-back station
Of a boundary rider's wife. There are missions to save the heathen,
There are millions spent in strife,
There are armies who preach salvation,
And sing of a better life.
But the road is dark and dreary.
And the way with trials rife ;
So they leave to God the saving
Of the boundary rider's wife. Melbourne "Argus." Notes From the Queensland Newspaper Toowoomba Chronicle and Darling Downs General Advertiser 10 Dec 1898 p. 6.